Ends And Beginnings

For some years now, and certainly since the catastrophic 9/11 attacks, therehas been a great deal of talk about the augmenting convergence of interests andperspectives between India and the US, and, despite historical suspicions, somehiccups and several irritants, the graph of relationships has shown continuous,though gradual, improvement. The character, content and atmospherics ofPresident George Bush’s visit to India suggest that Indo-US relations havearrived at the end of the beginning, and are now geared to move significantlyforward.

The inherent conflict of interests and perspectives between the politicalculture and society that is Pakistan, and those of the US, has also been vividlyin evidence over these intervening years. After the successful end of theanti-Soviet campaign in Afghanistan, there was a natural and progressivedisengagement on America’s part from the unstable, militarized, Islamist ‘republic’.This was abruptly reversed after 9/11, as perceptions of short-term strategicconcerns and of Pakistan’s purported centrality in the ‘war on terror’forced a mistaken reorientation of American policy, reviving a network ofsupporters at Washington who ignored accumulating evidence of Pakistan’ssponsorship of terrorism, violation of democratic and human rights, widespreadnuclear proliferation, and the most extraordinary range of lawless behaviour inthe international sphere, to package and project the country as a close friendand necessary ally to a credulous American public and policy community.

Evidence of the error of this approach has been mounting, as Pakistan spiralsinto disorder under its ‘strong leader’, General Pervez Musharraf, and, atthe same time, remains a primary sponsor and safe haven for terrorism – bothdomestic and international. Finally, however, the contours of the Bush stop-overat Islamabad suggest that, for Pakistan, relations with the US are now poised atthe beginning of the end.

No doubt, a great distance remains yet to be travelled – in both directions– and the course of history is notoriously convoluted. The direction of thesemovements is, however, substantially both necessary and inexorable. Pakistan’sunnatural strategic overreach, extended engagement with terrorism and Islamistextremism, and persistent political instability, have generated a blowback thatthreatens to sweep the country into widening disorder, and condemns it tonecessary strategic irrelevance in the medium and long term. It is significantthat every one of a large number of US strategic projections currentlyavailable, with time frames ranging from 2020 to 2050, confirm this strategicirrelevance. Conversely, the stability of India’s democracy and the increasingproportions and dynamism of its economy have underlined its importance in thesame projected scenarios. Despite the personal proclivities of the leaders ofthe current US Administration, as well as the often highly personalized basis ofdecision making, it is inevitable, consequently, that US policy eventuallyshifts to align more consistently with US strategic projections.

Pakistan will, of course, vigorously contest these emerging trends, but itscapacities to do so successfully are increasingly suspect. General Musharraf didarrange for another ritual slaughter of over a hundred ‘Al Qaeda militants’in the North Waziristan Agency, to coincide with the Bush visit – but the USPresident did not appear to be overly impressed and simply encouraged him to domore in the war on terror.

The nuclear issue – rather than terrorism and Kashmir – dominated what ispublicly known of President Bush’s tour of both India and Pakistan, and it wason this point that the long-flagellated ‘hyphenation’ of US relations withIndia and Pakistan was abruptly shattered. Bush unambiguously declared, whenGeneral Musharraf pressed for a comparable deal on civil nuclear cooperation atIslamabad: "Pakistan and India are different countries with different needsand different histories… as we proceed forward, our strategy will take ineffect those well-known differences."

The shock and disappointment in Islamabad has been palpable. Foreign MinisterKhurshid Mehmood Kasuri did bluster on, in a TV interview, about Pakistan’s‘position of strength’, ‘defensive parity in South Asia’, and the ‘fact’that an agreement on ‘mutual investment’ could have been pushed through, butmost Pakistani commentators appeared to be in agreement that the country hadgained little, indeed, that the visit "did more harm to relations between thetwo nations".

The visit will also do a great deal of harm to Pakistan’s increasinglybeleaguered Dictator. In the run-up to the Bush visit, demonstrations againstthe Danish cartoons initially orchestrated by sarkari jehadiorganisations had inadvertently acquired a momentum of their own, and had takenon the character of an anti-Musharraf, anti-Bush and anti-US campaign. TheKarachi suicide bombing at the US Consulate on March 2, the eve of PresidentBush’s visit to Pakistan, in which an American diplomat was among the fourkilled, did little to ease tensions, though Bush did demonstrate solidarity byrefusing to cancel the stopover at Islamabad because of "terrorists andkillers".

Crucially, however, Musharraf very desperately needed something substantialto offset domestic perceptions and the fundamentalist lobby’s projection thathe was paying too high a price for US support, and that he was an "Americanstooge". This, despite efforts to suggest that much was in the pipeline, hedid not receive. Instead, there was a pro forma homily on the need torestore democracy, and an embarrassing expression of the hope that the electionsof 2007 would be "open and honest".

It is significant, within this context, to note, as Pakistani commentatorMohammad Shehzad does, that President Bush is "the fifth American President tovisit Pakistan and on all five occasions, a democratic government was not inplace." On Kashmir, there was little more than an exhortation "for theleaders of both countries (India and Pakistan) to step up and lead". Worse,for the first time, Bush openly suggested that Musharraf’s commitment to thewar on terror was under review: "Part of my mission today was to determinewhether or not the President is as committed as he has been in the past tobringing these terrorists to justice". The conclusion, "and he is", couldonly slightly soften the sting of the initial observation, particularly givenIslamabad’s continuing and manifest bad faith on the sponsorship of andsupport to terrorism.

There are gradual, but tectonic shifts presently occurring in Asia’sstrategic architecture, and President Bush’s visit, like that of hispredecessor, President Bill Clinton in 2000, confirms these. Transient accidentsof history – including perceived imperatives arising out of the 9/11 events– may momentarily militate against these broad movements, but cannotsignificantly alter the inexorable direction and momentum of the flow ofhistory.

Ajai Sahni is Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for ConflictManagement. Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the SouthAsia Terrorism Portal