Indo-Pak Dialogue: No Euphoria in India

By P.K. Kothari

India's 1800 about turn on resuming dialogue with Pakistan and delinking it from the stoppage of cross-border terrorism as a pre-condition, does not come as a surprise. The nation has often felt let down by the lack of vision and absence of grit and determination, displayed by the political leadership. Oft-repeated rhetoric on Pakistan has been unmatched by action.The leadership has never acted decisively and boldly when necessary. Tendency to react in a knee-jerk fashion and yielding, too often, to external pressure has become part of strategic culture, evolved by the NDA government.

American Pressure:

Extending the olive branch to Pakistan, the Prime Minister, Mr Vajpayee, at the Srinagar press conference argued: “What has happened in Iraq is a Chetavni (warning) to the rest of the world, especially to the developing countries. India and Pakistan should sit down and sort out their problems. Inviting a third party will only expand the problem".

Of late, U.S. officials have been trying to arm-twist India into opening dialogue with Pakistan, by issuing nuanced statements. The CIA Director, George Tennet, stated recently : “The cycles of tension between India and Pakistan are getting shorter. Pakistan continues to support groups that resist India's presence in Kashmir, in an effort to bring India to the negotiating table".

The U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage stated that the Indo-Pakistan situation was totally frightening and the need of the hour was to “stop the weakening of international security architecture and put an end to the spread of nuclear weapons". He went on to praise Musharraf, as a man of his word, who had been able to curb the infiltration of Muslim militants from Pakistan into Kashmir. Mr Armitage also praised his role as reliable US ally : “In the war against terrorism, General Musharraf and his colleagues in Islamabad have been absolutely spectacular in breaking up terrorist cells, most recently one directed against our consul in Karachi, for which we are enormously grateful”. Applauding America's pro-Pak tilt, Pakistani Foreign Minister, Khurshid Ahmed Kasuri praised U.S., saying it was an “honest broker”, playing positive role.

Ground Reality :

The plain fact is, really nothing has changed in Islamabad's attitude towards India and terrorism. Since the Prime Minister's April 19 speech in Srinagar, J&K has already witnessed four bloody 'fidayeen' attacks - at Bandipore, Radio Kashmir (Srinagar), Tral (Pulwama) and Drug-Mullah (Kupwara). There have been two attempts on the life of State Finance Minister, Mr Muzaffar Hussain Beig. As per official estimates, 350 terrorists (150 alone in April) have sneaked into Jammu during the past four months.

Fearing another brutal summer ahead, Ambassador Lalit Man Singh, told a gathering on Indo-U.S. relations, at the University of California, Los Angels: "Close to 100 training camps have been spotted across the LOC, holding some 3,000 trained terrorists to be sent to India. An additional 1,500 are already on the LOC, waiting to slip across, with the active assistance of the Pakistan armed forces...Terrorists leaders in Pakistan have been released from detention and are being freely allowed to mobilise funds for Jehad". Pakistan has also begun diverting Taliban elements into Kashmir, to deflect U.S. pressure and to replenish the terrorist ranks. It has since equipped terrorists with Anza and many other SAMs.

Referring to the ground reality, Stephen Cohen, a Brooklyn scholar observes: “The structural differences between the two countries are deep. They seem to be conspiring to make the Americans believe that they are serious”.

Compulsions :

U.S. pressure, Pakistan's internal compulsions, lack of grit to deal with a rogue state and rethinking on the “rigid” stand have all figured in the calculations that went into Vajpayee's offer. The NDA government has been quick to sense priority to Israel-Palestine problem, North Korea and Kashmir as the post-Iraq agenda of US.

Even at the height of Iraqi campaign, Colin Powell, the U.S. Secretary of State told the New York Times : “India, Pakistan and the whole of the sub-continent problem was part of the “broader agenda” that the U.S. planned to go back to after Iraq. Americans also warned India against pre-emptive strike against Pakistan. Joanne Prokopowicz, the State Department Spokeswoman said : "Any attempts to draw parallels between the Iraq and Kashmir situations are wrong and are overwhelmed by the differences between them".

There is a strong view in Delhi that the "rigid" stand, so far, has only served to reduce the space for Kashmir-related diplomatic manoeuvres. Pakistan's internal compulsions may have also figured in extending the olive branch. Musharraf's lack of domestic credibility, slowing down of foreign direct investment and increasing friction between U.S. and Pakistan over latter's covert support to Al-Qaeda-Taliban elements, have all influenced the Indian perceptions. Pakistanis believe, a dialogue with India, would help decrease U.S. pressure over its double-faced role vis-a-vis Al-Qaeda.

