| |
US and India: Back to square
one
By Sultan Shahin
NEW
DELHI - The first year of the post-September 11 world
has been one of disillusionment for India. Nothing could
symbolize this better than the isolation of Prime
Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in New York, despite a
meeting with President George W Bush on the sidelines of
the United Nations General Assembly in which the latter
talked of a "strategic relationship".
No new
promises from the US that it will put pressure on
Pakistan to stop infiltration of Kashmiri and Pakistani
militants in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Indeed, allegedly Pakistan-sponsored militants have
stepped up violence in Kashmir in the run-up to the
Legislative Assembly elections to be held in three
phases, starting on September 16.
A junior
cabinet minister and three of his guards were among the
22 killed in several incidents of violence on Wednesday.
The funeral procession of the slain minister and
National Conference (NC) nominee from the Lolab
constituency, Mushtaq Ahmed Lone, was attacked and three
soldiers injured, among several violent attacks on
Thursday in the most recent incidents. But the US was in
no mood to listen to Vajpayee's pleas to pressure
President General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan to stop
sponsoring violence.
Indeed, the lionization of
Musharraf by the American civil society presented a
stark contrast. Editorial boards of major US newspapers
to think tanks in various American cities lined up to
listen to and report what Musharraf had to say. The
Pakistani dictator, too, made the most of the
opportunities to get across his views on India,
impressing the media, academics and students with his
clear articulation. In the UN General Assembly, he not
only took India to task for consistently rigging polls
in Kashmir, but also for what Indian civil society has
itself unanimously described as state-sponsored genocide
of Muslims in the western Indian state of Gujarat.
"India's belligerence [on Kashmir]," the
Pakistan president pointed out, "also reflects the
chauvinistic ideology of the Hindu extremist parties and
organization. Rising Hindu fanaticism has targeted
Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and even the untouchable
Hindus."
The worst blow of all, however, was
struck by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Putting known
Indian sensitivities aside, he said on Thursday that the
international community might have a role to play in
resolution of the Kashmir issue if tension between India
and Pakistan flares up again. In his address before the
General Assembly, Annan also suggested that the
underlying causes of the dispute needed to be addressed.
Both formulations have left India disconcerted.
New Delhi has consistently and firmly maintained that
the Kashmir dispute is in the bilateral ambit between
India and Pakistan under the Shimla and Lahore pacts.
India has also vigorously questioned the theory of
"addressing underlying causes", consistently demanded by
Musharraf, saying that terrorism should not be used to
bring issues to the fore or settle disagreements. The
international community, too, has appeared to agree that
even the supposed legitimacy of the cause cannot justify
violence and terrorism.
Coming at the end of
what has been billed as a year of international war
against terrorism, this was a hard blow to take for
India, which considers itself the biggest victim of
international terrorism.
The principle that
justified the US attacking Afghanistan would also
justify India attacking Pakistan. On every count that
the US is justifying its possible strike against Iraq,
India would be justified in attacking Pakistan and
attempt[ting a regime change in Islamabad. Every single
argument that Bush marshaled in his UN speech on a
pre-emptive war against Iraq applies with even greater
force to Pakistan. But when India mobilized its
million-strong forces on the border with Pakistan, a
country it considers to be the fountainhead of
terrorism, it was (by the US) advised restraint.
Musharraf was made to promise refraining from supporting
infiltration into Kashmir, and left at that.
When India continued to complain that the level
of infiltration had not come down despite Musharraf's
promise, sanctions were imposed in the form of a travel
advisory issued first by the US, then by other Western
countries to their citizens, to avoid traveling to
India. It was only when India conceded, apparently under
duress, that infiltration of militants from Pakistan has
almost stopped, that the advisories were gradually
removed. After this, of course, India has again felt
free to claim that infiltration is continuing. The US
and even Pakistan have accepted that some infiltration
is continuing.
