Two years ago, Pervez Musharraf, who was then Pakistan’s President and Army chief, summoned his most senior generals and two Foreign Ministry officials to a series of meetings at his military office in Rawalpindi. There, they reviewed the progress of a secret, sensitive negotiation with India, known to its participants as “the back channel.” For several years, special envoys from Pakistan and India had been holding talks in hotel rooms in Bangkok, Dubai, and London. Musharraf and Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India, had encouraged the negotiators to seek what some involved called a “paradigm shift” in relations between the two nations.

The agenda included a search for an end to the long fight over Kashmir, a contest that is often described by Western military analysts as a potential trigger for atomic war. (India first tested a nuclear weapon in 1974, and Pakistan did so in 1998.) Since achieving independence, in 1947, India and Pakistan have fought three wars and countless skirmishes across Kashmir’s mountain passes. The largest part of the territory is occupied by India, and Pakistanis have long rallied around the cause of liberating it. The two principal envoys-- for Pakistan, a college classmate of Musharraf ’s named Tariq Aziz, and, for India, a Russia specialist named Satinder Lambah--were developing what diplomats refer to as a “non-paper” on Kashmir, a text without names or signatures which can serve as a deniable but detailed basis for a deal.

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