Hopes and fears

Both these are bold steps in a desirable -- peace-promoting -- direction. The SAARC breakthrough infused a new life in the otherwise ineffective, almost moribund, regional grouping. It can now productively move from one success to more in days to come. It can become a harbinger of, and the means to, ever closer integration of the seven economies. Almost instinctively the sort of goals seem to have been accepted that have produced the EU in Europe. Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee allowed his imagination to soar: he visualised such a close integration of the South Asian economies as would need a single currency which has already been named Rupa. Pakistan PM found it appropriate and seemly to tacitly accept that goal.

The context of the breakthrough in bilateral ties of the two nuclear powers is the restarting of bilateral negotiations along the path charted on the conditions and for purposes agreed in Islamabad in the summer of 1997. Its format was called the Composite Dialogue. Its specific purpose was to complete the business (normalisation of ties) left unfinished by on-again and off-again negotiations after the Simla Agreement. The talks visualised by 1997 agreement between two Foreign Secretaries virtually collapsed after a few ineffectual meetings amidst the 1998 events -- insurgency in Kashmir seemed racing towards a climax and India forced a sort of show of hands by May '98 nuclear test explosions.

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After that Mr. Vajpayee rode a bus to Lahore and signed the Lahore Declaration which led to Pakistan Army's virtual revolt in the shape of the ill-fated Kargil operation and a freeze in bilateral ties followed. It was unsuccessfully sought to be broken in Agra. The year 2002 saw the nadir of Indo-Pak relations when a million troops looked like going to war amidst atomic sabre rattling. Indian PM, with prodding by foreigners and some finesse, threw a peace feeler in April last year and the Joint Statement of Jan '04 has succeeded in restarting the normalisation moves.

It is necessary not to be carried away by media hype or diplomatic rhetoric that is occasioned by all Indo-Pak meetings meant to take the normalisation process further. The decibel and volume of all this rhetoric should be seen for what it is: it demonstrates the common people's deeply-felt urge for a coming together in friendship and cooperation on both sides. Normally their two governments keep up an invisible curtain to keep the ordinary Indians from fraternising with common Pakistanis. Highly emotional scenes are witnessed on the few occasions when this curtain is lifted a little and Pakistanis and Indians are allowed to meet one another.

There was the recent occasion of the Joint Convention of Pakistan-India People's Forum for Peace and Democracy in Karachi when over 260 Indian peace activists visited Karachi along with over 350 of their Pakistani counterparts. The bonhomie and friendly feelings gushed forth from both sides. Although the number of Indian activists was smaller at the South Asia Partnership's Islamabad function, called People's SAARC Summit, just before the official SAARC's Summit, but the easy comraderie with Pakistani counterparts had an intense quality of its own. This fact explains why the two governments, whenever they start quarrelling, first thing they do is to clamp down on the visa issuing to prevent the normal civilized intercourse among civilized neighbours. Both governments fear normal cultural exchanges and only permit blood relations to meet their relatives after much hassle.

This was brought out by South Asian Free Media Association's several years of experience. It has been campaigning for a visa free -- or with really easy visas -- travel of senior South Asian journalists in the region. It has lobbied hard to have the issue included in the official SAARC agenda. Most Foreign Ministers and Foreign Secretaries have separately expressed, sometime repeatedly, sympathy and support for putting it on SAARC's Summit agenda. But the issue continues to elude the official SAARC agenda. This is really a key issue. Without free travel by citizens of South Asia in the region -- meaning free cultural exchanges -- no improvement in the inter-state relations can be stable or lasting. No normalisation, let alone friendship, between Pakistan and India can be sustained without a visa-free regime throughout South Asia -- so as to make India, Pakistan and Bangladesh adopt the sort of civilized mode operated by Nepal and Sri Lanka.

The Indian and Pakistani governments, in the current phase, are seeking a normalisation that has eluded them since 1971. Its scope does not extend to the sort of relations that subsisted between Pakistan and India between 1951 and 1965. The current effort is restricted to the sort of normality that existed on Dec 12, 2001, no more. But now that Pakistan policy makers have allowed the impression to get abroad that Mr. Vajpayee's vision of regional integration to the point of having a single currency is generally acceptable to the Jamali government, including its Boss, it is time for the government to go the whole hog. Let it work, from here and now, for a visa-free South Asia for all its citizens.

Much will depend on speed with which Pakistan moves. Everybody knows why Pakistan's policy makers are going along with Mr. Vajpayee's formulations. There is relentless pressure from the rest of the world, as is shown by the cascading stories in the global media of Pakistan's atomic scientists helping North Korean and Libyan governments' plans to have WMD technology. Iran went a step further and named individuals and cos that helped it acquire technology for uranium enrichment. Pakistan's strategic location and Gen. Musharraf's reliability in the eyes of Americans are a help, of course. But they are only 'some' help. Before too long and under other circumstances -- say under another US government -- things can get ugly. It is a natural and correct policy to get closer to India and fast.

But India is a diverse and big country and is in a different league. It has a complex -- and to a certain extent unpredictable -- politics that is so divisive as to deeply affect Pakistanis. Improvement in ties with it will remain fragile and vulnerable to variable moods in the famous 250 million strong middle class -- that now have a certain orientation. That is not really helpful. Indian politics per se may not be a consideration for Army generals and the government under Mr. Jamali. But other Pakistanis have opinions on, and about, Indian politics. Indeed they have preferences and fears as well as ideological interests. But moving fast on free cultural exchanges and a normalisation such as obtains in Europe is however the need of the hour that is not likely to lessen despite the vicissitudes of Indian politics.

Three considerations have to be kept in mind. First, normal or civilized relations among the peoples of the seven states is the minimum, not maximum, need; ideally, friendship among them is a prior requirement that can enable and sustain friendly cooperation among the SAARC member governments. Governments are not always responsive to their common folks, for they frequently represent narrow elites whose interests can vary, even if they are not volatile. To keep the governments committed to a people-to-people reconciliation from the grassroots up in all inter-state relationships, it is ultimately the responsibility of the Mr. Common Man, while the governments get ready to spoil these relationships virtually at the drop of a hat. That happens to be so, however odd it may be.

What the rulers of Pakistan have now done in and about SAARC as well as bilaterally with India, whatever their motives or compulsions, is good and timely. It is for them to resolutely resist the already visible adverse reactions from vested interests. Which vested interests is one talking about? It is the social and economic structures that produce and sustain the Jihadi culture. There are viscerally anti-Indian lobbies that can be depended upon to oppose both a vigorously revitalized SAARC and the graduation of the normalisation process with India into a genuine rapprochement between the two peoples that is sure to result from wide-scale cultural exchanges. It is only in Pakistan and India where opposition to an Indo-Pak friendship exists, though common people everywhere need it.

It is not the place to go into domestic political questions or how this narrowly-based government can move toward strengthening Pakistan's seriously damaged relations with major powers by doing what takes to become vitalized politically. That they are other stories for other times. Here the writer can only underline the far-reaching significance of what Islamabad may have done: it has released SARRC from needless foolish restrictions and revitalised it, on the one hand, and has offered to befriend India at a huge political cost to Pakistan's old and sterile stances. The advance will be opposed and it is for this government to face the cacophonous music from the Right wing as best as it can. For, it cannot go back or resile from what it has done.

MB Naqvi is a leading columist in Pakistan.