The war of poses

By Swapan Dasgupta

In the world of Punjabi humour, Nattha Singh and Prem Singh may well be the same thing (or Singh), but it was a cruel joke that Islamabad inflicted last Tuesday night when it clarified that Sarabjit Singh had in fact been mistaken for Surjeet Singh. The sheer insensitivity of this wilful mix-up apart, the incident, however, served to confirm once again—as if further confirmation was needed—that when it comes to the bilateral relationship with India, the last word doesn’t belong to either the President or the Prime Minister.

This unfortunate reminder of the quirks of Pakistani democracy is, however, timely. For the past year or so, an influential section of India’s foreign policy establishment has made the strengthening of Islamabad’s civilian government one of its main objectives. More than that, they readily believed that the war-like situation along the Durand Line and growing frostiness in US-Pakistan relations had actually helped tilt the balance against the military. Last Tuesday’s midnight clarification should help to inject a much-needed dose of realism into the official Indian perception of Pakistan.

President Asif Ali Zardari may indeed be a jolly fellow, a man who genuinely believes that cross-border trade is better than costly trench warfare. Unfortunately, neither he nor the well-meaning cosmopolitan set that frequently travel to India to preach aman ki asha, count for too much in Pakistan’s power equations. True, a military establishment that has been shown to be quite helpless against the repeated violations of Pakistan’s sovereignty by US Special Forces, isn’t quite what it was in the heydays of General Zia-ul Haq and General Pervez Musharraf. It has shown itself to be quite ragged round the edges. Yet, in a country replete with multiple power centres—that include the US-hating, India-loathing Islamist radicals—the cantonments still have a nominal upper hand. And when the military combines with the Islamists—as they did on the Sarabjit Singh issue—they become all-powerful.

This is a fundamental truth that India has been trying to impress upon world leaders from the day Osama bin Laden’s suicide bombers destroyed the twin towers in New York and attacked the Pentagon in September 2001. Last May, after the Abbottabad operation confirmed the presence of Osama in the heart of the Pakistan military establishment, the US has come round to the view that what India and, for that matter, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, have been saying for so long is right. It is now recognised in Washington that far from being a part of the solution, Pakistan is central to the problem.

When President Barack Obama assumed power in 2008, there was nervousness in New Delhi that the cosy relationship established with President George W. Bush would be unsettled. Indeed, some of Obama’s early utterances triggered concern in India over the future direction of US policy in the region. Today, all those misgivings have been dispelled—at least as far as Pakistan is concerned. If President Bush, despite his long-term commitment to a rising India, was still willing to give Pakistan an extraordinary amount of leeway, President Obama has shown himself to be completely exasperated with Pakistan. The sheer ferocity of the drone attacks is, for all practical purposes, tantamount to a US declaration of war against Pakistan.

What has been witnessed in the past couple of years is the unravelling of a US-Pakistan alliance that had been forged in the early days of the Cold War. Having been made suckers for long, the US attitude towards Pakistan is distinctly vengeful. Washington, it would seem, is out to punish the Pakistan military for its duplicity and treachery. The quiet role played by the US in nudging Saudi Arabia to extradite Zabiuddin Ansari, alias Abu Jundal, to India earlier this week, would suggest that the pusillanimity evident in the A.Q. Khan controversy may be a thing of the past. The US now wants Pakistan’s dirty linen to be exposed to the world—even if that involves admitting the earlier gullibility of the State Department and CIA.

Even if it is bad form to gloat over the misfortunes of a neighbour, India can afford to take a we-told-you-so attitude. Yet, it is inexplicable that a section of the Indian establishment seems to be deeply embarrassed at Pakistan’s embarrassment. Having an independent foreign policy is always a noble goal. Keeping an arm’s length from the US and other NATO forces has earned India tremendous goodwill and secured some leverage in Afghanistan. Is there now an attempt to tell a worried Islamabad that India will keep its distance from the US-Pakistan divorce proceedings? That India will do its bit to prevent Pakistan from being engulfed in a siege mentality?

Obviously there is. Why else did the Cabinet Committee on Security feel obliged to repudiate yet another attempt to secure the demilitarisation of Siachen? What explains the concern in South Block that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s anxiety to visit Pakistan before 2014 with some grand gesture of reconciliation may result in some foreign policy missteps?

Fortunately for India, the scope for unilateral action on the part of a beleaguered Government is very limited. The UPA Government no longer has the capacity to take bold initiatives. Pragmatism should deem that India should confine itself to modest, baby steps in its Pakistan policy. Bold initiatives necessitate a Pakistan at peace with itself. That, tragically, is a distant hope.  

