INDIA PAKISTAN TALKS -- The fiasco that need not have been

There is a déjà vu in the way the Pakistani foreign and military establishment has reacted to the resumption of talks between the two countries
Vikram Sood

The India Pak talks were followed by the usual Prime Time agony on TV on February 25 as wise men and women dissected what went wrong.  There was considerable surprise and consternation at how events and strategies unfolded that day. It was obvious that the theatrics by the Pakistan Foreign Secretary caught us by surprise. It was equally obvious that we had not done our homework. Actually what Salman Bashir did was a scaled down version of what Musharraf did at the India Today Conclave a year ago in New Delhi and much more scaled down version of his antics at the Agra Summit. It should have been déjà vu.

I had written about these tricks last year, pointing out that whenever Pakistanis want to launch their careers or burnish their fading images, they come here. The artiste performs to gushing audiences while the politician, general, or civil servant addresses his domestic audience in Pakistan. It pays or, is indeed expected, that he should act tough while in New Delhi. Rare is the case that a man comes to New Delhi and talks reasonably in public. One eminent journalist of a well known Pakistani magazine made that mistake some years ago and the agencies got to him pretty quickly when he got back with their gruff midnight knock. So this should have been anticipated and prevented unless this was a deep Brahmanical ploy and the Pakistanis are still trying to figure this out.

The game plan was obvious the moment we announced that we would resume dialogue. The first thing Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi did was to jump onto his high horse, fulminate in Multan about how Pakistan had brought India to its knees and proclaim victory. This was a novel way of restoring normalcy. It was then the turn of the jihadis to warm up to the act. Hafeez Saeed was off the mark first when he announced that one Mumbai was not enough and that jihad was the only way. Wanted in India, this outburst was described later by the Foreign Secretary as Saeed's exercise of his democratic right of free speech.  Just before the Delhi tamasha got going, the Pak Foreign Minister offered his Chinese hosts a blank cheque to help improving India Pak relations. The astute Chinese did not bite the bait, knowing that such cheques could bounce.

Abdul Rahman Makki, brother in law of Hafiz Saeed, and the new face of terror against India, was jingoist about jihad in Kashmir on February 4 when he also warned that Pune would be the next target. So it was on February 13. We did not withdraw the offer to talk. Two days before the talks were to commence 23-year old Captain Devendra Singh Jass and two soldiers died combating terrorists in Sopore. Before the talks commenced the Pakistan Foreign Secretary assures Syed Ali Shah Geelani, that secessionist who does not want to live in Pakistan, continued support. He says this after meeting him in our country. We allow the meeting therefore say nothing. We did not call off the talks. How could we do that anyway? We had already announced that talks and terrorism could continue simultaneously. Moreover, we have this great desire to look good and seek approval from the West.

Two days after the talks were over, Pakistan sponsored Taliban or Haqqani networks or Lashkar e Tayyaba terrorists or all three put together, hunted and killed Indians in a guest house in Kabul. The message they are giving us -   if we care to decipher it  --  we can hit you in Kashmir, in Maharashtra and in Kabul; we will do it again and  there is nothing you can do about it.