11/24, 97 PM India-Pakistan Relations: Challenges and Opportunites sopeidanptnntvisuryroteset journals Review Essay India-Pakistan Relations: Challenges and Opportunities Ejaz Hussain Abstract Mario E. Carranza. 2016. India-Pakistan Nuclear Diplomacy: Constructivism and the Prospects for ‘Nuclear Arms Control and Disarmament in South Asia. New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield. 267 pp. ISBN: 978-1-4422-4561-7. Daniel Haines. 2016, Rivers Divided: Indus Basin Waters in the Making of India and Pakistan, New ‘York, NY: Oxford University Press. 264 pp. ISBN: 978-0-19064866-4 Hein G. Kiessling. 2016. Faith, Unity, Discipline: The ISI of Pakistan. London: Hurst & Co. 307 pp. ISBN: 978-1-84904-517-9. A. S. Dulat, Asad Durrani and Aditya Sinha. 2018. The Spy Chronicles: RAW, ISI and the Ilusion of Peace. New Delhi: HarperCollins Publishers. 344 pp. ISBN: 978-9352779253. Department of Social Sciences, Iqra University, Islamabad, Pakistan Corresponding author(s): Ejaz Hussain, Department of Social Sciences, Iqr University, Plot No. 5, H-9, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan, E-mail: cjaz.hussain@iqraisb.edu pk Introduction India and Pakistan emerged in August 1947 as successor states of British India with distinctive identities. India normatively and constitutionally ensconced secularity, albeit with Hindu majoritarianism. Pakistan, in part because of its relative ethnonational diversity, opted for an overwhelming Islamic character for nation-building vis a ‘Hindu’ enemy. These incompatible state ideologies ensured that the India and and securitization vis~ Pakistan fought a war right after independence over the control of Jammu and Kashmir! (Hussain, 2013, pp. 109-120), Moreover, the two states conflicted over the assessment and distribution of the colonial institutional and financial legacy; in particular how the civil and military bureaucracy would be divided and the appropriation of the capital. In 1965, India and Pakistan fought another inconclusive war over Kashmir and a few years later in December 1971 fought a third war that saw India support East Pakistani rebels and partition Pakistan, creating the independent state of Bangladesh.” Nevertheless, Pakistan’s quest for strategic parity with nuclear-capable India® continued in the following decades. The Siachen issue (1984), Brasstacks (1987) and Zarb-e-Momin (1989) further confirmed the deteriorated nature of bilateral relationship. Though then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi visited Pakistan in 1989, the two sides failed to normalize their bilateral relations in the 1990s. Driven by their security concerns and fear of the other’s intentions, both hitpsjourrals.sagepub.comisovepub/10.117712347787018823964 mne124, 67 Pe India-Pakistan Relations: Chalanges and Opportaites states fought once more over the border town of Kargil in Kashmir in 1999, The much-hyped Agra Summit in July 2001 provided a window of opportunity to the two countries’ leadership to sit and talk together, However, the embedded misgivings and mistrust remained staunchly intact. Currently, India-Pakistan relations are replete with examples of territorial conflict (namely Kashmir and Sir Creek), security challenges (terrorism), energy deficits and resource shortages (water scarcity), strategic uncertainty (arms race) and geopolitical tussle (proxy war in Afghanistan). This rivalry takes place in the backdrop of an overall abysmal state of human development in both states. Today, approximately 2530 per cent of Pakistanis, or 60 million people, live below the poverty line with a similar percent of Indians living in abject poverty. The history of the India-Pakistan rivalry raises several important questions. First and foremost is that if the status of socioeconomic indicators are so poor in both India and Pakistan, why do the two countries still prefer military competition over political and economic cooperation? Can any of the two state’s rare bilateral agreements, such as the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), be replicated? What type of dangers are posed by the nuclear arsenals that the two states possess, and is there any possibility of nuclear reversal? Finally, can India and Pakistan talk over issues such as terrorism meaningfully? These are the lingering but crucial questions that are at the core of the four recently published books under review in this article. The first of these books is Daniel Haines’ Rivers Divided: Indus Basin Waters in the ‘making of India and Pakistan which as its name suggests looks into the complicated relations that the two states have over their shared river and how the water is utilised. The second book is Mario Carranza’s India-Pakistan Nuclear Diplomacy: Constructivism and the Prospect for Arms Control and Disarmament in South Asia, which offers an alternative approach to the conventional narrative surrounding India and Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Finally, both Hein Kiessling in his book Faith, Unity, Discipline: The ISI of Pakistan and A.S. Dulat, Asad Durrani and Aditya Sinha in The Spy Chronicles: RAW, ISI and the Illusion of Peace explore the central role