Delhi, and the Indo-Pakistani peace process, under attack

Nov 2nd 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

Three bombs that exploded in Delhi within 30 minutes of each other have killed more than 60 people and put 200 in hospital. Police say their prime suspects for the terrorist attack are groups fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, where India and Pakistan dispute sovereignty. So the atrocity threatens the unfolding Indo-Pakistani peace process

NOT long ago, it would have led to immediate talk of war. The co-ordinated terrorist attack on Delhi on Saturday October 29th, in which three bombs exploded within 30 minutes of each other, killed more than 60 people. Many were shoppers, stocking up for Diwali, the biggest Hindu festival of the year, on November 1st, and the Muslim festival of Eid, three days later. Police and officials were quick to voice suspicions of Pakistan’s involvement. Yet, within hours, India and Pakistan had announced one of the biggest steps yet towards easing tension in their six-decade-long dispute over Kashmir.

In response to the devastating earthquake that shook both Indian and Pakistani parts of the territory on October 8th, they announced a limited opening of the “line of control” that divides it, to allow separated families and relief workers to cross. Far from thwarting agreement, the atrocity in Delhi nudged Pakistan, in particular, into making the concessions needed to reach it. Yet the peace process is nevertheless damaged. Two days after the Delhi bombings, Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, called again for the “demilitarisation” of Kashmir. India, smarting from the terrorist attack, and exasperated at General Musharraf’s habit of negotiating through press conferences, sniffily ignored him.

Delhi has a history of terrorist attacks. After the latest, the police detained more than 20 people. They saw the hand of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based group fighting Indian rule in Kashmir. It is in theory banned in Pakistan, but remains active. A less well-known Kashmiri group—thought to be dormant or defunct—calling itself Islamic Inqalabi Mehez (“Islamic Revolutionary Front”) claimed responsibility. Indian analysts dismissed this as Lashkar covering its tracks.

In December 2001 an attack on the Indian parliament, also blamed on Pakistan-backed militants, did bring the two nuclear-armed neighbours to the brink of war. Since then, however, Indo-Pakistani relations have been transformed. A two-and-a-half-year-old peace process has not made much progress on the Kashmir dispute. But a series of confidence-building measures has succeeded in making war seem almost inconceivable.

Peace is proving popular in both countries. But the insurgency in Indian Kashmir drags on, with more than 1,500 people killed so far this year. The killings have gone on, even since the earthquake. Seven people died in a suicide car-bombing in the outskirts of Srinagar, capital of Indian Kashmir, on November 2nd, the day a new chief minister of the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir took office in the city. The bomber was said to be a resident of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir.

The previous day, America had complained that one of its helicopters, carrying earthquake-relief supplies in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, came under rocket fire—presumably from the militant groups. Pakistan insisted the helicopter had encountered nothing more sinister than a blast of dynamite clearing a landslide-blocked road.

The hugely destructive natural disaster, in which at least 74,000 people died, has made human conflict seem petty. As the harsh Himalayan winter looms, there is a desperate humanitarian crisis, putting pressure on both governments to “soften” the line of control. The meeting that agreed the breakthrough on this, in Islamabad, may have provided one motive for the terrorist attacks in Delhi. Militants may be anxious to disrupt a peace process they fear (with good reason) is likely to end in a perpetuation of the status quo in Kashmir. Similarly, in April this year, on the eve of the opening of a fortnightly bus service across the line of control, militants staged a vicious attack on the passengers in Srinagar.

The militants may also want to disprove reports that the earthquake, having destroyed some of their training camps in Pakistani Kashmir, has severely dented their strength. Or perhaps they wanted to mark the sentencing, on October 31st, in the trial of militants accused of an earlier attack in Delhi, in 2000. Of the seven convicted, the alleged mastermind of that attack, a Pakistani, was sentenced to death.

If the terrorists’ aim was to derail the peace process, they have failed in the short term, and Pakistan itself was swift to condemn the outrage. In the long run, however, India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, may find it harder to make rapid progress. On October 31st, he told General Musharraf by telephone that India had “indications” of the bombers’ “external linkages”—ie, India suspects Pakistan is involved. Already, India's main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, has blamed the bomb blasts on the government’s “going soft” on terrorism.

Both opposition and government will concentrate on General Musharraf’s failure to crack down definitively on the Pakistan-based militant groups. He has banned the most notorious. But their members have simply regrouped under other names. To the horror of some liberals in Pakistan as well as Indian observers, they have played a prominent role in relief work after the earthquake, sometimes with logistical support from the Pakistan army.

Indian hawks have long argued that parts of Pakistan's army and intelligence services have an institutional interest in prolonging the conflict in Kashmir. That is why, they say, General Musharraf proves so perversely unwilling—or unable—to put the militants out of business altogether. So the atrocity in Delhi is bound to have an impact on India’s willingness to pursue the peace process. It may even dent one of its central pillars: the mutual trust between Mr Singh and General Musharraf.

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