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When India’s Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee meets Pakistan Pres. Pervez Musharraf July 19 to try to avoid nuclear war, both will play with a hand of deuces and no aces up their sleeves. Both come weakened by recent domestic developments.
Musharraf’s formal takeover of the presidency may have given him more protocol [and negotiating] clout in New Delhi. But it also aimed at bolstering his position against growing Islamicist elements and Pakistan’s corrupt, fractious but powerful feudal politicians. Neither the U.S. nor the UK/Commonwealth would acknowledge his simultaneous reaffirmation to return to civilian government next year. Washington and London continue hypocritical denunciations of his military takeover of a chaotic civilian regime. Meanwhile, huge [10 million], unruly Karachi remains an ethnic and religious powder keg.
Musharraf also has a tiger by the tail in Afghanistan: Quetta’s military’s dream of “broadening Pakistan’s strategic depth” to include the Pushtu/Pathan areas of that traditional but synthetic buffer state could easily fuel separatism in Pakistan’s own Northwest Frontier. Meanwhile, relations with the U.S. worsen because of Pak support for the Taleban [including their hosting Osmana bin-Ladin], feeding Administration proclivities for the State Dept.’s longtime agenda to bury any vestige of the 50 years of U.S.-Pakistan alliance, and recognize India’s paramountcy. Dependence on China’s missile and nuclear exchanges is probably growing even as Beijing links with Moscow against Pakistan’s allies in Central Asia.
Vajpayee is no better off. Kashmir remains India’s touchstone for claiming a scrupulously multiethnic union, even with Vajpayee’s own BJP party’s Hindu chauvinists and paramilitary RSS barking at his heels. To give Kashmir up — either to a UN referendum designated so many decades ago, or to international arbitration or mediation — would fly in the face of India’s 50-year-old claims [and constitutional provisions]. It would invite endless demagoguery [including from the challenging Congress Party]. Yet, Kashmir policy is at a dead end. No longer can India claim violence is only Pakistani subversion. The growing casualties — from anti-government terrorism and the half million Indian Occupation force’s counter-terrorism and corruption — is proof notoriously passive Kashmiris, if not throwing in their lot with independence/Pakistan, are sympathetic. Always in the background is how any Kashmir settlement would effect relations between India’s Hindus and [what is now close to 200 million] Moslems [and 35 million Christians], at their lowest ebb since the 1948 Partition. And what about India/Kashmir’s disputed China frontiers [which New Delhi and Beijing have recommenced negotiating]?
Recent regional elections have further weakened the fragile rag-tag coalition [the ill] Vajpay heads, may soon clip its majority to one-digit. The Northeast insurgencies [where the Nagas truce is in jeopardy], with self-proclaimed Maoists in Bihar/West Bengal, and in western Nepal, all demonstrate regional instability. The Sri Lankan ITTE insurgency, dependent on logistics and financial support among the 65-million Tamils in India’s southern state, hangs over the whole long-term future of Indian unity.
And how vulnerable it would all be to any Chinese attempt to turn up the burner on any of these insurgencies — either as an answer to any Washington-New Delhi anti-China strategy or to enhance its ally Pakistan’s weight.
Perhaps the most important new element in the instability dating back half a century to the birth of the British India twins is the U.S.’ new role as Washington sees it. For despite the much-trumpeted Bush campaign promises for triage on American foreign commitments, Washington is willy-nilly handmaiden to this summit. On its eve and a visit to Washington of the Pak foreign minister, National Security Adviser Condelezza Rice joined the chorus calling for a wide-ranging strengthening of the U.S.-India relationship. The Indian media are even dangling bases to the Pentagon, whose high pandjameters — suddenly aware the growing possibility of breakup in Indonesia threatening Mideast-East Asia sealanes — call for new bases somewhere in South Asia.
Washington’s ability to remove the Clinton Administration’s imposition of sanctions against India, and to a lesser extent, Pakistan, when they both went nuclear, is probably the U.S.’ greatest [and only] bargaining chip. But what is worrying is the Bush Administration’s apparent continuation of Clinton’s naïve approach to the whole subcontinent. Removing the cant of “the world’s largest democracy” [by any standards Indian elections are a Westminster farce], understanding that despite $6 billion worth of software exports last year, the Indian economy is still a shambles left by 35 years of Soviet planning with only stop-go reforms, acknowledging that announced enormous increases in military expenditures [not a small part committed to Russian purchases] could break the camel’s back — all tell us where India really is.
There may be a dealer’s role for Washington in this poker. But it will have to be played with a great deal more perspicacity than Washington’s current public statements and attitudes suggest.
Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@abac.com), is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International.
He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.