India-Pakistan Talks Dead-Ended From Beginning

Not surprised at the freezing of India-Pakistan  peace talks. The talks were Dead-ended right from beginning  as both stakeholders were walking on tight ropes . India govt under Modi has been opposed to Pakistan holding talks with Kashmir's separatist leaders. The peace talks were cancelled in 2014 for the same reasons. Pakistan, knowingly. irritated India by inviting separatist leaders to meet Sartaj Aziz.  The message was clear. Pakistan is not interested  to talk to India unless Kashmir issue is put on agenda.  It wants to involve Kashmir's separatist leaders as third party in peace talks. Even BJP coalition partner in Jammu & Kashmir, PDP favors involvement of  separatist leaders in peace talks.  This is not acceptable to Modi govt.  Even a commoner knows it well that peace talks between two warring parties can't succeed with demands and counter-demands. Pakistan was, right from the beginning, quite susceptible over India's interlocutor, Ajit Doval.The 70-years-old  Doval,  is the country’s spy master and is known to send shivers down the spines of India’s enemies. He is  the man who had worked  for 7 years incognito as a secret operative in Lahore, Pakistan. The  intelligence veteran with decades of experience in dealing with Pakistan-backed terrorism, was comfortably positioned viz-a-viz to Pakistan Security adviser Sartaj Aziz. Doval had spied for India successfully. He was in the Golden Temple in the days leading up to the Indian Army’s Operation Blue Star. He posed as a Pakistani Spy, gained the militants plans, their intelligence inputs, reinforcements and various other valuable information.  In eighties , when Mizoram National Front was breaking India’s back with insurgency. Doval is reported to have infiltrated the underground Mizo National Front, weaned away half a dozen of its top commanders and all but broke the back of the MNF. In Kashmir, Doval persuaded prominent militants like Kukkay Parey, and turned himself and his colleagues into ‘moles’ in the terrorist outfit. He then pacified these anti-India outfits and turned them peaceful. The recent surgical strike by the Indian army along the Burmese border was also personally supervised by him. There were many  more such secretive operations he had successfully carried out. Pakistan is not the only country Doval had  spied. There are reports that former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa lost the presidential elections earlier in January this year M Sirisena as he was in the cross hairs of Doval. Rajapaksa was seen as a nuisance to India as he was more friendly to China. He. unexpectedly, lost the election and there was enough evidence that India played a role in assisting his departure. According to reports Colombo station chief of RAW (Research & Analysis Wing) was asked to leave. But not before he had: one, united Sri Lanka’s usually divided opposition parties to agree on a joint contender for the election; two, aided Rajapaksa’s chief aide. In parliament elections held on last Monday Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe thwarted  Rajapakksa's bid  to grab. Its was a great setback to China and Pakistan. Pakistan knew very well that it was difficult to deal with Ajit Doval and Sartaj Aziz was no match to him. As such, it had no option but to vitiate the peace talks from Ufa days when Indian Prime Minister and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif laid the foundation in Russia. Pakistan army has never favored peace talks with India. In fact,  a huge section of Pakistan’s military establishment is opposed to cracking down on terrorist groups operating against India. Indeed, it  sees tactically useful to recruit them to the coalition against those jihadists determined to overthrow the state. It is due to amy opposition that the Joint Anti-Terrorism Mechanism set up by PMs Manmohan Singh and Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani in 2009 yielded precisely no results.And so were the covert contacts between Indian and Pakistani intelligence chiefs. The awful costs of failure weren't  good enough to try again.