'Greater West Asia' leans heavily
on India By M K Bhadrakumar
As with all wars, the explosive
consequences of the recent Lebanese war compel
evaluation. Many would see the war as the sixth
conflict between Arabs and Israelis, while to some
at least the war almost certainly took on features
of a second Palestinian intifada and, as some
others would claim, it could be counted as a part
of the "global war on terror".
Yet the
unique character of the Lebanese war cannot be
lost on New Delhi, even as an Indian special envoy
for the Middle East
left
for a tour of the region last week to make a
first-hand assessment.
New Delhi cannot
help but reflect that a new region, not just a
Middle East but a "Greater West Asia", has emerged
out of the Lebanese war, with the result that what
appear as individual conflicts - the US invasion
of Iraq in 2003, the crisis in Afghanistan, the
current Israeli-Lebanese conflict - are connected
and feed off one another.
Professor Fred
Halliday coined the phrase and pointed out: "It is
not possible to understand what is happening
today, let alone what will happen, between Lebanon
and Israel, or in Iraq or Afghanistan ... without
seeing these events in the broader regional and,
to a considerable degree, global context ... The
'linkage' of the Persian Gulf to the Arab-Israeli
conflict ... of long-remote Afghanistan to the
politics of Iran and the Arab states, and of
Pakistan to the Middle East as a whole has, in
recent years, become a reality."
This was
strikingly brought home to New Delhi on August 23
when, even as Indian Interior Minister Shivraj
Patil was berating Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence in parliament for fomenting
terrorism, Pakistani President General Pervez
Musharraf received a strange phone call from
President George W Bush expressing America's "deep
appreciation for Pakistan's role in fighting
terrorism and the support Pakistan has been
extending internationally in this regard".
Bush suggested to Musharraf that when they
meet this month, they ought to exchange views on
international developments and on "measures to
further strengthen the strategic relationship"
between the United States and Pakistan.
Without doubt, the linkage of Pakistan to
the Middle East as a whole, which the late
president Zia ul-Haq used to speak about in the
1970s, has become a reality. This is the most
important consequence of the Lebanese war, from an
Indian perspective.
But it is a reality
with many faces. It is a reality of a new
pan-Islamic consciousness that ties Arab with
non-Arab causes (and vice versa) with potentially
dramatic effects on the minds of young Muslims
living anywhere, including outside the Islamic
world in countries such as India and Britain.
It is a reality portending a protracted
conflict with multiple centers in countries of the
subcontinent that may well run and run, propelled
by a seamless matrix of strategic detonators such
as terrorism, militant Islam, nuclear
proliferation, religious extremism, social
injustice and discrimination, corruption, greed
and injustice, authoritarianism and the sense of
alienation of Muslim minorities in
near-existential terms.
It is a reality
where major protagonists include non-state actors
jostling for space with established states,
rendering negotiation, let alone conflict
resolution, infinitely more complex and difficult
to achieve.
Not the least of all, it is a
reality of interlocking passions and interests and
expediencies - and of great fury and intensity.
Hardly any ready solutions or even temporary
palliatives are available, either.
Second,
New Delhi should expect that no matter Pakistan
being allegedly a "failing state", or a "rogue
state", and indeed no matter Indian allegations of
Pakistan fomenting trans-border terrorism,
Islamabad will remain for the foreseeable future a
key interlocutor for Washington on a variety of
theaters of utmost consequence for US strategic
interests - coping with al-Qaeda, Taliban
resurgence, Iran's nuclear ambitions, the emergent
"Shi'ite crescent" in the Middle East and the
Persian Gulf, and so on.
It is also
completely irrelevant to Washington whether
Musharraf should don his military-reform hat even
while holding the office of the head of state.
During the past week, some harsh words
have been written in the US media suggestive of a
deepening despair about the weak, indecisive
leadership of Afghan President Hamid Karzai in
Kabul. Bush has since spoken to Karzai, asking him
to come to Washington for urgent consultations.
But as the Afghan endgame approaches, Musharraf
holds the keys to the intricate tangle in the
Hindu Kush.
