Siachen deal is not easy, will take time

It was hardly expected that defence secretary Shashikant Sharma’s talks in Islamabad on Siachen over the past two days would lead to a thaw on both sides.

While Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has reached out in many ways to normalise ties with Pakistan in recent years, it is hard to find reciprocity from the other side. Trade talks have gone far better than other issues, but even there Islamabad said no to liberalised business visas. That was a clear doable but didn’t happen despite assurances by President Asif Ali Zardari when he was in India in April. It is evident that Pakistan’s real rulers — its military — virtually overruled their President. What chance then did the Siachen Glacier issue have, with no preparation preceding it? If the defence secretary’s visit was to be that preparation, the timing was clearly all wrong. Pakistan has not moved on the Mumbai attacks front. It has undermined the trade front by acting all too strange on visas.
The sudden media prominence given to renewed efforts to resolve the Siachen tangle follows Pakistan Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani speaking of demilitarisation at Siachen after scores of Pakistani soldiers were killed in a blizzard in the glacier region in April. He went out to sound like a peacenik, and even made noises befitting an environmentalist. But that is hardly the way for breakthroughs to materialise.
From an Indian perspective, the key consideration to keep in view is that Gen. Kayani continues to stick to the Pakistan Army’s old strategic doctrine — that it lives to fight India. If Pakistan chooses to continue being a militarised state, how can it expect India to give up its military positions? How can Islamabad, in all seriousness, expect India to vacate Saltoro Ridge captured after some effort in 1984 when it was noticed the Pakistani Army was surreptitiously trying to establish a base for itself there?
A deal on Siachen involving demilitarisation — in effect, the Indians pulling back from positions they hold — was possible in 1992, or earlier when Rajiv Gandhi was Prime Minister. But after Pakistan’s 1999 Kargil misadventure under Gen. Pervez Musharraf, when Pakistani forces sneaked through into territories that Indians used to vacate in the harsh winter months, any semblance of trust in the Pakistan military’s intentions has evaporated. The way things are, it is fairly clear that any Siachen resolution can only be a part of a resolution of the Kashmir tangle, that involves settling the LoC which guides the coordinates to the glaciers.