In early 2007, eight years after he had launched a covert military operation in Kargil, General Pervez Musharraf, as president of Pakistan and the army chief, offered a peace plan to India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh.
The plan was realistic and ambitious. It recognised that both India and Pakistan laid a claim to all of Jammu and Kashmir going back to their independence in August 1947. They had fought two major wars, one in 1947-48 and one in 1965, that were focused exclusively on Kashmir.
In July 1972, Prime Ministers Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan and Indira Gandhi of India signed the Simla Peace Agreement. It was mostly focused on the return of Pakistani prisoners of war, but it also touched upon Kashmir. What was hitherto known as the Cease-Fire Line was renamed the Line of Control. Other than that, nothing substantive was agreed upon.
Since then, India repeatedly claimed that it was ready to discuss all issues with Pakistan besides Kashmir. It also stated that it did not want to internationalize the dispute. Pakistan repeatedly said it regarded Kashmir as the core issue between the two countries and sought a multilateral solution. The impasse seemed to be permanent.
After the failure of the Kargil incursion, which elicited worldwide condemnation, Musharraf was convinced that Pakistan could not wrest Kashmir by force. He began to pursue a negotiated solution with India in 2004 through a “The Back Channel.” In April 2005, he visited India at Singh’s invitation.
Musharraf asked the corps commanders to put their hands on their hearts and tell him if Kashmir would gain freedom without negotiating a settlement with India
The diplomacy that occurred during the Back Channel was described in 2009 in The New Yorker by renowned journalist and author, Steve Coll. Later, he appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air. The solution envisioned that Kashmir would become an autonomous region in which Kashmiris would move freely across the Line of Control and trade with each other. Over time, the LoC would become irrelevant, and declining violence would allow a gradual demilitarisation of the region.
Musharraf gathered his formation commanders at GHQ in Rawalpindi and told them Pakistan’s raison d’être was not to live in permanent enmity with India. The raison d’être was Pakistan’s permanent security. He asked, "what is security?" He said that it was the safety of our borders and our economic development. He added that war was no longer an option for either side since both had nuclear weapons.
He asked the corps commanders to put their hands on their hearts and tell him if Kashmir would gain freedom without negotiating a settlement with India. He also told the corps commanders that peace with India would produce economic benefits that would strengthen Pakistan--and the military. The Army had a fifteen-year development plan which would only be achieved through rapid economic growth.
Through that speech, he brought about a big change in the thinking of the corps commanders about Kashmir and India. They began to focus on the economy of Pakistan and how the world viewed Pakistan, rather than warfare.
At the same time, a fundamental change in India’s strategic thinking also began to take place. After 2002, India’s economic outlook changed dramatically, and it began to see itself as a rising power. The ranks of its middle-class consumers swelled. Indian strategists began to visualise their country rising to a great power status by the mid-21st century.
The began to realise that a catastrophic war with Pakistan - or Pakistan’s collapse into chaos - would stand in the way of India’s greatness. “We were convinced these two countries must learn to live in accord--must,” Jaswant Singh, who was India’s foreign minister, said.
On 8 January 2007, Manmohan Singh remarked in public, “I dream of a day, while retaining our respective national identities, one can have breakfast in Amritsar, lunch in Lahore, and dinner in Kabul.” Singh’s decision-making was grounded in military realism. If India were to launch even selective strikes at targets in Pakistan, it would likely deepen Pakistan’s internal turmoil and thus exacerbate the terrorist threat faced by India.
Any Indian military action would also risk an escalation that could include nuclear deployments - which may be precisely what the jihadi leaders hoped to provoke. “There is no military option here,” Lalit Mansingh, a former Indian Ambassador in Washington, said. India had to “isolate the terrorist elements” in Pakistan, he said, not “rally the nation around them.”
Peace was at hand. And then tragedy struck. In March 2007, Musharraf overplayed his hand domestically and fired the Chief Justice of Pakistan. That unleashed an outcry across the length and breadth of the political spectrum.
His standing in the nation was shattered. He was no longer able to strike a deal with Singh. Pressure mounted on the general to step down from the army and “remove his uniform,” which he had called his “second skin.”
In July 2007, the Red Mosque incident occurred in Islamabad and Musharraf’s harsh response drew widespread condemnation. Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was likely to succeed Musharraf, was allowed to return to the country. Sadly, she was assassinated in December 2007.
Musharraf declared a state of emergency. The US withdrew its support, triggering his political death spiral. He exited the stage in August 2008.
In November, terrorists concerned that peace might break out between India and Pakistan attacked Mumbai. That halted the Composite Dialogue between India and Pakistan.
Twenty-one years have elapsed since Pakistan began a peace dialogue with India. It is time for the leaders of both countries to resume the Back Channel dialogue. The quality of life of the 1.7 billion inhabitants of the two countries will improve dramatically if Pakistan permanently calls off the Jihad to liberate Jammu and Kashmir, accepts the Line of Control as the international border with India, and begins to trade with India.
Of course, this will only happen if India extends the hand of friendship to Pakistan, the much smaller sibling, drops its accusatory stance and temper, and offers Pakistan “substantial” concessions in other areas. Will Prime Minister Modi seize the moment?