Can India and Pakistan finesse their well-known positions to move the dialogue forward? Of course they can.
Ever since his electoral success in Pakistan last month and installation as prime minister last week, Imran Khan has repeatedly signalled goodwill towards India. Delhi, in turn, has responded with warm words. In his congratulatory call to PM Khan last month and his more recent letter, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has affirmed India’s readiness to pursue constructive engagement with Pakistan. India also appears open to an early conversation between the two foreign ministers, probably on the margins of the annual session of the United Nations General Assembly in the middle of next month. So far so good. But there is no underestimating the problems in turning the positive optics into a productive engagement.
Three difficulties confront Delhi. First is the fact that the influence of the elected leaders on Pakistan’s foreign policy has significantly declined in the last few years. Asif Ali Zardari, who led the Pakistan People’s Party to a resounding victory in 2008 after his wife Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, as well as Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League, who swept back to power in 2013, attempted to change the civil-military equation on national security decision-making in favour of the former. Both Zardari and Sharif came to grief in trying to wrest a larger role for themselves from the army. Can Khan, despite good intentions, succeed where his predecessors failed? While Delhi must necessarily suspend its judgement on that question for the moment, it has to cope with a second set of problems. Delhi can’t but notice that Khan has emphasised the importance of “conflict resolution” — Pakistan’s diplomatic code for putting Kashmir at the centre of any engagement with India. Delhi, on its part, has linked its call for constructive engagement with the creation of a “violence free atmosphere” — India’s code for credible Pakistani action against cross-border terrorism.
Can India and Pakistan finesse their well-known positions to move the dialogue forward? Of course they can. Prime Ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh did exactly that with Pakistan’s leaders. There were periods of reduced cross-border terrorism that facilitated a productive dialogue on Kashmir and helped produce a range of confidence-building measures. There were moments when major agreements were ready to be clinched — including those related to Kashmir. They remained elusive thanks to the lack of domestic consensus on either side of border. That brings us to the third set of challenges — of carefully nurturing the bilateral engagement amidst the hostility of multiple actors at home. The right course for Delhi is to approach Imran Khan with positive realism. Modi has the political capital to do that. Avoiding either starry-eyed optimism or blind cynicism, the PM must explore all the possibilities with Imran Khan for unfreezing the relationship. Even the smallest of advances could bring great relief to the people of India and Pakistan.