that Pakistan's Army, or more specifically its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), have had on recent Pakistani foreign policy and the vested interests it may have in keeping the animosity with India alive. In order to analyse the contributions of each book, this article is divided into four sections, one each dedicated to the books in question before concluding with a brief overview of their importance to developing a holistic overview of Indo-Pakistani relations, Territory, Conflict and Contested Sovereignty The existing literature on the Partition and the postcolonial South Asian states takes a unilinear view of the nations of territory, conflict and sovereignty. Scholars such as Arthur Michel (1967, pp. 10-35), Undala Alam (1998), Majed Akhter (2015), Sarah Ansari (2005, pp. 18-45) and David Gilmartin (2015, pp. 1-14, pp. 182 198) have explored different aspects of decolonization, democracy, civil-military relations and territorial conflict between India and Pakistan. Yet such scholarship has underestimated the potential of territorial waters in shaping political and strategic perceptions, public policy choices, notions of state formation and the military strategy in India and Pakistan. Moreover, existing accounts tend not to problematize “territoriality” the way that Haines in his Rivers Divided has attempted to. Taking a conceptual and empirical departure from the existing works that are grounded in history, topography and (in)security of the subcontinent, the author is more into the politics of the Indus waters. In so doing, the author has invoked the overwhelming impact of the Cold War’s geopolitics on the domestic politics, national leadership and choice formation in India and Pakistan. In conceptualizing ‘territory’ in the pre-Partition period, Haines, who implicitly applies a constructivist perspective to the data, conducts a discursive survey of nationalist thought being popularized by both the Hindu and the Muslim leadership. The All India National Congress along with a plethora of right-wing Hindu religious hitpsjourrals.sagepub.comisovepub/10.117712347787018823964 antv4, 6:37 PM India-Pakistan Relations: Chalanges and Opportaites organisations such as the RSS equated the material notion of territory with the physical and spiritual characteristics of humans in terms of ‘Mother India’ (Haines, 2016, p. 22). In contrast: Muslim visions of teritory were more diverse. While some Muslims joined Congress and worked for a composite, all-India nationalism, the Muslim League challenged Congress and Hindu nationalist visions of India as one nation, with one territory. Apart from any cultural and spiritual distinctiveness, Muslim political consciousness coalesced around the separate representation that the colonial government granted to Muslims in couneils and assemblies ... ¢ Lahori poet, Muhamamd Iqbal, as president of the Muslim League in 1930, argued that Muslims in India should not be seen as part of an Indian nation, alongside Hindus and others ... Iqbal emphasized the commonality of the ummah (community of believers) in a world of internationalism. By contrast, Mohammad Ali Jinnah... insst[ed] that India was not a nation but a geographical space where the two nations lived. (Haines, 2016, p. 23) As the above highlights, the notion of territorial nationalism lacked intra-Muslim consensus and, to problematize it, Haines has brought the recent scholarly debate on the subject into the discussion. The Muslims of India were diverse and divided along linguistic, sectarian and economic grounds. The Muslim elite characterized by the Muslim League thus rejected ‘nationalism’ that relied on localization of identity. Rather, Jinnah presented Pakistan in purely political terms where the Muslim-majority regions were claimed for all the Muslims regardless of locality and socioeconomic status (Devji, 2013, pp. 89-122). Dhulipala (2014, pp. 194— 278), however, has highlighted the overwhelming significance that the Muslim elders attributed to certain territory, at least in the United Provinces. In contrast to such narratives, Haines argues that the contestation of sovereignty is a post-independence phenomenon, though its origins are rooted in the intricacies of the Partition Plan, in particular the integration of the princely states with either India or Pakistan. Both India and Pakistan were able to satisfactorily integrate most princely states through either cooperation or coercion. However, Jammu and Kashmir became the primary bone of contention between the two countries since independence. Indeed, the 1947-1948 war in Kashmir set a pattern and lines of conformation that continue to this day. Yet, the conflict over Kashmir is not necessarily as nationalistic in nature as it is normally made to be. Rather, both India and Pakistan framed Jammu and Kashmir in sovereignty terms. For instance, Indian leadership, as Haines’ archival research points out, predicated its ‘absolute sovereignty” on Kashmir with reference to state formation. To the contrary, Pakistan assumed Kashmir as ‘territorial integrity’ for the federalization of the state that comprised of two separate parts, namely East and West Pakistan