Welcome ceasefire in Kashmir: Don't miss the bigger chance!

So it's good news that Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali's Kashmir ceasefire offer was quickly followed by Pakistan lifting its ban on Indian airliner flights through its airspace. India has welcomed both initiatives.

We citizens should actually celebrate them. Resumption of point-to-point air services and overflights should pave the way for restoring rail links -- and hence for more trade, on which India is keen. Greater citizen-to-citizen and commercial contacts are worthy in themselves.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

The ceasefire, at minimum, will end the India-Pakistan practice of randomly, casually, callously shelling each other's territory. Both do this routinely -- not for strategic gains, but for macho effect.

The ceasefire will bring great respite to the 200,000 Indians who have fled their homes as a result of artillery shelling which occurs thousands of times every year. Optimistically, it could lead to other confidence-building measures.

The overflight ban meant a diversion of India's West-bound flights and a loss of Rs. 100 crores. India was the greater loser because it operated 10 times more flights through Pakistan's airspace than the other way around.

Overflight restoration removes an irritant. Pakistan prolonged the ban to deny India aviation access to Afghanistan. This was the two rivals' hot-cold war spilling into Afghanistan.

Its end is welcome. Even more positive is the apparent change in Islamabad's attitude. It recognises that it's ludicrous to inflict a loss upon itself only because that hurts India.

This establishes a simple principle: don't do anything to needle your adversary when you know it hurts you too. It's irrelevant whether his loss is greater than yours -- so long as you bleed yourself. This principle does not assume friendship between enemies: it only eliminates their most irrational rivalry.

This principle should be applied to Siachen. Siachen is the world's highest-altitude conflict, and perhaps its most strategically irrational one.

India and Pakistan, two poor countries, each spend Rs 3-to-5 crores a day to sustain hostilities at 20,000 feet, where wind velocity can reach 150 kmph and temperatures minus 50 Celsius.

More Indian and Pakistani soldiers die at Siachen from frostbite than from gunshots. Siachen leaves survivors scarred: with snow-blindness, high-altitude sickness and depression from loneliness in desolate places.

India and Pakistan are fighting only to deny each other a possible future chance to demarcate the Line of Control beyond point NJ-9842 in ways favourable to them. Siachen doesn't overlook any strategic area, nor does it lead to one. It's a dead-end.

Even on a cynical view, the ceasefire could resolve Siachen if the right moves are made. But one needn't take a dismal view. Mr Jamali's unconditional ceasefire made a clean break from the action-reaction pattern of Pakistan's responses to India's recent overtures.

With this, Pakistan established its ownership of the peace process. One reason for this is growing Western pressure. The West feels that Pakistan is dragging its feet on fighting Al-Qaeda. Islamabad is acutely aware of this.

On November 20, Gen Pervez Musharraf told Pakistani journalists that the world doubts Pakistan's sincerity in fighting terrorism; it expects Islamabad to "do more" -- on pain of US punishment.

Compulsion may not be the only factor behind Pakistan's change of stance. There's growing recognition within its moderates that its covert intervention in Kashmir is turning counterproductive. It should explore cooperation.

This holds especially true of economic cooperation. The coming South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit is make-or-break. Pakistan can't further delay a free trade agreement (FTA). If SAFTA doesn't happen, India will turn its back upon SAARC and reach FTAs with Southeast Asian countries and with neighbours like Sri Lanka.

Mr Jamali's Eid initiative must be seen in this context as sincere. India must respond to it generously. It has much to gain by speeding up the peace process. It should look beyond the ceasefire, while ensuring its extension into the summer.

In South Asia, the processes of normalisation of relations and of transforming them can be simultaneous; they reinforce each other. India should explore both.

This may not quickly result, as Gen Musharraf demands, in a comprehensive dialogue through four steps: start talking; accept the centrality of Kashmir; eliminate whatever is unacceptable to Pakistan, India and the Kashmiris; and finally, reach a settlement acceptable to all.

This is not unreasonable. But Pakistan too must show it has stopped supporting Kashmir's jehadis. The ceasefire is a step in that direction. If it holds, India should make some unilateral gestures, including visa relaxation and doing away for, say, six months, with (the absurd) requirement of police reporting for visitors.

India can unilaterally release all visa-violating Pakistani detainees as soon as they serve their prison terms. India should unilaterally announce more tariff concessions, especially those it's offering Sri Lanka.

India could organise a goodwill delegation from Jammu and Kashmir to visit Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Even bolder would be a one-year moratorium on missile test-flights.

All this will need a mindset change. Essentially, we must choose between India remaining a prisoner to its hostility with Pakistan, and liberating itself to develop its potential and give its citizens a fair deal.

The first option unrealistically assumes that Pakistan and India are destined to remain enemies. Its proponents piously want Pakistan to disintegrate through internal ethnic conflict or economic collapse.

This is the favourite fantasy of Jammu and Kashmir Governor S.K. Sinha. But nothing of the sort is going to happen. Pakistan's economy is recovering, clocking 18 percent industrial growth. Its ethnic tensions are not unmanageable.

On a sober, realistic view, Pakistan and India must learn to live with each other -- separately, but sanely and responsibly. Peaceful co-existence alone can produce positive results. India must contribute to it -- in the spirit of the October 22 proposals.

Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.