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Alarm bells for India,
Pakistan
By B Raman
The
United States and the United Kingdom have reasons to be
both gratified and embarrassed by the rapidity and
relative ease with which they have brought about the
withering of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. It has
come about sooner and at a much lesser cost than
expected.
They have reasons to be gratified
because the dire warnings of many analysts of a long and
bloody urban battle before they could enforce their will
on the Iraqi regime have fortunately proved wrong. The
fatal human casualties suffered by the coalition forces
(95 Americans and 35 British until April 8) since the
beginning of the invasion and the fatal civilian
casualties suffered by the Iraqis (about 2,000 according
to the Iraqis) have up to now been less than the figures
of the 1991 Gulf war. According to one estimate, about
40 percent of the coalition casualties came from
friendly fire and not due to the resistance put up by
the Iraqis.
Many analysts had estimated that the
Americans would need at least 60,000-plus ground troops
for a successful outcome of any attack on Baghdad. They
seem to have achieved it with about 25,000, but there is
now cause for concern that this number may be inadequate
for restoring and maintaining law and order in Baghdad.
The infrastructural damages suffered by Iraqi society as
a result of ground and air operations have also been
much less than initially feared. More than anyone else
in Washington, the much-maligned Donald Rumsfeld, the US
Defense Secretary, must be savoring his moments of
self-vindication.
Another reason for
gratification is the wild scenes of jubilation in the
streets of Basra, Najaf and Baghdad, but this has to be
moderated by the concern that the jubilation has been
largely confined to the Shi'ites, who constitute about
51 percent of the total population of Iraq but who have
long been under the heel of the Sunni-dominated
government apparatus. One could sense that the
celebrating crowds were essentially Shi'ites from their
chest-beating. One is yet to see similar scenes of
jubilation by the Sunnis, who form about 46 percent of
the population. Among the Sunnis, only the Kurds have
been naturally jubilant. In the din of the anti-Saddam
Hussein slogans shouted by the Shi'ite crowds, one could
hear some hailing Ayatollah Khomeni too, the religious
Shi'ite leader of the Iranian Islamic revolution in
1979. In this could possibly lay the seeds of an
aggravation of the Shi'ite-Sunni divide, not only in the
Iraq of the future, but also in the rest of the Islamic
world, particularly in Pakistan, where this divide has
been behind many acts of domestic terrorism.
The
US and the UK can also note with satisfaction that apart
from the initial incidents of violence in Yemen, the
anti-invasion demonstrations in the Islamic world have
until now been free of violence and there have been no
acts of terrorism. Osama bin Laden, if still alive, has
been strangely quiet. A recorded call for suicide
attacks attributed to him, which has been circulating in
Pakistan and Afghanistan, is yet to be proved genuine.
Nowhere have the demonstrations proved to be
uncontrollable.
Why the embarrassment? Because
the two principal reasons cited by the US and the UK -
possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and
Iraq's nexus with al-Qaeda - for starting the military
conflict to bring about a regime change have not proven
to be correct so far. The critics of the coalition
action, who had been saying that these were fabricated
pretexts for the invasion unsupported by evidence, could
claim some vindication, too, unless some evidence in
support of the US and the UK emerges in the days to
come.
When the Iraqi security forces in the
smaller towns down south with their predominantly
Shi'ite population put up fierce resistance for nearly
two weeks, why did their colleagues vanish without a
serious and sustained fight in Baghdad? This is an
intriguing question, which will be debated for days and
weeks to come. Those who had been regularly watching the
telecast accounts of Raaghi Omar, the BBC correspondent
in Baghdad, would have noticed that he had been
repeatedly expressing his puzzlement over the seeming
absence of any defensive measures in Baghdad as the US
troops approached the capital. As he pointed out
repeatedly, there were no visible troop deployments
inside the capital, no security barriers, no civil
defense measures, no patrolling. Nothing.
Why
this was so? Did the regime decide long before the US
troops neared Baghdad not to put up a fight in Baghdad
lest this historic city, to which the Iraqis are as
emotionally attached as the French are to Paris, suffer
irreparable destruction? One can only pose the question
without being able to answer it.
Despite the
ease with which the US troops have established
themselves in sections of Baghdad and the disappearance
of the regime from the capital, President George W Bush,
Vice President Dick Cheney and the US military
commanders have been repeatedly cautioning of the
difficulties that still lie ahead. The US troops are yet
to establish effective control over the Sunni sectors of
Baghdad and win the acclaim of the Sunnis. The coalition
troops have not yet ventured into large parts of central
Iraq, which is the bastion of the pro-Saddam Sunni
tribes. The fact that there has not so far been any
terrorist retaliation in other parts of the world does
not mean that no terrorist strike is planned or that
they are demoralized. Terrorists strike at a time and
place of their choosing. It would be unwise to let the
scenes telecast from the Shi'ite sectors of Baghdad on
Wednesday induce a mood of excessive self-congratulation
and complacency.
Will the fall of Baghdad mark
the beginning of a new phase of unconventional war, not
confined to Iraq alone, but spread across the world?
After occupying Iraq, will the coalition forces be able
to pacify it in a manner that will strengthen regional
peace and stability without creating revanchist feelings
in the minds of the Iraqis and other Arabs? Could Iraq
turn out to be the US's Palestine or Lebanon? These are
very valid questions that will preoccupy not only the US
and the UK, but also the rest of the world for months to
come.