surrounded by India (Haines, 2016, pp. 43-55). Though the Radcliffe Award delimitated the Indo-Pakistani boarders, and though not as fully as is generally believed, it produced problems due to its neglect to clearly divide rivers and adjacent areas. Since the Indus waters flow from Indian-administered Kashmir into Pakistan, the two sides developed competing notions of territoriality that were linked with their subjective conception of sovereignty. Therefore, when India stopped the flow of water for Pakistan in May 1948, the latter not only protested but asserted ownership over the Indus Basin on the basis of ‘prior appropriation’. In other words, Pakistan claimed that the pre-independence areas that constituted Pakistan had utilised the Indus waters uninterrupted for aeons and thus had the topographical and ethical right to receive water supply without Indian interference into the basin (Haines, 2016, p. 49). Interestingly, in that early phase of decolonization, India and Pakistan did cooperate with each other over numerous issues; for example, the rehabilitation of the refugees. Hence, Prime Minister Nehru, who tilted towards socialism and was at the forefront of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), did not take a tough diplomatic stance on Kashmir, in general, and Indus waters, in particular, The Pakistani elite, though embracing hyper-nationalism vis-i-vis Kashmir in the 1950s, also acted rationally and agreed to share water with India, The April 1948 water crisis, however, drew global attention to the disputation over Kashmiri territory and hitpsjourrals.sagepub.comisovepub/10.117712347787018823964 ante124, 67 Pe India-Pakistan Relatons:Chalanges and Opportites sovereignty. The United States, Pakistan in the early 1950s, In that heated Cold War regional context, a prominent American technoerat and water manager, David E. Lilienthal, visited the subcontinent in a private capacity though with official blessings (Haines, 2016, pp. 107-110). Having observed the Indus Basin, ilienthal (1951) provided a technical, not a legal or political, solution to the puzzle: India and Pakistan should maintain joint ownership and usage of the Indus waters that were classified as ‘eastern’ (Ravi, Sutlej and Beas) and ‘western’ (Chenab, Jhelum and Ravi) rivers. Both India and Pakistan did not buy this argument owing to their respective conception of territoriality and the ith the interest to prevent communism in South Asia, engaged both India and contested notion of sovereignty. Here, the author provides an original perspective on decolonization history by establishing structural linkages among state formation, territorial sovereignty and Cold War geopolitics (pp. 120-127), Consequently, by 1957, the World Bank with the backing of Western states engaged Indian and Pakistani leadership with the aim of securing a resolution to the Indus Basin Waters dispute. The water bureaucracies of the two countries, thus, held several meetings. Moreover, the top leadership, Nehru in India and Ayub Khan in Pakistan, from 1958-1960, were constrained domestically. Nehru’s economic policy was a flop whereas Ayub was lacking broad legitimacy for his military rule (Haines, 2016, p. 138). This nexus between domestic and global politics provided strategic space to not only the subcontinental leadership but also the Western powers, such as the US, Canada and West Germany, that financially contributed to the Indus Basin Development Fund worth US$893.5 million (pp. 144-150). As a result, India and Pakistan were able to sign the IWT in September 1960, which resolved the waters dispute albeit strategically rather than technically. In other words, the IWT went beyond the Linienthalian cooperative framework and instead, ‘divided’ the rivers in a manner that the water of three eastern rivers came under Indian suzerainty—though Pakistan were to use these waters for irrigation purposes for initial 10 years—and the three westem rivers exclusively came under Pakistani control though India could use these waters for hydroelectric purposes as long as the water flow remained uninterrupted. Moreover, with the Fund money, Pakistan started construction of the Mangla Dam and links canals The signing of the IWT, and the cooperation and rationality displayed by the Indian and Pakistani leadership, received global applause. Domestically, however, the IWT received mixed response. In India, the opposition accused Nehru of being a ‘sell out’ by gifting the Basin to Pakistan, In addition, since India had to pay some USS173.8 million to Pakistan, this fact further annoyed the opposition and the right-wing nationalists. In Pakistan, the story was similar, with the opposition led by Fatima Jinnah criticising Ayub’s regime for betrayal as, in their view, Pakistan lost its three rivers to India and had recognized India’s right to use the western waters (Haines, 2016, pp. 155-158). Nonetheless, the Treaty survived. However, it failed to resolve the broader Kashmir conflict. Moreover, it could not help resolve related boarder issues, especially in the divided Punjab. For example, the Sulemanki headworks had its bund located in undemarcated territory. Indian and Pakistani