A step forward on Sir Creek

The commitment expressed on Friday by Pakistan and India to conduct a joint survey in the Sir Creek area augurs well for the early resolution of an age-old border dispute that may be relatively soft in strategic terms but has, over the decades, claimed a heavy human toll. Technical modalities are to be worked out later this year in August while the survey itself, aimed at delineating land and maritime boundaries in the disputed region, is expected to be conducted between November 2006 and March 2007. If the exercise proceeds as per schedule, the two parties may be in a position to meet the 2007 submission-of-claims deadline set by the UN Convention on Law of the Sea. Both Pakistan and India are signatories to the convention which calls for the resolution of all maritime boundary disputes by 2009. The convention's original cut-off point, 2004, was recently extended by five years. From the economic and commercial perspective, a mutually acceptable boundary would help define the currently interpretative limits of the continental shelf and the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) to which Pakistan and India are legally entitled under international law. The dispute over Sir Creek, the most eastern of the 17 creeks dotting the Sindh coastline, has also hampered exploration in a region said to be rich in oil and natural gas. On an individual level, however, poor fishermen on both sides of the 'divide' have clearly been the biggest losers in this largely non-confrontational quarrel, the August 1999 shooting down of a Pakistan Navy surveillance aircraft and subsequent retaliation notwithstanding. With the maritime border being as murky as it is, Pakistani and Indian fishermen routinely stray into contested waters, mostly through no fault of their own. If the intrusion is detected, they are arrested rather than fined and left to rot in jail for prolonged periods. According to the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, some 50 Pakistani fishermen are currently languishing in jail across the border. The number of Indian fishermen in Pakistani prisons is estimated at 200. The Sir Creek dispute is said to date back to 1875 and has its origins in the territorial claims of the princely states of 'Sind' and Kutch. Mediation by the British resulted in the '1914 Resolution Maps' and a final demarcation in 1925 showed the boundary as a 'green line' on the eastern (now Indian) side of the creek. Not surprisingly, the issue resurfaced after Partition. Using the 1914 'green line' as a marker, Pakistan has consistently claimed ownership over the entire 60-mile-long Sir Creek estuary which separates the province of Sindh from the Indian state of Gujarat. New Delhi, for its part, has insisted on a 'mid-channel' delineation, as shown on a later map. This assertion has long been rejected by Islamabad on the grounds that such boundaries are applicable only to navigable channels which, according to the Pakistani view, Sir Creek is not. Originally tabled in 1969, the Sir Creek issue produced at least six rounds of unsuccessful bilateral negotiations between 1989 and 1998. Indications of significant movement on the dispute first surfaced during the September 2004 visit to India by Pakistan's foreign minister, and the progress achieved since then appears to have been cemented by the landmark joint statement issued on Friday. Given the pitfalls that the two countries have encountered on the rocky road to peace, it can only be hoped that this promising start does not prove to be yet another case of one step forward and two steps back.