But now the US administration
officials have floated the theory, as Deputy Secretary
of State Richard Armitage said in his latest South Asia
visit, that no one, not even India, believes that
Pakistan alone can stop all cross-border terrorism in
Kashmir. This may be true, but India has consistently
maintained that Pakistan and Pakistan alone is
responsible for the insurgency in Kashmir. Vajpayee did
admit in his recent Independence Day speech (August 15)
that mistakes were made by India in Kashmir, but for the
present imbroglio India blames Pakistan squarely and has
made its point clear to the world time and again.
The US war against terrorism has made no
difference whatsoever to violence in Kashmir. About this
time last year India was jubilant. Following September
11 New Delhi had hoped that having now experienced
terrorism on its own soil, the US would seriously join
the ongoing Indian battle against terrorism, and being
the epicenter of global terrorism, Pakistan would be
taught a lesson. India thus offered its unconditional
and unqualified support to the US in its vow to root out
terrorism, as it had done earlier, almost without a
thought, on the issue of its Strategic Defense
Initiative.
But instead of taking help from
India, a fellow-democracy, the US decided to bully
dictatorial Pakistan into changing its policies towards
the Taliban-run Afghanistan and becoming a so-called
front-line state in the war against terror. No wonder
that India feels the shadow of violence in Kashmir has
grown even larger since September 11.
Why has
Pakistan grown stronger and bolder in its confrontation
with India during the past year? India has been
furiously debating this question in the past weeks.
Kanti Bajpai of Jawaharlal Nehru University cites four
reasons. One, from almost "pariah" status, it became
internationally respectable with its newfound front-line
status, this time in the fight against terrorism. Two,
with political rehabilitation came promises of economic
aid to rescue Pakistan's unraveling economy. Three,
international recognition and aid shored up Musharraf.
His political consolidation was helped by the Pakistani
people's disillusionment with political parties and the
palpable relief of civilian leaders after September 11
that they were not at the helm in Pakistan. Four,
ironically, the US war in Afghanistan at one stroke got
rid of three strategic liabilities for Pakistan:
al-Qaeda, the Taliban and indeed Afghanistan itself
(contrary to some Pakistani claims, Afghanistan never
added strategic depth for Pakistan). Overnight,
Islamabad was free to focus all its attention and
resources on India.
Riled by the growing
political and economic rehabilitation of its old enemy,
the resumption of strong US-Pakistan links, the
consolidation of Musharraf's rule and the unwillingness
of the general to do anything serious about infiltration
and terrorism, India, too, tried to take advantage of
the US-led war against terrorism to sort out its own
problems with Pakistan, at least to bestir the world
community and the US in particular to give greater
attention to its concerns. This led to the crisis in
South Asia in the summer of 2002, turning the region
into a nuclear flashpoint.
Former foreign
secretary and now a celebrated analyst J N Dixit agrees
there is a general disappointment and rising criticism
in India about the US not being sensitive and supportive
about Indian concerns regarding Pakistan. There is
angst, he reports, that despite India's continuing
endeavor to establish close rapport with the US since
the early 1990s, the US response has not been as
reciprocal as India hoped for.
This
disillusionment with US policies has been conveyed to
the US administration in no uncertain terms. India's new
Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibbal's speech at the
Federation of Indian Industries in July was the first to
articulate this disappointment. Armitage noted this and
enquired about its implications in a discussion with the
Indian ambassador in Washington. He was told that there
is no shift in India's policy and that Sibbal's remarks
were only a reflection of trends in public opinion in
India.
Other Indian interlocutors, particularly
National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra, too have
clearly conveyed India's disappointments with the US for
not taking a firm stance against Pakistan's subversive
approach in Jammu and Kashmir. He has told that Indian
restraint should not be taken for granted if
Pakistan-sponsored violence disrupted the political
processes in Kashmir. In response, Armitage stoutly
maintained that Musharraf was committed to fulfilling
his promises to the US about withdrawing support to
terrorist activities in India. Significantly, he
promised to again urge Musharraf to speed up the
fulfillment of his promises.
In a television
comment Dixit, however, asked India not to blame others
for its disillusionment. "Who had asked us to raise our
expectations so high? Nations make their policies
according to their self-interest. To think that just
because we are a democracy, the biggest democracy on
earth, the US will treat us differently than it treats a
dictatorial Pakistan is foolish."
