Geo-strategic efforts toward trade

It is important to keep the reasons for India's indecisiveness in focus. The matter has been mixed up with the thinking of India's national security wallahs. A bit of background is necessary too. These security wallahs do not trust Pakistan and think that India will have given a hostage to an unreliable Pakistan. Moreover, India has been running a cold war with Pakistan. In recent decades its strategy has been to isolate Pakistan and that has determined India's course of action, particularly in Afghanistan and Central Asia. India has diligently cultivated Iran. That process has been facilitated by Pakistanis own unwise obsession with Taliban. India supported the Northern Alliance during the second civil war in Afghanistan in 1990s. By stretching a little, India's cultivation of China too can be put in this box.

There is little that anyone in Pakistan can usefully say or do about Indian strategic thinking, though one finds making a remark or two irresistible. The trouble with militaristic strategy-making is that emotionally determined enemy is supposed to have all the characteristics of a demon; his generously estimated capabilities become, for their purposes, equal to his intentions; it leaves no ground or scope for possible reconciliation, friendship or enlightened self-interest. The national interest always comprises a crude mix of what might be barely possible or even conceivable by way of military build up. It does uncommonly look like the small mind trying to think big and projecting its own deductions as doctrines. In any case, it has come to be a respected science, if also rather esoteric; this thinking is always guided by the interests of the local variant of Industrial Military Complex. It allows no enlightened discussion: one's side has to stretch out its own capabilities and resources on the assumption that the adversary will bring to bear all its capability which has to be countered to the delight of vested interests. The phenomenon remains recognisable in all climes and places.

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Politically it is anyhow necessary for New Delhi and Islamabad to sort out the pipelines issue thoroughly. They can either remain caught up in the old cobwebs, spun over 57 years, by cold war thinking or they can break out of pettifogging and produce a common vision that would benefit the actual peoples of India and Pakistan. The silly idea of keeping all the options open is not wise. Keeping all the options open all the time means doing nothing remarkable or good.

What is needed is a vision of Indo-Pakistan relations that should become a model for the region as a whole which can extend into regional integration for making progress economically, socially and culturally, with a modicum of political harmony. There is also a sub text here. Some Indians had at one time toyed with the notion that appealing to pre-independence unity of all the peoples, building on linguistic and cultural commonalties, including religions, and more trade would make Pakistan relaxed and become the kind of friend that India would be happy to live with. That is dated.

On this side too, there are decades of the old suspicion: The Indians have not accepted Pakistan at heart and would want to undo it somehow. One reference to reality should dispel these illusions and delusions: the kind of developments that have taken place in India as well as in Pakistan preclude the possibility of a political reunion between Pakistan and India, such as was in the mind of Akhand Bharat Wallahs at one time. There are as powerful vested interests in Pakistan that will keep it a separate state, and a militarist one at that, indefinitely. In India the Hindutva brigade has marched so far that they will have to invent a Pakistan if there was none; they need a political demon to frighten the Indians with.

The options before both countries are stark: they can use, indeed misuse, emotive language to please the galleries about making serious efforts at agreement-making ­- and here one is talking all agreements all along the line over eight disputed subjects ­- without necessarily conceding anything from their maximal positions. The bureaucracy particularly and the politicians in general like muddling along without making any difficult decisions. The other alternative is that somehow the two states produce enough statesmanship to work for a vision of peace and rapid progress by resolving the disputes and agreeing to uninhibited cultural, political and economic relations with as free a trade as possible. Insofar as Pakistan is concerned, on the specific issue of oil and gas pipelines, it is anxious to give as many guarantees as India desires, as noted. It will earn up to $ 500 million in royalties for the transit trade in addition to assured oil and gas supplies for itself. In fact if this Iran-India pipeline goes through, the way would be open for an even bigger pipeline scheme from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to India as well as for some oil exports from Gwadur and or Karachi.

There is no reason why the two countries cannot have an agreement for opening up the two-way transit trade for all: for Pakistani goods can travel by Indian railways to Bangladesh and beyond while Bangladesh and India can make big profits by exporting by land route through Pakistan to Afghanistan and Central Asia. Pakistan can certainly compete with India in Afghanistan, Central Asia and wherever depending upon the price and quality of its goods. Such a free transit trade will provide welcome incentives to Pakistanis to improve their productivity.

There are international schemes of linking Far East and Southeast Asia with Europe by at least two land routes running roughly parallel; one through the northern parts of Asia and the other is intended to pass through southern parts. Japanese, South East Asian and South Asian goods can travel to Europe through South Asia and vice versa. The benefits to the two countries would be immense, including some unearned royalties.

There are myriad possibilities of progress inherent in Indo-Pakistan economic cooperation, especially in conjunction with free as well as preferential bilateral trade. To put crudely the two countries should happily give high value hostages to each other: India's investment in mega projects in Pakistan and Pakistan's investments in some big Indian projects will go a long way in creating mutual trust. With that the future of SAARC will brighten up. There will be then real hope for South Asia's poor. The region can then put itself on the road to rapid progress.

The master reason why Pakistan should reverse its traditional standoffishness is that the old ideas are no longer applicable; they were centred around a possible war with India on Kashmir that was always round the corner. After the two countries have gone nuclear, the idea of another war is simply foolish; neither side can afford to go to war over Kashmir or indeed anything else. If that basic presumption of war is knocked out, all the policies that were predicated on the likelihood of war get knocked out too. Once the dimensions of this huge change are assimilated, there would be compulsion to go over to the antipodal positions. And that would be logical, too. Pakistan was denying itself all the benefits of economic cooperation with India and the rest of the region for the sake of Kashmir. Now if that militaristic road to Kashmir is closed, there is no reason why to go on denying oneself what is only all too possible.

MB Naqvi is a leading columist in Pakistan.