India Left in the
Lurch by US vis-a-vis Pakistan
By
Brahma Chellaney
VIOLENCE-EXTOLLING
Islamists target the US, Israel and India as their principal enemies.
Yet, these three democracies are no more secure against terrorism
today than before President George W. Bush launched his war on
terror. In fact, the US, despite shared goals, has left India
in the lurch against Pakistan-directed terrorism.
The
second anniversary of 9/11 was a reminder not only of India's
lonely battle against qualitatively escalating terror but also
about the way Bush's war on terrorism has enlarged rather than
diminished international challenges.
Despite
the post-9/11 international consensus, it became clear before
long that Bush's war on terror was not global but selective, and
that its prime aim was homeland security. No sooner had Bush outlined
the concept of 'pre-emptive strikes' at the US Military Academy
at West Point and become fixated on regime change in Baghdad than
even the selective war on terror swerved off course.
Before
attaining any enduring success in its original mission, that war
has widened its thrust to take in a new State — the once-quiet
Iraq — that Bush this week called "the central front"
against terrorism. Military preemption failed to pre-empt chaos
and terror. Worse, as Bush's West Asia peace plan founders, the
US military confronts the menacing prospect of sinking into a
double quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan, a development that will
surely spur the bloody resurgence of Islamists.
With the spreading nature of Islamic
terror underlined by the Bali, Casablanca and Jakarta bombings
and Bush's self-made problems raising the dissonant timbre of
international politics, his limited successes are becoming paler.
These include the ouster of the Taliban from Kabul and the capture
of several al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, including Ramzi Binalshibh,
Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and Waleed bin Attash.
Today, the Taliban and al-Qaeda,
after being on the run, are beginning to regroup, with the help
of new volunteers from Pakistan. Critical to their revival strategy
are the sanctuaries and support they enjoy within Pakistan, where
a military dictatorship propped up by US aid has neither deracinated
terrorist safe havens in the eastern tribal belt nor dismantled
its State-run terror complex against India.
The
additional $87 billion Bush wants for Iraq and Afghanistan is
a belated recognition of the enormous costs involved in dollar
terms, not to mention human casualties. With $58 billion already
spent, the Iraq war has become the costliest in US history. But
it will require more than money to contain jihadi forces.
The
challenge is also wider: the entire expanse between the Mediterranean
Sea and the Philippine Sea is home to militant groups. While the
radicalization of many Muslims in Southeast Asia under girds the
growing challenge, the footprint of almost every major international
attack can still be traced back to the reigning epicenter of terror,
the Pak-Afghan belt.
It
is in this vast stretch known for its sheikhdoms, military dictatorships
and other types of autocracies that Israel and India, as the two
flourishing democracies under siege from Islamic terror groups,
wish to expand their modest cooperation against terror. Just as
India's security has been undermined by the jihadi forces that
the US first encouraged and now battles in Afghanistan, Israel
may have to bear the brunt if Iraq becomes a new base for global
jihad. Indo-Israeli cooperation, however, cannot yield lasting
results without a winnable US strategy and vision. That, in turn,
demands that the US learn the lessons from its past policies that
gave rise to the Frankenstein's monsters it now pursues, including
bin Laden, Mullah Omar and Saddam Hussein.
The first lesson — forgotten
in Iraq — is to keep the focus on longer-term goals and
not be carried away by political expediency and narrow military
objectives. The US has to stop drawing distinctions between good
and bad terrorists, and between those who threaten its security
and those who threaten others. The viper reared against one State
is a viper against others.
Another lesson is not to turn the
war against terror into an ideological campaign to serve one's
strategic interests. Fighting terror has come handy to the Bush
team to give vent to its imperial ambitions. It has expanded US
interests in an unparalleled manner and positioned US forces in
the largest array of nations since World War II.
A
third lesson is that the problem and solution are linked. Terrorism
not only threatens the free, secular world but also springs from
the rejection of democracy and secularism. Terrorism-breeding
swamps can never be fully drained as long as the societies that
rear or tolerate them are not de-radicalised and democratized.
It is odd that Washington oils the Pakistani dictatorship with
billions of dollars in aid and debt write-off but wants to hold
elections in ravaged Afghanistan.
The
war on terror — a grueling long haul — can be won
only by inculcating a secular and democratic ethos in societies
steeped in religious and political bigotry. Despite the daunting
challenge, the US cannot afford to lose this war. Nor can India,
for the sake of its own security, see the US lose. The Islamists
would swell their ranks by trapping the last great superpower
in Iraq and Afghanistan after having routed the Soviet Union in
the latter State. Their resurgence would bring India under greater
terrorist pressure.
Yet,
this does not constitute sufficient cause for India to despatch
an army division to Iraq, even if there is the UN's imprimatur.
A beleaguered India has to help itself before it helps the US,
which last year tricked New Delhi into calling off Operation Parakram
with assurances it never meant or intended to keep. The Americans
released their pet dictator in Islamabad from Indian military
pressure as part of a deal that has given their special units
continuing operational freedom within Pakistan and secured some
Pakistani assistance on the Afghan front in return for Musharraf's
keeping of what he euphemistically calls his 'Kashmir policy'.
The latest upsurge of terrorist attacks
in J&K since August 27, when the top Indian government leadership
was in Srinagar, indicates that Pakistan, exploiting Bush's preoccupation
with Iraq, has asked its surrogates to step up attacks as a way
to impose higher costs on India for its refusal to open political
dialogue with it. So wedded is Islamabad to terror that its links
with the Taliban and al-Qaeda have been cited by the Afghan president
and, as the New York Times reported on Wednesday, by some of its
own police and intelligence officials.
Bush's
floundering policy in Iraq is thus working to further undercut
Indian anti-terror aims. It not only gives Musharraf more maneuver
room, it also strengthens the hand of his principal benefactor,
Colin Powell, and the latter's alter ego, Richard Armitage, who
played the role of trickster last year when he came claiming to
carry in his pocket Musharraf's solemn pledge to Bush to "permanently"
and "verifiably" end cross-border terrorism. Re-visiting
India 11 months later, a bald-faced Armitage dismissed that pledge
as past history.
Powell last week displayed his own
bias in a terrorism-related speech at the George Washington University
that passed over the terror against India. Rather, Musharraf-like,
he linked the mid-2002 threat of an Indo-Pak war with the "dispute
over Kashmir", not with the Kaluchak terror strike. Powell's
department, as critic Newt Gingrich points out in Foreign Policy
in an article titled 'Rogue State Department', has a culture that
"props up dictators" and prefers accommodation to principles.
This culture may explain why while one Saddam Hussein is being
hunted in Iraq, Powell and company are busily building another
Saddam in Pakistan — this one with detectable weapons of
mass destruction.
US credibility today stands dented
in New Delhi. Washington should remember that India notionally
has a better claim to seek a US army division to assist in anti-terror
operations in J&K under Indian command than the US has to
ask for an Indian army division in Iraq. While India has not even
an indirect link with the anarchy and resistance in Iraq, the
US has directly shored up Pakistan's military regime, kept its
economy afloat and condoned its export of terror.
With
India unlikely to yield, the US is not going to get enough foreign
troops to reduce its burden. But it can surely cut its losses
by handing nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan to the UN and
focusing its efforts on battling terror. Terrorism can be stemmed
only through a sustained international campaign that targets terrorist
cells and networks wherever they exist and as long as they exist.
It is time the war on terror became global not just in name but
in practice.
The
writer is a well known Indian columnist, regarded as a hawk on
Pakistan policy
