The broad contours of the deal have been floating around for quite some time. These included, inter alia, demilitarisation of the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir, a high level of autonomy, soft borders, no redrawing of borders and no dislocation of settled population, and some sort of joint mechanism for management of common resources like forests, water and other such issues. Kasuri not only confirmed a lot of what was being speculated, but also went a step further by revealing that the deal was almost done and was just a ‘signature away’.

According to Kasuri, the two countries had reached what he calls “the only possible solution to the Kashmir issue”. This involved full demilitarisation of both Indian Kashmir as well as ‘Azad’ Kashmir (a euphemism for Pakistan-occupied Kashmir). Both countries had “agreed on a point between complete independence and autonomy” and had worked out “a package of loose autonomy that stopped short of the Azadi and self-governance aspirations.” The Line of Control (LoC) would become ‘irrelevant’ and the people of the state could move free across the LoC using only their identity cards.

In an ideal situation, this would perhaps be an eminently workable, if not an ideal solution. But given the state of relations – the trust deficit, the unremitting export of terrorism, the Pakistani animus towards India which has now acquired almost civilisational overtones – this solution doesn’t have much chance of working, at least not until relations between the two countries and peoples normalise and a high degree of confidence develops between them.

Take for instance Kasuri’s admission that the agreement was “an interim one, and was subject to review after 15 years… during this period its implementation would be monitored by all parties concerned, and, in the light of the experience, this arrangement could further be improved.”

Although Kasuri has not stated this explicitly, it is quite clear that the LoC would not have become the permanent border between India and Pakistan. Quite aside the fact that for India converting the LoC into an international border is huge concession, even if the government was to ever agree on it, it will find it immensely difficult to deliver on such a deal. For one, there is a unanimous resolution of Parliament that emphatically states that the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India and the only issue that needs to be decided is the modalities of Pakistan’s vacation of its occupation of a part of the Indian state.

Assuming that the Parliamentary resolution can be side-stepped, the government will have to contend with a ‘basic feature’ of the Indian Constitution which states that the territorial unity and integrity of the country cannot be altered. There is, however, a constitutional provision under which borders can be settled but even this involves an elaborate procedure – a two-thirds majority in Parliament followed by two-thirds of the Indian states endorsing such a move – both undoable and undeliverable propositions at present.

In other words, the LoC would have remained a de facto and not a de jure border, something that would keep alive Pakistan’s irredentist claims over the Indian state. A soft LoC could easily be exploited to create conditions inside Jammu and Kashmir that could, in the future, be used to create enormous problems for India and wrest control over a substantial, if not entire, part of the state.

As far as the deliverability of the deal is concerned, there is a big question mark as to whether the government in Pakistan can really pull the file off the rack and sign it. Let alone the current government, there are doubts on whether even Musharraf could have actually signed such a deal, and if he had indeed been so brave or stupid, how long such a deal would have lasted once he was no longer on the scene.

Kasuri claims that the current civilian government in Pakistan is fully aware of the deal and is in favour of pushing it through. According to him, all the stake-holders in Pakistan, including the army, had endorsed the deal. Perhaps, the military brass had nodded their head in agreement to the plan when Musharraf was both army chief and the President of the country. No sooner had he doffed his uniform, the Pakistan army all but repudiated the deal.

Asif Zardari, of course, is keen on good relations with India. Shortly after his party emerged as the single largest party in the February 2008 elections, Zardari told an Indian channel that Kashmir must be pushed on to the back-burner and left for future generations to settle. In all likelihood, Zardari at that time was not aware of what had been worked out on the back channel. But the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, who was heading the ISI when the back channel was on, surely knew what had transpired. Within a few days of Zardari’s interview, Kayani went to PoK and “reaffirmed the army’s commitment to the Kashmir cause in line with the aspirations of the nation”.

Zardari probably never took the hint and, after he became President, he announced that the nation “would soon hear good news on Kashmir”. At this stage he was probably familiar with the understanding reached on ‘the interim solution’. A week later, Kayani went to Siachen and “highlighted the national consensus that exists on the Kashmir issue”.

The final straw came after Zardari told an Indian audience that Pakistan would never exercise the First-use option of its nuclear weapons. A week later the 26/11 attacks took place and the Indo-Pak peace process was blown to smithereens. Today, with the Pakistan army once again calling the shots on foreign policy and strategic issues, the civilian government has been forced to distance itself from plugging for a deal on Kashmir.

It is a little surprising that a seasoned politician like Kasuri, who is one of the few people in Pakistan who has always been a votary of good relations with India, could have been so politically naive as to think that the solution that was being discussed on the back channel was doable, much less deliverable. Solutions arrived at on back channels are at worst nothing more than an academic exercise, an
d at best theoretical constructs of what could or might be. The utility of back channel is not so much in coming up with a big-bang solution but more in working out a step-by-step approach to create conditions that over the years enable some sort of a deal that both states and their peoples can live with.

At the end of the day, deliverable deals are possible only through regular diplomatic and political channels, in full public view and with full public approval. By Kasuri’s own admission, the public opinion needed to be prepared to accept the deal because the solution would have only succeeded if there was public support behind it, which it clearly wasn’t.

Therefore, rather than ‘pulling the files from the rack’, these files should be allowed to remain where they are and pulled out only after trust and confidence is built between the two countries and the people. Otherwise, instead of settling issues, a deal such as the one being talked about could end up inflaming the public opinion to a point where not only will the deal become untenable but also the peace process itself will suffer a terrible setback.