Pakistan seeks solace in the
Kremlin By M K Bhadrakumar
The Kremlin has announced a three-day
"official visit" by Pakistan President Asif Ali
Zardari to Russia beginning next Wednesday at the
invitation of President Dmitry Medvedev.
Such visits are scheduled in advance while
formal announcements are kept until a later date.
Nonetheless, Zardari's talks within inscrutable
Kremlin walls will attract huge attention
regionally and internationally as they will be
taking place within a fortnight of the la
affaire Abbottabad, which has prompted
speculation regarding the United States-Pakistan
relationship following the killing on Monday of
al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in that Pakistani
town.
Also, the Russians (and Pakistanis)
have chosen to schedule the
trip ahead of Zardari's visit
to Washington, which has already been postponed
once and now seems quite unlikely to take place in
the near future.
At the very least, Moscow
is indicating that the imperatives of the Kremlin
constructively engaging Russia with regard to
regional security (which has been evident for the
past two to three years) remain very much in place
and the sensational killing of Bin Laden doesn't
come into that matrix.
In world
perceptions (especially in America), Pakistan is
blithely called nowadays the "epicenter" of
international terrorism, but Moscow doesn't seem
perturbed on that score. Indeed, the Russian
approach is implicitly that the proper way of
addressing the challenge lies in engaging Pakistan
rather than branding it as a "state sponsoring
terrorism" and ostracizing it, as some influential
sections in the US Congress have lately demanded.
Interestingly, Russian media coverage of
the killing of Bin Laden has been factual and
balanced and has been devoid of any sensationalism
or undue flights of over-interpretations - the
overall impression being that there are many
ambiguities in the American version (or versions)
of what really took place and the final version is
yet to appear and, therefore, it is premature to
conclude anything beyond the domain of
speculation.
Russian official media
prominently reported observations by former Cuban
leader Fidel Castro on Thursday in his weekly
column that there was likely to be a backlash in
the Muslim world to the manner in which the US
went about "assassinating" Bin Laden - an
"abhorrent act" - and then hastily burying him at
sea and that even in American opinion, criticism
may mount once the initial fervor dies down and
cool stocktaking begins. (Castro also appeared
sympathetic toward Pakistan).
"Whatever
the actions attributed to Bin Laden, the
assassination of an unarmed human being surrounded
by his family constitutes an abhorrent act ... The
fact that he was killed and buried at sea
indicates fear and insecurity, and turns him into
an even more dangerous person," the 84-year-old
Cuban revolutionary wrote in an opinion piece.
The Novosti agency highlighted Castro's
remark that the US raid on Abbottabad "offended
Pakistan's national dignity, violated its laws and
desecrated the traditions of this Muslim country".
Be that as it may, what does Moscow look
for in Zardari's visit? Three things come to mind.
One, Moscow would like to get as close as
possible to the inner track of the ongoing
US-Pakistan discourse regarding the end game in
Afghanistan. Russia will factor in that Bin
Laden's killing will hasten the Afghan peace
process and give US President Barack Obama a
somewhat free hand with regard to the drawdown of
US troops in Afghanistan commencing in July.
Evidently, Russia is concerned about
security implications for the Central Asian
region. Reuters quoted "security sources and
analysts" to the effect that Russia was in talks
with Tajikistan to send up to 3,000 Russian border
guards to the Tajik-Afghan border region:
Russia fears the planned withdrawal
of NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization]
troops from Afghanistan by 2014 will create a
power vacuum allowing Islamist militants
fighting US forces there to move into Central
Asia. Twenty years after the fall of the Soviet
Union, Moscow sees Central Asia as part of its
sphere of interest and worries that an upsurge
in Islamist violence or heroin trafficking could
upset the predominantly Muslim, oil- and
gas-producing region.
However, Russian
concerns are also geopolitical. Moscow is watching
with unease the strong American diplomatic and
political pressure on Afghan President Hamid
Karzai to agree to a Status of Forces agreement
that legitimizes a long-term US military presence
in the region. A spate of Russian commentaries has
appeared in the recent period about the imperative
need of revamping and strengthening the
capabilities - political as well as military - of
the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty
Organization as a counter-alliance to NATO.
Moscow is also not ruling out that as an
adjunct to the new security paradigm emerging in
Afghanistan in the end game underway, there could
be renewed attempts by Washington to expand US and
NATO influence into Central Asia. Moscow circles
have openly speculated that Washington may
deliberately contrive an atmosphere of the Arab
Spring to appear on the Central Asian steppes
sometime in the near future. It would thereupon
seize on social and political convulsions to
manipulate "regime changes" in the region
favorable to American geopolitical strategies in
the Great Game. One website close to security
circles in Moscow even predicted an American
thrust in this direction as early as the coming
autumn.
Indeed, according to a White House
statement, Obama made a telephone call to his
counterpart in Astana, Nurusultan Nazarbayev (who
was recently "re-elected" with a 95% majority)
stressing the need for democratic reforms in
Kazakhstan (which borders China). American
commentators have also lately focused on the
potential of a Middle East-like upheaval in
Central Asia that could blow away existing
authoritarian regimes.