There is a
growing feeling in the foreign policy establishment in
Delhi that the war on terror has not so much gone
astray, with the focus shifting to Iraq and other
non-related issues, but that it was never a war on
terror in the first place. The US merely tried to take
advantage, according to this view, of the sympathy it
gained throughout the world on September 11 to further
its imperialistic aims of creating its physical military
presence in strategically important parts of the world
where it did not have a single soldier. "Only the
exceptionally naive or the extremely ill-informed would
believe that the US power projection into Central Asia
relates solely to the fight against the terror unleashed
by Islamic jihadis," says analyst and author
Major-General (retired) Vinod Saighal.
The war
against terror is also being ascribed to the US hunt for
oil and gas. The fact that the present US administration
is largely run by people with business interests in the
energy sector is also mentioned. The fact that the US
has virtually left Afghanistan to its fate, with the
vast majority of the Taliban, including its top leaders,
not accounted for and hardly a new road or housing bloc
rebuilt, and turned its attention to another country
which is the second largest oil producer after Saudi
Arabia with 10 percent of world's oil deposits, is also
pointed out as proof that rather than being a war
against terror the US is actually waging a war for the
world's oil and gas resources.
India's foreign
policy establishment is gradually coming to a
near-unanimous view that New Delhi cannot afford to
remain silent as these disturbing developments take
place, particularly on the issue of growing US
bellicosity on Iraq. India has vital stakes in this
region and cannot afford to sit tight and let the US do
what it likes.
Noted strategic analyst Brahma
Chellaney has been an unabashed promoter of US-India
relations. His analysis thus assume significance. He
writes, "Bush's bellicose stance on Iraq, in fact, is
driven by his successful blending of the war on terror
with US energy-security strategy. That has already led
the US to build military presence in the oil-exporting
Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia and strengthen
safeguards on its access to Persian Gulf oil.
"In the name of fighting terror, the US has set
up a network of forward bases stretching from the Red
Sea to the Pacific, making its forces active in the
largest array of countries since World War II. US forces
are now positioned in five nations adjacent to India -
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan - even as Washington enters into strategic
tie-ups of varying types with India, Sri Lanka, Nepal
and Bangladesh. Bush also realizes he can never win his
war on terror because terrorism, like poverty, is as old
as humankind and will remain prevalent. But he can win a
war against Iraq by deposing Saddam."
It is a
measure of India's disenchantment with the US that for
the first time India's ruling class is remembering
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The point is being made
repeatedly that it is not September 11 that changed the
world, but the day in 1945 when the first nuclear bomb
in history was dropped over Hiroshima in Japan. Several
commentators, including the editor of the Hindustan
Times, Vir Sanghvi, and columnist Brahma Chellaney, have
mentioned this. Any overt criticism of the US on the
part of mainstream media is so rare that this avalanche
of condemnation on the very first anniversary of what is
still considered an epochal event is quite overwhelming.
Before September 11, India had succeeded in
dehyphenating its relationship with the US, which was
always seen in terms of India and Pakistan together. The
hyphen is back and lengthening. India had once, not too
long ago, objected to the then US president Bill Clinton
even visiting Pakistan for a few hours. Today it is
unimaginable for any Western dignitary to come to India
and not visit Pakistan. With growing disaffection with
the US-supported Hamad Karzai regime in Afghanistan,
most of al-Qaeda and Taliban, including perhaps its
leaders Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, hiding in
Pakistan, and Musharraf quite willing to fight American
battles on Pakistani soil, US dependence on Pakistan and
its dictator is growing. There is nothing much India can
do about it. Its relationship with the US is on hold.
The raging sea of sympathy for the US at this
time last year has for many in India turned into fumes
of fury and anger. The US is thought to have betrayed
the Indian victims of terror. India's honeymoon with the
US is definitely over. A new round may begin some day.
One can never be sure in affairs of the heart. Jilted
lovers have been known to come back to the fold. It just
takes time.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication
policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
