Pakistan’s former National Security Advisor Major General (retd.) Mahmud Ali Durrani initially only knew Indians as figures at the end of his rifle’s sight, as he once told me. That changed when he became involved in a Pakistan-India Track-II dialogue process through which we first met while he was still a serving army officer. He went on to become one of the most influential establishment voices in Pakistan arguing for peace with India.

A longtime advocate of India-Pakistan friendship, General Shanti’ (peace) as he came to be known, passed away peacefully on October 24 in Rawalpindi after a heart attack.

CAPTION: Major-General (retd.) Mahmud Ali Durrani, former National Security Advisor, Pakistan, in conversation with Bharat Bhushan, host of To The Point, Sansad TV, India, 2015

When I first visited Pakistan in 1999, Durrani (not to be confused with former ISI Chief Lt Gen Asad Durrani) came to pick me up for dinner from my hotel along with his wife Fatima. As I got into the car, he told Fatima, “Look at him carefully. He neither has horns nor a tail. Indians are humans just like us.”

Correcting stereotypes

Most Pakistanis, he added, have a convoluted view of Indians and he wanted to begin with correcting stereotypes at home first. To convince sceptics, he wrote a book called India and Pakistan: The Cost of Conflict and the Benefits of Peace (Oxford University Press, Pakistan, 2001).

He kept up his Indian friendships till the end. It may surprise many that Ajit Doval, India’s National Security Adviser, was one of his friends. The two got along famously even before either of them became NSAs.

Whenever we talked on the phone, Durrani would ask, “How’s my friend, the 'thanedar' (police inspector)?” I would politely respond that I had no access to Doval as the NSA.

Durrani had a distinguished career in the army, becoming Pakistan’s military attaché in Washington DC, 1976-1982, and then General Zia ul Haq’s military secretary 1982-1986. He also served as Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, June 2006 to May 2008.

Two days after Durrani’s ambassadorial tenure ended, then Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani appointed him national security advisor at the behest of President Asif Ali Zardari, upholding a promise by late Benazir Bhutto, Zardari’s wife. At a dinner meeting probably in the U.S. while preparing to end her exile and return to Pakistan, she had told Durrani that she would appoint him to the position if she was elected as prime minister.

Bhutto was assassinated on 27 December 2007 while campaigning for the parliamentary election scheduled for February 2008. Zardari became co-chair of Pakistan Peoples’ Party with their son, Bilawal Bhutto, and later, the President of Pakistan in September 2008.

Gillani later removed Durrani as NSA for having publicly identified Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone surviving terrorist of the Mumbai 26/11 attack, as a Pakistani national. He claimed that Durrani had not consulted him first; the general said he had consulted Zardari.

Durrani had been working towards India-Pakistan rapprochement much before he became NSA. That is how our first meeting took place — through the Balusa group, the India-Pakistan Track-II dialogue organised by Shirin Tahir-Kheli, a U.S. diplomat of Indian-Pakistani origin, at the Rockefeller Conference Centre, Bellagio, Italy.

That was in May 1998. The dialogue was bombed mid-way by the A. B. Vajpayee government’s nuclear tests of May 11 forcing the Indian and Pakistani participants into their own silos once again — Indians gloating; the Pakistanis grim and sullen.

Regular participants from Pakistan at that dialogue series included Shahryar Khan, former foreign secretary; Syed Babar Ali, businessman and founder of Lahore University of Management Sciences – LUMS; Shahid Khaqan Abbasi who later served as prime minister of Pakistan; Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi, later appointed foreign minister, twice; and Durrani, while he was still a serving officer.

Even after he retired, Durrani had direct access to General Pervez Musharraf both when he was the chief of army staff and when he designated himself the chief executive of Pakistan. Durrani did not always agree with Musharaff.

When I was on a reporting assignment to Pakistan in July 1999 after the Kargil War, I met up with him. One evening, Durrani told me that after learning about the Kargil incursions he had visited Musharraf and warned him that it would be a costly misadventure. Nevertheless, Musharraf tasked him to write a policy paper on short and medium term threats to Pakistan’s security and installed him in the military general headquarters, or GHQ.

Shirin Tahir-Kheli and Durrani became the moving forces behind the Track-II dialogue, the Balusa group, 1995 to 2003, which had the blessings of the prime ministers of both countries. He was also later involved with Aman Ki Asha, or 'hope for peace', convening several "strategic seminars" themed 'Our Common Destiny,' for the unique India-Pakistan joint initiative launched in 2010 by the two largest media groups of both countries.

A regular visitor

Durrani became a regular visitor to India. It had become a ritual that when he came to India, Vice Admiral (Retd) K. K. Nayyar would hold a drinks reception (Durrani was a teetotaller) for him at his residence. It was always a select gathering of Indian policy makers and policy influencers, including Brajesh Mishra, M. K. Rasgotra, Satish Chandra, among others. They would sit around a table and hold friendly but frank discussions about the irritants in the India-Pakistan relations.

Once I asked him why Pakistan did not stop terrorism against India, the biggest roadblock in the peace process. He replied quite candidly that some in the Pakistani establishment believed that if the terrorism tap was closed, India would never talk about Kashmir.

Then he said something which left me stunned, “You see, even if orders are given to close the tap, some amount of terrorism may continue. Those on the lower rungs of the army have worked together with these chaps, gone on operations with them, and developed friendships. It is very difficult to cut off those relationships. So, stopping terrorism will be a very long process.”

Some in Pakistan linked Durrani to the plane crash that killed Zia ul Haq. Durrani, then the 1st Armoured Division Commander at Multan, apparently persuaded (which he denied) Zia to witness the US M1 Abrams tank demonstration which he was conducting at Bahawalpur. The plane mysteriously crashed after leaving Bahawalpur, killing Zia along with 29 others. An explosive device was apparently planted in a case of mangoes gifted to Zia which was loaded on the aircraft.

I once asked him what he had to say about such allegations. “Khuda ki khair karo (Be afraid of God). Why would I want to harm the man who was my principal benefactor?” he snapped.

The acclaimed journalist and former chairman of the Pakistan Human Rights Commission, late I A Rehman, on a visit to India once asked me with a mischievous smile, “You have a brother in the Pakistan Army?”

When I looked bewildered, he explained, “I was sitting at an event next to a retired Pakistani general and when somehow your name came up in our discussion, I asked him whether he knew you. He replied, ‘Know him? He is my younger brother!’” That was General Mahmud Ali Durrani.

Travel well, brother. Your efforts have laid the foundation for a peace that will surely come someday.

(The writer is a New Delhi-based journalist, former editor and former television talk show host. Views are personal. By special arrangement with Sapan)