Significantly, amid
all this, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi
arrived in Moscow on Thursday on an official visit
and was scheduled to meet Medvedev on Friday.
Sino-Russian political consultations come
close on the heels of a two-day China-Pakistan
"strategic dialogue" in Beijing at the end of
April. It is pertinent to note that the Chinese
stance on the Abbottabad episode is unequivocally
sympathetic toward Pakistan. A Chinese Foreign
Ministry spokesperson extravagantly praised
Pakistan's record in the struggle against
international terrorism and expressed Beijing's
solidarity with Islamabad in these difficult
times.
Commentaries by the state-run
Xinhua news agency have brought out that the
US-Pakistan relationship is currently under great
stress. Conceivably, Yang will share his
perceptions with the Kremlin leadership and that
will form valuable input for Moscow in structuring
its talks with Zardari.
Moscow (or
Beijing) has little to complain about Pakistan's
interest in counter-terrorism cooperation.
Besides, the genuineness of the Pakistani interest
in forging a strategic partnership with Russia is
also not in doubt. Moscow will most certainly have
taken note that Pakistan shares the apprehensions
of other regional powers regarding the prospect of
a long-term American military presence in
Afghanistan.
Most important, Moscow has of
late distinctly mellowed its traditional antipathy
toward the Taliban. In other words, an Afghan
settlement that provides for the reconciliation
and reintegration of the Taliban is, in principle,
something that Moscow could learn to live with if
certain aspects of the "al-Qaeda factor" could be
properly addressed.
Russian leaders will
certainly like to hear from Zardari how Russian
concerns in this regard could be addressed with
the help and understanding of Pakistani security
agencies.
The timing of Zardari's visit
underscores that Moscow recognizes the central
role that Pakistan plays in the Afghan situation.
Both Moscow and Islamabad also share the view that
any Afghan peace process should be "Afghan-led".
However, at this point, any
Russian-Pakistani consultations are destined to be
broad-ranging, bringing in, in particular, the
uncertainties of the security situation in the
Persian Gulf region where again Pakistan may
figure as a "provider" of security for some
regimes there.
Finally, the
Russian-Pakistani talks are taking place at a
rather delicate moment in the US-Russia "reset".
The crisis in Libya has alerted Russia to the
stunning reality that the more things seemed to
change in the US approach to world politics under
Obama, the more they came to resemble the George W
Bush era in terms of the ideology of
"unilateralist interventions", the use of military
power in the settlement of disputes and the
marginalization of the United Nations.
With all the talk of the US adopting a
culture of "smart power", the evidence points
toward the preponderance of "hard power" as the
principal instrument of global strategies.
If anything, in Russian perceptions,
Abbottabad will stick out like a sore thumb -
meaning, in the ultimate analysis, the US has only
one way, its own unilateralist way, to handle
issues, namely, the John Wayne way.
Significantly, Russia's envoy to NATO,
Dmitry Rogozin, said on Thursday following a
meeting of the NATO-Russia Council in Brussels
that the US was already deploying its missile
defense system in Europe without bothering to
reach an agreement with Russia. He referred to US
deployments in Romania.
While it is too
early to say that the "fizz" has gone out of the
US-Russia reset, Moscow has been compelled into a
reality check. If (or when) Western ground troops
appear on the bleak Libyan landscape (where after
40 days of NATO operations Muammar Gaddafi is
still looking good), the "reset" may take a
serious beating. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov said in a lengthy television interview in
Moscow last week that Moscow would not accept such
an escalation of Western military intervention
without the specific, unambiguous mandate of the
United Nations Security Council.
As for
the "reset" with the US, Lavrov, in typical
Russian humor, added that Moscow continued to
figure out whether the reset was indeed a reset
(perezagruzka) or a peregruzka
(overcharge). The difference might seem marginal -
the mere absence of a consonant and a vowel - but
appearances can be deceptively simple.
Lavrov made a fair judgment: "I think the
reset is working, after all. We, though, do not
seek to call it the reset, as we had always been
ready for equal partnership and mutually
beneficial projects, but the US Republican
administration had tried to act a little
differently. So when Barack Obama and [Vice
President] Joe Biden announced the reset, we
welcomed it. They have reset the American attitude
toward the Russian Federation, and we are trying,
of course, to reciprocate."
On his part,
Zardari will use the opportunity of his visit to
Moscow to probe what there is in this nebulous
business of the so-called US-Russia reset, for
Pakistan. Indeed, there could be a lot -
especially if the Americans allow the current
adrenalin flow to assume a torrential nature and
conclude it could take Pakistan for granted in any
Afghan settlement.
But that isn't all. The
Kremlin knows that the alchemy of the US-Pakistan
relationship has changed following Abbottabad.
Pakistan faces grave insecurities in the period
ahead and is looking for regional support systems.
Russia can offer a lot - membership in the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization, to begin with,
at the alliance's summit meeting in June in
Astana.
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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