Carrots for India, sticks for
Pakistan By Dinesh Sharma
United States Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton's visit to India on July 18-19 could not
have come at a more opportune time. The expressed
purpose was to advance the civil nuclear deal
between the countries; provide an update on the
AfPak region; offer cooperation on the recent
Mumbai bombings and discuss upcoming
India-Pakistan meetings.
While her visit
seems to have met these objectives, the
deteriorating relationship with Pakistan in the
post-Osama bin Laden world formed the chaotic
backdrop to the strategic dialogue.
In the
aftermath of the Mumbai terror attacks that
claimed the lives of at least 20 people, as
tensions escalate between India
and Pakistan, on the one hand,
and the US and Pakistan on the other, there are
many reasons why the Indian psyche would have
resonated positively to a strong female
protagonist who could take charge of the
situation, or at least give reassurances that the
future will turn out fine no matter how terrifying
the times.
Indians by habit are
conditioned to idealize female authority figures
and elevate them to the status of demigods. This
is certainly true of politics, where women
candidates have a long history of running and
winning against the staunchest of male opponents;
former premier Indira Gandhi; the chief minister
of the state of Tamil Nadu, Jayalalithaa Jayaram;
Mayawati, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh
state; Sonia Gandhi, the head of the Congress
party that heads the ruling coalition government;
Indian President Pratibha Patil, come to mind.
As a leading woman politician in the
world, Clinton found a welcome reception in India,
feeding off the reservoir of projective
identifications that Indians shower on her -
adoration, respect, deification - especially now
that such praise may be in short supply at home.
Interestingly, Sonia Gandhi and Clinton
are both products of the post-World War II
generation, both born in 1947 - the year India
gained independence from Britain. Gandhi hails
from a small village in Italy, while Clinton is
from the Midwest. Both are cosmopolitan, educated,
Western women who have seen the world from the
perspective of other people.
Both entered
politics later in life, following on the trails of
their husband's political careers. In the case of
Sonia, her spouse was the late prime minister
Rajiv Gandhi; Hillary is married to former
president Bill Clinton.
The allure of
dynastic power still holds sway in India. This is
the country over which Indira Gandhi ruled
throughout the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s with an
iron fist. Throughout her reign, "India is Indira
and Indira is India" was the commonly heard
slogan, even from the mouths of very young
children.
Thus, the space Hillary Clinton
occupies in the minds of Indians is elevated not
only by the political culture that is hospitable
to women politicians, but the archeology of
womanhood where goddess-worship has been central
to the Hindu cosmology for thousands of years.
Unlike the West, where monotheism has written
women out of everyday religion and scriptures, in
India the gods are oftentimes females, or at least
androgynous.
However, with the onset of
globalization, India has opened the door not just
to direct foreign investment but to the
ever-changing conceptions of womanhood and family
life. As a result, the power of the devi or
goddess in the household, with 10 arms and various
guises, has only increased.
Nowhere is
this more apparent than in the stockpile of images
circulated by Bollywoood, where Western women are
no longer simply typecast as tramps and cabaret
dancers, but increasingly play supporting roles
alongside leading heroines. Indeed, globalization
in India has opened inroads not just for Indian
women, but for their Western counterparts as well.
It is hard to tell these days who is the
real feerangi or a foreigner: do the
Indians want everything Western or do the
Westerners want to be Indian, to adopt Indian
names, dress, customs and lifestyles?
Across the border in Pakistan, the
increasing pace of globalization has created a
backlash against everything American and Western.
Clinton's recent trip is a reminder once again of
how India is moving ahead while Pakistan needs to
catch up.
Women have never held power in
Pakistan for any significant duration to impact
the social structure. The military instead has
dominated the affairs of state. In neighboring
Bangladesh, another Islamic society, women have
had much longer tenures as the heads of state and
the country seems much better for it.
As
Clinton was flying off to India, the head of
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI),
Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, was wrapping
up negotiations with Marc Grossman, the head of
the US's AfPak policy, about the curtailment of
US$800 million in US aid to Pakistan.
