How Rivalries End by Rasler Karen; Thompson William R.; Ganguly Sumit

Author:Rasler, Karen; Thompson, William R.; Ganguly, Sumit
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.

Continuing Deadlock: The Composite Dialogue

In 2003, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee again offered a resumption of talks with Pakistan. The motivations underlying his offer to hold talks with Pakistan remain unclear. It is possible that given the success of India's counterinsurgency strategy in Kashmir, which had managed to restore a semblance of political order and stability, he saw a renewal of talks with Pakistan as a possible pathway toward addressing the underlying sources of conflict. In any case, Pakistan reciprocated later in the year with the banning of two terrorist organizations and the imposition of a cease-fire along the Line of Control (Chari, Cheema, and Cohen 2007: 208).

By 2004, a full-scale, “composite dialogue” was under way with a range of issues extending from nuclear confidence-building measures to the demilitarization of the Siachen Glacier under discussion. According to one of the few accounts of the dialogue, considerable progress was made between 2004 and 2007 in addressing these issues. Unfortunately, domestic opposition to General Musharraf's regime, unrelated to his pursuit of this peace process with India, led to its petering out.21

With the civilian interregnum in Pakistan and a change in the key political actors the dialogue lost its momentum. Worse still, in November 2008, a group of ten terrorists affiliated with the Lashkar-e-Taiba attacked a series of targets in a well-coordinated fashion across Bombay (Mumbai), India's principal commercial and entertainment hub. For a host of complex reasons it took Indian security forces over three days to completely quell the terrorist attack (Rabasa et al. 2009). Despite the viciousness of the attack and India's ability to trace the origins of the terrorists to Pakistani soil based upon electronic intercepts, the Congress-led regime of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh avoided any resort to military action. In all likelihood India decided not strike Pakistan for two reasons. First, in the time that it took the security forces to bring the terrorists to heel any element of surprise was lost. It was entirely reasonable to surmise that Pakistani forces were in a suitable state of alert to repulse or respond to an Indian military strike. Second, the fear of nuclear escalation that had long dogged Indian military planning no doubt played a role in curbing an incentive to carry out military action. However, the regime in New Delhi felt compelled to end the ongoing dialogue.

What had initiated the “composite dialogue” in the first place? Vajpayee and Musharraf must be seen as change-seeking entrepreneurs. Though Vajpayee made the initial move he enjoyed a degree of reciprocity from Musharraf. Musharraf, it appears had learned that no quick resolution to longstanding and deep-seated differences was possible through political grandstanding. He had resorted to this tactic in the summer of 2001 during the Agra summit only to have hawkish leaders within the Indian cabinet quickly undermine his efforts. Indeed, without Musharraf's willingness to move forward with a substantive and meaningful dialogue Vajpayee's call for a dialogue would have been in vain. In this case, the talks, which appear to have made

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