Bleak outlook

Until a few days ago the signs from New Delhi and Islamabad had been positive. Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had been invited to New Delhi to attend Narendra Modi's inauguration as India's prime minister in May. Top level bilateral talks between the two foreign secretaries were scheduled to take place in Islamabad next week. Both sides had refrained from indulging in the usual diplomatic blame games and had toned down the rhetoric considerably in recent months. All of this had given rise to considerable hopes that the two countries could possibly find a way to restart the so-called composite dialogue India had suspended after the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai allegedly carried out by the Lahore-based Islamist Lashkar-e-Taiba organisation.

But these hopes have been dashed for the time being with India's decision to cancel Foreign Secretary Sujata Singh's visit to the capital of Pakistan next week. To an outsider the reason for the cancellation of the talks appears plausible. India has said that the decision of Pakistan's High Commissioner to India, Abdul Basit, to hold talks with separatists from the part of Kashmir that is under Indian administration "raises questions about Pakistan's sincerity and undermines the constructive diplomatic efforts by India's new prime minister." But in view of the fact that Pakistan has previously spoken to militants from Kashmir without facing a backlash of this severity from India, there is clearly more to this than meets the eye.

So what has triggered this about turn by the Indian government? After cross-border skirmishes across the line of control in Kashmir in the last few days, Modi has been put on the spot. The hardline Hindu-nationalist leader cannot afford to appear weak in the eyes of his domestic constituency as he pledged to strengthen India during the election. Kashmir has been at the centre of a territorial dispute between the two countries since independence in 1947. The nuclear-armed neighbors have fought three wars in sixty-seven years and nearly went to war as recently as 2008 after the Mumbai attacks. Without a doubt, India feels that Islamist terrorists are again trying to foment trouble in Kashmir and that they have been given a green light to do so from their paymasters in Islamabad. This assessment was clearly behind Modi's remarks last week before he visited Kashmir when he accused Pakistan of waging a proxy war in the region.

For Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the cancellation of the talks is nothing short of a disaster. By travelling to New Delhi to Modi's inauguration he put his prestige on the line. In the process he took the risk of challenging the powerful industrial-military complex at home run by the armed forces and their omnipresent intelligence service ISI. The very legitimation for their ubiquitous influence on Pakistani foreign and security policy depends upon the maintenance of significant tension with India. Without a perceived threat from their powerful neighbors, ordinary Pakistanis would not accept the inordinate size of the military budget or the fact that ISI operates without supervision by the Pakistani government.

Nawaz Sharif himself clearly has expressed a strong interest in improving trading ties with India and relaxing political tensions. He hopes that this will be of mutual benefit and help him lead his country out of its desperate financial and economic situation. He is the last person in Islamabad who would have given a green light for a resurgence of Islamist terrorism in Kashmir.

It is however well documented that the Pakistani intelligence service, ISI, has trained and financed Islamist terrorists in the past with the aim of destabilizing Indian Kashmir. The timing of the recent cross-border incursions and attacks by Islamists is no coincidence. It serves as a provocation to Hindu strongman Modi and guarantees humiliation for the Pakistani Prime Minister, who at present has his hands full at home in the face of massive anti-government demonstrations organized by opposition politician Imran Khan and Muslim cleric Tahirul Qadri. Both of these men are suspected of having close links to the military establishment in Pakistan.

Thus it would appear that the opponents of a rapprochement between India and Pakistan have won the opening political battle in the Modi-Sharif era. It is a powerful warning to Sharif to abandon his policies. But the fact remains that both men need each other to address their pressing economic problems. The question now is whether they can overcome the opposition at home. The outlook is bleak.