from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

India and Pakistan, living up to low expectations

Hopes of progress were low when the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan met in Islamabad last week and the two sides lived up to expectations, disagreeing on how to move their relationship forward and blaming each other for souring the mood. 

Pakistan took exception to the timing of remarks by the Indian Home Secretary on the eve of the talks accusing the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency of involvement in the November 2008 attack on Mumbai.  India objected to comments made by Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi comparing those remarks to anti-India speeches given by Hafez Saeed, the founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group blamed for Mumbai.  Qureshi complained his counterpart repeatedly took instructions from Delhi during their talks, an accusation that Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna denied.

Signs are, however, that the mood is steadying and the two countries are trying to put the acrimony behind them.

Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said Pakistan wanted good relations with India and both sides were sincere in improving ties. Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, the country's top diplomat, also stressed in interviews with television channel NDTV and with CNN-IBN that the process of dialogue must continue.  "I think in diplomacy, as in life, disappointments such as these needs to be surmounted, because as neighbours India and Pakistan will have to deal with each other," she said. "We don't have the luxury of maintaining irresolvable distances between our two countries."

Are there too many sacred topics in India?

Protests and television debates on the apex court’s decision to OK  the publication of a book on Maratha ruler Shivaji, banned in 2004 by the Maharashtra government, has put India back in the spotlight on the question of freedom of expression.

India is secular and a democracy but a country with a billon-plus population — consisting of hundreds of tribes, clans and castes following myriad beliefs — can be pretty fickle when it comes to defining ’sensitive’ topics and easily susceptible to parochial politics.

The list of subjects considered “sacred” in the country include the extended Gandhi family, Ambedkar, Periyar, Subhash Chandra Bose, Rabindranath Tagore, Veer Savarkar and maybe a few thousand more people, said an editorial in the ‘Mint’ daily.

Hindu pilgrims brave Kashmir violence to seek salvation at cave shrine

Protest strikes, curfews and violent demonstrations have paralysed Muslim-majority Kashmir valley over the killing of 15 civilians in the past month and the deaths blamed on government forces.

Thousands of police and paramilitary soldiers are struggling to control near daily street protests that have grown into bigger anti-India demonstrations recently.

But tens of thousands of Hindu pilgrims chanting hymns are daily trudging to a cave shrine where they worship a naturally formed ice stalagmite as a symbol of Lord Shiva, the god of destruction and one of the most revered Hindu deities.

India wants austerity to begin at the boardroom

A news article on Tuesday said India’s finance minister plans to call a meeting of about a dozen top CEOs to tell them to adopt a more austere lifestyle.

An “ostentatious lifestyle” by CEOs does not reflect well when nearly 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, Pranab Mukherjee plans to tell them.

Austerity is arguably a big deal for Mukherjee: he was instrumental in launching an austerity drive last year in the Congress party following the worst drought in four decades, exhorting his colleagues to fly economy and cut back on their foreign jaunts.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi asked party leaders to give up a fifth of their salaries for drought-relief work, and several members made a show of even taking the train.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Hopes low, stakes high when Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers meet

Perhaps one of the most telling features on the media commentary ahead of a meeting between the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan in Islamabad this week is the lack of it. Expectations could hardly be lower.

Part of that is the nature of the actors involved. In India, policy towards Pakistan is set by the prime minister's office, not the foreign ministry. So External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna is not in a position to deliver the kind of breakthrough that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh achieved at a meeting with his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani when both agreed at a meeting in Thimphu, Bhutan in April to try to find a way back into talks broken off by the November 2008 attack on Mumbai. In Pakistan, the army retains a tight grip on foreign and security policy, limiting in turn the kind of concessions that Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi might make.

Part of the low expectations come too from the very limited agenda set for the talks - to work out ways of  reducing the huge trust deficit between the two nuclear-armed rivals. Or as the Indian foreign ministry described it in a terse statement on its website:

"In pursuance of the mandate given by the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan, during their meeting at Thimphu in April, 2010, to the Foreign Ministers and Foreign Secretaries of both the countries to work out the modalities of restoring trust and confidence in the relationship, thus paving the way for a substantive dialogue on issues of mutual concern, Hon’ble External Affairs Minister, Shri S.M. Krishna will visit Pakistan from July 14-16, 2010 for bilateral discussions at the invitation of H.E. Mr. Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan."

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Towards a settlement in Afghanistan; on terms and timing

In the highly charged debate about Afghanistan, one of the more common features is the straw man fallacy - in which you deliberately misrepresent your opponent's position in order to discredit it. One of the least common is a definition of terms and timing - thereby making the straw man attack even easier.  So before a round-up of where things stand on prospects for a settlement, here are some caveats on what it does not involve.

