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With bad news rolling in on all sides, the Bush Administration can take momentary comfort from short term gains in the Subcontinent where possibility of an accidental nuclear exchange is a constant threat.
India has announced a phased withdrawal of 700,000 troops deployed along the Indo-Pak border. Pakistan has completed elections for a return to civilian government. Kashmir, touchstone of the Indo-Pakistan conflict, has ended a corrupt dynasty. Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee assured his European interlocutors on a trip that there will be no war.
But as so often happens in the Subcontinent, good news is fraught with new and unexpected tidings.
In Pakistan, there are new problems for President-Gen. Musharraf, whose military government rules with no martrial law, a relatively free press and ø despite carping by the Europeans ø has just held a relatively free election. An amalgamation of religious parties from moderates to above ground terrorists, has won an unprecedented victory. ÒThe KingÕs PartyÓ, Musharraf supporters, does not have a majority, and will have to bargain with the decapitated rump of former corrupt parties who led Pakistan into its present mess. Even worse, the Islamicists have majorities in the Northwest Frontier and Baluchistan regional assemblies bordering Afghanistan. It is there with the help of local sympathizers of Al Qaeda and the Taliban have taken refuge, not yet rooted out of their mountain lairs by Pakistan security forces aided and abetted by American military and civilian antiterrorist cadre.
Musharraf has reiterated that cooperation with the U.S. against the worldwide terrorist conspiracy will continue as IslamabadÕs policy. And it is likely that a combination of money, intrigue, and pressure, will enable him to cobble together a working parliamentary majority. The religious elements in Pakistan are notorious for their in-fighting and their anti-Musharraf front is not likely to hold. Furthermore, MusharrafÕs amended constitution permits him to dismiss the national assembly and a national security council, largely military has the last say. Furthermore, by a plebiscite his presidency is assured for the next five years. Still there will be a constant tussle among bargaining politicians ø never noted for their civil virtue ø that is going to make cleaning up continuing ethnic as well as religious violence even more difficult.
On the Indian front, it is true the election virtually eliminated the corrupt local government that made Kashmir an even more convoluted problem, vitiating Washington and othersÕ efforts to defuse it. As the withdrawal announcement was made, clashes continued along the Line of Control, always threatening a fourth war between the two countries since they were formed in 1948. India insists that infiltration of ÒmilitantsÓ is continuing from Pakistan, some undoubtedly linked to Al Qaeda-Taliban.
The return of the Congress Party, the main national opposition, as a major player in Kashmir increases the fragility of the two-dozen-party coalition now ruling in New Delhi. The Congress already rules in 14 of IndiaÕs 28 states. Prime Minister Vajpayee, a ÒnotoriousÓ moderate in the BJP party which heads the ruling coalition will be under even more pressure from the so-called Hindutuva [Òpolitical HinduismÓ] ultras. Their advocacy of ÒHindu rastraÓ, Hindu rule, has been an effective vote-getting tool. Their rightwing alliesø the paramilitary RSS from which BJP sprang, and the Shev Sena, powerful in IndiaÕs cultural and commercial capital of Bombay ø call for just such a strategy. Bal Thackeray, a thuggish Bombay power broker, in VajpayeeÕs national coalition, now calls for Hindu suicide bombers to answer what appears to be growing militancy among IndiaÕs 150-million Moslems. Violence continues to sputter in what had been considered one of IndiaÕs most progressive states, Gujarat, where state officials were implicated in pogroms against Moslems, sparked by firebombing and murder of Hindu pilgrims by Moslem terrorists. The Hindutuva crowd also is lobbying against VajpayeeÕs already limping economic liberalization [saddled with an $8 billion bill for the military deployment] stumbling as a result of slowdowns in Europe, the U.S., and JapanÕs continuing stagnation.
Elsewhere in the subcontinent are flashpoints that could feed into all this instability: In Nepal, a new king has suspended flagging parliamentary government, in the face of a Maoist insurrection that could easily spill over into northern India. Negotiations to end the bloody 18-year-old insurgency among Tamils in Sri Lanka are deadlocked under Norwegian direction [the same people who gave us ÒOsloÓ in the Mideast] with direct implications for IndiaÕs own 65 million Tamilians. Karachi remains an almost ungovernable hotbed of ethnic violence, stemming from factors that have nothing to do with Islamacist terrorism but could get intertwined. And a half dozen insurgencies percolate in northeastern India on the Chinese-Tibetan border.
The India-U.S. geopolitical partnership that so thrilled the Clinton foreign policy wonks looks no better than their ballyhooed ÒsuccessesÓ in Northern Ireland and North Korea, also now unraveling.
Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@comcast.net),
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.