Pakistani sensitivity is high
in the pecking order in Washington. This was clear
from what General John Abizaid, head of the US
Central Command, said in Kabul on Sunday: "I think
Pakistan has done an awful lot in going after
al-Qaeda, and it's important that they don't let
the Taliban groups be organized in the Pakistani
side of the border."
The US commander,
famous for plain speaking, cautiously added that
he "absolutely does not believe" accusations of
collusion between Islamabad and the insurgent
Taliban or other extremists. "You do not order
your soldiers in the field against an enemy in
order to play some sort of a game with neighboring
countries," he offered as the logic of his
skepticism about cascading allegations of covert
Pakistani support of Afghan extremists.
The Lebanese war has led to further
erosion of US influence in the Middle East.
Admittedly, the pessimism permeating Washington
regarding the progress of the war in Iraq is
running in proportion to the high volatility of
the Lebanese and the Afghan situation. Bush
himself expressed his own mixed feelings in late
August: "Sometimes I'm frustrated. Rarely
surprised. Sometimes I'm happy. This is - but war
is not a time of joy. These aren't joyous times.
These are challenging times and they're difficult
times and they're straining the psyche of our
country".
This loss of US influence in the
Middle East in turn casts its shadow over the
South Asian region. It may have emboldened
Islamabad to crack down on the insurgents in
Balochistan. Again, in a curious way,
India-Pakistan composite dialogue, which had been
languishing in recent months, might well be on the
verge of gaining a new life.
But the
Lebanese war's lessons for India exceed these
Pakistan-centric considerations. Thus a Chatham
House report on Wednesday underlines the enormous
importance that Iran has come to acquire (thanks
to the Iraq/Lebanon/Afghanistan wars) in the
geopolitics of the entire region stretching from
the Levant to the Persian Gulf.
The
coalition government in New Delhi would be loath
to admit it, but it must harbor a sense of
profound regret that it alienated the regime in
Tehran, one of the most catastrophic errors of
judgment in foreign policy in years.
India's capacity to influence the events
in the strategically vital region to its west is
virtually nil - despite claims of being an
emerging influential regional player. Now, New
Delhi would be greatly embarrassed if despite all
the hubris about the coming Armageddon in US-Iran
relations, Washington's next move were to begin
serious negotiations with Iran.
The Bush
administration has reportedly given political
clearance for the visit of the former reformist
president of Iran, Mohammed Khatami, to Washington
ostensibly at the invitation of Christian groups.
Khatami is traveling via Tokyo, where he sought
Japanese intervention with the Bush administration
in the standoff with Iran. This is not the only
strand in the wind.
Recently Bush held a
brainstorming session with eminent regional
experts such as Vali Nasr, who consistently
believes that the present time is the right time
in engaging Iran. The James Baker Institute just
brought out a report - endorsed by former
secretary of state Henry Kissinger - that the Bush
administration must "examine ways to engage the
Iranians in a discussion of the future of nuclear
power".
Looked at another way, for New
Delhi the Lebanese war is also about the
opprobrium that heavily hangs in the perceptions
in the Islamic world around India's security
relationship with Israel. To carry this on
regardless would be as incomprehensible as if
India were to have overlooked the horror and shame
of bonding with the apartheid regime in South
Africa.
Finally, the Lebanese war has
ensured that US foreign policy and political Islam
shall remain deeply intertwined. It is conceivable
that the United States will be compelled to
rethink "Islamic fascism" and craft a more
nuanced, differentiated policy approach of
engagement and dialogue with Islamism. The US
indeed possesses an abundance of intellectual
resources to realize that the salience of Islam
will remain in 21st-century Muslim politics.
An earnest effort could well commence in
Washington sooner rather than later to understand
what motivates and informs Islamism.
The
Lebanese war should equally shake up the
complacency of sections of Indian opinion that
remained rooted in beliefs and canons that
Islamism was to be equated with terrorism, that
Islam was incompatible with democracy or that it
was inherently a militant religion.
India
too, in other words, will have to decide whether
the primary issue is religion and culture, or
whether it is politics.
M K
Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the
Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years,
with postings including ambassador to Uzbekistan
(1995-98) and to Turkey (1998-2001).
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