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The US vision for
Musharraf
By Praveen Swami
[Turkey] had lost her leadership of
Islam and Islam might now look to leadership to
the Muslims of Russia. This would be a most
dangerous attraction. There was therefore much to
be said for the introduction of a new Muslim power
supported by the science of Britain ... It seemed
to some of us very necessary to place Islam
between Russian communism and Hindustan.
-
Sir Francis Tucker, General Officer-Commanding of
the British Indian Eastern Command.
A
little over half a century on, driven by the
forces unleashed by the tragic events of September
11, 2001, imperial Britain's Pakistan project is
being reinvented. It is hard to imagine a more
unlikely caliph than Pakistani President General
Pervez Musharraf, but that is precisely what the
United States seems determined to anoint him.
Pakistan, Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice told Musharraf at their recent meeting in
Islamabad, is "a model country for the Muslim
world". Among other things, she praised Pakistan's
president and chief of army staff, who came to
power in a coup in 1999, for his "bold vision for
South Asia and initiatives to promote peace and
stability in the region".
Speaking in New
Delhi, she emphasized the need to help Nepal -
where the monarch has seized power - "get back on
a democratic path". But evidently she felt no need
to suggest something of the kind might be
desirable in Pakistan as well. If the US felt any
ire at Musharraf's inflammatory proclamation on
his official website that the Kargil war of 1999
"proved a lesson to the Indians", it was not
mentioned, at least not in public.
All of which
makes it necessary to ask the question: just what
is the United States' own vision of stability in South
Asia - and how precisely does it mean to go about
achieving it?
Casual readers of media reportage
on Rice's recent visit to India, Pakistan
and Afghanistan might be forgiven for thinking
that the United States' principal interests in the
region are arms sales and Iran, in that order.
Much of the public discourse of Rice's visit
focused on the prospect of the possible sale of
F-16 aircraft to Pakistan, and the Patriot II
anti-ballistic missile defense system to India.
The United States' concerns about the construction
of a gas pipeline from Iran to India, passing
through Pakistan, ranked second in terms of the
space it occupied. Little was said, unless it
figured behind closed doors, about continued
terrorism directed at India, nuclear
proliferation, the persistence of jihadi
infrastructure in Pakistan, and, yes, democracy.
F-16 aircraft and missile defense issues
are, of course, important, and have a vital
bearing on the security environment in South Asia.
Neither, however, is a cause of instability; both
are, rather, a consequence of a long-running
disputation between India and Pakistan.
Historically, the US has seen such
sales, or their denial, as a way of addressing
the security anxieties of the antagonists
- principally, of Pakistan. It is quite obvious
that the strategy, if it can be called one, has
failed. The provision of weapons to Pakistan did not
deter it from initiating wars in 1965 and 1999;
nor, notably, have its nuclear-weapons and missile
capabilities meant an end to its fears about
India's superior conventional capabilities. A few
F-16s or a missile defense system will change
little.
What,
then, are we too make of Rice's
pronouncements? Part of the problem is the Washington
policy establishment's mode of understanding
South Asia. Pakistan is cast within the
frame of what is called "the Muslim World", and
the United States' relations with that country are seen
as integral to engagement with other countries
where the bulk of the population happens to be of
Islamic persuasion.
Much policy production
in the US rests on the a priori assumption
that an entity called "the Muslim World" in fact
exists, and that the cooptation of elements of
this transnational entity is central to containing
terrorism. Among the key corollaries of this credo
is the notion that Islamist terrorism is the
product of a confrontation between two immutable
adversaries, "the West" and "the Muslims".
In this vision, Musharraf's perceived
"enlightened moderation" is the key not just to
securing a purely tactical set of interests - in
Afghanistan, for example - but to a far larger
ideological project. Perhaps as a consequence,
Musharraf has never been pressed to explain the
content of his "enlightened moderation": the words
themselves, evidently, are adequate.
In the
vision of the United States' policy establishment, this
enlightened moderation stands opposed to the
Islamist postures of al-Qaeda, notwithstanding the
considerable evidence that exists of cooperation
and accommodation between the two. In essence, the
US has thrown its weight behind the fabrication of
an ummah, or community of believers, from a
welter of peoples with different, often
adversarial, histories, cultures and interests. It
is a project that closely resembles that of the
Islamists, even if its projected outcome is, of
course, very different.
Where might India
fit into this vision? Although Rice's area of
scholarly expertise is the former Eastern Bloc,
she had articulated at least the outlines of a
position on South Asia before her current
assignment.
Writing in the journal Foreign
Affairs in 2000, Rice suggested that the US ought
to "pay closer attention to India's role in the
regional balance". "There is a strong tendency,"
she pointed out, "conceptually to connect India
with Pakistan and to think only of Kashmir or the
nuclear competition between the two states. But
India is [also] an element in China's calculation,
and it should be in America's, too. India is not a
great power yet, but it has the potential to
emerge as one."
Put simply, Rice and the
policy establishment she represents see India as a
potential strategic counterweight to China. Many
in India, notably former defense minister George
Fernandes, have characterized its relationship
with the US in much the same terms.
This
position, it needs to be noted, is not new. Until
the US began a cautious detente with China in the
1970s, it underwrote Indian covert and
sub-conventional military activities targeting
Tibet. Among other things, the US supplied
aircraft and technological equipment to what
became the aviation research center of the
Research and Analysis Wing, and provided training
and weapons to the ethnic-Tibetan irregular force
called Establishment 22, which fought with great
distinction in the 1971 war.
It is hard to
miss the limitations of an India-US relationship
founded mainly on a common set of concerns about
China, however. Speaking prior to her arrival in
New Delhi, Rice placed emphasis on "opportunities
- economic, in terms of security, in terms of
energy cooperation - that we can pursue with
India".
The United States' alarm at the prospect of
an Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline illustrates the
problems that arise from the fact that India must
of necessity look west and north, and not just to
its east. On the face of it, the sharing of assets
between the three countries would be a factor for
stability, something in which the US has a common
interest. Criticism of the pipeline project has
mainly emanated from a section of analysts in
India, where some see enriching a hostile
Islamabad as an exercise in folly, and not in the
US. US reactions to the proposed pipeline deal,
however, show the ways in which concerns about
West Asia, in fact, shape policy toward South
Asia, just as they did a half-century ago - and
the problems that inevitably arise.
Almost unnoticed is the
fact that Rice's visit marks a step toward what
critics in both India and Pakistan have long
demanded - the end of hyphenation, or the removal
of the implicit linkages of policy on one country
and policy toward the other.
Yet Pakistan
is not just part of "the Muslim World", whatever
this might be, nor India merely a piece of a
non-Muslim Asia that has China at its center. The
destinies of both countries are intimately linked.
The future of their relationship depends on
Pakistan's ability to re-imagine itself as a
secular, progressive and democratic state, not as
a carriage-bearer for an Islamist ideological
enterprise.
Should Pakistan be encouraged
to move in this direction, India will benefit -
and so too would the authoritarian states to its
west. The administration of President George W
Bush has repeatedly proclaimed its commitment to
the processes of democracy, and yet seems
curiously bereft of the conceptual wherewithal to
bring this about.
Praveen Swamiis
Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow, United States
Institute of Peace, Washington, DC.
Published with permission from the
South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal
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