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India: US ambassador's parting
kick
By Sultan
Shahin
 NEW DELHI –To the consternation and
surprise of many in South Asia, the United States
appears to be stoking the same fires on the
sub-continent now that it helped douse a year ago.
As India and Pakistan completed a war-rhetoric
free three months in a remarkable atmosphere of bonhomie
and goodwill on the part of the ruling classes, common
people and even hardliners of the two countries,
recently departed US ambassador to India Robert
Blackwill made himself conspicuous by being the only
person to bewail as a parting shot his failure to stop
the "continuing cross-border terrorism" on the
India-Pakistan Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir.
Even the hardline deputy premier of India, Lal
Krishan Advani, has refrained from making such
complaints, despite several terrorist attacks in recent
weeks, most notably a dramatic suicide attack on an army
camp at Tanda in Kashmir that killed a brigadier among
about a dozen army personnel. On the morning of July 22,
terrorists almost succeeded in annihilating the entire
top officer corps of the country's most important
military formation, the Northern Command. Advani's
restraint has been particularly noticeable since Prime
Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee extended a hand of
friendship to Pakistan in a public speech at Srinagar in
Kashmir on April 18.
Since Vajpayee's Srinagar
speech, a process of normalization of relations between
the two countries has continued, though more slowly than
many had come to expect. Yet normal diplomatic relations
are almost in place, the Delhi-Lahore bus has started
running, resumption of train and air links, too, are on
the anvil, the prime minister has agreed to travel to
the Pakistani capital Islamabad for a summit meeting of
South Asian regional leaders in January, and substantive
talks on all disputes, including Kashmir, are being
contemplated.
In the meantime, track-two
diplomacy has gathered extraordinary momentum. A number
of delegations of members of parliament and media
persons from both countries have exchanged visits. A
member of parliament, Abdur Rashid Shaheen, the first
Indian Kashmiri politician to visit Pakistan in decades,
told Asia Times Online, "Everywhere we went in Pakistan
the outpouring of emotions of goodwill was unbelievable.
It was as if a dam had burst unexpectedly. You couldn't
find anyone willing to talk about discord. Every one we
met was happy at the prospect of peace."
Two
events have particularly helped to improve the
atmosphere. As the bus link resumed, on the very first
day from Pakistan came baby Noor Fatima with holes in
her heart to be treated by Indian doctors at a hospital
in Bangalore. As the media coverage brought her case to
the notice of Indians, almost the whole country prayed
for her recovery, several anonymous donors paid the cost
of her surgery (which she didn't really need), thousands
of people wrote to her and hundreds visited her in
hospital, bringing gifts. Now she is back to Pakistan,
hale and hearty, having shown to the people of both
countries how closely their hearts still beat with each
other, despite half a century of partition and decades
of animosity nursed by politicians on both sides.
Another event that has left a remarkably healthy
impact - contrary to all expectations - has been the
visit of Muslim fundamentalist leaders from Pakistan,
led by the redoubtable Maulana Fazlur Rahman, also known
as the father of Taliban, as the latter were the
products of madrassas (religious schools) run by
his party, the Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam. Rahman and his
delegation met a cross-section of people, from the prime
minister and opposition leaders to Hindu religious as
well as fundamentalist leaders, never flinching in their
protestations of peace. He said all the things Indians
wanted to hear on the peaceful solution of Kashmir
dispute, normalization of relations and so on. But he
had one refrain: let us solve our problems through
bilateral dialogue; let us not allow the United States
to intervene in our region.
It is perhaps this
and the warm response that this sentiment evoked among
the ruling elite in India that has alarmed the US. In
fact, in his speech offering the olive branch to
Pakistan, Vajpayee, too, made a reference to the changed
world scenario that necessitated normalization of
relations between the two warring, nuclear-armed
neighbors.
According to India's national
security advisor Brajesh Mishra, the two countries were
on the brink of war about this time last year. A
terrorist attack on the Indian parliament, killing eight
people, had stirred India into action. Almost the entire
Indian army was mobilized and most of it was deployed on
the border with Pakistan in an eyeball-to-eyeball
confrontation. Vajpayee had called for a decisive war.
Any war could arguably have led to a nuclear disaster.
The US played a constructive role then. It first
encouraged Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf
to promise to do whatever he could to stop militant
infiltration across the border. As infiltration declined
- without any acknowledgement from India - and the war
rhetoric continued, the US issued a travel advisory to
its citizens against traveling to the region. This
forced India to start acknowledging the reduced levels
of cross-border infiltration. Gradually tensions were
defused and the travel advisory was withdrawn before it
could do too much damage to Indian economy. The Indian
and Pakistani armies were redeployed to their peace-time
positions.
Against this backdrop, Blackwill may
very well have claimed credit in helping the situation
move in the direction of normalization, and expressed
satisfaction, projecting this as one of the main
achievements of his two-year tenure. Instead, he chose
to sound a jarring note by highlighting an issue that no
Indian leader is complaining about, even in the face of
the gravest provocation.
Blackwill's expression
of disappointment at the ongoing "cross-border
terrorism" has now been followed by the closest US ally,
Britain, making similar comments. "Pending a resolution
of the Jammu and Kashmir issue, the Line of Control
should be strictly respected and Pakistan should fulfill
its commitment to stop infiltration across it," a
spokesman of the British Foreign Office told the Press
Trust of India on Wednesday.
A Pakistan
government spokesman has dubbed Blackwill's situation as
localitis, a condition that diplomats the world
over know as "going native". It is a common condition
among envoys. Sent to a country to represent the
interests of their government, diplomat can fall so much
in love with the host country that they end up acting as
a representative of that country.
