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India: US daisy-cutters or olive
branch?
By Sultan Shahin
NEW
DELHI - Monday night's coordinated suicide attacks on
residential complexes for foreigners in Riyadh, the
capital of Saudi Arabia, appears to have altered the
Indian view of the post-Iraq world order: It may have
helped Delhi make up its mind on whether or not to send
troops to Iraq as part of a "stabilization force" on the
request of the United States.
Well-placed
sources in the government have told Asia Times Online
that now the answer is going to be an unambiguous "no":
India does not want to get stuck in the Middle East
quagmire aggravated by the US-led invasion of Iraq,
particularly as the Indian parliament has unanimously
deplored that action. It may continue to hide behind the
need for a United Nations resolution though, as it
doesn't want to incur US displeasure.
A strong
and determined pro-US lobby in the government led by
National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra is, however,
still at work and due to his closeness to Prime Minister
Atal Bihari Vajpayee, it may still succeed. But the
Riyadh bombing has clearly strengthened the naysayers as
it has exposed the many vulnerabilities of the US
presence in the Middle East, as well as the striking
power of al-Qaeda that is only likely to grow with the
passage of time.
India has been under tremendous
pressure for the past fortnight to accede to the US
request over troops, as the latter is interested in
sending as many of its soldiers as possible back home
from Iraq as early as possible. The US and British
proposal for India to send a division-level force is
believed to have been made at the highest levels in
government, both in New Delhi and in Washington, two
weeks ago. It is also said to have come up in the talks
between Mishra and US officials in Washington last week.
Before the Riyadh blasts, India was almost ready
to participate in a US-led stabilization force for Iraq,
according to news emanating from Poland, the one country
other than Albania that has so far shown readiness to
send its troops to Iraq. India has participated in
humanitarian campaigns before, and given the chaotic
law-and-order situation in Iraq, the contemplated force
could be considered a humanitarian gesture for the
people of Iraq.
India's participation in the
United Nations-led relief effort in Iraq was already
under way, with the government organizing a field
hospital to be sent there. External Affairs Minister
Yashwant Sinha was expected to offer military assistance
for Iraq to his US counterpart, Secretary of State Colin
Powell, when they met in Moscow on Wednesday. The US
request did come up for discussion in Moscow, but
apparently Sinha did not give any categorical reply to
the request formally made by US Deputy Secretary of
State Richard Armitage during his Delhi visit last week.
The Indian government is split down the middle
on the issue for these reasons. One, the request was
being made not by a legitimate Iraqi government, but by
an "occupying power". Two, India had opposed the
invasion of Iraq, and now sending troops to work under
US command without a UN resolution could be construed as
supporting the invasion itself.
Indian mandarins
were able to work out a compromise. India was urging the
Americans to amend its resolution somewhat in the United
Nations, the argument being that if the UN could be
involved, even in some vague way, in the formation of
the interim government in Iraq, it would be far easier
for India and other countries such as Pakistan and
Malaysia to participate in the US-led stabilization
force.
But the blasts in Riyadh have changed all
this. Given the meticulous planning and execution
involved, as Powell put it, the bombing has "all the
fingerprints of an al-Qaeda operation". According to the
daily newspaper The Pioneer, which often reflects Indian
government thinking, the blasts clearly had a twofold
purpose: First, to show that far from being crippled,
al-Qaeda has retained its ability to strike at any place
and time of its choosing. Second, the timing - the eve
of Powell's visit to the country in the course of his
tour of West Asia to explain US policies in the region
after Saddam Hussein's ouster - was meant to show that
US supremacy in this part of the globe could hardly be
taken for granted and that its allies were in peril.
The Riyadh attack has come at a time when the
Indian mind, as reflected in talks with officials as
well comments in the media, is full of apprehensions and
misgivings about the real US intentions in South Asia.
Vajpayee's invocation of the US invasion of Iraq in
parliament last week as an "example" of how powerful
nations can render the UN a toothless body can be seen
in this context. He is also said to have been furious
with Yashwant Sinha's earlier statement in parliament
calling for "preemptive strikes" against Pakistan on the
lines of what the US did in Iraq, as it amounted to
supporting the US theory of preemptive strikes against
countries that did not and could not pose any threat.
