The week that the first cherry blossoms appeared in Beijing in April, the
Chinese capital also received a hugely controversial figure in the politics of
the region - the redoubtable "amir" of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F) of
Pakistan, Maulana Fazalur Rehman, who is often spoken of as the "father of the
Taliban".
Two aspects regarding Rehman's visit would have intrigued an outside observer.
The JUI-F has no Chinese counterpart, but Beijing solved the dilemma with the
Chinese Communist Party of China (CCP) stepping in to hold Rehman's hand. The
CCP and JUI-F may seem like oil and water, but today's China hopes to make them
mix - and may well succeed. During Rehman's visit, the CCP and JUI-F signed a
memorandum of cooperation.
Second, from Beijing Rehman headed for the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
It was an extraordinary moment - the energetic maulana getting exposed to the
violent politics of the Central Asian region, thanks to the ideology of
militant Islam practiced by his progenies, and on the other hand, the sheer
audacity or pragmatism of Beijing's policies in hosting him in Urumqi while
Xinjiang is bleeding at the hands of Islamist militants based in Pakistan and
is barely coping with the activities of the drug mafia on the Karakoram
Highway, which figures increasingly as the principal artery of drug trafficking
to China.
Surely, Pakistan is of immense importance to the Chinese strategies. It is a
time-tested "all-weather" friend, a potentially serious market for China's
exports and investment, a vital link in China's new communication chain
connecting the Persian Gulf, Middle East and Africa (bypassing the Malacca
Strait), but most important, a land that shelters Islamist militants from China
who may probably have come under the influence of motivated foreign powers.
Unsurprisingly, security cooperation with Islamabad has assumed high priority
for Beijing while navigating the waters of friendship with Pakistan. The
following report in the government-owned China Daily newspaper recently
underscored the complexity of the relationship between the two countries:
An
increasing number of members of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM),
which led the riots and is labeled a terrorist group by the UN Security
Council, are reportedly fleeing to Pakistan and settling down there for future
plots. According to latest reports, the ETIM has been in close collaboration
with the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. An ETIM leader is also reportedly hiding
in Pakistan and there are reports of a "Chinese battalion" made up of about 320
ETIM members of the Taliban forces. "It is not hard for them to hide in
Pakistan. They have similar religious beliefs, appearances and languages as the
locals', the Beijing-based World News newspaper reported on July 1."
Besides, China faces unprecedented geopolitical challenges in carrying forward
the "all-weather friendship" with Pakistan. The heart of the matter is that
Pakistan has become a hunting ground for the US regional strategies. There is a
qualitative difference today in comparison with the ebb and flow of the
US-Pakistan collaborative ventures of the Cold War era. The US today depends on
the Pakistani military to end the Afghan war so that without the war casualties
complicating Western public opinion, continued American and North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) military presence in the Central Asian region
becomes sustainable.
United States strategies toward Pakistan factor in NATO's future as a
global security organization, the US's trans-Atlantic ties, and China's rise
and the challenge it poses to the US supremacy in the world order in the 21st
century. In short, Pakistan is an almost irreplaceable US ally and will remain
so for the foreseeable future, given its geography, political economy and its
unique dealings with terrorist groups. The US Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton's arrival in Islamabad next week for co-chairing the US-Pakistan
strategic dialogue - the second in four months - underscores Pakistan's
centrality in Washington's foreign policy calculus.
What emerges is that no more is it the case that whatever China does in
Pakistan is with an ulterior motive against its big South Asian neighbor,
India, or that Beijing's policy toward Pakistan is quintessentially
India-centric. As a matter of fact, the trend for quite some time has been of
Beijing trying to keep a balance between its relations with India and Pakistan.
The political symbolism in the Chinese Premier and other leaders receiving a
special envoy of the Indian prime minister recently in July, just ahead of the
arrival of the Pakistan President on a week-long "working visit", cannot go
unnoticed.
Following consultations in Beijing, the Indian special envoy said that New
Delhi is looking forward to forging "a relationship [with China] which is not
externally driven". How this translates into policy will be of keen interest.
Curiously, soon after the Sino-Indian consultations and on the eve of the
US-Pakistan strategic dialogue in Islamabad, the US National Security Adviser
arrived in New Delhi to "fortify" the strategic partnership between the two
countries and to prepare the ground for US President Barack Obama's expected
visit to India in November. The US official's itinerary included calls on the
Indian defense minister and the military top brass.