Islamabad is,
however, being rather churlish in its reaction.
Blackwill is no "greenhorn Orientalist", as one
newspaper put it, "capable of going gaga [crazy]
over curry and peppers". He is from among the "best and
brightest" in the team of US president George W Bush. He
is not going back to academia, as he had originally
planned. He may have his detractors in the State
Department, but he is going back to the inner circles in
the White House - as a strategic planner in charge of
Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.
In any case,
Blackwill is doing no favors to India by seeking to put
a spoke in the moving wheels of India-Pakistan
relations. Had he gone "native" and suffered from
localitis, he would be rooting, like most other
Indians, for normalization of ties on the sub-continent.
He is perhaps only trying to distract attention from and
giving vent to his frustration over his biggest real
failure - not being able to persuade India to send
troops to Iraq.
It would be naive to think that
Blackwill had his own agenda in the sub-continent,
different from that of the Bush administration,
particularly as one can see it in the context of a
concerted attempt on the part of the pro-American lobby
to denigrate Vajpayee's peace initiatives, not only on
Pakistan but also on China.
While Vajpayee has
been consistently talking of the 21st as being an Asian
century, and is presumably working towards that end, his
detractors openly talk of an American century and
India's subservient role in it. Veteran strategist K
Subrahmanyam, for instance, wrote just two days after
Vajpayee's Srinagar speech an article entitled "The
American Century: Turn it to India's Advantage". He
conceded that "US actions in its own self interest may
on occasion hurt our national interest and security.
Some would argue that it does so to some extent even
today." Yet, he argued, "At the same time, it is also
possible that Washington, as set out in its national
security doctrine, may attempt to cultivate India in its
own interest. In that case, there are bound to be new
opportunities for this country ... unfortunately,
populism rules the roost in political, economic, social,
foreign and national security policies." His advice:
send troops to Iraq to aid American occupation of that
unfortunate country and earn US goodwill.
Another protagonist of this view, Brahma
Chellaney, a frequent contributor to the International
Herald Tribune and Hindustan Times, is not so
diplomatic. He has launched a scathing attack on
Vajpayee's foreign policy pre-occupations. "Vajpayee has
remained obsessively fixated on this semi-failed
neighbor [Pakistan], sometimes vowing a fight to the
finish and at other times exuding love. His policy
pendulum feverishly swings from one extreme to the
other, even as cross-border terrorism in his reign has
morphed from hit-and-run attacks to daring suicide
assaults on army camps and national emblems of power
like parliament and the Red Fort."
The ferocity
of the attacks on Vajpayee for his attempts to normalize
relations with Pakistan and China is quite unprecedented
and cannot be without a reason. Chellaney needs to be
quoted at some length, "The much-pilloried I K Gujral
[former prime minister] - the BJP's archetypical wimp -
could never have dared to do what Vajpayee has gotten
away with. One day Vajpayee downgrades diplomatic
relations with Pakistan, and on another day he restores
full ties. He snaps all air, road and rail links with
Pakistan like an incensed lover and then, still spurned,
decides to reinstate those links. Sanctions are
necessary one day but a bad idea on another day. No
sooner does he vow zero tolerance against terrorism than
he announces a ceasefire against all terrorist groups.
He declares his Ramazan ceasefire failed because of
Musharraf and the very same day he invites the Pakistani
dictator to Agra. He mobilizes the military for war,
vowing a decisive fight, but after keeping the soldiers
in combat-ready positions for nine long months, he calls
off the operation. One day he says Indian pressure on
Islamabad is working, and then heads to Srinagar to
theatrically extend his hand of friendship and reverse
Pakistan policy, surprising his own foreign minister."
Also significant is his attack in the context of
China, "Vajpayee not only failed to capitalize on the
boost provided by India's new nuclear state status, but
he has also acted in ways to erode the country's
self-esteem while giving vent to his self-importance.
Notice the way the either-tired-nor-retired-Vajpayee has
scoffed at the 1962 parliament resolution on the Chinese
betrayal of the Panchsheel [five principles of
co-existence] and decided to celebrate with desecrator
China the 50th anniversary of those despoiled
principles."
Why is Vajpayee attracting such
venom on the part of believers in the American century?
Apparently, Vajpayee is refusing to play the American
game in this region: he is seeking to chart out an
independent course for India. This may be in conformity
with Indian ideals that evolved over nearly a century of
struggle against British imperialism, but apparently
doesn't suit a new generation who want to be the new
khan bahadurs (feudal lords appointed by the
British) of the American century.
It is quite
understandable that Chellaney chooses to disparage
Vajpayee by comparing him with India's first prime
minister Jawaharlal Nehru. To be likened to a secular,
liberal leader like Nehru can be the worst abuse for a
Hindu fundamentalist. Vajpayee built his career opposing
Nehruvian politics. He not only opposed Nehru's
secularism and liberalism, he also did not participate
in his and the country's struggle against the British
raj. Vajpayee and his colleagues in the Hindu
fundamentalist Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh did not join
Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru's "quit India" call to the
British in 1942, for instance.
But apparently
Vajpayee has realized that India is too big and proud a
nation to play the role of an American poodle in the
region. He did flirt with the neo-imperialist dream of
an American century in his initial years as prime
minister, perhaps under the influence of his long-time
colleague and friend Jaswant Singh. But ever since he
shifted Singh from the external affairs portfolio, he
has been consistently following an independent foreign
policy, refusing to play the American game in the region
- containment of China, bases for the US on Indian soil,
India heading a new Asian version of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization, sending Indian troops to help
America occupy Iraq and so on. Backlash from the
pro-American lobby or Blackwill's parting kick are not
going to sway him from his resolve, it seems.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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