NEW DELHI--Top intelligence officers from India and Pakistan held secret talks in Dubai in January in a new effort to calm military tension over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, people with close knowledge of the matter told Reuters in Delhi.
Ties between the nuclear-armed rivals have been on ice since a suicide bombing of an Indian military convoy in Kashmir in 2019 traced to Pakistan-based militants that led to India sending warplanes to Pakistan. Later that year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi withdrew Indian-ruled Kashmir's autonomy in order to tighten his grip over the territory, provoking outrage in Pakistan and the downgrading of diplomatic ties and suspension of bilateral trade.
But the two governments have re-opened a back channel of diplomacy aimed at a modest roadmap to normalising ties over the next several months, the people said. Kashmir has long been a flashpoint between India and Pakistan, both of which claim all of the region but rule only in part.
Officials from India's Research and Analysis Wing, the external spy agency, and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence travelled to Dubai for a meeting facilitated by the United Arab Emirates government, two people said. The Indian foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment. Pakistan's military, which controls the ISI, also did not respond.
But Ayesha Siddiqa, a top Pakistani defence analyst, said she believed Indian and Pakistan intelligence officials had been meeting for several months in third countries. "I think there have been meetings in Thailand, in Dubai, in London between the highest level people," she said.
Such meetings have taken place in the past too, especially during times of crises but never been publicly acknowledged. "There is a lot that can still go wrong, it is fraught," said one of the people in Delhi. "That is why nobody is talking it up in public, we don't even have a name for this, it's not a peace process. You can call it a re-engagement," one of them said.
Both countries have reasons to seek a rapprochement. India has been locked in a border stand-off with China since last year and does not want the military stretched on the Pakistan front.
China-ally Pakistan, mired in economic difficulties and on an IMF bailout programme, can ill-afford heightened tensions on the Kashmir border for a prolonged period, experts say. It also has to stabilise the Afghan border on its west as the United States withdraws.
"It’s better for India and Pakistan to talk than not talk, and even better that it should be done quietly than in a glare of publicity," said Myra MacDonald, a former Reuters journalist who has just published a book on India, Pakistan and war on the frontiers of Kashmir. "But I don’t see it going very far beyond a basic management of tensions, possibly to tide both countries over a difficult period - Pakistan needs to address the fall-out of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, while India has to confront a far more volatile situation on its disputed frontier with China."
