The Forgotten
Cost of the Kashmir Conflict
By Dr Ahmad Faruqui
Dansville, CA
When
analysts reckon the cost of the Kashmir conflict,
they cite the thousands of lives lost, maimed
and scarred over the past 59 years, the cost of
maintaining garrisons along the Line of Control,
and the cost of maintaining large standing armies
to ensure victory in a full-scale war. But what
is often forgotten in this calculus is the far
bigger cost of not being able to carry on normal
commerce and trade between India and Pakistan.
This cost manifests itself in the hundreds of
millions of people on both sides of the border
that live below the poverty line whose lives would
improve considerably if economic relations were
normalized between the two countries.
Every time that India and Pakistan sit down to
do business, the generals in Rawalpindi make the
resolution of the Kashmir conflict a pre-requisite
to transacting any serious business with New Delhi,
knowing fully well that the omens for resolving
the conflict are not good.
First, when the issue could not be resolved when
Pakistan was twice its current size vis-à-vis
India, how can it be resolved now when India has
become a regional great power? Second, how can
it be resolved under the auspices of the United
Nations when Secretary General Kofi Anan has said
clearly that the UN resolutions that Pakistan
has brought up consistently are not binding? Third,
how can it be resolved when no third party is
interested in mediating the dispute, knowing fully
well the New Delhi objection? Many have tried
and failed. The most recent mediation attempt
was by that by the Saudis. Confident of their
nascent ties with India, and seeking to do a favor
to long-standing ally Pakistan, they declared
boldly that they would mediate the conflict. India
nixed that proposal the day it was put forward.
So why do the generals keep pushing Kashmir as
the core issue? The most popular explanation is
that the conflict provides the Pakistan army with
a raison d’etre. However, in two recent
papers based on interviews with senior Pakistani
officers, Peter Lavoy of the US Naval Postgraduate
School provides a more nuanced explanation.
Lavoy argues that some generals in Rawalpindi
believe that the Kashmir conflict pays for itself
because it ties down several hundred thousand
Indian army troops that would otherwise be available
for deployment against Pakistan. One can presume
that these generals must see evidence of the “enemy’s
evil intentions in the Indian military operations
that are being carried out this month to test
the “Cold Start” war doctrine. But
how likely is it that India would actually invade
Pakistan without any provocation? It would need
some strong provocation, such as the Pakistan
Army’s military action in East Pakistan
in 1971 that caused millions to flee the civil
war into India.
Lavoy cites General Musharraf's proposal that
India withdraw its troops from Kashmir, allowing
Pakistan to do the same and ultimately leading
to a resolution of the conflict. Does this represent
a fundamental change in Pakistan’s strategic
culture or simply a grand standing opportunity?
Lavoy says another facet of Pakistan’s strategic
culture is a belief that that India wants to reduce
Pakistan to the status of Bangladesh. But while
a “West Bangladesh” scenario may signal
the end of the world for the generals in Rawalpindi,
it would hardly signal that to the Pakistani nation.
Bangladesh is doing fine economically, much better
than it was doing as East Pakistan. It knows better
than to pick a fight with India. Thus, its defense
burden is half that of Pakistan’s. Its population
today is smaller than Pakistan’s, in a reversal
of the pre-1971 equation, and it continues to
have a higher literacy rate. Very few Bangladeshis
are blowing themselves up to settle religious
scores. Finally, Bangladesh is a democracy while
Pakistan is a camouflaged dictatorship.
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz spoke recently at
the passing out parade of the Gentlemen Cadets
at the Pakistan Military Academy. Parroting the
GHQ, he said that Pakistan was opposed to having
an arms race in the region and was pursuing a
national security strategy to secure its national
integrity, solidarity and economic sovereignty.
And then came the long-awaited clincher: for a
durable peace to happen in South Asia, a just
settlement of the Kashmir dispute in accordance
with the wishes of the Kashmiri people was required.
One would have thought that the international
banker in Aziz would have prevented him from reciting
these well-worn phrases. He, more than anyone,
has to be conscious of the cost the fight over
Kashmir represents for Pakistan’s economy.
It denies Pakistani exporters the chance to sell
to a billion Indians. It denies Pakistani consumers
access to competitive products and services from
India that would improve their standard of living.
And it denies Indian entrepreneurs the opportunity
to invest in Pakistan and create jobs for Pakistanis.
With much fanfare Pakistan has lifted the ban
on screening Indian films that was imposed during
the September 1965 war but this is just a cosmetic
measure, since most Pakistanis were already viewing
them on DVDs. The bilateral relationship is confined
to the cricket pitch, film screenings and musical
evenings, since Islamabad continues to view New
Delhi through the lens of Kashmir rather than
through the lens of trade and development.
Pakistan’s military leaders are fond of
visiting China to check on the progress of the
JF-17 Thunder fighter jet and sundry weapon systems.
It is time they studied how China deals with the
US, its long-term rival. When Deng Xiopeng came
to power, he laid out the Four Modernizations
program for the Middle Kingdom, and made economic
development its most important “modernization”
objective. Everything else was going to be secondary,
including the resolution of the long-standing
dispute with Taiwan. Deng’s successors have
continued his policy.
China is militarily capable of taking Taiwan by
force but knows that would invite a debilitating
attack from the US. So it has made an invasion
conditional on Taiwan declaring its independence,
an unlikely event. In so doing, Beijing can stay
focused on the modernization of the Chinese nation.
In return for making the US its largest trading
partner it has agreed to accept the US as a global
hegemon. In fact, it has even opened its economy
to investors from Taiwan and Taiwanese businesses
have invested billions of dollars in China, creating
jobs and economic opportunities for millions of
Chinese. Islamabad would do well to copy Beijing’s
paradigm, put aside the Kashmir conflict and extend
the hand of economic friendship to New Delhi.
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