Obama, soccer and South Asian security
By M K Bhadrakumar
The United States could be on the threshold of a big breakthrough in the
geopolitics of the South Asian region. A planned visit by Pakistan President
Asif Ali Zardari to Washington in late January could well turn out to be the
tipping point.
The diplomatic tango over the terrorist attacks on the western Indian city of
Mumbai on November 27 is entering a crucial phase. In a media interaction on
Wednesday, the American ambassador to India, David Mulford, let it be known
that India's dossier linking Pakistani nationals with the Mumbai attacks is
"credible". New Delhi had handed over the dossier to Islamabad on Monday.
He said, "I think the dossier is credible. A lot of that was prepared
with assistance from the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation]. The US doesn't
compile stuff which is not credible." Mulford went on to say that the Mumbai
attacks appeared to have been carried out from Pakistan and that an FBI team
was en route to Pakistan, which would take the probe forward. Equally, Mulford
reacted sharply to the widespread notion that Pakistan holds the US by the
jugular vein over the Afghan war. He said, "Americans are very good at skinning
the cats."
After having secured New Delhi's assurance that India will not resort to a
military strike against Pakistan, Washington is perceptibly stepping up
pressure on Islamabad to act on the available evidence regarding the Mumbai
attacks. Mulford's tough statement signifies a shifting of gear. So far
Islamabad has been on a denial mode, but on Wednesday, the Foreign Ministry in
Islamabad publicly acknowledged that the lone terrorist survivor in the Mumbai
attacks was after all a Pakistani national. On Thursday, in another statement,
the Foreign Ministry affirmed that the Indian dossier is under "serious
consideration".
Increasingly, the picture that emerges is that the Pakistani army chief General
Ashfaq Kiani and Zardari seem to have come on the same page not to resort to
strategic defiance of the US. One sign is that opposition leader Nawaz Sharif
has switched to an altogether rejectionist stance that New Delhi's dossier
regarding Pakistan's involvement in the Mumbai attacks was "insufficient" and
there was "plentiful" evidence of Indian covert activities within Pakistan.
Within the complicated political calculus in Islamabad, the nascent
Kiani-Zardari proximity also seems to have politically isolated Prime Minister
Yousuf Gilani, who hit out on Wednesday by dismissing Pakistan's National
Security Advisor retired Major General Mahmood Durrani. Now, Durrani has been
acting as a vital bridge between Kiani and Zardari, apart from being
Washington's key interlocutor in Islamabad. Curiously, Durrani has also been a
passionate advocate of normalization of relations between Pakistan and India.
His sacking may momentarily disorient the US game plan, but it is not a lethal
setback. The face-saving formula that is gaining all-round respectability in
Islamabad is that "non-state actors" might actually be at work disrupting
India-Pakistan relations. The US pronouncements on the Mumbai attacks have
carefully differentiated between the terrorists who struck Mumbai and the
Pakistani authorities.
Washington is bringing leverage to bear on the Pakistani power structure from
many directions. On the one hand, in an important gesture towards Islamabad,
the Barack Obama administration is all set to appoint a special envoy to India
and Pakistan. The Nelson Report, an influential daily briefing on US policy
matters, confirmed this on Monday while reporting that top-ranking US diplomat,
Richard Holbrooke, former assistant secretary of state in the administrations
of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, is being appointed.
The appointment of a US special envoy will be seen by the Pakistani
establishment in Islamabad as tantamount to a US mediatory mission on the
Kashmir issue, which has been a longstanding demand by Islamabad. In the normal
course, Delhi would have instinctively rejected the appointment, but Washington
would have assessed that with the newly elected popular government taking over
after a successful election in the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir, New
Delhi would feel far more confident about its standing on the Kashmir issue and
might not raise dust on Holbrooke's appointment.
Interestingly, the US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia and Central
Asia Richard Boucher, when asked on Tuesday whether there is an effort to solve
the Kashmir problem, made a highly nuanced response, saying, "There is always
hope. But it has been something that they [India and Pakistan] themselves have
pursued ... But I think there is an opportunity here to work together against
the groups that are trying to disrupt India-Pakistan relations, against the
groups that are actually harming the cause of Kashmir by carrying out these
horrible terrorist actions. And, hopefully, coming out of that, the two sides
will find themselves in a better position to cooperate." Boucher then added
that India and Pakistan made "great strides" over the past two years in
discussing Kashmir, and the Mumbai attacks made that more difficult right now.
Another factor weighing in Islamabad's calculations is the unprecedented role
that China has taken in diffusing the current crisis in India-Pakistan
relations. Beijing's influence on Islamabad is second to none. It was very
obvious that the mission undertaken by the Chinese special envoy He Yafei to
Islamabad on December 29 and to New Delhi on January 5 was with US
encouragement. Washington seems to have estimated that Chinese good offices
would serve a useful purpose in persuading the Pakistani military to cooperate
on the Mumbai attacks. In fact, Kiani received He.
