The 1991 treaty violated by Pak ship that collided with Indian vessel

Why in the News

A Pakistani ship closed on an Indian Navy vessel and collided with it in international waters. India has summoned Pakistan’s Charge d’Affaires over the conduct and placed it in direct contravention of Article 10 of the 1991 Agreement between India and Pakistan on Advance Notice on Military Exercises, Manoeuvres and Troop Movements. Article 10 bars naval ships and submarines of the two countries from closing within three nautical miles of each other while operating in international waters. The last comparable episode was in 2011, when the Pakistan Navy ship PNS Babur brushed past the Indian Navy frigate INS Godavari in the Gulf of Aden and damaged the frigate’s helicopter safety net. The contested point is whether a set of confidence building measures written in the late 1980s and early 1990s still restrains conduct at sea, when the only consequence of a breach is a diplomatic protest.

What is the 1991 Agreement on Advance Notice on Military Exercises, Manoeuvres and Troop Movements?

1. Purpose: The agreement establishes a standing mechanism for the two countries to inform each other about military exercises and troop movements. Its stated object is to prevent a crisis arising from a misreading of the other side’s intentions.
2. Scope: It lays down rules for the land, naval and air forces of both countries. Major exercises close to the other’s territory are to be avoided, and where they take place the other party is to be informed.
3. Naval threshold: A major naval exercise is defined as one involving six or more ships of destroyer or frigate size and above, exercising in company and crossing into the other country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (the maritime belt extending up to 200 nautical miles from the baseline, over which a coastal State holds resource rights).
4. Article 10: Naval ships and submarines of the two countries are not to close less than three nautical miles from each other in international waters, so as to avoid an accident. One nautical mile is about 1.85 km.

Why did the two countries build this agreement when they did?

1. Nuclear weapons programmes: Accelerating weapons work on both sides through the 1980s raised the cost of any war to a level neither government could absorb. That escalation is what made a standing notification mechanism attractive to both.
2. Soviet invasion of Afghanistan: The December 1979 invasion made Pakistan and the United States keen to avoid disturbance on Pakistan’s eastern border with India. Pakistan’s western commitment created the space for an eastern arrangement.
3. Exercise Brass Tacks IV: India carried out a massive military exercise in Punjab and Rajasthan along the India-Pakistan border in January 1987, mobilising some 150,000 troops. The scale of the exercise alarmed Pakistan and produced the specific demand for advance notice that the 1991 treaty answers.
4. Clarification rights: The agreement allows either side to seek clarification on the assembly of forces, and on the direction, extent and duration of an exercise. That right is the operative response to the uncertainty Brass Tacks IV created.

What else does the confidence building architecture of this period contain?

1. Joint commission, 1983: The Agreement for the establishment of a joint commission between India and Pakistan was signed on 10 March 1983. It was the first of the structured bilateral mechanisms of this phase.
2. Agreement on the Prohibition of Attack against Nuclear Installations and Facilities, 1988: Finalised on 31 December 1988, it bars each country from attacking the other’s nuclear installations. The two sides exchange lists of their nuclear installations every 1 January, and that exchange has continued without a break since 1992.
3. Cultural Cooperation Agreement, 1988: Signed on the same day as the nuclear installations agreement. It shows the period’s approach of pairing a military restraint measure with a civilian one.
4. Agreement on Prevention of Air Space Violations, 1991: Signed on 6 April 1991, the same day as the advance notice agreement, it also permits over flights and landings by military aircraft. Air and land restraint were therefore settled together, and the naval rule sits inside the same package.

What does the recurrence of naval incidents show about the agreement’s reach?

1. Long gap between incidents: The previous close quarters episode was in 2011 in the Gulf of Aden, far from either country’s coast. The rule has held for long stretches, which is why each breach is treated as a signal rather than as routine.
2. Distance from the exercise framework: Both incidents occurred during ordinary deployments, not during a notified major exercise. The agreement’s notification machinery is built for planned exercises and does not reach the day to day operations where contact actually happens.
3. Response limited to protest: India’s recorded response in both cases was a diplomatic communication. No joint inquiry, shared navigational record or agreed finding of fault follows a breach.

Challenges to the 1991 Agreement

1. No verification or monitoring machinery: The agreement provides for notification and for clarification on request, and creates no inspection body or joint verification procedure. Eg. Neither side produced an agreed account of the 2011 PNS Babur and INS Godavari incident, which closed without a finding.
   The Fix: Attach a standing naval point of contact on each side with a fixed timeline for exchanging navigational data after a close quarters incident.
2. No incidents at sea instrument: Article 10 fixes a separation distance and prescribes nothing about signalling, manoeuvring or harassment at close range. Eg. The United States and the Soviet Union addressed exactly these behaviours through the Incidents at Sea Agreement of 1972, which India and Pakistan have no equivalent of.
   The Fix: Negotiate a dedicated incidents at sea agreement covering signalling procedure and prohibited manoeuvres, separate from the exercise notification framework.
3. Dependence on the political climate: Each measure in this architecture survives only while the wider relationship permits it, and none carries a self executing renewal. Eg. The composite dialogue that carried most bilateral confidence building work has been suspended for extended periods after terror attacks.
   The Fix: Insulate the technical measures from the political dialogue by giving the military to military channels their own standing mandate.
4. Silence on non-state and hybrid activity: The instruments of this period address regular forces and declared exercises, and say nothing about maritime infiltration, unattributed vessels or fishing fleet incidents. Eg. The 26 November 2008 Mumbai attackers reached the city by sea after hijacking a fishing trawler.
   The Fix: Extend the notification framework to a maritime incident register covering non-naval vessels operating in the other country’s declared zones.
5. Asymmetry in the dispute settlement route: A breach produces a summons, and the agreement names no arbiter, no penalty and no suspension clause. Eg. India’s protest in the present case ends with the summons, whatever the outcome of the collision.
   The Fix: Provide for a joint review at the level of the two naval headquarters within a fixed period of any reported breach of Article 10.

Conclusion

The 1991 Agreement remains in force, and both navies continue to operate in the same international waters. India’s response has stopped at a summons, which is the whole of what the instrument provides. The gap the collision exposes is procedural rather than political: the two countries have a rule on separation at sea and no shared means of establishing what happened when it is broken. What to watch is whether the exchange of nuclear installation lists due on the next 1 January proceeds as usual, since that is the one measure of this architecture that has run unbroken and is the readiest indicator of whether the rest still holds.

Matching Previous Year Question

“Terrorist activities and mutual distrust have clouded India-Pakistan relations. To what extent the use of soft power like sports and cultural exchanges could help generate goodwill between the two countries? Discuss with suitable examples.”