Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

Kashmir
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Although Musharraf had agreed to clamp down on militant groups,
the situation on the ground did not change much. Pakistan’s promise
of a complete halt to support for the Islamic militants did not seem
credible at that stage. Pakistani military officials contend that a total
turnaround in Pakistan’s policy could not be possible without some
reciprocity from India, for example, reduction of troops and an end to
human rights violations in the state. ‘We will lose all leverage if we just
pull out our support to the Kashmiris without any show of flexibility
by India,’ said a senior Pakistani official. ‘In the absence of any light at
the end of the Kashmiri tunnel, it would be hard for the government to
sell any proposal for peace with India to its own people.’ It was quite
apparent that the military-backed administration was not ready to put
the Kashmir issue on the backburner. The military officers, who stood
by Musharraf when he moved away from Pakistan’s long-standing
policy of supporting the conservative Taliban regime in Afghanistan
and joined the US-led coalition against terrorism, were not likely to
maintain their loyalty towards him if he had decided to make a radical
shift on the Kashmir issue.
With India agreeing to resume peace talks, Pakistan faced
increasing pressure to come down hard on Islamic guerrilla groups
and destroy militant infrastructure. A serious international concern
was that Pakistan’s inability to contain militancy could continue to be
a significant obstacle to the normalization of relations between the
two countries. While acknowledging that there had been a decrease
in infiltration and that the level of violence in Kashmir had declined,
Washington was not fully satisfied with the situation.
The situation then took a most dramatic turn in January 2004, when
Vajpayee came to Islamabad to attend the seven-nation South Asian
regional summit. Few had expected any breakthrough when the aged
Indian Prime Minister went to pay a ‘courtesy call’ on Musharraf at the
imposing presidential palace on 5 January. Although there had been
hints of a possible meeting, nobody was sure until it actually happened.
The outcome of the 65-minute parley between the two leaders went
beyond anybody’s expectations. Not only were some significant
decisions taken to move the process of normalization forward, but a
road map for further interaction was also clearly stated.
Most importantly, Musharraf pledged to prevent the use of the
territory under Pakistan’s control ‘to support terrorism in any manner’.
It was the first direct commitment of this nature since the Pakistanibacked
armed insurgency in Kashmir began in 1989. The joint