engineers and paramilitary forces frequently violated the other’s sovereignty until the two sides finally settled the issue in 1960 (Haines, 2016, pp. 85-89). However, bilateral cooperation failed in the Rann of Kutch where India and Pakistan faced a military standoff in 1963 (Haines, 2016, p. 101). The Cold War geopolitics helped resolve it though for the time being as the two neighbours fought an all-out war in 1965 on Kashmir due largely to ontological differences on territory and sovereignty. The 1965 war, in the author’s view, marks the limitations of the IWT as far as conflict, prevention was concerned. Thus, rather than ensuring peace and strategic stability in South Asia, the IWT, due to its inability to resolve the Kashmir conflict, has perpetuated conflict, sharpened the competing claims on territory and sovereignty. hitpsjourrals.sagepub.comisovepub/10.117712347787018823964 ante124, 67 Pe Ingia-Pakstan Relatons: Challenges and Opportunities Additionally, it has also inadvertently militarized the Indus Basin to the extent that both India and Pakistan actively threaten use of nuclear weapons if the status quo is altered in the conflict zone and if, or when, the low riparian state is deprived of water(s) rights altogether. Last but not the least, the IWT set a weak precedent for dispute resolution in a different, though within the same regional, context, As Haines observed: [The idea of using the Indus Waters Treaty as a model for India-Pakistan cooperation in [East] Bengal during the late 1960s demonstrated some of the pitfalls of trying to take a model of collaborating from one context and applying it to another. The intervention of the 1971 civil war in Pakistan, and subsequent secession of Bangladesh, does of course complicate the picture, We cannot know whether negotiations between the governments in New Delhi and Islamabad would have been more fruitful than those between Delhi and Dhaka. (p. 174) Thus, Rivers Divided is largely pessimistic of the IWT’s ability to act as a precedent for settling territorial disputes involving waters. The book adds originally to our understanding of territoriality and its role in water management, offering fresh insights into the demonization history and the (early) Cold War in analysing the interplay of territory, conflict and sovereignty. However, the study remains focused on the politics of the Indus Basin during the 1950s and, to some extent, 1960s, and does not link the issues in the later decades, especially to the current debate on water management between India and Pakistan, However, it does emphasize the centrality of territory (Kashmir), which remains central until today, to any India-Pakistan negotiations. How did Kashmir conflict influence strategic thinking in both the countries and to what extent, and in what ways, it helped militarize the Line of Control (LoC) and India-Pakistan border is discussed in the next section. rly politics with the water-related Does Constructivism Suggest Ways Peace Can Emerge Between India and Pakistan? Theoretically, the existing intemational relations (IR) literature tends to take a (neo)realist view of nuclear relations regionally and globally (Mearsheimer, 1994/95). As far as India and Pakistan’s nuclear program and the advancements in weapon system are concerned, the scholars as well as policymakers invoked security dilemmas and, therefore, relied on military means to achieve strategic stability in South Asia (Lavoy, 2009, pp. 1-29). However, owing to the overwhelming predominance of realist ontology, altemate theoretical positions have been grossly overlooked. In a bid to rescue IR theory in general, and nuclear studies in particular, Mario E, Carranza (2016) has managed to achieve two key goals. On the one hand, Carranza has exposed empirical limitations of (neo)realism and (neo)liberalism both as explainers of TR and nuclear weapon behaviours. On the other hand, Carranza proposes a constructivist analytical framework to explain tensions between India and Pakistan and the nature, character and, importantly, the future of nuclear arms race between the two countries. The first and foremost criticism of rationalist and instrumentalist theories such as neorealism and neoliberalism is directed at its failure to predict the demise of the Soviet Union the way it happened in the late 1980s. This is primarily because these theories are static and thus discouraging as far as the idea, if not the process, of change in a society and state is concerned. Since such materialist perspectives favour ‘objects’ above ‘norms’, IR theory and, consequently, global policy discourse on nuclear weapons and disarmament deprived itself of alternate ontological and epistemological positions, perspective and polic ‘neo-neo’ theories is empirically valid, However, in reviewing IR theory, besides the various strands of liberalism and realism, other important IR theories such as critical theory, postmodernism, poststructuralism, feminism and the green perspectives are excluded from the discussion altogether (see Steans, Pettiford, Diez, & Carranza’s critique of the hitpsjourrals.sagepub.comisovepub/10.117712347787018823964 sitv4, 6:37 PM India-Pakistan Relations: Chalanges and Opportaites EL-Anis, 2010, pp. vi-vii). Similarly, the nuclear studies literature review on South Asia is limited in scope, and certain scholarship stands, to use constructivist jargon, marginalized.