In Vajpayee's view India's case against Pakistan
is different. India may have a right to strike
preemptively as Pakistan is a real and present danger to
this country. This neighboring country has already
fought four wars with India and has also been engaged in
a low-intensity proxy war for the past two decades,
first in the state of Punjab, supporting a Sikh
fundamentalist movement for independent Khalistan, and
then in the state of Jammu and Kashmir in aid of
Kashmiri separatists. Pakistan also supports separatists
in the northeast of India.
Indian suspicions of
US intentions in South Asia are revealed in private
comments by senior officials as well as comments in the
media. Newspapers have taken to giving headlines such as
"Daisy-cutters or olive branch", meaning that if India
doesn't make peace with Pakistan, as the US desires and
probably on US terms, it may have to face an invasion in
the manner of Iraq and Afghanistan.
These
misgivings have been enhanced by the fact that while
making his now-famous hand-of-friendship speech at
Srinagar, capital of the Indian-administered state of
Jammu and Kashmir, on April 18, the prime minister
himself mentioned the changed world scenario after the
invasion of Iraq as the reason for his offer of an olive
branch to Pakistan.
A senior official of the
main opposition Congress party and a former diplomat
refers to these widely felt grievances and deep
suspicions about the United States in his inimitable,
combative style, while giving his version of how things
have gone so wrong that India has to face US bullying:
"When the Vajpayee lot found that their bluster [against
Pakistan] was not impressing anyone, they mobilized the
bulk of our armed forces, at enormous cost to the nation
and enormous damage to morale, to go man the outer
perimeter of our borders on full alert for 10 long
months in a meaningless eyeball-to-eyeball
confrontation, which quite failed to cow down the
Pakistanis but thoroughly alarmed the world at this
display of brinkmanship by two neo-nuclear powers.
"That is when the Sword of Damocles hanging over
our heads since June 6, 1998, was unsheathed: UN
Security Council Resolution 1172, which revived for the
first time since the 1965 war the dreaded K-word,
Kashmir. As punishment for Pokhran II, the axis of evil
- the five permanent members of the Security Council,
all of whom are nuclear weapon powers - threatened India
and Pakistan, settle Kashmir or our wrath will descend
on you. That is how Vajpayee at Srinagar made the
connection between Iraq and Kashmir. The Iraq
resolutions were twice as old as Resolution 1172 - but
kept in storage till [George W Bush] decided he needed
another war on yet another defenseless enemy to win his
2004 elections. Sorting out India and Pakistan would go
down extraordinarily well with the American voter.
"Vajpayee has made the connection only now.
Jaswant Singh [former external affairs minister, now
finance minister] made it much earlier. Hence his
chasing Strobe Talbott [deputy secretary of state in
former US president Bill Clinton's administration] the
world over, 10 times around, begging redemption for
Pokhran II by abject surrender to the United States. The
US, of course, won the day. The Vajpayee government
first credited the US president, not the Indian armed
forces, with ending the Pakistani incursion in Kargil
[in 1999]; then they let Bill Clinton get away with
describing Kashmir as a 'dispute' in the sacred
precincts of Central Hall; then rushed in after
September 11 with an offer of territory which the
Americans feared to tread; then bit their tongue as
neither America nor the world bought our story about
13/12 [terrorist attack on the Indian parliament]; and
have now abjectly dismantled the entire response to
13/12. It is a groveling confession of wasted years."
Thus, while India had reacted to the events of
September 11, 2001, with a fervent hope that now the US
will see the need to tame Pakistan - a demand reiterated
for the umpteenth time last week by Deputy Prime
Minister Lal Krishan Advani - it has reacted to the
Riyadh blasts merely with a hand-wringing that the US
did not have the good sense to continue its so-called
"war on terror" in the manner India had advised.
One typical example of the Indian response is
provided by an editorial in the pro-government Pioneer:
"Ironically, it is the US itself which is primarily
responsible, albeit indirectly, for the fact that the
al-Qaeda was still able to do so. It should have waged
its war against terrorism with single-minded zeal until
the al-Qaeda's organizational infrastructure, the global
reach and efficiency which was strikingly underlined by
the events of 9/11, had been fully destroyed. Instead of
doing that, it invaded Iraq. Though it did so at the
head of a coalition of a large number of countries, it
had to provide almost the whole of the military effort
involved - with Britain playing a critical supporting
role. As a result, al-Qaeda retains a significant part
of its infrastructure, and its leaders like Osama bin
Laden and Ayman-al-Zawahiri are alive and plotting."