What were the American end-objectives in
Iraq? I have never subscribed to the view widely
prevalent in the community of strategic analysts that
Iraqi oil was the main motivating factor. The Americans
can easily do without Iraqi oil and without the extra
billions of dollars that it could bring to their
companies if they managed to control it.
In my
perception, the principal US objectives are four.
Firstly, an anxiety to liberate their Iraqi policy out
of the rut into which it had fallen post-1991 which, in
their belief, could only be done with a regime change.
Large sections of the American public and administration
were concerned and embarrassed by evidence of the
sufferings inflicted on the Iraqi people by the
sanctions. Their pride would not let them agree to a
lifting of the sanctions as long as the Saddam regime
remained in power.
Secondly, in their view, Iraq
and Iran stood in the way of an enduring peace in
Palestine that would not be detrimental to Israeli
interests. Thirdly, they are hoping that the overthrow
of what they consider to be a rogue regime will send a
strong signal to what they look on as other rogue
states, such as Iran and North Korea, Iraq's fellow
members of Bush's "axis of evil", and cause them to
moderate their behavior. And, fourthly, the US is
feeling increasingly uncomfortable over the prospects of
its continued presence in Saudi Arabia and over the
dangers of pro-bin Laden fundamentalist elements one day
capturing power in Saudi Arabia and getting hold of its
oil wealth. To prepare themselves for such an
eventuality, they want to create in Iraq a political
atmosphere and a regime that will be conducive to the
US's long-term interests and which will be favorable to
their one day shifting their military presence from
Saudi Arabia to Iraq.
These reasons should
explain their determination to remain in Iraq for as
long as they consider it necessary in their national
interests and not to allow the United Nations to
complicate matters. In Somalia and Kosovo,
considerations of US national interests and national
security were not involved. But in Afghanistan and Iraq,
they are, in the eyes of the US.
September 11
brought home to US policymakers the vulnerability of
their homeland to the threats posed by irrational
non-state actors operating from far away and enjoying
the protection of state sponsors of terrorism. They are
now determined to neutralize these threats effectively
wherever they come from and regardless of the human or
material costs they entail. Fears of the negative impact
of body bags on American minds, of their being perceived
as anti-Islam by the Islamic world, being condemned as
unilateralist and hegemonistic by the rest of the
international community etc are no longer inhibiting
factors on their determination and action.
How
can the US protect American lives and interests and
prevent another September 11? That is the question in
their minds today and it will be in their minds at least
as long as the present US administration remains in
office. Today, they assess the Pervez Musharraf regime
in Pakistan to be conducive to the protection of their
lives and interests and they will support it however
much India may beat its breasts about the threat posed
by the regime to Indian lives and interests.
Musharraf knows this and has consequently been
cooperative in action against al-Qaeda elements
threatening American lives and interests. He is not
worried about India's anger over his continued support
of cross-border terrorism. At the same time, a careful
reading not only of his recent statements, but also
those of the political and Islamic fundamentalist
leaders of Pakistan would indicate that they are
increasingly concerned over the dangers of the US one
day looking on Pakistan's nuclear weapons and its
collusion with China and North Korea in this matter as
detrimental to American interests and national security.
This is also evident from the way they have reacted to
the US imposing sanctions on the Khan Research
Laboratories (KRL) for its collusion with North Korea.
KRL had been the target of similar sanctions in the past
- in 1993 for its collusion with the Chinese and in 1998
for its dealings with North Korea. The Pakistanis
laughed off the previous sanctions, but this time, the
US action has sent a shiver down their spines.
The government of India has handled the Iraq
issue in an unwise manner. We were right initially in
taking an ambivalent stance of neither supporting nor
disapproving the US action. But the subsequent volley of
rhetoric after Pakistani terrorists massacred over 20
Hindus in Jammu and Kashmir - comparing Pakistan to Iraq
and talking of our right of preemptive action against
Pakistan - does not speak well of our maturity. The
sudden volte-face of the government, due to pressure not
only from the opposition, but also from the cadres of
the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, in agreeing to the
passage of a resolution in parliament deploring the US
action and calling for the withdrawal of US troops, is
unlikely to serve our national interests.
It is
a fact that the US has been adopting double standards in
the fight against terrorism and in its attitude on the
question of Pakistan's nexus with North Korea. This is
largely because of the considerable sympathy which
Pakistan still enjoys in the US State Department and
with General Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State.
The evidence up to now is that Rumsfeld and his advisers
in the Pentagon, such as Richard Perle and Paul
Wolfowitz, do not look on Pakistan with the same
blinders as Powell and his advisers in the State
Department.
The Pentagon presently has a group
of people, some close to Israel, who are determined to
put an end to jihadi terrorists, without worrying about
the diplomatic niceties nor the likely damage to the US
image in the eyes of the international community. This
group is likely to emerge stronger after the Iraq
operation. The reported nomination of Daniel Pipes, one
of the strongest campaigners in the US against Islamic
terrorism and states supporting it, to the governing
board of the Congressionally-funded US Institute of
Peace, shows the strong influence of these anti-jihadi
elements in US policymaking. It is in India's national
interest to work for a convergence of views with them,
even if such a convergence immediately does not benefit
us in dealing with Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in our
territory.
A modern, democratic and secular
state in Iraq, opposed to pan-Islamic terrorists, would
be as much in India's national interest as it would be
in that of the US.
B Raman is
Additional Secretary (ret), Cabinet Secretariat,
Government of India, and presently director, Institute
For Topical Studies, Chennai; former member of the
National Security Advisory Board of the Government of
India. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com. He was also head of the
counter-terrorism division of the Research &
Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency,
from 1988 to August, 1994.
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