For some years now, and certainly since the catastrophic 9/11 attacks, there has been a great deal of talk about the augmenting convergence of interests and perspectives between India and the US, and, despite historical suspicions, some hiccups and several irritants, the graph of relationships has shown continuous, though gradual, improvement. The character, content and atmospherics of President George Bush’s visit to India suggest that Indo-US relations have arrived at the end of the beginning, and are now geared to move significantly forward.
The inherent conflict of interests and perspectives between the political culture and society that is Pakistan, and those of the US, has also been vividly in evidence over these intervening years. After the successful end of the anti-Soviet campaign in Afghanistan, there was a natural and progressive disengagement on America’s part from the unstable, militarized, Islamist ‘republic’. This was abruptly reversed after 9/11, as perceptions of short-term strategic concerns and of Pakistan’s purported centrality in the ‘war on terror’ forced a mistaken reorientation of American policy, reviving a network of supporters at Washington who ignored accumulating evidence of Pakistan’s sponsorship of terrorism, violation of democratic and human rights, widespread nuclear proliferation, and the most extraordinary range of lawless behaviour in the international sphere, to package and project the country as a close friend and necessary ally to a credulous American public and policy community. Evidence of the error of this approach has been mounting, as Pakistan spirals into disorder under its ‘strong leader’, General Pervez Musharraf, and, at the same time, remains a primary sponsor and safe haven for terrorism – both domestic and international. Finally, however, the contours of the Bush stop-over at Islamabad suggest that, for Pakistan, relations with the US are now poised at the 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 these movements is, however, substantially both necessary and inexorable. Pakistan’s unnatural strategic overreach, extended engagement with terrorism and Islamist extremism, and persistent political instability, have generated a blowback that threatens to sweep the country into widening disorder, and condemns it to necessary strategic irrelevance in the medium and long term. It is significant that every one of a large number of US strategic projections currently available, with time frames ranging from 2020 to 2050, confirm this strategic irrelevance. Conversely, the stability of India’s democracy and the increasing proportions and dynamism of its economy have underlined its importance in the same projected scenarios. Despite the personal proclivities of the leaders of the current US Administration, as well as the often highly personalized basis of decision making, it is inevitable, consequently, that US policy eventually shifts to align more consistently with US strategic projections.
Pakistan will, of course, vigorously contest these emerging trends, but its capacities to do so successfully are increasingly suspect. General Musharraf did arrange for another ritual slaughter of over a hundred ‘Al Qaeda militants’ in the North Waziristan Agency, to coincide with the Bush visit – but the US President did not appear to be overly impressed and simply encouraged him to do more in the war on terror.
The nuclear issue – rather than terrorism and Kashmir – dominated what is publicly known of President Bush’s tour of both India and Pakistan, and it was on this point that the long-flagellated ‘hyphenation’ of US relations with India and Pakistan was abruptly shattered. Bush unambiguously declared, when General Musharraf pressed for a comparable deal on civil nuclear cooperation at Islamabad: “Pakistan and India are different countries with different needs and different histories… as we proceed forward, our strategy will take in effect those well-known differences.”
The shock and disappointment in Islamabad has been palpable. Foreign Minister Khurshid 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, but most Pakistani commentators appeared to be in agreement that the country had gained little, indeed, that the visit “did more harm to relations between the two nations”.
The visit will also do a great deal of harm to Pakistan’s increasingly beleaguered Dictator. In the run-up to the Bush visit, demonstrations against the Danish cartoons initially orchestrated by sarkari (state sponsored) jehadi organisations had inadvertently acquired a momentum of their own, and had taken on the character of an anti-Musharraf, anti-Bush and anti-US campaign. The Karachi suicide bombing at the US Consulate on March 2, the eve of President Bush’s visit to Pakistan, in which an American diplomat was among the four killed, did little to ease tensions, though Bush did demonstrate solidarity by refusing to cancel the stopover at Islamabad because of “terrorists and killers”. Crucially, however, Musharraf very desperately needed something substantial to offset domestic perceptions and the fundamentalist lobby’s projection that he was paying too high a price for US support, and that he was an “American stooge”. This, despite efforts to suggest that much was in the pipeline, he did not receive. Instead, there was a pro forma homily on the need to restore democracy, and an embarrassing expression of the hope that the elections of 2007 would be “open and honest”. It is significant, within this context, to note, as Pakistani commentator Mohammad Shehzad does, that President Bush is “the fifth American President to visit Pakistan and on all five occasions, a democratic government was not in place.” On Kashmir, there was little more than an exhortation “for the leaders of both countries (India and Pakistan) to step up and lead”. Worse, for the first time, Bush openly suggested that Musharraf’s commitment to the war on terror was under review: “Part of my mission today was to determine whether or not the President is as committed as he has been in the past to bringing these terrorists to justice”. The conclusion, “and he is”, could only slightly soften the sting of the initial observation, particularly given Islamabad’s continuing and manifest bad faith on the sponsorship of and support to terrorism.
There are gradual, but tectonic shifts presently occurring in Asia’s strategic architecture, and President Bush’s visit, like that of his predecessor, President Bill Clinton in 2000, confirms these. Transient accidents of history – including perceived imperatives arising out of the 9/11 events – may momentarily militate against these broad movements, but cannot significantly alter the inexorable direction and momentum of the flow of history.
The writer is the Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management
Courtesy : South Asia Terrorism Portal
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