In the perceptions of the present NDA-Govt., New Delhi cannot engineer a change in Islamabad's behaviour without help from U.S. This assessment makes Delhi yield too often to American pressure. Manoj Joshi, a Defence expert elaborates : "New Delhi's current predicament is palpable and in part of its own making. Indian officials claim that the country was close to ordering its forces to go to war at two different points of time in 2002. But the final order did not come and a major reason for this is that India lacks the military capacity to punish Pakistan, which continues to facilitate the work of Jehadi terrorists in the state. India has little choice now but to lean on the U.S. to check Pakistan".

Security Threat:

Despite the optimism displayed in official rhetoric on both sides recently, the mood in India is full of scepticism and one of betrayal by Americans. Many top security experts of the country have done well to focus on the long-term Pakistani threat to Indian security.

In a brilliantly researched paper, read to a distinguished gathering in New Delhi recently, Prof. Satish Kumar stated Pakistan poses a long-term security threat to India. He said this was inherent in the nature of Pakistan state, its ideology, its power structure and the imperatives that determine the behaviour of its ruling establishment. He warns: "These factors are not likely to change in the next 20 to 30 years. India has to cope with this kind of adversary. Its strategic capabilities and thinking, its national will and character must respond to the situation accordingly".

Mr. J.N. Dixit, former Foreign Secretary concurs with this assessment. Delving deep into the official documents related to strategic planning by Pakistan concerning its relation with India, he opines: "whatever admonitions and pressures that the U.S. may generate on Pakistan, there is not going to be any qualitative or positive change in Pakistan’s policies towards J&K". Arguing that alienating J&K from India is not a limited one issue objective for it, Mr. Dixit concludes: "The objective is the long-term strategic objective of the Pakistani power structure to destabilise India by generating violence and communal divisiveness and then fragmentation of India on the basis of centrifugal, ethno religious forces, which it seeks to create, sustain and encourage".

Mr. Dixit dismisses Pakistan's quest for dialogue as spurious, saying "its reiterations of insisting on a dialogue will be cover for these policy objectives and will also be an exercise in preventing world powers from understanding the substance of Pakistani machinations". Didn't Musharraf himself say, a month after Lahore Summit: "Low-Intensity conflict with India will continue even after the Kashmir issue is resolved".

Air Marshal (Retd.) R.S. Bedi explains Pakistani Schizophrenia in these terms : “Instead of striving to come up as an independent and powerful nation and developing economic and cultural relations with similar India for mutual development of both, Pakistan sought to move on an entirely different course. It chose to challenge India. It sought military parity, started to nibble at India’s vulnerable parts and began to patronize Indian Muslims. Ambition for leadership and its denial to India became its core foreign policy objective. Migrant Muslims from India who had an ideological bias against Hindu India and who formed the ruling elite of Pakistan emerged as an important factor behind anti-Indian stance”.

Independent Pakistani assessments have not been different. Hussain Haqqani, former Foreign Minister and a Carnegie scholar says, a feeling of insecurity against a much larger and “hostile” neighbour was the original source of Pakistani apprehensions about its nationhood. He argues that Pakistani attempts to destabilize India have been directly related to this sense of insecurity. In his opinion, over the years, structures of conflict have evolved, with the Pakistani establishment as the major beneficiary of maintaining hostility. He says, “the exclusion of Bhutto and Sharif from the political process has benefited the Islamist political parties. Their political power makes it difficult for politicians and intellectuals to advocate a settlement with India”.

Army-Mullah Nexus:

The political instability in Pakistan gave place to military bureaucracy, which thrives on hostility to India and exports terror as its official policy. Army dominates virtually every section of national life. There has also been growing trends of Islamisation within Army. A western expert on Pak army, Stephen Cohen analyses : “The present arrangement of a military-led or influenced government will prevail indefinitely, but not transform Pakistan. Rebuilding weakened institutions is pointless if the Central operational principles of the Pakistani establishment remain hatred and distrust of India and intolerance of diversity at Home”. Pak army, in fact, needs Kashmir issue for its own survival. It is a pretext to paper over internal contradictions in Pakistan.

Absence of any political infrastructure has led the Jehadi groups to occupy the available space. The fundamentalist groups are collaborating with the army-led government in fomenting subversion in India. Farrukh Saleem, a noted Pakistani analyst observes : “The military government is now engaged in a dicey-double stance, appeasing the Americans in the international front and using the mullahs on the domestic front. Internal policy is all about derailing democracy and splitting up democratic forces. External policy is nothing but India-Centric. The Khaki and the mullahs both have an identical view of national identity and that of national security…Both use Islam and India to distract the population from real issues”.