Indians have, of course, not suddenly become
supportive of anti-American terrorism. And there has
been pro forma condemnation of terrorism in some circles
as well. But what should perhaps worry Washington is
that more and more people are beginning to see bin Laden
as a legitimate opponent of the United States. Indeed,
Indians are not alone in thinking that if there were
free and fair elections in Saudi Arabia today, bin Laden
would win hands down.
Even more worrisome,
perhaps, are reports in the Indian media, including the
government-controlled TV channel Doordarshan, that
despite the discovery of mass graves in Iraq, at least
some people are beginning to miss Saddam Hussein, and
even wanting him to come back, merely weeks after his
fall. As one American observer remarked, if there is
real democracy in Iraq, the government that gets elected
is bound to be anti-American.
There is
disenchantment with the United States at every level in
India. Former foreign secretary M K Rasgotra, for
instance, characterizes the US attitude toward Pakistan
as "dishonorable ambivalence" and a "great disgrace". He
said, "Richard Haas, one of Armitage's important
colleagues, publicly acknowledged last month
Washington's failure to hold [President General Pervez]
Musharraf to his commitments. In the same breath, he
proceeded to suggest that India, nevertheless, resume
dialogue with Pakistan. Is Armitage here to exert his
weight in support of that kind of dishonorable
ambivalence? What greater disgrace could there be on
democracy that one great democracy, engaged in war on
terror, should propose to another that it bargain for
peace under threat of continuing terrorism by its
self-declared adversary! The bitter truth is that
Washington has not bothered much about Pakistan's
campaign of terror in Kashmir. Even the great Colin
Powell seems overawed by the Pakistan military regime's
nuclear blackmail."
Another former foreign
secretary whose views carry a lot of weight with the
Hindu fundamentalist-led government, even though he
joined the secular opposition Congress party after the
massacres of Muslims in Gujarat, J N Dixit, remarks that
a fruitful Indian-US relationship is not possible until
the United States allays some Indian concerns.
What are these widely felt concerns? Among
several other things, Dixit pointed out,
"Interventionist US assertiveness will create incipient
tensions in Indo-US relations. Going by the assessment
that South Asia is the most dangerous place, what would
[the United States'] policies be in dealing with the
nuclear weaponization of Pakistan and India? Will it be
preemptive or will it be aimed at stabilizing the
existing security environment? These questions are
pertinent because the Iraq war unequivocally underlined
the US's will to take any action required to safeguard
its national interests unilaterally. The implications of
such action create new security concerns for nations
like India, which need to be addressed. America's
policies have the additional impetus towards supremacy.
The very process of globalization is becoming an
instrumentality of US foreign and security policies."
One fallout of the US-led war on Iraq has been
that the Indian perception of US capability has changed.
Even those who opposed US policies admired its
efficiency and professionalism. Now even ordinary
Indians are aghast at statements like the one made by
the US official in charge of central Iraq, Barbara
Bodine: "We didn't know what we were walking into."
Don't Americans even read newspapers, people are
asking? It is common knowledge that many Middle East
watchers and statesmen had warned the US against opening
a Pandora's box. Powell had himself warned in his
autobiography of the dangers of opening hundreds of
years-old wounds in the Arab world. How can they now
feign ignorance of the dangers of invading Iraq? The
whole world had asked them to stay away from Iraq.
Even before Riyadh, senior journalists, like
senior officials, were making strong cases against India
"succumbing to the US demand to send troops to Iraq to
function under US command". After Riyadh, these voices
are only getting louder.
In the wake of
September 11, India had offered its full-fledged support
in fighting Islamic terrorism, whose hub, it was
thought, lay in Pakistan. After Riyadh, it may start
dealing with the United States in the same way other
countries, Pakistan, for instance, or now Syria and
Iran, do - appearing to cooperate but in reality merely
trying to avoid the rain of daisy-cutters.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
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