In the normal course, New Delhi would have been lukewarm about Beijing's
perceived meddling in South Asia but mindful that this one had Washington's
blessings, New Delhi politely welcomed He, treating the visit on low-key while
a top Indian official later publicly expressed satisfaction on the
consultations. The Indian official said, "What we do see is a strong
condemnation from China of terrorism and the Mumbai attacks. On the issue of
terrorism, China stands firmly with us ... We have a joint working group on
counter-terrorism with China. We will make sure it works." The Indian official
revealed that He said India was China's "strategic partner" while Pakistan is a
"close friend".
All this apart, Washington has its own considerable leverage on Pakistan. A
US$15 billion assistance package for Pakistan is at present under consideration
with the US Congress and the US Central Command is finalizing a new military
aid program of $300 million annually for Pakistan during the coming five-year
period.
Most important, Washington would realize that crunch time has come for US-India
strategic partnership. If Pakistan is a basket case, the dynamics of US-India
partnership work in a diametrically opposite way. New Delhi handed over an
alluring New Year gift to the George W Bush administration with India signing
on January 1 its biggest ever arms deal with the US - a $2.1 billion contract
for eight Boeing P-81 long-range maritime reconnaissance (LRMR) aircraft for
the navy. The contract provides an option for India to order up to eight more
such planes. It is a direct commercial agreement with Boeing, dispensing with
the usual tendering procedures. The Bush administration had actively canvassed
for the deal.
Again, a forthcoming Indian deal for 126 multi-role fighter aircraft alone is
estimated to be worth $10 billion. Equally, a 150-member American trade
delegation has just arrived in New Delhi. The US-India Business Council is
sponsoring this largest-ever trade mission from the US, including over 50
senior commercial nuclear executives representing such US giants as General
Electric, Westinghouse, Bechtel Nuclear, the Shaw Group, Babcock & Wilcox,
etc. Clearly, the US-India nuclear agreement is being launched for business
exploitation. The Confederation of Indian Industry, which is hosting the
American businessmen for a three-day meet in New Delhi from Thursday, estimates
that 18-20 nuclear plants that India may import over the coming 15-year period
could open up investments to the tune of $27 billion.
Evidently, India is opening up as a potentially huge market for the US'
military-industrial complex and nuclear industry. That brings up a pertinent
question: what is it that Washington could do to ensure that such a US-friendly
dispensation continues to rule India even after the parliamentary elections in
April-May?
Certainly, Washington could do a lot by influencing the denouement of the
present crisis in India's relations with Pakistan in a way that modulates the
popular mood in India. A negative perception is growing in the Indian public
opinion that the government is merely resorting to vacuous rhetoric but is
actually helpless in tackling Islamabad's obduracy with regard to cracking down
on the terrorist groups operating against India. It hangs like a Sword of
Damocles over the ruling Congress party's electoral prospects.
As a Pakistani commentator put it, "The Indian government has thus been placed
in a dilemma. Elections to the Lok Sabha [parliament] are coming up. If it
fails to act before that, it will lose face, and perhaps the elections too. And
if it acts to initiate military action, it could lead to war, and since war
develops its own momentum, it could quickly get out of control. They have a
decision to make, and quickly too, before time overtakes them."
Therefore, Washington needs to carefully weigh its options. The defeat of the
Congress in the forthcoming elections will no doubt constitute a major setback
to US regional strategies in South Asia. Indeed, if Washington could somehow
persuade Islamabad to hand over to Indian hands even one or two of the 20
terrorist suspects New Delhi wants, Indian public opinion would see it as a
huge success of the government, and the credit will go to the Congress party -
especially someone like Masood Azhar, whom the then Indian government
surrendered under humiliating circumstances as ransom during the hijacking of
an Indian aircraft eight years ago to Kandahar in Afghanistan.
Holbrooke will then have a historic opening as well to work on putting the
India-Pakistan relations on a predictable footing. Never before has Washington
found itself in such a conundrum. It finds itself in the enviable position to
swing the outcome of an Indian election and even decisively mould the future
ruling dispensation in New Delhi, apart from holding a virtual carte blanche to
work on the flawed India-Pakistan relationship from the angle of the US's
regional strategies.
The US influence in South Asia has never before been as paramount. But there is
a caveat. The US must first get Islamabad to bend, and by the idiom of soccer,
must bend it like English star David Beckham, who scores from free kicks by
making the ball "bend" or swerve as it flies through the air. Can Obama pull it
off when he receives Zardari? A long time ago, on the back streets of Jakarta,
he used to play soccer.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign
Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka,
Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
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