Indo-Pak ties: Brace for more Modi coups; two PMs have many meetings lined up in 2016

India and Pakistan appear set for a robust engagement in 2016. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise visit to Lahore, he is set to have another date with his Pakistani counterpart in the Swiss city of Davos, on the margins of the World Economic Forum between January 20 and 23. The third meeting in less than two months, after Paris,  will take place just a week after the meeting of foreign secretaries in Islamabad. It will help leaders to personally monitor the outcome and issue further directions to set the talks on course. Experts here believe the frequent summit meetings, are designed to put pressure on bureaucrats to carve out a road map for peace, ahead of Modi’s another tete-a tete in Islamabad with Sharif in September, on the sidelines of the SAARC summit.

As spin doctors continue to spin yarns about Modi’s December 25 visit to Lahore, insiders believe that combination of factors including Western nudges, fears of extremism rearing head in South Asia, security situation in Kashmir, repeated requests by chief minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed heading coalition with the BJP and worries of disruptions to a thaw pushed Modi government into chalking a new line, cloaked in optics and symbolism.  After repeated setbacks, the US as well as Russia appear to have concluded that recent attempts at negotiating peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban represent the last opportunity for a resolution in Afghanistan. Given Pakistan's centrality to bringing the Taliban to talks, the US has for weeks been nudging New Delhi and Islamabad to resume a dialogue last suspended in 2013. US President Barack Obama, in October and November, had hosted both the Pakistan Prime Minister and his army chief Raheel Sharif. In discussions with them, the US secured an assurance that both were keen on avoiding any exacerbation of tensions with India.

But they also fear that in absence of a definite agenda, optics and symbolism have their limits, recalling Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Lahore trip, which was followed by Kargil. In Pakistan, Modi’s optics has once again highlighted that a hardline BJP was more amenable and decisive than a Congress, whose prime ministers right form Rajiv Gandhi, Narasimha Rao, and Manmohan Singh, despite having agreed on a formula to settle skewed issues like Siachen and Jammu and Kashmir backed out because of indecision. Officials in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) also concede  that what Modi achieved, was something, Manmohan Singh, had dreamt of for a decade, but was not allowed by his Congress party.

While welcoming Modi’s diplomatic outreach, J&K CM, recuperating here at the AIIMS, recalls that during his October 15 meeting with the PM, he had conveyed to the PM that peace, progress and development and success of his PDP-BJP coalition was linked to a peace with Pakistan. “I was assured that an effort was on,” he said. His aides told dna, that Mufti could deliver on governance during his earlier tenure between 2003 and 2005, largely because, peace process with Pakistan was at its peak, with then President Pervez Musharraf first with Vajpayee and then engaged with Manmohan Singh were busy in exploring a formula to settle disputes.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar agrees that  Modi has had several ‘coups’ to his credit already – his invitation to SAARC leaders to his inaugural; choice of Kathmandu for the first visit abroad as prime minister; visit to Washington in September 2014 (despite being blacklisted for American visa until recently); get-together with Chinese president and wife on the Sabarmati river banks; invitation to the US president to be the guest of honor at Republic Day; Ufa Declaration; 167-second chat with his Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif in Paris.”But this is the mother of all coups. The only lingering doubt is about how it happened; we know it lacked substantive content. The Pakistani side has left us at the mercy of our spin doctors. And the latest spin is that the Lahore visit was not an impulsive diplomatic coup, after all,” he says.

Further, Modi had himself asserted that it was personal relationships between leaders that transform diplomatic relations, rather full-stops and commas. “The openness; how much they (leaders) know each other; and the chemistry between them- this matters more and is very important. In fact, far from the camera when we speak, then we become closer to each other, he had spelled his diplomacy in January this year, when welcoming the US President Barack Obama.  Pakistan's recent appointment of a former army general, Nasser Khan Janjua, as its national security adviser has also opened a fresh window for early negotiations on terrorism and cross-border violence, officials and experts said."That the Pakistan NSA represents the views of his military establishment is good because the shadow-boxing is over," said former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan G. Parthasarathy.  Experts say, Modi’s “hotline diplomacy” and unconventional  approach has parallels in how US President Ronald Reagan pursued with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s, when the two leaders personally and publicly worked  towards a thaw.

NOT SO ABRUPT: The sequence of events emerging now also makes one believe that Modi’s stopover was not a complete surprise, though he and his aides had kept it highly secretive. Pakistan’s high commissioner in India Abdul Basit rushing to Islamabad last Tuesday, presence of an industrialist, who had arranged their one-to-one meeting between Sharif and Modi in Kathmandu at his residence, and the PM’s decision to postpone a tea party for Christian community leaders on Christmas Day at Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s residence as early as December 14 were indicators that preparations for an unusual events were in progress. Modi was on his maiden visit to Kerala on December 14 had had expressed regret to Archbishop of Syro-Malabar Church Cardinal Mar George Alencherry, that due to some issues, he was postponing meeting with Christian leaders on December 25. The rescheduled tea party, as of now, will take place on December 29.