* ‘Nevertheless, the assumptions of constructivism (namely reality is socially constructed) are clearly outlined, and with respect to developing a constructivist framework on nuclear weapons and reversals in South Asia, Carranza builds on the works of Tannenwald (2007, pp. 1-25) and Rublee (2009, pp. 1-20) who analysed similar themes in a non-Asian context. However, as far as constructivist framework on South Asian nuclear programs is concerned, his is an original contribution, Carranza begins by first deconstructing the structurally embedded realist reasoning that the introduction of nuclear weapons into a rivalry, such as the India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir, will “freeze” it by making direct conflict irrational. Here, he demonstrates that the core assumptions of constructivism reveal that this not necessarily the case. Instead, India-Pakistan rivalry and consequent nuclearization is a product of social construction on the part of the political and strategic elites (Carranza, 2016, pp. 37-39). The latt generated respective discourse in strategic interaction with the social environment at the global level where the core nuclear-related norm, termed as Nuclear Non-Proliferation Norm (NNPN), affected the elite behaviour , however, towards threat perception and securitization in terms of nuclearization (Carranza, 2016, pp. 92-97). Since, the NPN remained flexile in the initial Cold War period, non-core states such as South Africa, Israel and even India took advantage of it. Unsurprisingly, India, faced with ‘security dilemma’ from China, tested i capability in 1974, India’s nuclear policy carried implications for Pakistan lost quarter of its territory and more than half of its population in war against India in 1971. Thus, to bridge the conventional capability gap with rival India, Pakistan started its nuclear programme the same decade, while invoking realist positions that argued, ‘More [nukes] are better’, to ward off Indian threat (Waltz, 1995, pp. 1-45). Thus, by late 1980s, Pakistan had acquired ‘existential’ deterrence vis-i-vis India’s ‘minimum deterrence’ (Carranza, 2016, pp. 55-58). Delhi, however, tested nuclear weapons, again, in May 1998, to which, Pakistan, in reaction, did the same the same month, This tit-for-tat nuclear posturing had alarming effects on each country’s deterrence strategy. As Kapur (2008) has rightly observed, before the May 1998 tests, India had stable deterrence towards both China and Pakistan, Rather than pure security dilemma, it was the ‘prestige’ factor that ranked into Indian strategic community and the political leadership that desired to enter the elite club of the nuclear weapons states (Frey, 2006, pp. 123-141). In the post-1998 tests period, Pakistan, in order to ensure ‘asymmetric escalation’ (roughly first-strike option), had set ‘minimum deterrence’ to counter India’s ‘assured retaliation’ (second-strike capability), However, the Kargil War of 1999 taught a variety of lessons to each state. India, on its part, conceived what is described as Cold Start Doctrine, that is, the acquired ability to abruptly strike conventionally inside the enemy’s tertitory especially in a crisis (Narang, 2014, pp. 77-115). In other words, in the jargon of deterrence pessimists, the nuclear weapons militarised the conventional notion of warfare and doubled the risk of escalation in a conventional war. For its part, Pakistan has learnt that it is unlikely to be able to match India conventionally. Instead, it has acquired the tactical nuclear capability to counter India's Cold Start strategy, thereby increasing the possibility of nuclear weapons being used, accidently or intentionally, in a future Indo- Pakistani war. Thus, Carranza’s analysis is no different from that of other nuclear deterrence pessimists (Feaver, 1995). Additionally, he is critical of the Obama Administration for the 2008 nuclear deal with India on two counts. First, the deal allowed for India’s enrichment of its existing nuclear regime. Secondly and more importantly, Obama’s policy on India proved counterproductive with respect to emphasizing the NNPN, at the regional level, to gradually realize nuclear arms control and disarmament in South Asia. nuclear hitpsjourrals.sagepub.comisovepub/10.117712347787018823964 ente124, 67 Pe India-Pakistan Relations: Chalanges and Opportaites However, if Indo-Pakistani nuclear history is any guide, nuclear reversal seems a daunting task. Therefore, the book has bracketed the need for nuclear diplomacy between the two countries with the support of a global social eminent that prefers and enacts NNPN. Carranza’s study has, in this respect, proposed a four-tier model of normalization between India and Pakistan, highlighting nuclear arms control scenarios, similar to the model originally proposed by Stephen P. Cohen (2013, pp. 74-114). Moreover, this research has, with a constructivist tinge, underscored the role of ‘norm entrepreneurs’ (i.e, strategic elite, think tanks, NGOs, the media etc.) in the communication and dissemination of anti-nuclear norm at multiple fora and level. The author posits that the NPN is already working as it has prevented India and Pakistan to test nuclear weapons since 1998. This may be so with regard to weapons testing, but a look at the two countries’ wider behaviour reveals the flaws with this position, First, both India and Pakistan are busy expanding their nuclear arsenal and are showing no sign of slowing. Second, India is enhancing its short to long-range ballistic missile capacity as is Pakistan. Moreover, the latter is equipping its navy with a nuclear submarine in order to counter the Indian triad. To add insult to injury, neither India nor Pakistan have joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Indeed, the two are quite sceptical of the Fissile Material Control Treaty as well. One wonders how the NNPN can, without the formal backing of powerful states such as the USA, France, Germany, Russia and China, ensure nuclear arms control and disarmament. When the great powers start compelling weaker states, such as India and Pakistan, to denuclearize, will such a policy course be an outcome of norm-oriented constructivism or power-oriented (neo)realism? India-Pakistan Nuclear Diplomacy, at best, is ambiguous in this respect. Indeed, at places, one finds realist overtones in the guise of constructivism. For example, on the prospects of nuclear arms control and disarmament, Carranza has emphasized that: [T]he United States must have a single nonproliferation and disarm policy toward the [South Asian] region; it cannot xzive India a free pass on its nuclear weapons program while attempting to unilaterally denuclearize Pakistan with a preemptive strike ... the good news is that President Obama’s 2009 Prague speech has significantly strengthened the NNPN by officially placing nuclear disarmament in the intemational agenda. (2016, p. 147) [Italics in the original] Nonetheless, the study is an interesting read to approach India—Pakistan nuclear rivalry from a non-tealist and non-liberal perspective. In addition, it calls upon the global strategic community and the policymakers in India and Pakistan to take the dangers of nuclear war in South Asia more seriously. However, will India and Pakistan ever be able to reverse (nuclear) rivalry? What actors and factors have hindered the 1999 Lahore Declaration? The following section of the article tends to problematize such questions. initiatives such Institutions, Conflict and Rivalry One of the main, if not the primary, spoilers for any reconciliation between India and Pakistan can be found in the latter’s internal political and institutional struggles. There is no dearth of literature on Pakistan’s politics, history and civil-military relations (Siddiqa, 2007, pp. 1-20). These accounts have identified the role of the state institutions, particularly the military, in the country’s politics, society, economy and the foreign policy. However, fewer studies exist to map the outreach and analyse the role and impact of sub-institutions such as the ISI that has assumed immense significance, at least, in the Indian strategic and intelligence communities. As already mentioned, Kashmir conflict and India—Pakistan (nuclear) relations constitute the core of India-Pakistan Nuclear Diplomacy and Rivers Divided. There is, then, a need to problematize the role of the permanent state institution(s) in comprehending the level and degree of the lingering territorial conflicts, dangers of (nuclear) arms race and prospects for strategic stability in the South Asian region. hitpsjourrals.sagepub.comisovepub/10.117712347787018823964 mte124, 67 Pe India-Pakistan Relations: Chalanges and Opportaites To begin with, Lal’s The Monstrous Face of ISI (2000, pp. 6-14) and Dhar’s Fulcrum of Evil: ISI-CLA-Al Qaeda Nexus (2006, pp. 15-45) offer particularistic view of the ISI’s role in Kashmir, Northeast India and, for that matter, Afghanistan and the Middle East. This literature, by and large, highlights the ISI’s activities rather than exploring the internal structure, financial and institutional capacity of the orga Winchell’s Pakistan's ISI: The Invincible Government (2003) and Sirrs’ Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (2017, pp. 13-48) shed light on the intemal intricacies of the formidable force. Kiessling’s book falls into this latter category whilst The Spy Chronicles contributes to the former. Kiessling begins with the ISI’s origins and intended purpose. Specifically, Kiessling identifies that the IST was founded by the Australian-British General Cawthomne, whose services were hired by the Pakistani Amy to build up their military intelligence. Cawthome considered the USSR as a strategic threat to the British interests in South Asia and therefore sought to establish an intelligence organization that was instrumental in countering the Soviet designs in the region (Kiessling, 2016, pp. 14-15). Within a short span, however, the Pakistani Army and the ISI were indigenised institutionally, with a Pakistani Army man leading the ISI from July 1948 onwards. This ensured that the ISI’s