Pakistan Army’s subversive role has been supplemented by the huge Jehadi infrastructure, built over the past two decades. It includes 40-50 thousand madrassas. There are today 200 thousand armed Jehadis in Pakistan, backed by over one million young people, Jehad oriented but not yet armed. According to one estimate, Pakistan’s defence budget-at Rs 180 billion-is supplemented by Rs 80 billion, collected by the ‘jehadi’ organizations for the “cause”.

What is alarming is that there is widespread public endorsement of jehadis in Pakistan. A recent poll in Pakistan showed 88% people believe that the holy Quran and Sunnah should be the source of all laws in Pakistan. And 64% of those polled agree that Pakistan’s security interests were served by supporting jehadi outfits in J&K.

Pak Intransigence:

For many reasons, Pakistan’s military believes it can continue to bleed India. One, India has been deterred from responding militarily to its provocations because of fear of nuclear escalation. Haqqani observes: “The possession of nuclear weapons has given the Pakistani elite a sense of invulnerability and has increased its willingness to consider options of unconventional warfare”. India’s empty rhetoric on pre-emptive strikes and failure to intimidate Pakistan, with unprecedented mobilization of its troops along the border, and their subsequent tame withdrawal, without achieving any of the explicitly declared objectives, reinforced Pakistan’s conviction that its nuclear posture had been able to put India on the defensive. Musharraf even claimed that Pakistani armed forces were able to defeat the enemy without fighting the war. This is an important reason for heightened terrorist activities in India lately.

U.S. Role :

Secondly, Pakistan army is convinced that it has the support of the U.S. not only in ruling the country, but also in receiving U.S. economic and military assistance, despite the provocations it indulges in against India. Pakistan, not without justification, has a belief that the U.S. A will not really do anything meaningful to embarrass it on cross-border terrorism.

Colin Powell, the U.S. Secretary of State describes Pakistan’s support for its Jehadis not as support for “terrorism” but as “infiltration”. He, no longer, insists that infiltration has to end. Powell wants us to be satisfied if it has been “reduced”. G. Parthasarthy laments: “By constantly speaking of the dangers of nuclear conflict, the U.S. in effect, reinforces Pakistan’s resort to nuclear blackmail.”

Even while U.S. is hunting Al-Qaeda and Taliban elements, it wants to keep Jehadi pressure on India to fulfill its narrow geo-political objectives. U.S. went out of its way to help Pakistan-over $ 1 billion in aid, renewed IMF and World Bank soft lending, international debt-rescheduling of over $12 billion and the promise to write off $1 billion in U.S. debt. Against this U.S. has been trying to put spokes in the wheel for India’s defence cooperation with Israel and burgeoning relationship with Iran and China.

Why U.S. still regards Pakistan as its front-line ally and overlooks Pakistan’s double-faced policy towards Al-Qaeda Jehadis and the dangers of its nuclear assets falling into the hands of Jehadis and other rogue states?

G. Parthasarthy observes: “The U.S. needs Pakistan in its hunt for terrorists in Afghanistan and in Pakistan itself. It has concluded that it should support Musharraf and the Pakistani Army to achieve its objectives. This is a relationship of political expediency, but one India cannot ignore”. In the view of Farrukh Saleem, a Pak analyst : “Pakistan produces nothing that can help America grow….our goals do not overlap America’s…America’s real interest in Pakistan, as a consequence, is that we do not become a rogue state and that we do not become an agent of instability in the region. No more, no less”.

Reaction :

However, Americans are not taking any chances, once their direct security interests are threatened. It has been demanding regular purges of anti-American elements in ISI and Army. The recent air crash, in which Pak Air Chief, a known anti-American, was killed has led to lot of speculation on conspiracy theories. On the nuclear assets, Jane’s Intelligence Digest (March 21) says, a U.S. contingency plan has been put in place to neutralize the threat of Pakistani nuclear assets and technology falling into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists. This follows revelation on the murder of Daniel Pearl, by Bernard Henry Levy, a French security expert.

The Prospect:

Even as India hopes to wrest few concessions in dialogue with Pakistan, the patriotic opinion is exercised over a number of issues-What options for pressure and measured retaliation are available to India should the terrorist violence escalate beyond a point? Secondly, do we have a long-term vision to deal with a rogue army that undermines democracy at home and promotes Jehad abroad.

The present, NDA government has put all its eggs in the American basket to bail out India from the mess in Kashmir. What it can lead to-G. Parthasarthy, India’s foremost expert on Pakistan and former Ambassador warns on a prophetic note : “Nations lose their independence, self-confidence and self-respect not by importing foreign technology, goods and services, but by mortgaging their minds to foreign doctrines and concepts”.