Instead, both New Delhi and Islamabad have hardened their stance vis-a-vis each other’s activities which they believe are detrimental to the security of their countries. India’s insistence that people such as Dawood Ibrahim were being sheltered in Pakistan, the “most wanted terrorist” Hafiz Saeed was roaming free and the constant “source of irritation” Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, considered the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks was testing the justice system, have put the situation back to the beaten path. Similarly, Pakistan is openly accusing India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) of fomenting trouble within its boundaries and this came directly from the Army. As Modi completes one year in office on May 26, one of the foremost challenges of having good relations with neighbours (read Pakistan) continues to remain a challenge.
Better relations between the two countries are a prior condition to any movement forward on Kashmir and past seven years have seen that any improvement within and outside Kashmir has remained hostage to the animosity between India and Pakistan. However, amid the dark clouds hovering over their relations, a silver line appeared recently in the form of some possible agreements on strengthening Confidence Building Measures across the Line of Control (LoC). India's Joint Secretary (Kashmir) in the Ministry of Home Affairs revealed a positive development about the proposals to enhance the travel allowances for the passengers traveling on Srinagar-Muzaffarabad and Poonch-Rawlakot routes besides on spot clearance to children below five years of age.
This could be seen as a bonus for the CBMs that most people believed were dying a slow death. Notwithstanding the fact that the cumbersome procedures involved in clearances for travel and the lack of facilities for cross-LOC trade have been a hurdle in the much-desired progress in these CBMs, the figures about the use of the bus service are surely encouraging. Since the time the bus service in Kashmir was launched in April 2005 and in Poonch in June 2006, over 27,000 people on both sides of the LOC have traveled on these buses. Most of them come from divided families.
In 2014, the Kashmir Initiative Group (KIG), an intra-Kashmir peace building platform, pitched institutionalized CBMs. “While the CBMs have created a window of opportunity, they remain precarious. Cross-LoC CBMs can only be sustained and their peace building value realised if they are institutionalised. CBMs are meaningful when they reflect predictable, consistent and accountable behaviour. If this can be accomplished through,” read a paper released by KIG.
Arguing that these CBMs have raised stakes for peace the paper noted, “The establishment of reliable procedures that are understood and acted upon by all sides, then it could be said that there is a degree of institutionalisation. Parties can then be more confident in building trust in each other and a virtuous, as opposed to vicious, cycle of behaviour can start to evolve. The cross-LoC bus and trade initiatives initiated in 2005 and 2008 respectively have been important for supporting the development of an environment conducive to conflict transformation. Many people on both sides of the LoC have developed a vested interest in peace as a result. Cross-LoC travel opens opportunities for human contact; it connects families thereby addressing longstanding grievances, and trade creates an opportunity for people across the LoC to undertake joint activities that have a mutual and tangible (that is, economic) benefit. However both initiatives suffer from operational challenges, which limit their socioeconomic and peace building potential.”
During his visit to Uri on May 16, Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed too underlined the importance of CBMs and vowed to take all steps to upgrade them. It was during his first tenure as Chief Minister in 2005, the CBMs were launched with much fanfare as part of his party’s political agenda, though initiated by then Prime Minister AB Vajpayee and Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf. But in the following years, increased hostility kept them off the priority list of the governments, although they did not end.
As the results have shown, these CBMs have a strong potential to be agents of change. India and Pakistan must understand the stakes they have raised in peace building which could help them to pick up the threads for a sustained peace/dialogue process to build an atmosphere of mutual confidence and trust.
Shujaat Bukhari is a veteran journalist based in Srinagar, and the editor-in-chief of Rising Kashmir