Backdrop of India Pakistan Talks

India has agreed to resume talks with Pakistan after a deadlock of over two years.

India and Pakistan turned out to be foes of each other soon after their independence from the British Rule in 1947. The two countries have had three wars to date in 1948, 1965 and 1971. The last war resulted in secession of East Pakistan from the Federation as an independent state named as Bangladesh.

The main issue of enmity between the two countries is regarding the State of Jammu and Kashmir part of which is under the administrative control of India and the other part is under the control of Pakistan. With majority population of Muslims but ruled by a non Muslim who sold the state to India for Rs. 7.5 million only resulted in the advance of armies of both countries into the state in 1948. The UN sponsored cease fire and the countless resolutions passed by Security Council and General Assembly seek holding of a plebiscite in the disputed state. Having agreed to the aforementioned resolutions at the time of cease fire, India backed out from her commitment and continues to do so to date. Whereas Pakistan could take the case to UNO, the Simla Agreement signed after the 1971 War binds the two countries to resolve the dispute mutually without intervention of a third party. This is the price Pakistan had to pay for the 1971 War to get its thousands of prisoners back besides losing its eastern wing which had more population than the western wing. In 1988, India undertook the nuclear tests which was immediately followed by Pakistan. Both India and Pakistan became nuclear states.

With the passage of time, a number of other issues like Siachen, prisoners in both countries have cropped up. The two worth mentioning are the water dispute and terrorism. The former has arisen as a result of construction of dams and diverting the water by India on/of the rivers flowing from India into Pakistan. Earlier, the struggle of Muslims in Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir was recognized the world over as a bona fide independence movement. Since the incidence of 9/11 , India has been able to politically shun the notion of independence movement before the world and is hell bent on labeling it as terrorism. Pakistan, too, had to cease its support to the freedom fighters restricting itself to only moral, political and diplomatic support.

Ever since the US invasion of Afghanistan soon after the 9/11, India has been increasing its presence in Afghanistan; over a dozen consulates and lot of trade and construction activities. This does not suit Pakistan, rather threatens Pakistan's security on its western front. Pakistan's concerns have been registered by America who acknowledge that Indian presence in Afghanistan is adversely affecting Pakistan's war on terror. Pakistan accuses India of supporting terrorists playing havoc in Pakistan and separatists seeking secession of Baluchistan from Pakistan. India denies both accusations.

Until the end of the last decade, India insisted that confidence building measures should be taken first to resolve the issues and Pakistan maintained that the issues be resolved first and confidence building measures would automatically follow. During all these years there was a time that India refused to recognize Kashmir as an issue between the two countries as India considered its integral part. However, through negotiations, Pakistan has been able to make India concede, though only diplomatically, that Kashmir is an issue between two countries which requires resolution. During the last decade, Pakistan changed its stance and agreed to initiation of confidence building measure like cross cultural interaction between the citizens of two countries and trade.

The confidence building measures progressed pretty fast and, reportedly, back channel diplomacy was taking place to resolve the issues including that of Kashmir when the Mumbai attacks occurred in November 2008 and everything came to a standstill, rather, it started moving backward to the brink of cross border adventures. India accused Pakistan of its involvement in these attacks as the only terrorist caught alive is a Pakistani citizen. Pakistan denied its involvement at governmental level and committed to undertake investigations and punish the individual Pakistani citizens, if any, found involved. This row has taken two years for the dust to settle down where after India has agreed to resume talks of which terrorism is going to be an important point on the agenda.