Asia Times: COMMENT: Myopic India's all-out 'isolate Pakistan' bid



	November 19, 1999	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

COMMENT: Myopic India's all-out 'isolate Pakistan' bid
By Praful Bidwai

NEW DELHI - The Indian government, pleased at the critical tone of the Durban Declaration of the Commonwealth summit pertaining to Pakistan, is going all-out to isolate the Pervez Musharraf regime further.

The Declaration deplored the ''unconstitutional overthrow'' of the Nawaz Sharif government. And its authors decided to suspend Pakistan from the councils of the Commonwealth, a 54-nation grouping largely composed of former British colonies.

Ironically, India's anti-Pakistan strategy may prove counter-productive, especially if New Delhi overplays its hand and puts itself on the defensive on the touchy Kashmir issue, on which it is vulnerable.

As India and the United States begin ministerial level talks in London on security and other issues, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has said the US should harden its stance on the military rulers, and that ''consideration of democracy isn't uppermost'' in the Clinton administration's scheme of things.

The Durban summit which ended November 15 resolved that ''no legitimacy should be accorded to the military regime and called for the restoration of civil democratic rule without delay'' and that Sharif be ''released immediately and that the rule of law in Pakistan be duly observed.'' The unusually strong resolution was partly a consequence of the anti-military sentiment in many Commonwealth governments, some of which have recently suffered from military takeovers. Nigeria, for instance, was especially vocal in condemning military coups after its experience of the brutality of General Sani Abacha's rule.

At Durban, India made an effort to get Pakistan suspended from the Commonwealth altogether, but failed. Part of the effort lay in emphasizing Nawaz Sharif's technically sound claim to be an elected prime minister. This borders on judging domestic political developments in another state - which the Commonwealth Charter does not quite permit.

Besides, India risks interference in its own affairs, which it otherwise fiercely resists. The Commonwealth communique says: ''We commit ourselves in partnership with civil society to promote processes that help to prevent or resolve conflicts in a peaceful manner, support measures that help to stabilize post-conflict situations and combat terrorism of all kinds.''

The phrase ''help to resolve conflict'' could create problems for New Delhi in respect of Kashmir and its northeast states like Nagaland, which have witnessed secessionist or autonomist movements which New Delhi has dealt with mainly by using force.

The Vajpayee government is following its present approach because it believes that that is the best way to build on the new cosiness in its relations with Washington after this summer's Kargil crisis. The war claimed over 1,000 casualties. The United States, rather uncharacteristically, sided with India and named Pakistan as violating the status quo in South Asia's nuclearized environment. There was clear evidence too of Pakistani infiltration of guerrillas across the Line of Control.

The two countries have since moved even closer as Washington gets more and more concerned about ''cross-border terrorism'' and Osama bin Laden. New Delhi believes that it can trap Washington in its own rhetoric of fighting terrorism and promoting democracy. Last weekend, Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh went as far as to say that the ''creation of an international climate of pressure (against Pakistan) is the first step'' before resumption of dialogue.

India has refused to recognize or deal with Gen Musharraf. It now makes a bilateral dialogue with Pakistan conditional upon its withdrawing support to terrorism. As the Indian foreign minister put it, Pakistan must ''stop calling for 'jehad' from every rooftop, every day and by every organization.''

New Delhi's obsessive refusal to deal with Gen Musharraf has nothing to do with a general aversion to military rulers. It has been happy to do brisk business with military rulers from Indonesia to the Middle East and Latin America, indeed even with Pakistan under its previous military ruler, Gen Zia-ul-Haq.

Nor is the ''cross-border terrorism'' new. Pakistan has long supported, armed, and trained jehadists and other guerrillas demanding independence for Kashmir, especially since a new militancy erupted in 1989-90.

The aversion to Gen Musharraf springs from three sources, two Pakistan-specific and one US-centred. New Delhi believes he was the real architect of the Kargil incursion. And secondly, it believes that some members of his new cabinet, such as former foreign minister Abdus Sattar are anti-India hardliners.

Many well-informed observers in Pakistan would contest this assessment and argue that Musharraf's cabinet is a mixed bag, including even representatives of liberal-minded civil society groups. But within the distorting prism of India-Pakistan suspicion and rivalry, darkly negative assessments prevail over more balanced, nuanced, ones.

However, the most important consideration seems to be New Delhi's hope that it could take advantage of Pakistan's present situation to enter into an exclusive strategic relationship or ''partnership'' with Washington. This will allow it to take the heat off itself on the Kashmir issue and on the equally thorny nuclear question.

This approach, which is a far cry from the principled non-aligned stance India professed for long years until the early 1990s, is deeply fraught. It risks alienating sober, sensible, public opinion not just in Pakistan, but also in India, which favours conciliation and peace, as the popularity of the February ''bus diplomacy'', with all its limitations, showed. It also injects dangerous hostility into the already tense India-Pakistan relationship, and makes normalization of relations and mutual cooperation difficult. This has menacing implications especially after the crossing of the nuclear threshold.

Moreover, if Gen Musharraf's government proves durable and gains some legitimacy thanks to ''populist'' policies such as unearthing tax dodgers, India will find it extremely awkward to deal with Islamabad. Tense India-Pakistan relations spell less, not more, security for the whole South Asian region. Already, India has dealt a blow to the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc), by torpedoing its summit. India stands to lose from Saarc's non- functioning.

Finally, in the long run, India has little to gain from an overly cosy relationship with Washington. The two countries', and people's, interests diverge widely. And a so-called strategic partnership between them cannot possibly be equal or fair.

This agenda may satisfy the elite's craving for recognition by a superpower, and of nuclear accommodation with it. But it can do nothing to promote genuine human security in South Asia or globally.

(Inter Press Service)