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There is that old anecdote, perhaps apocryphal. A young American general, eager and bushy-tailed, arrives to make his mark at the Berlin Allied Commission.. He launches a new initiative. The French delegate, as usual, is opposed. The Brit doesn’t like it either — but obfuscates in the interest of the trans-Atlantic special relationship. The Soviet is his usual silent , brooding self. Comes the vote, the US carries three to one — the Soviet voting for the U.S. proposal The American is nonplussed. Going out, he asks the Frenchman, I know you were expressing your government’s position but what’s your personal opinion? AGallic shrug. The Young American insists, Please tell me, General, what do you think? The Frenchman grimaces, and says I think Americans think that history begins when they arrive.
All this comes to mind as the Bush II group reviews policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan, enthusiastically continued Clinton’s campaign of Swami-infatuation. Alas! Of necessity, that seems to the IndoPak neophytes in Washington to mean a dump-Pakistan corollary.
It doesn’t take much to make the argument against Pakistan. Islamabad flaunted our nonprolieration agenda [of course, along with India]. It plays the Chinese game — including introducing the Chinese to a new port at the entrance to the Persian Gulf, collaborating in Beijing’s violation of the missiles anti-proliferation treaty. It continues to stoke the Kashmir insurgency. It continues to support Taliban Afghanistan which hosts Osman bin Ladin and his terror campaign against the U.S.. It has turned its back on representative government, again.
Yet we live in the real world. Pakistan’s 150 million Moslems [by the way probably smaller than India’s Moslem population] are one of the most critical factors in the whole seething Islamic world. There was a time, not so long ago, when the West hoped, along with the Turks and the Persians, Pakistan would help modernize the vast reaches between Casablanca and the southern Philippines. That hope was based on subcontinental Islamic history and politics. Mohammed Jinnah, Pakistan’s founder, was, the quintessential secularized Moslem, son of that marvelous multicultural British Indian Bombay [now ruled by Hindu fanatics].
Defining national character is out of fashion — that is racial/ethnic/cultural stereotyping, we are told. But at the risk of incurring the wrath of PCers it is time to think about the risks Washington’s incurs in the continuing inability/unwillingess to stop spiraling downward U.S.-Pakistan relations.
Indian Islam has always had radically catholic dimensions. Suffism, after all, that most gentle and inclusive of Islamic philosophies, owes its origins to the incredible amalgamation of the subcontinent’s culture. But there has always been a fiery Indian Islam, rivaling the Mideast. Whether it was The Great Mutiny or the revolt of the Mapillas in serene Kerala , Indo-Islam can take on a fanaticism that defies logic.
The report that Pres. Musharraf is thinking of a pilgrimage to Fidel Castro enroute to the UN general assembly is the signal that we are reaching that danger point. Musharraf, complete with dog and non purdah wife, is the last vestiges of the British Indian Army ethos.
What lies behind Musharraf’s throwing down the gauntlet to Washington is a game of chicken between Washington and Islamabad. Musharraf is desperate. Ethnic and religious violence, UPwallahs [Partition refugees from India] against Sindhis and Pathans in Karachi, even among pragmatic Punjabis, spurred in part by Saudi and Iranian funds, religious fanatic infiltration into the army, an economy all but bankrupt, four layers of American sanctions, carping by human rights activists about military rule, ad infinitum.
Pakistan is near implosion.
The implications of a breakdown are horrendous. India, which suffers most of the same diseases, but [perhaps!] only at a less critical stage, would the first victim. A Pakistan breakup would reinforce the separatist tendencies inside India, some already at guerrilla stage. Again, as in the past, India would be the refugees’ destination.
Pakistan’s demise would send a shutter through the always volatile Mideast and the Islamic world. It was Pakistani troops [along with the Shah’s in Dofar] that more than once saved the Saudi regime when it was beset by Moscow-inspired neighbors in the Cold War. The Gulf states’ police [along with hareem boys] are still recruited in Pakistan’s Baluchistan. An Islamic regime or an Islamicized army would be a signal to the Moslem world that the religious right was “the wave of the future”. The Afghanistan problem, which Washington deludes itself into thinking can be solved with the cooperation of Moscow as well as Indian and Central Asian support for Massoud’s Tajik forces, would become even more intractable. The drug scourge out of the region would intensify. The Chinese might lose their present ally, but the likelihood is they could exploit the chaos against India and the U.S.
Most of all, an even more chaotic state would be the owner of nuclear weapons and the possibilities of at least short-term missile delivery.
Mr.Bush, pick up that telephone and call Musharraf. It may be the last chance to rebuild some kind of U.S.-Pakistan dialogue.
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.