First, as Andrew Exum highlights here, few are talking about a helicopters-on-the-rooftops of Kabul-style, complete U.S. withdrawal come July 2011, the deadline fixed by President Barack Obama for starting to draw down U.S. troops. Second, few believe the war will end in an outright victory; but rather in a negotiated settlement, including with the Taliban.  Third, when people talk about negotiating,  they are not suggesting Taliban leaders are suddenly about to lay down arms and come to the table (it is just not the sort of thing you do when your names figure on the most-wanted list.) Beyond those caveats, what you do have is a set of questions about the likely influences that will define the timings and terms of a settlement.

ON TIMING:

The obvious question is how long will U.S. and European public opinion hold up in support of the war? And also how long will Afghan public opinion tolerate the war before some segments of the population see a return of the Taliban as the least bad option?  For one indication on this, do read this piece by Spencer Ackerman at Danger Room reporting on a study showing Afghans are far more likely to react against civilian deaths caused by ISAF than against deaths caused by insurgents. 

from Afghan Journal:

Pakistan’s Zardari in China; nuclear deal in grasp

(File picture of President Zardari in China)

Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari is in China this week, making good his promise to visit the "all weather ally" every three months. During his previous trips, his hosts have sent him off to the provinces to see for himself the booming growth there, but this trip may turn out be a lot more productive.

Zardari  may well return with a firm plan by China to build two reactors at Pakistan's Chashma nuclear plant, as my colleague in Beijing  reports in this article, overriding concern in Washington, New Delhi and other capitals that this undermined global non-proliferation objectives.

It's a bit of a nuclear poker going on in the region and Afghanistan as the new battleground between the regional players cannot remain untouched.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Kashmir protests: another tragedy of timing

Another three people have been killed in Kashmir in the biggest anti-India demonstrations in two years, bringing the death toll to at least 14 in the last three weeks. You can see some video of the protests in the Kashmiri capital Srinagar here - please watch it and remember that only a few years ago peace had returned to the streets of Srinagar after more than a decade of violence.

While Indian Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram has suggested the violence is being whipped up by the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, our correspondent in Srinagar says that many local Kashmiris believe the protests are largely spontaneous.

If that is the case, it is a tragedy of timing. As discussed nearly two years ago on this blog, Kashmir has an entire generation of young people who have grown up knowing only what it is to live in the midst of an insurgency.  Then, after India and Pakistan re-opened a formal peace process in 2004, violence began to drop dramatically (something that has usually gone unacknowledged by Delhi but was obvious to anyone who regularly visited Kashmir).

The sense you picked up was of a shift away from what was at most tacit tolerance for Pakistan-backed militant groups (anyone who questions this should first read Basharat Peer's Curfewed Night) into a belief in peaceful protests, led by the younger generation. It is that younger generation who are throwing stones today, and seeing their own being killed. That is what makes the latest round of violence in Kashmir so dangerous. If the youth of Kashmir are radicalised anew, as happened when an earlier generation protested against Indian rule in 1989, the cycle of rage begins again.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

In scramble for Afghanistan, India looks to Iran

Diplomats like to stress that Afghanistan is not a zero-sum game, that if only the many regional players -- including Pakistan and India - can settle their differences, they can find common cause in seeking a political settlement that will offer stability. That view comes complete with an appealing historical template - the British in India were able to extricate themselves from their failed Afghan wars in the 19th century in part because they agreed with Tsarist Russia that Afghanistan should be allowed to remain neutral.

Yet in the feverishness of the 21st century Afghan war, the perception (right or wrong) of a likely early American disengagement may be encouraging more, rather than less, zero-sum gamesmanship. The danger then is that far from moving towards a settlement for Afghanistan, regional players back different sides in the Afghan conflict, leading to de facto partition and renewed civil war.

With India now convinced Pakistan is pushing for a political settlement in Afghanistan which could return its former Taliban allies to power in Kabul, New Delhi in turn has renewed a drive to work with Iran to offset Pakistani influence there.

"I would today reiterate the need for structured, systematic and regular consultations with Iran on the situation in Afghanistan," Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said in a speech this week to Indian and Iranian think tanks, posted on the Ministry of External Affairs website.

Reactions from the common man

Opposition parties held a one-day general strike to protest a fuel price hike by the government. Reuters finds out its impact in New Delhi and whether Delhiites support the strike.