Hopefully, a lid has been firmly put on the can of worms that Uncle Sam
periodically held out in front of the Indians - an "alliance of Asian
democracies" involving the US, Japan and Australia. There is need to shield
India's normalization with China from episodic US interference.
The worrisome part is that on the sidelines of the recent US-India strategic
dialogue in Washington in June, senior American officials resuscitated in their
public diplomacy the George W Bush era ideas of the US and India patrolling the
Indian Ocean and working together with Japan and Australia - doctrines which
seemed irrelevant and quixotic once the world financial crisis erupted and new
realities emerged in the international system.
Equally, India needs to view Sino-Pakistan ties in perspective and with new
thinking. China's close relationship with Pakistan will no doubt have a bearing
on New Delhi's impetus to strengthen Sino-Indian ties but it also needs to be
put in geopolitical perspective. Indeed, it is high time to de-hyphenate the
Sino-Indian relationship from China's relationship with Pakistan (or with the
US). The Indian strategic community needs to re-orientate its thinking: India's
relationship with China need not be dependent on the state of its relations
with Pakistan, or vice versa.
And, conceivably, the same should hold good for China. The convergence of
Indian and Chinese interests on a range of global issues today is obvious and
demands a "new stage of the relationship", as a senior Indian official put it
recently.
The Indian government has done well to refuse to join issue acrimoniously with
Beijing over the China-Pakistan nuclear deal controversy - despite genuine
apprehensions in New Delhi over anyone consorting with Pakistan, which could
have a bearing on nuclear non-proliferation. The opinion-makers in the media
have been suggesting that the Sino-Pakistan nuclear deal is primarily directed
against India. To quote from a Western media report, "China and Pakistan are
threatening to disrupt India's nuclear aspirations by stepping up collaboration
of their own."
However, do the two reactors that China proposes to set up at Pakistan's
Chashma complex under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards
really threaten India's security or do they shift the "strategic balance"
between India and Pakistan?
On the contrary, it can be argued that if Pakistan is brought into the fold of
any form of non-proliferation regime including the IAEA safeguards that China
seems to have in mind, it can only be a good thing. Besides, morality may not
have a place in politics, but how can India possibly pick a quarrel over
Pakistan having a nuclear deal of its own with China, which India secured from
the US with considerable elan in 2008?
What is overlooked is that the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as such did not
bar nuclear trade with a non-signatory like India - or Pakistan. Rather, it was
the Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG) that brought in the "Iron Curtain". The NSG
was an American concoction aimed at penalizing India under a designated
multilateral regime by roping in all and sundry countries that could have
potential to be suppliers of nuclear fuel or technology to India at some stage.
Plainly put, as the US began sensing during the past decade the compelling need
in terms of its global strategies to forge partnership with India as an
emerging power, the NSG barriers became an inconvenient relic of the past.
Similarly, it is entirely conceivable that in terms of the imperatives of
Washington's regional strategies in the South Asian-Central Asian region, the
US may well one day offer a nuclear deal to Pakistan.
In short, Beijing will have an added motivation to foster its ties with
Pakistan at a crucial juncture when the latter figures as a key partner in the
US regional strategies. The heart of the matter is that the US strategy to get
“embedded” in the southwest Asian region profoundly worries China. Pakistan, on
its part, has been an exemplary partner for China, too, who robustly insulates
the Sino-Pakistan friendship from any American poaching.
To be sure, both Beijing and New Delhi will be keenly watching the diplomatic
pirouette of the forthcoming US-Pakistan strategic dialogue in Islamabad. For
once, Beijing and New Delhi find themselves in the same boat - except, of
course, that India sees itself as a direct beneficiary in some ways of the US's
decisive influence over Pakistan.
The US has been savvy enough to realize the virtues of "de-hyphenated" ties in
the complicated geopolitical environs of the region. A "de-hyphenated" policy
enables Washington to optimally pursue its ties with China, Pakistan and India,
while at the same time drawing sustenance from the contradictions in the mutual
ties between the three regional powers themselves. The spectacle offers a
veritable morality play in politics and diplomacy.
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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