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Military Matters
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Both for peace and Kashmir resolution, India needs to talk with General Kayani |
Pakistan Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani (centre) meets Pakistani and Chinese army troops with General Hou Shusen (left), deputy chief of the People’s Liberation Army, during a joint exercise in Jhelum, Pakistan on 24 November 2011.
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Pravin Sawhney and Ghazala Wahab
Relations between India and Pakistan are not difficult to fathom as made out by
most analysts. Understanding ground realities and balancing destabilising
factors that impact on security matters, is the way to genuinely improved
relations between the two adversaries. People to people contact, historical and
cultural ties are feel-good factors but do not help in improving security
relations. On assuming office when the Pakistan Army appeared discredited,
President Asif Ali Zardari spoke about improving overall relations with focus on
trade with India. He said that the Kashmir issue could be put on the backburner.
Instantly, he was cut to size by his army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani
and Kashmir resurfaced on Pakistan’s radar screen. Between India and Pakistan,
confidence-building or reducing trust deficit is not a process that helps to
make change in broader security relations possible, but it is change
(destabilising
factors) that makes confidence building possible. |
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Given this mantra, the recent
bonhomie between Prime Ministers, Manmohan Singh and Yousaf Raza Gilani is
another aimless shot at reconciliation.
TThat Gilani and his government do not amount to much in a nation obsessed with
security against India, is the foremost reality. Pakistan’s national security is
the prerogative of its army which is in full control of the nation’s nuclear
weapons and ballistic and cruise missiles, the sole delivery vehicles for nukes.
These strategic weapons bestow unqualified power in hands of the Pakistan Army.
All talks about a national command authority that suggests a say for the Prime
Minister and civilian President besides others in nuclear matters is hogwash.
Among the three defence services, the air force and the navy are less equal than
the army. Remember the 1999 Kargil war, when the Pakistan Army had not taken the
other two sister services on board its conflict plans.
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