|
 |
 |
|
Nepal, the Hindu kingdom of 25 million wedged between India and Tibet, is going down a familiar Third World road — repeated parliamentary government failures, traditional institutional breakdown, economic slowdown [flagging tourism and remittances from Gurkha mercenaries], and nihilistic rebellion.
This week’s headlines — fall of another government — didn’t push the visit of the Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Henry Shelton and forthcoming visit of Asst. Sec. of State for South Asia Christina Rocca off New Delhi’s front pages. But coupled with martial law in Assam in northeast India, it should give strategic planners in The Pentagon pause.
Shelton went as “an acknowledgement by the U.S. of the need to reactivate and reenergize defense planning [in regards to India and South Asia].” It is no accident, as the Communists would have said, that no senior Bush II official has visited Pakistan. State’s No. 2, Richard Armitage, had already stopped in New Delhi. In Washington, Pres. Bush recently had time for a casual drop-in at the Oval Office by Indian Defense Minister Defense Jaswant Singh. Singh described India as “a natural U.S. ally”. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar, about the same time, got lectures on Islamabad’s ally, the Taliban, protecting Osmana Ben Ladin, in Afghanistan, how Pakistan should return to elected government, and its alliance with the nuclear and missile proliferating Chinese. No Oval Office drop-in.
Shelton, a “China hawk” among the Washington cognoscenti, remonstrated warming U.S.-India relations is not a function of Washington’s China concerns. But the new geopoliticians running The Old Executive Office Building think closer relations with India will bring a “balance” to U.S. policy in South Asia, that acknowledging New Delhi’s longtime claims to hegemonic power will accomplish two purposes: put the screws to Pakistan, back them away from China, and give Beijing cause for thought.
Ah! If only the world were so simple. An old academic friend, Milton Sachs, used to say in Vietnam: “Never underestimate the role of faddism in American life — and policy”. It comes to mind with policy pundits pumping up India’s role. The slogan “uniting the world’s oldest democracy with the world’s largest democracy” sounds good in Foggy Bottom. But it neglects the utter failure of India with its major problems a half century after independence.
Nepal could well be touchstone for a misguided U.S. policy in the Subcontinent. Those of us who watched the Indian army’s disaster in 1964 in the Himalayas where today some 30 repeat 30 insurgencies are going forward will need more convincing —whatever the terms of U.S.-Indian military collaboration — that India represents a potential strategic ally, nuclear weapons notwithstanding. Last year’s Indian army performance in Kashmir, where Pakistani regulars and irregulars pulled the classic taking of the high ground, cutting India’s main ground supply routes to Kashmir [and the disputed border with China of Ladakh, Little Tibet], is not encouraging.
There is a long history of Katmandu’s blackmailing India — even by the ruling Nepalese Congress Party whose origins go to Indian inspiration. But that was, first, under a Hindu autocrat whom Jawaharlal Nehru could browbeat at moments of crisis, or, later, politicians with intimate links to Indian policymakers [and corruption]. The new boys on the block run a fullfledged insurgency — occasionally spilling over from Nepal’s Terai lowlands with no natural barrier with India. It proceeds on a well-known program — radical reform promises [including abolishing the monarchy], carefully targeted terror against [corrupt and brutal] police and [half illiterate] school teachers, urban terrorism, etc. It is the whole panoply of Maoism.
Former King Birendra, murdered by the crown prince in a bizarre massacre of most of the immediate royalty at a family dinner only a few weeks ago, apparently aberrational but certainly with political repercussions, purposely kept Nepal’s small, probably ineffectual army from a head-on encounter with the rebels. The army has now been fitfully engaged while the new prime minister pledges negotiations. With their friends in parliament, the rebels pursue an old Maoist formula, talk-talk, fight-fight. After abducting 71 policemen, they are now releasing some with great magnanimity. Their leadership’s love affair with the Chinese in neighboring Tibet is ballyhooed. And they threaten even worse bloodletting if the government should go to New Delhi for help. [That is not exactly an inviting alternative for any Nepalese government: an invitation extended by the Sri Lankans for help against their ethnic insurgency ended with a hangdog Indian army retreat, and a virtual New Delhi hands-off policy ever since —even though there is an implicit threat to Indian unity of Greater Tamilnad with separation the huge southern state.]
The real question is what will be Beijing’s answer to any warming of Indo-American relations —more help to a beleaguered Pakistan and to the Himalayan insurrections?
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.