Cricket diplomacy: The tournament’s over but the political game goes on

By Maria Kuusisto

On Saturday, India triumphed over Sri Lanka to win the Cricket World Cup for the first time in 28 years. The real drama came a few days earlier, though, in the semi-final between India and Pakistan. Tickets for the match, held in India, were selling for multiple times their face value in the days prior. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh used the opportunity to take a swing at "cricket diplomacy," inviting Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to join him in the stands. It was the first match that Pakistan had played in India since before the 2008 Mumbai terror attack — which India blames on Pakistani extremists — and there was hope that the meeting would encourage the peace process between the two countries.

Sports and politics are common bedfellows, and India and Pakistan are no exception. Leaders in both countries have used cricket — a favorite pastime on the subcontinent — to encourage closer relations. But while Singh’s and Gilani’s joint appearance reflects warming relations between India and Pakistan, it won’t have the same momentum-building effect that cricket diplomacy did in 2005, when former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf cheered a match in New Delhi. (During that visit, India and Pakistan announced new bus service between Indian- and Pakistan-held Kashmir.)

Today, domestic constraints are too severe to allow significant compromise. In India, many feel that Pakistan hasn’t done enough to tackle terrorism or to bring the perpetrators of the Mumbai attack to justice. Singh’s push for political and economic cooperation with Pakistan — a central objective of his second term in office and something he hopes to establish as part of his legacy — is therefore deeply unpopular.

In Islamabad, the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) is declining in popularity and under pressure from all sides, while trying to gear up for the 2014 parliamentary elections. And the government has little independence from the military, which continues to view India as the principal threat to Pakistan’s national security. In February, the government sacked its foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who had been a central player in the talks with India.

The dialogue will continue, focusing primarily on the investigation into the Mumbai attack. The two countries’ home ministers met in the days before the semi-final, and Pakistan agreed to allow Indian investigators to question individuals suspected of involvement in the attack and to establish a hotline to share terrorism-related information. But the Pakistani military opposes making major concessions to India on the terrorism front and is likely to block proposals that it considers too intrusive (such as to try senior militant leaders). Meanwhile, another Mumbai-like attack remains possible — which would make the dialogue, such as it is, even more untenable.

Maria Kuusisto is an analyst in Eurasia Group’s Asia practice.