This year’s Nobel Peace Prize brings attention to long-standing tensions between India and Pakistan, which have flared in the last week due to heavy cross-border shelling between the two militaries that has killed at least 20 people.
The Nobel Committee split the reward between Malala Yousafzai, a 17-year-old Pakistani girl shot by the Taliban for her efforts to advocate for girls’ education, and Kailash Satyarthi, a 60-year-old Indian man who has dedicated his life to ending child labor in his country.
Two years ago Pakistani militants shot Yousafzai in the head after they boarded the bus she was taking home from school in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. Yousafzai had been an outspoken advocate of girls’ education and had written a blog for the BBC about life under the Taliban after the extremist group took over the Swat Valley for a brief period in 2009.
Although Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and other Pakistani politicians have congratulated Yousafzai on winning the award, a segment of the Pakistani population disapproves and believes her shooting was a western conspiracy aimed at tarnishing Pakistan’s international reputation. Indeed her 2013 book, “I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban,” was banned by a Pakistani organization representing 40,000 private schools for advocating Western, not Pakistani, interests.
Satyarthi is a lesser known figure representing a less visible human rights problem. Child labor is endemic in India, where an estimated 50 million children are employed in industries like brick and carpet making.
While the prize holds rich symbolism and is aimed at encouraging India and Pakistan to focus on cooperating for the betterment of their people, rather than shooting at one another across the border, it is doubtful the award will push the two countries back to the negotiating table.
The Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries were scheduled to meet in August, but Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called off talks at the last minute over anger that Pakistani officials met with Kashmiri separatists. A window of opportunity for reviving dialogue emerged in late September when Pakistan’s National Security Advisor Sartaj Aziz publicly regretted the timing of Pakistan’s meeting with the Kashmiri separatists.
That window seems to have firmly closed in the last week, however, as firing across the Indo-Pakistani border has escalated, resulting in the deaths of at least 13 Pakistanis and 8 Indians, the largest number of fatalities along the border in a one-week period since a cease fire was declared between the two sides in 2003.
Despite the symbolic gesture of granting the Nobel award for human rights work in India and Pakistan, the two countries are likely headed toward a period of more–not less–tension. Pakistani PM Sharif, who is personally inclined toward improving relations with India, has been weakened by a month of street protests against his rule that were likely encouraged by the Pakistani Army. The military leadership apparently disapproved of Sharif’s decision to attend Indian PM Modi’s swearing-in ceremony in June.
For his part, Modi made clear in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly last month that India will only enter talks with Pakistan under “appropriate conditions.” Modi is carving out a different approach to relations with Pakistan than that of his predecessor, Manmohan Singh, who was often viewed by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party as overly forbearing toward Islamabad, especially in the face of terrorist attacks in India traced back to Pakistan-backed groups.
