Bengaluru: “If India and Pakistan couldn't sort out their differences with 55 high level summits, what guarantee is there, that a 56th will break the logjam,” asks Husain Haqqani, former Pakistan ambassador to the US and author of India vs. Pakistan Why Can’t We Just Be Friends?', cautioning against the high expectations of a breakthrough every time Indian and Pakistani leaders reach out to each other, as Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif did with their Christmas Day hug. It can only be followed by a Pathankot, he said.
Spelling out how "Kashmir is in grave danger of going the way of Palestine, "Ambassador Haqqani, who was in the city to promote the book (that he describes as 'the ultimate primer on India-Pakistan relations,') says that the world's sympathy for Kashmir, never as much of an attention grabber as Palestine, was slipping.
Contrast the lukewarm response that Mr Sharif received when he brought up the Kashmir issue during an address to the UNSC in 2015, with the huge support Pakistan garnered from 58 members of the body in 1948, Mr Haqqani lays the blame at Pakistan's use of Kashmir to settle scores for the loss in ’71 of its eastern wing, its fathering of jihadi irregulars to counter India’s overwhelmingly superior conventional forces and its attempts to “militarily alter the LOC”, as being contributory factors.
“Don’t mistake me. As a Pakistani, I have immense sympathy for the plight of the Kashmiris, caught as they are between the Pakistani establishment and the Indian Army, but as in the case of Palestine, where the international community has cooled off after backing a Palestinian state for years, saying it cannot happen, not at the cost of the destruction of Israel, Kashmir too, cannot be resolved according to Pakistan’s demands."
Speaking against the backdrop of renewed violence in Jammu and Kashmir that Delhi openly charges, is being instigated by Islamabad-backed jihadists, Mr Haqqani said in an interview to Deccan Chronicle on Tuesday: “The status quo has not changed since 1947. All this talk of a plebiscite is just that — talk,” and refers to an anecdote in his book of a little known moment when then Pakistan President Ayub Khan accepted that a plebiscite was not possible.
Mr Haqqani recounts, how in 1962, post the Indo-China war when the US Assistant Secretary of State at the time, W. Averell Harriman, proposed an “India Pakistan discussion on Kashmir without pre-conditions” to Ayub Khan, Mr Harriman also told Ayub that “Pakistan’s demand for a plebiscite in Kashmir could not be fulfilled and that the Vale of Kashmir controlled by India could not be transferred to Pakistan”.
Ayub’s response was that if a plebiscite was not possible, he was prepared to consider any alternative where the views of all three stake-holders — India, Pakistan and the people of Kashmir — was taken into consideration.
“Kashmir is not the problem, it’s a mere symptom of the problem,” Mr Haqqani said.
“The problem? Pakistan’s refusal to accept — as a former Pakistan Army chief told Mr Haqqani — “that after investing so much time and energy on the issue, Pakistan could not swallow the bitter pill that the Kashmir dispute may not be resolved any time soon.”
As the former diplomat sensationally admitted, “even President Pervez Musharraf told Pakistani lawmakers — that the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba was a reserve force!” The irregulars, meant to keep India off-balance and stop its rise as a South Asian economic powerhouse.
“Why do we even want to be equal?” asked the former diplomat. Pakistan, he said, had squandered all its energies in a fruitless attempt to achieve equality with India, falling back first on the US which helped it maintain military parity with India, without realising that enrolling Pakistan as a partner... buttressed conflict in South Asia.”
Instead of using its resources to provide better education and a standard of living to its people, Pakistan’s military cornered the biggest share of the country’s assets. Already large, with US’ munificence, it became twice as large, giving the military the idea that it “could flex its muscles against India and settle Kashmir.” China, he said, was “the new US”.
Haqqani, who recounts how Musharraf’s request to the curator of the last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar’s mausoleum in Myanmar to replace the legend “Shahenshah-e- Hindustan” with “Shahenshah-e-Hindustan” as Pakistan, was symptomatic of the malaise says: “Even Pakistan’s nuclear arms had not ended its insecurity. Instead, it feeds its India obsession.”