primary focus shifted from trans-regional geopolitics to national politics and security policy. This included not only a near obsessive focus on India but also efforts to control the domestic situation. Indeed, Iskander Mirza, a general-cum-bureaucrat, and General Ayub Khan, the commander-in-chief, authorised the ISI’s monitoring of Prime Minister Noon and the opposition (Kiessling, 2016, p. 21). This revelation is one of the primary contributions of the study because previous accounts of the ISI’s activities against the political was blamed on Zulfigar Ali Bhutto, the Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1973-1977. Bhutto, Kiessling argues, only increased the political role of the organization in the county’s domestic politics. As far as Pakistan's secutity/foreign policy was concerned, the agency’s capacity and role was quite miniscule under the Ayub regime. The ISI was involved in fomenting anti-India insurgencies in Northeastern India after 1957, despite the then ongoing India—Pakistan negotiations over the Indus Basin. Nonetheless, the book leaves the impression that during the 1965 India-Pakistan war, the role and outreach of the agency was quite limited. If so, this then explains Pakistan’s inability in acquiring and communicating intelligence during the 1965 war (p. 23). However, by the 1971 crisis in East Pakistan, the IST had become highly competent and efficient, even forwarding copies of General Manekshaw’s operational instructions on the forthcoming Indian invasion to Pakistan's leadership. Yet, despite this windfall, the country’s military and civil leadership could not prevent the dismemberment of Pakistan, In the post-1971 period, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto tended to rejuvenate morale of the military. To prevent the penetration of the Soviet and Afghan elements in Pakistan's bordering areas with Afghanistan and Iran, the Bhutto government entrusted the ISI with the responsibility of training and utilising around 5,000 strong Afghan guerrilla troops. Colonel Syed Raza Ali played a leading role in this regard. However, owing to the intricacies of imbalanced civil-military relations, the Bhutto government was dismissed by General Zia ul Haq in July 1977, He ‘insinuated a possible conspiracy had been hatched against him among the military leadership and the intelligence agencies’ (Kiessling, 2016, p. 39). Kiessling has utilised a number of primary sources to highlight the complexities of civil-military relations during 1980-1990s. In addition, his description of the ISI’s engagement with the Taliban (1994-2001) is based on the author's personal contact with the (former) officials of the agency. Thus, Kiessling states that under DG Lt. Gen, Ehsan ul Hag, who remained at the helm from October 2001 until 2004, the organization was instrumental in directing Pakistan’s South Asia policy whereby Afghanistan was seen as an Indian protégé the post-9/11 world, though the ISI cooperated with the CIA, the former projected Pakistan’s interests by ion, In contrast, cla In hitpsjourrals.sagepub.comisovepub/10.117712347787018823964 ante124, 67 Pe India-Pakistan Relatons:Chalanges and Opportites registering concems over the excessive use of drone attacks in Pakistan's tribal areas. Such territory and sovereignty concerns though resonate with the themes raised in River Divided. The US-Pakistan relations further worsened in the post-Musharraf period (2008-2013) when the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)-led government called upon the Obama Administration to save the civilian setup in the wake of Bin Laden’s killing by the US Navy SEALs in Abbottabad in May 2011. Moreover, the Raymond Davis, Affair and the Salala Incident, both also in 2011, halted the NATO supply to Kabul through Pakistan, In addition, the Gilani [Zardari] government tried to control the IST by signalling friendly gestures to India, This strained civil-military relations to the extent Prime Minister Gilani was fired by the judiciary, which typically works in tandem with the military establishment. The Pakistan Muslim League government of Nawaz Sharif/Khaqan Abbasi (2013-2018) also attempted to implement the PPP’s policy of normalization with India. The Sharif government also interfered in the military’s, and for that matter ISI’s, internal matters and tended to take control of the country’s foreign policy. Importantly, the civil government planned to curtail the role of the ISI by empowering the Intelligence Bureau that is generally regarded as a civilian institution. The Army and the ISI, keen to stay relevant in the country’s politics and security/foreign policy, reacted to the extent that Prime Minister Sharif stood disqualified, in the so-called Panama Papers in which the organization was accorded a key role by the apex courts. In Kiessling’s opinion, Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency still remains a powerful force in the region. Moreover, the agency sees Afghanistan in confrontational terms as it has, over the decades, developed bilateral stable relations with India (Coll, 2018, pp. 666-669). The strength of the book lay in its attempt to bridge the gap in the