Asian Age/ Deccan Chronicle, June 29, 2012

Seize the moment in Afghanistan

By Swapan Dasgupta

Last Friday marked the 10^th anniversary of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, exactly 26 days after Osama bin Laden’s jihadis destroyed the twin towers in New York and attacked the Pentagon. It was an occasion marked by umpteen “Troops out” demonstrations in Western cities and campuses—a testimony to how easily the steely determination of 2001 has yielded way to the hopeless despondency of 2011.

Yet, there were the proverbial loose ends in evidence. In a letter to The Times (London), the time honoured way of drawing attention to an issue, 19 women urged world leaders to ensure that “women’s rights are not traded away in any political settlement with the Taleban.” “You cannot make peace”, they wrote, “by leaving half the population out.”

At a time when the dominant discourse within the British establishment centres on drawing a distinction between the malevolent extremism of the Al Qaeda and the conservative traditionalism of the Taleban that basically wants to be left alone to do its own thing, it is heartening that there are people around to remind governments of the civilising mission that formed the sub-text of Operation Enduring Freedom. Just because the war hasn’t gone according to a hastily written script, does not necessarily imply that it was along a misadventure.

Today, it is only the military establishment on both sides of the Atlantic that argues against a policy of instant disengagement from Afghanistan. The so-called “gains” from last year’s “surge”, they say, must not be frittered away by any hasty withdrawal and the troops must stay in that country till 2014 at least. Predictably, this military assessment goes against the tide of popular feeling in the West. The overall consensus is that this is an unwinnable war and, as such, it is prudent to leave Afghanistan to God and anarchy.

Recent developments in Afghanistan have bolstered the arguments of those favouring a unilateral disengagement. The back channel talks with the Taleban have, quite understandably, made little progress. A Taleban convinced the West has lost the will to fight won’t be terribly accommodating; it can afford to prevaricate. More important, the Taleban has demonstrated through this year that it has the capacity to strike at will and penetrate the deepest security walls: the assassinations of Ahmad Wali Karzai and former President Rabbani and the attack on the ISAF headquarters and US Embassy tell a grim story.

The only positive outcome of the military slide is that the US has finally been forced into open acknowledgement of the fact that the preconditions of positive engagement with the Taleban won’t be possible as long as Pakistan persists with its double game. What India used to say about Pakistani sponsorship of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed is now being said by the US in the context of the Haqqani network, a group also said to be responsible for the attacks on the Indian Embassy in Kabul. In the past, when President Karzai used to point an accusing finger at Pakistan and charge it with harbouring Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, a sanctimonious West used to hurl counter-charges of corruption and nepotism at him. Now there is a subdued realisation that the concerns of the Afghan Government should also have been taken on board.

Over the past few years and more precisely since President Obama entered the White House, the importance of a Taliban-free Afghanistan has been lost sight of. The Karzai administration has a long list of shortcomings which are well known. However, it is a marked improvement from the darkness that enveloped Afghanistan from the Communist coup in 1978 to the collapse of the Taliban in 2001. These 23 years saw a once vibrant society regress into medievalism.

Since 2001, Afghanistan has come a long way, and it is important to not lose sight of the progress. The sight of nervous, sometimes trigger happy, foreign troops patrolling the streets and highways offends Afghan pride and often gives the Taleban resistance a nationalist flavour. But this is offset by the medievalism of a movement that equates women with chattel and treats ethnic minorities as targets of purification. A second Taleban government in Kabul may refrain from hosting those intent on bombing Spanish trains and the London Underground, but it will not display a similar restraint when it comes to India or, for that matter, Pakistan. The generals in Rawalpindi imagine that they control the Taleban and, therefore, by implication, will regain the strategic depth in Afghanistan. In the process, they may find that Pakistan too is a very different place.

Hitherto, India has played a modest role in Afghanistan and concentrated on good works and institution building programmes. New Delhi was always wary of overdoing things for fear that the West would see it as an attempt to replay the Indo-Pakistan game in a third country. Now with the West in retreat and Pakistan having overplayed its devilish hand, there is an opening for India. Last week’s pact with Afghanistan opens up a window of enhanced cooperation, particularly, the training of its army and police. Afghanistan wants a greater Indian role and, perhaps, a measure of involvement.

The problem isn’t India’s willingness to do its bit. It is a question of India’s ability to respond imaginatively, efficiently and, above all, discreetly. Above all, it is a question of prioritising a friend over a hostile neighbour. 

Sunday Pioneer, October 9, 2011