India & Pakistan: The Hawks Have Won

Did Qureshi’s impolitic outburst while Krishna was still in Pakistan deep six the peace process for the foreseeable future? Forget about it. Leave the parsing of the details and the blame game to the Foreign Office types. Here’s the problem: the hawks on neither side are convinced about the benefit of talking to each other right now. 

Start with the Indians. (No, not because they’re more to blame, but you have to start somewhere. I’m going by the alphabetical approach.) India is divided when it comes to Pakistan. One camp believes the Mumbai attacks were orchestrated and executed by the Pakistan Army through its militant proxies. This leads them to a one, central conclusion: relations with Pakistan cannot improve until Pakistan does something meaningful about a) going after the specific people involved in the Mumbai attacks and b) beginning to roll back the ‘India-centric’ jihadis cultivated here.