Jul 02, 2011
Hrishiraj Bhattacharjee
If states are known by the enemies they have, then Pakistan has largely been known by the very country it seeks to avoid: India.
Ahmed M. Quraishi.
The India-Pakistan conflict is one of the most enduring rivalries of the post-World War era. Thus far, it has witnessed three wars, one limited war and a number of serious interstate crises. Yet it still shows no signs of receding. Numerous confidence building measures (CBM) had been initiated by leaders of both nations over the years, but every such CBM had to be prematurely terminated or yielded very little result due to one mishap or another.
After the terrorist attacks on Mumbai in November 2008, India decided to stop all forms of official dialogue with Pakistan until it took credible actions against the perpetrators of the Mumbai attack; whom, according to India, were hiding inside Pakistan. This resulted in a complete shutdown of all sorts of diplomatic talks between the two countries for the next two and half years. Then in March 2011, the Indian and Pakistani cricket teams faced each other at the Cricket World cup semi-finals in India. This facilitated a high level dialogue between the Prime Minister of India Dr Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani, when the latter accepted the former’s invitation to watch the match in India. The dialogues were considered to be quite successful as Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani described the meeting as a ‘win-win’ for both India and Pakistan . However, just when s is correct here instead of ‘when’ the officials from both the countries were trying to move this dialogue forward, Osama bin Laden was found and killed in Pakistan. This development changed the political discourse between India and Pakistan overnight – from one of camaraderie to blames, counter-blames, threats and counter-threats. However, the death of Osama has also initiated a bigger war inside Pakistan – a turf war of authority between its civilian leaders and the powerful military. Various developments, as discussed later in this article, indicate that Pakistani civilian leadership is now trying desperately to exert its control over the military and this has given rise to the decline of military dominance in Pakistan.
Leave A Comment