When
asked about the exact nature of the discussions, a
State Department spokesmen said, "I mean, you can
imagine that they talked about our relationship
going forward, both the challenges that we're
facing but also the cooperation that remains and
the importance of that cooperation in terms of
counter-terrorism assistance but also in terms of
civilian assistance."
Pasha demanded that
Pakistan's sovereignty should not be compromised
again, according to Daniel Markey of the Center
for Foreign Relations. This is something the US is
willing to grant, but only with strict conditions.
Pakistan wanted the reversal of the $800 million
aid, but that is contingent on specific demands,
given the saga of Abbotabad, the Pakistani town in
which US special forces killed al-Qaeda leader Bin
Laden under the noses of Pakistani security.
The United States demanded that Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) training officials be
allowed back into Pakistan, with greater oversight
over local military and police officials, and
greater cooperation and investigation into the
circumstances surrounding Bin Laden's former
compound.
While 87 CIA officials have been
granted visas to go back into Pakistan, the
greater cooperation surrounding the investigation
of Bin Laden's compound has not yet materialized.
Pakistan has not been willing to release the
doctor, Shakil Afridi, who infiltrated the
compound to collect Bin Laden's biological
evidence. Also left unresolved has been the effort
Pakistan is willing to make against the
Pakistani-based Haqqani militant network that
plays a key role in the Afghan insurgency.
A few days after Pasha's visit, the US
Federal Bureau of Investigation released yet
another damaging report implicating the role of
the ISI in lobbying the US government. Two
Pakistani Americans have been charged with
secretly working for the ISI in the shadows of
Washington. According to the US Department of
Justice:
Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, 62, a US
citizen and resident of Fairfax, Va, and Zaheer
Ahmad, 63, a US citizen and resident of
Pakistan, are charged in a one-count criminal
complaint in the Eastern District of Virginia.
The complaint alleges that the defendants have
conspired to: 1) act as an agent of a foreign
principal without registering with the Attorney
General in violation of the Foreign Agents
Registration Act (FARA); and 2) falsify,
conceal, and cover up material facts they had a
duty to disclose in matters within the
jurisdiction of Executive Branch agencies of the
US government.
The complaint claims
that Fai has been involved in a decades-long
scheme to hide Pakistan's involvement to shape the
US government's position on disputed Kashmir with
India through a lobbying think-tank. "His handlers
in Pakistan allegedly funneled millions through
the Kashmir Center to contribute to US elected
officials, fund high-profile conferences, and pay
for other efforts that promoted the Kashmiri cause
to decision-makers in Washington."
It is
difficult to estimate how far the carrot and stick
approach deployed by the US will succeed in
changing the hearts and minds inside Pakistan or
the ISI. According to Daniel Markey of the Center
for Foreign Relations, there is a real sense of
frustration in the US government about Pakistan.
Certainly, any strategic dialogue between
the US, India and Pakistan will only improve once
the root cause of the conflict has been shown the
light of day. As Aatish Taseer, son of the slain
Pakistani governor of Punjab province has
described, the clash between India and Pakistan is
rooted in their differing visions of national
identity.
In 1947, India chose to define
itself as a secular nation, led by people like
Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru and others. In
reaction to a multicultural, multi-religious and
pluralistic India, which is consistent with the
linguistic, ethnographic and religious demography
of the region before any lines were drawn in the
sand and with the coming pace of globalization,
Pakistan chose an exclusively Islamic path,
envisioned by the poet Mohammad Iqbal. This
alternative vision of Pakistan has run into
trouble from both within and without, due in large
part to a lack of representative democracy and
military rule.
India's rise over the past
two decades and the reversal in the fortunes of
Pakistan, seen as "the calamity of Mohammad
Iqbal's unrealized utopia" might explain the
bitterness and rage that many Pakistanis feel
towards India and the US.
While the carrot
and stick approach to diplomacy might force
Pakistan to conform to US demands, it may not
substantively resolve the problem of terrorism
rooted in a radically different vision of the
world. This is the hard task that awaits many
modern Pakistani men and women.
Dinesh Sharma is the author
of Barack Obama in Hawaii and Indonesia: the
Making of a Global President (ABC-CLIO/Praeger,
2011.
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