Zero Option: Eternal WAR, Eternal PEACE

Sanjay Kapoor Sharm-El-Sheikh (Egypt)/Delhi

Only conspiracy theories can explain why India and Pakistan have not been able to sort out their long held dispute. It is 62 years since they found independence, but till now they have not been able to bring peace to a region that nestles a majority of the world's poor. It is not that attempts have not been made at rapprochement, but vested interests that thrive in instability and chaos in this region are far stronger than those who want to smoke the peace pipe. 

In 1953, the first attempt was made by US President Dwight D Eisenhower to sort out differences between the neighbours. His brief to his envoy Paul Hoffman, former chief of the Marshall Plan, was, "Our world simply cannot afford an outbreak of hostilities between these two countries, and I would risk a great deal to prevent such an eventuality."

Due to Hoffman's initiative, Nehru agreed to visit Karachi and talk to his counterpart, Muhammad Ali Bogra - a Bengali East Pakistani Muslim. Nehru was received with warmth and came back with the impression that the existing regime was favourable towards India. Although the American initiative ran into rough weather due to reports that Washington was up to no good as it was hobnobbing with Sheikh Abdullah, Nehru decided to invite Bogra to Delhi.

Nehru worked hard to give Bogra a resounding welcome, going to the extent of engaging in crowd control during the public meeting that he had organised for him. On August 20, 1953, in a communiqué, he stumped his opponents and Hindu fundamentalists when he agreed to announce the new plebiscite administrator by April 1954 and hold voting by 1955, "provided the atmosphere in Pakistan remains good". At that time it seemed like the two countries would sort out their differences, but these hopes proved stillborn.

According to Dennis Kux, author of US and India - Estranged Democracies, Karachi did not take advantage of Nehru's decision to cement plebiscite arrangements and decided to take a tougher line against India. Kux fails to give a reason, but it is clear that there were vested interests that did not want peace to return to this region.

Similar attempts were made when India defeated Pakistan during the 1971 war and Indira Gandhi had the gun in her hand to force Pakistani premier Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to agree to a settlement of Kashmir. Ms Gandhi let that opportunity pass by.

A decade later, progenies of the two leaders, Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto, were about to seal a deal when the young Pakistani prime minister's hand was stayed by her country's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. Clearly, the ISI had acquired far larger role after the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. 

Since then, politics in both nations have tried to assert its independence from army/military intelligence and the foreign office, but failed continuously. Pakistan, which was conceived by British colonialists as a buffer state to prevent the Soviet Union to spread communism in India as well as guard the routes to the oil wells of Arabia, got increasingly militarised. The country began to be controlled by a military elite that was willing to respond to every request of its western patrons.