Did Pakistan’s top army chief just back down over Kashmir in backchannel talks with India?

Pakistan’s most powerful army chief, Qamar Javed Bajwa, is said to be willing to drop demand that India reverse course on special status after ‘off-the-record’ meeting

The development has upset the country’s military-led establishment, as has Bajwa’s calls for a normalisation of relations with New Delhi in pursuit of economic ties

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An Indian soldier stands guard in Srinagar. Photo: AFP

Published: 6:30pm, 15 May 2021Updated: 8:28pm, 15 May 2021

Controversy has erupted in Pakistan over major concessions to India that the country’s powerful military leadership appears to be prepared to make, following months of backchannel talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration.

The secrecy surrounding the dialogue in Dubai between Modi’s national security adviser Ajit Doval and Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed, chief of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence agency, has in recent weeks exposed a communication gap between the military and Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government, which has not directly been involved.

Amid the confusion, it has however emerged that Pakistan’s most powerful army chief of staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa is inclined to back down from Islamabad’s insistence that India reverse its shock August 2019 move to end the special constitutional status of the disputed Kashmir region.

This revelation, which emerged from a lengthy off-the-record meeting between Bajwa and leading media opinion makers at army headquarters on April 25, has sparked warnings from within the military-led establishment against a compromise on Kashmir in pursuit of the normalisation of Pakistan’s relations with India.

Pakistan and India have fought several major conflicts in Kashmir since independence in 1947.

The terms of their relationship vis-à-vis Kashmir were last officially determined under the 1972 Simla Agreement, following the last all-out war between India and Pakistan.

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