NEW DELHI, 21 October — Colin Powell must have left Delhi a happier man than he was when he arrived. It seems that the most serious problem he faced dealt with an article and it was not article of faith. It was merely an article of the English language.
Fifty and more years of the American response to Kashmir now boil down to whether the province that acceded to India some weeks after freedom is “the” central problem between India and Pakistan or “a” central issue.
So there we have it. All sides of this isosceles triangle are agreed on a number of things. India, Pakistan and the United States, are all agreed that there is no dispute about the fact that this is a/the problem. They are also in full concurrence that it is central. We just have to sort out the appended article, whether it is ‘the’ or ‘a’.
Maybe we should pause to check out whether every formulation in the previous paragraph is correct. The image used was that of a triangle. Is it still a triangle or has it become a four-sided rectangle? The secretary of state of the United States of America did mention, throwing in an “of course” as he did so, that the wishes of the Kashmiri people would have to be taken into account in any resolution of a/the problem. Powell must have been pleasantly surprised at the absence of any fuss at the phrase.
Not many months ago this particular phrase was considered disturbing enough by Delhi to destroy the Agra Summit. During those last frantic stages of ebbing goodwill in the lengthening shadows of the night, Pakistan seemed ready to accept our insistence on the inclusion of a phrase condemning cross-border terrorism if we in turn included a reference to the will of the Kashmiri people. We refused to consider this.
Powell seems to have encountered no such determination. Has anything changed? Or is it that we are more hospitable to Washington than we are to Islamabad? It is possible that while we are willing to stretch the Kashmir equation from a triangle to a rectangle, we do not quite want it to become a pentagon. The US always does manage to acquire two sides when offered merely one. That is the prerogative of all superpowers.
The greatest intelligence service in the world is common sense. You do not need the CIA or the KGB to tell you that Powell came to Delhi not to solve India’s problems but to solve America’s. Kashmir apparently was not very high on his agenda; it was merely an also-ran, which is perfectly understandable.
When Washington gets focused, which is rare enough, it tends to stay focused. The American concern at the moment is about a difficulty that could be even more precarious than the war in Afghanistan; the post-Taleban government, if there is going to be one. When the Americans last tried to form a Kabul government after a military vaictory they got so fed up that they washed both their hands and their feet and disappeared. This time they will have nowhere to hide. They will have to deliver an alternative government if not an alternative state, and ensure delivery of all the objectives of this war: the elimination of Afghanistan as a base for the promotion or encouragement of terrorism; good governance that ensures a better life for Afghans and stability within the country as well as the neighborhood; and of course the arrest and trial, in the US, of all those who they claim are involved in the attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, led principally by Osama Bin Laden. This is what Powell came to discuss in Delhi. In Islamabad, capital of a front-line country in the war (India, comparatively, is off-line) the agenda would have been more demanding in every sense of the word.
Pakistan has become a vehicle of American policy in Afghanistan, an instrument and a participant in a war that is unpopular in the country, but with no option except to be obedient. President Pervez Musharraf is in that area so familiar to Pakistan’s succession of leaders and generals, between a rock and a hard place.
Musharraf is wriggling in a trap, and seeking to do so with as much justification as he can claim. He has to pretend that this obedience is an exercise in Pakistan’s self-interest, that all the compromises in Pakistan’s western policy are compensated by gains on its eastern policy. Pakistan’s west starts with the Durand Line and ends with the Washington Line. Pakistan’s east starts north of Jammu and ends north of Siachen.
Kashmir is the only wriggle space available to a Pakistan leadership that must be distraught with tension each time it stops to think about the future, if it has any time left from thinking about the present. This war in Afghanistan could be comparatively short if Pakistan’s generals are lucky, although the Taleban show no signs so far of fitting into Musharraf’s war calendar. But Pakistan’s real problems will probably begin the moment this war is over. How?
First, the end of the war may not be synonymous with the defeat of the Taleban, if the end means the fall of the Afghan government and the institution of an alternative regime. The Taleban will continue to fight and with Pakistan as their supply line and their fallback space. They may not get support from the Pakistan government this time, but there will be more than one alternative source. Pakistan will continue to face the problem of destabilization and unrest irrespective of who declares victory because the Taleban will not concede defeat.
Second, the next government in Kabul will be of little comfort to Islamabad. The patchwork being conceived now, of a “moderate Taleban” participation in a future alliance is a myth. There is no moderate Taleban, and any deserters from that cause will be called precisely that, deserters. Ranks emptied by death or desertion will be more than readily filled by the next generation of fighters. The Taleban’s resource base is in the mind that Pakistan itself helped create. Third, and most important. The most dramatic war aim of the US is the arrest of Bin Laden. You do not have to be a soothsayer to predict the emotional outburst that will accompany any television footage of Bin Laden under American arrest. This prospect could not have escaped the imagination of Pakistan’s generals. It is very likely that Bin Laden’s parting gift to Pakistan’s generals would be to condemn them as “Munafiqeen”, or the hypocrites. This is a heavy price to pay for support to the US, in both personal and national terms.
What have the generals got in return? Economic aid. Money is viewed as the traditional price for betrayal. The only lure that Musharraf can offer to Pakistanis is that the US will somehow use its power, after it has brought Afghanistan under control, to bring India under control and force a change in the status of Kashmir. Each time therefore that Musharraf discovers a pause in the conversation he introduces Kashmir. It has become his drug for a greater illness. New Delhi is under no such compulsion. Delhi’s policy aims are clear enough. It wants to extend its friendship with Washington into the status of its most stable ally in the region. It wants, in fact, to reverse history and replace Islamabad. Even if there was no argument over the objective there is sufficient reason to doubt the strategy.
Displacement never makes for good diplomacy. It is far more sensible to increase the bilateral space in the Indo-US relationship through a plural approach that strengthens the relationship. India must live up to its own size and potential; that is what will enable the US to see value in the equation. A displacement policy only brings India down to the level of Pakistan’s current equation with the US, that of a client state trying hard to maintain a veneer of dignity. A bilateral relation that is viewed as being at the cost of a third country is inherently immature.
If friendship and alliance with America is the purpose of Delhi’s moves then the last way to achieve it is by introducing a dangerous irritation in America’s war effort. Warming up the cease-fire line on the eve of Powell’s visit was completely counterproductive. It forced Powell to bring Kashmir to the top of everyone’s concerns at precisely the moment when he had to keep Pakistan’s public postures in mind.
He therefore stressed on a resolution that included the will of the Kashmiri people. As for the difference between ‘a’ and ‘the’, Powell could barely keep the amusement out of his eyes (they twinkle too sharply in any case). He could not care a damn as long as India and Pakistan got on with a search for a way out of an impasse that could blow each other up, and take American policy in the region along with it.
We are in Phase One, as has been repeatedly said, and have been vaguely introduced to Phase Two of America’s plans for the region. The promises of Phase Two have not been made to Delhi alone. But the swirl of conversation at the edges of the policy-shaping world is beginning to veer around to Phase Three.
Phase One is this war; Phase Two will seek to address the nodal points of international tension, and Palestine in particular. But there is a stage after that, when the world will address the many flash points that dot the globe and seek to stem a fire from becoming a conflagration. According to one estimate, nearly 150 wars have been fought across the globe since the Second World War. The seed of every future war lies in a past that is left unresolved.
That will be the business of Phase Three. Front-line states, take care.