literature with respect to the internal structure, functions and intra-agency power relations. This objective though is partly achieved because there still are unaddressed questions which, to some extent, have been raised by two former spymasters of India and Pakistan, Dulat and Durrani, in The Spy Chronicles (Dulat, Durrani, & Sinha, 2018, pp. 1-55). The Spy Chronictes is divided into seven parts and 33 chapters which are in a conversational journalistic style and organization, effectively being the transcripts of several interviews Sinha had with Dulat (representing India) and Durrani (representing Pakistan), The initial chapters, while setting the tone, informs about India- Pakistan rivalry and the role of the two spy agencies in conflict perpetuation. The ISI, argues Durrani (pp. 83- 123), viewed Kashmir as an opportunity post-Cold War to contain India’s military might. However, the agency miscalculated the scale and length of the Kashmiri anti-India militancy. In Durrani’s view, Pakistan should have backed Amanullah than Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). In contrast, Durrani assumes that the Indian spy organization is careerist and an efficient organization due to it being under civilian control. Part IV (pp. 124-180) sketches the ISI’s prominent role in supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan and its bittersweet relationship with the CIA post- 9/11, Dulat believes that the Pakistani intelligence agency gained currency in the Western world due to its media coverage. ‘The Flashpoints’, as Part V is titled, revolves around Kashmir, the 2002 standoff, the Mumbai terrorist attack (2008) and the contested ‘Surgical Strike’ (2016). Both Dulat and Durrani posit the mentioned events as attempts, on the part of the two countries’ security establishment, to disturb the status quo in the subcontinent. “The New Great Game’ (Part VI) discuses events such as the killing of Osama Bin Laden and the lingering warfare in Afghanistan, The former spy chiefs view US-Pakistan, India-US and, broadly, the South Asian politics and foreign policy in rational terms, where each spy agency is serving its national interest. In the final section, titled ‘Looking Ahead’ (pp. 257-285), Dulat and Durrani offer nothing new, instead they simply keep reiterating the Manmohan-Musharraf era prescriptions for the Kashmir conflict. Nonetheless, The Spy Chronicles is refreshingly optimistic and peace- ‘ented, making it a welcome addition to the literature on the hitpsjourrals.sagepub.comisovepub/10.117712347787018823964 ontv4, 6:37 PM India-Pakistan Relations: Chalanges and Opportaites India-Pakistani rivalry. However, it may be an uneasy reading for a non-specialist given series of interpersonal dialogue compiled candidly by Aditya Sinha. Furthermore, it has not touched in detail upon some key outstanding sources of contention, such as the water issues highlighted in Rivers Divided, and nuclear challenges as put forth in India-Pakistan Nuclear Diplomacy. Conversely, The Spy Chronicles has much resonance with Faith, Unity, Discipline. Conclusion The four texts analysed share some common themes concerning India-Pakistan relations: territory, conflict, sovereignty and (limited) cooperation. Rivers Divided set the tone by highlighting the hydro-political significance of Kashmir over which India and Pakistan fought three wars. Since the much-hyped IWT failed to resolve the Kashmir conflict, it gradually lost relevance as a model for conflict resolution even in similar settings, such as the Farakka barrage in the Bengal basin, The contested notions of territoriality and sovereignty factored into elite decision-making that, on the one hand, perpetuated mutual mistrust and misgivings and, on the other hand, embedded conventional rivalry that took a nuclear turn in the 1970s onward. The past decades have only added to strategic uncertainty in the South Asian region, as illustrated in India-Pakistan Nuclear Diplomacy. Importantly, the state institutions, both civil and military, in the subcontinent seem to have lost faith in creating peaceful conditions for coexistence. Faith, Unity, Discipline has, thus, provided with useful insights about the role, functions and outreach of one of the powerful state institutions in Pakistan, the IST, which views India as its primary rival. Last but not the least, The Spy Chronicles provides a detailed discussion of the challenges that hinder normalization in India—Pakistan relations, the opportunities missed in the past and the ones available presently. If the two countries are able to revisit, and revise, their revisionist poliey and posture and make strides in building bilateral confidence, the toughest of issues can be resolved. In order to do so, however, both the states will have to reorient their institutional mind-sets, remould state nationalism and rework on antagonistic populism, which, by default, demand further studies on the subject. Acknowledgement The author wishes to acknowledge with thanks helpful comments by Stephen Westcott on earlier drafts of this review. Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article. 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