[Reader-list] MJ Akbar BLOG in TOI

[Bipin]

Dear sir,

Bellow is what reputed journalist Mr. M. J. Akbar has to say on Indo-Pak
talk. 

You don't need a sting operation to find out what Ms Rao will say. Defence
minister A K Antony has already informed us that infiltration has not gone
down, and cordite from Pune is still in the air. She has no option except to
hammer away at terrorism and the "war by other means" that Pakistan launched
after its failure to seize the Kashmir valley by irregular and then regular
forces in 1947-48. The strategy for subversion was initiated by the same
person who planned the first war, a Colonel Akbar Khan. He adopted  the
rather ambitious nom de plume "Tariq", after Tariq bin Ziad, Arab conqueror
of Spain in 712. He wrote two papers after ceasefire on  January 1, 1949,
"What Next in Kashmir?" and "Keep the Pot Boiling in Abdullah's Kashmir".
Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan sanctioned Rs 1 million to arm a "people's
militia" in Indian Kashmir. The Abdullahs have moved into their third
generation, but the blood in that pot has not stopped boiling. The outcome
of the dialogue on  February 25 will be determined not by what Ms Rao says
but by what she hears.

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/TheSiegeWithin/entry/talk-without-h
ope-so-there 

Sensible nations either go to war or negotiate peace; they don't sulk. So it
is sensible for India and Pakistan to resume talks at a formal level. The
tricky part is to discover what kind of talk makes sense.

War is always much easier to start than peace. You need only a trumpet to
launch hostilities. Peace requires a rather more complicated orchestra;
there will be discordant notes from some insistent trombone; the bass could
be playing a military march; all musicians might  not read from the same
sheet; and there is always the likelihood of liberal violins airing  strains
more relevant to heaven than to realists who live on earth. If the
maestro-conductor tears his hair occasionally, you can understand why.

The heavy breathing about the  February 25 talks between foreign secretaries
Nirupama Rao and Salman Bashir suggests that neither Indian nor Pakistani
media, which sit in the front row and shape the response of the audience,
have quite understood what a bilateral dialogue between hostile neighbours
is all about. Each journalist is cranking up the decibel level around one
question, and one question only: what will the diplomats say when they meet?

You don't need a sting operation to find out what Ms Rao will say. Defence
minister A K Antony has already informed us that infiltration has not gone
down, and cordite from Pune is still in the air. She has no option except to
hammer away at terrorism and the "war by other means" that Pakistan launched
after its failure to seize the Kashmir valley by irregular and then regular
forces in 1947-48. The strategy for subversion was initiated by the same
person who planned the first war, a Colonel Akbar Khan. He adopted  the
rather ambitious nom de plume "Tariq", after Tariq bin Ziad, Arab conqueror
of Spain in 712. He wrote two papers after ceasefire on  January 1, 1949,
"What Next in Kashmir?" and "Keep the Pot Boiling in Abdullah's Kashmir".
Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan sanctioned Rs 1 million to arm a "people's
militia" in Indian Kashmir. The Abdullahs have moved into their third
generation, but the blood in that pot has not stopped boiling. The outcome
of the dialogue on  February 25 will be determined not by what Ms Rao says
but by what she hears.

No prizes for guessing what her counterpart will say: precisely the same
thing that his ministry has been saying for six decades: Kashmir, Kashmir,
Kashmir. In the old days, they were more focused and claimed that Kashmir
belonged to Pakistan. These days they are a little more circumspect in
letting "Azad Kashmiris" some leeway; but they are still certain that
Kashmir does not belong to India. In the  time left, Salman Bashir will talk
about Indus waters, but that is a comparatively minor issue since India has,
in principle, accepted the responsibility of an upper riparian state to
share water with territory lower down. Disputes over quantum are really
small potatoes.

In the absence of real answers, the practice has been to resort to
platitudes. Platitudes survive because they have latitude. The problem is
that the flexibility of excuses has been fully exhausted. There is a tired
ring to the deadpan explanation for terrorism: "we must address core
issues", meaning Kashmir. There will be a me-too variation this time; an
injured expression and the hapless suggestion that Pakistan too is a victim
of terrorism. This risible argument does not bear examination. The fact that
terrorists with another cause blow up Peshawar can hardly be justification
for Pakistani establishment help to those who want to blow up Srinagar, or
Mumbai, or Pune. As for Kashmir, Pakistan has signed two agreements, at
Tashkent in 1966 and at Shimla in 1972, endorsing the ceasefire line of
January 1, 1949 as the effective border: if anything, Tashkent was more
specific than Shimla. A third treaty confirming this would end the dispute,
but no one has suggested that this is on the agenda.

Is there anything new to say or hear? Are we going to talk for the sake of
talks? That may be better than not talking at all, but it would be useful to
place a marker along the way to the conference hall. This is about civilians
pretending to be civil, not about finding solutions. There is no solution
apart from the status quo, and if the status quo were acceptable to Pakistan
we would have had warmth and cooperation after 1972 - and, by now, dozens of
authors trying to make money out of books on Pindia. Pindia, after all, has
a nicer ring to it than Chindia, and it makes a more dramatic story than
analysis of frosty neighbours secretly delighted that the Himalayas separate
them.

Let us talk without hope so that there may be hope for civility.

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thanks

Bipin Trivedi