An uphill task

In the recent past, there have been signs that India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi would attempt to overcome years of suspicion and enmity and normalize relations with his country's western neighbor, Pakistan.

He took the unprecedented step of inviting Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to his inauguration ceremony in New Delhi in May 2014. And, just last month, Modi agreed with Sharif to start a new round of peace talks when they met in Russia.

But despite these efforts the outlook for a substantial improvement in ties appears bleak. An optimist would say that the fact that the two men are on speaking terms is a positive development. That is true. But the scale of the task facing the two men is not to be underestimated. There is deep and profound opposition to a rapprochement in both countries. Both sides continue to demand concessions which the other will not or cannot make.

ISI's paranoia

From the perspective of Indian foreign policymakers, Delhi requires evidence that Pakistan is seriously interested in peace and in the advantages that a normalization of relations would bring, namely improved trade and a boost for both economies. This is also very much in Prime Minister Sharif's interests, if he is to combat chronic unemployment at home. But Pakistan's civilian governments have always been at the mercy of the military. And nothing has changed.

The military needs tension with India to justify its dominant role in Pakistan, both as a fighting force and as a huge stakeholder and player in the economy. And, traditionally, as soon as it sees its interests in Pakistan in danger, its omnipresent and all powerful military intelligence wing, ISI, instrumentalizes non-state actors such as Islamist extremists to provoke India. After losing three wars with its powerful neighbor since independence in 1947, to say that ISI is paranoid about its giant neighbor is not an exaggeration.

All the efforts of civilian governments in Islamabad to gain control of ISI have failed and will continue to fail. For years, divided Kashmir has been a barometer for ISI's position. Cross-border incursions by Islamist terrorists there signal ISI opposition to Islamabad's attempts to break the ice with India. Thus it does not come as a surprise that the recent wave of terrorist attacks in Indian-administered Kashmir followed closely on the heels of the recent Modi-Sharif meeting.

Bleak outlook

The other major stumbling block remains Pakistan's denial of any form of responsibility for the monstrous terrorist attack on the India financial metropolis of Mumbai in 2008, which cost the lives of more than 170 innocent people. There is abundant circumstantial evidence to show that at the very least ISI played a role in facilitating the efforts of non-state actors belonging to the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist organization to carry out the attack from Pakistani soil.

But Pakistan steadfastly refuses to acknowledge the evidence or the culpability of its citizens. So far no one has been found guilty in Pakistani courts or extradited to India. Rather, the alleged ringleader of the attack, Hafez Saeed, whose self-proclaimed goal is an Islamic State in South Asia and the "liberation" of Kashmir, resides in Lahore under the protection of the Pakistani police. Washington has placed a $10 million reward on the head of Pakstan's top jihadi leader.

So as the two sides approach the peace talks scheduled for August 23 in New Delhi, the battle lines have already been drawn.

While Modi would undoubtedly prefer a breakthrough which would enable him to push forward the modernization of South Asia's economy and trading relations to India's west, he is a prisoner of Indian public opinion. It requires a binding declaration from Pakistan that it will no longer support Islamist terrorism against India. But that can be ruled out as long as Pakistan's intelligence agency continues to dominate the country's foreign policy.

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