Page 2 of 2 Musharraf not the problem, or solution
By M K Bhadrakumar
so that the US's overall South Asia project in a New American Century benefits.
The main hitch at the moment is that both India and Pakistan may be heading for
fresh parliamentary elections. This may not be a time for taking new
initiatives. Politics in India has become needlessly acrimonious following the
government's recent wheelings and dealings to engineer defections from
opposition parties to push on with the nuclear deal with the US. There cannot
be national consensus on any single problem facing the country today.
Again, the situation in the Indian state of J&K has sharply
worsened. But it is unlikely that Islamabad will go beyond rhetoric to create
difficulties for Delhi in J&K, provided India is careful about Pakistani
sensitivities in Afghanistan. The ball is very much in India's court. There is
a clear linkage here. Delhi must review the parameters of its Afghan policy.
(Even the Pakistani rhetoric on Kashmir could be attributed as a response to
the strident Indian campaign lately against Pakistan's dubious role in the "war
on terror".)
From Delhi's view, much will depend on the US's equations with the Pakistani
military leadership. (In the past decade or so, Delhi has got used to counting
on the US's good offices to moderate Pakistani policies - as compared to the
traditional heavy emphasis on "bilateralism" in the conduct of India's
political and diplomatic contacts with Pakistan.)
There is a thesis that the US wields considerable influence over army chief of
staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani. But it needs to be tested on the ground. The
Pakistani military always maintained its corporate interests. Also, the US
needs to engage the Pakistani military on a long-term footing. The US would do
well to incrementally push the Pakistani military to develop on the lines of
the Turkish military - conceding a continued army role in policy-making for the
foreseeable future but increasingly delimiting it in terms of focus on
professional issues, underwriting Pakistan's legitimate security needs,
settling the Kashmir question, etc.
Clearly, in immediate terms, the post-Musharraf era holds out many
imponderables for Delhi. Delhi, which closely watches developments in Pakistan,
cannot but be aware that Islamabad faces huge challenges. Pakistani politicians
lack a coherent strategy toward tackling militancy. The two leading political
parties - the PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League of Nawaz Sharif have a long
distance to cover to find a way to share power. It is not going to be an easy
process. From India's point of view, it is immaterial which of the two parties
emerges as the leading player in foreign policy.
The prospect of political disarray in Islamabad is very real. Former prime
minister Sharif may contest the PPP's mandate to lead the government. (Delhi
enjoys cordial relations with Sharif.) The problem is that in times of
disarray, "rogue" elements within the Pakistani security establishment have
tried to vitiate the climate of relations.
The crisis in India-Pakistan relations inevitably surfaces whenever the
security establishments on either side get into the driving seat. On the whole,
however, such a prospect remains limited at present as Pakistan has its hands
full with its own preoccupations internally and on the Afghan border. Kiani is
also uniquely placed as Pakistan's first army chief to have headed the
ubiquitous Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
Delhi seems to size up that there is a general feeling among Pakistan's
political parties to move forward in relations with India. The key factor is
going to be the dominant role that the security establishment and the military
traditionally have played in Pakistan's policy towards India. A qualitative
difference this time is that the Pakistani military may itself feel inclined to
stay in the background rather than insist on being the ultimate arbiter -
unless, of course, the politicians plunge into irreconcilable squabbles,
dragging the country into great confusion and chaos, thereby forcing the
military to intervene. (The gravity of the economic crisis in Pakistan is often
overlooked.)
The conventional school of thought in Delhi is that when problems accumulate
within Pakistan, the military and the security establishment resort to
diversionary tactic by ratcheting up tensions with India. The argument doesn't
exactly hold good in the current circumstances. The fact is Pakistan is
perilously close to chaos with the huge problem of militancy and violence
confronting it, which has no parallels. Indeed, the crisis places the military
itself somewhat in turmoil, as it is unsure of its own will to tackle the
looming challenge. It is a rare occasion when India is probably not even the
principal challenge for the Pakistani military.
The emergent situation leaves Delhi with a rare opportunity to encourage the
democratic process within Pakistan. Delhi could make some meaningful gestures
to the democratically elected government in Islamabad. It is a different matter
whether the requisite foresight and pragmatism to do so is available in Delhi.
The forthcoming parliamentary elections in India need not necessarily be a
distraction for the political leadership to take initiatives. Paradoxically,
making peace with Pakistan always goes down well with Indian public opinion and
could even be useful electorally, though politicians in power may prefer
reticence and play it safe.
Musharraf's shadow on Kabul
On balance, it is obvious Musharraf was not at all the problem in
India-Pakistan relations in recent years and his exit need not necessarily pave
the way to a solution to the problems between the countries.
Afghanistan is placed almost exactly the same way. To be sure,
Afghanistan-Pakistan relations have been particularly marred by acrimony over
the past six months and much of that had to do with the factors at work in
Pakistan's tribal regions and Kabul's perception that Islamabad was covertly
aiding the Taliban insurgency.
It is highly doubtful whether the ground situation will radically improve in
the post-Musharraf phase. On the other hand, it is highly probable that in the
short term at least, the Taliban insurgency will benefit out of the political
turmoil inside Pakistan until a new leadership gets firmly ensconced in power
with a definite policy to counter the militancy.
The Pakistani military is likely to take a back seat and insist that it has
left the initiative on policy making to the civilian leadership, while being
careful that its equations with the US and the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization ([NATO) are not jeopardized. Kiani's trip to Kabul on Tuesday
testifies to that. The general will strain every nerve to project that if the
Taliban insurgency continues to flourish inside Afghanistan, it is not because
of his (lack of) cooperation within the framework of the trilateral
Afghanistan-Pakistan-US military commission, which coordinates operations on
Afghan-Pakistani border areas.
Curiously, Afghan President Hamid Karzai is the only protagonist among
Pakistan's neighbors in the region who stands to benefit directly from
Musharraf's departure. His personal equations with Musharraf had a lot to do
with the sharp deterioration of Afghanistan-Pakistan relations in the recent
period. Now Karzai gets a fresh start.
He has close contacts with the Awami National Party, the Pashtun nationalist
party ruling North-West Frontier Province in Pakistan. Musharraf's departure
likely brightens his prospects to get re-elected as president in the election
in October 2009 - assuming he remains America's choice - as he counts on
support from the Afghan refugee community in Pakistan, estimated to be over 3
million. In the election in 2004, Musharraf ensured that this vote bank was
delivered lock, stock and barrel to Karzai. (The two leaders were on easy terms
then, and Musharraf was doing Bush a calculated favor on the eve of the
latter's re-election to the White House.) But Karzai was shrewd enough to doubt
whether the general would have similar goodwill to deliver the hapless 3
million Afghan refugees for a second time in the 2009 elections.
Ironically, viewed from another angle, Musharraf's departure places Karzai and
the US at a serious disadvantage. The point is, Musharraf often enough served
as a lightning rod for their failures in the war. (There is reason to suspect
that the battle-scarred commando general might even have relished the
controversial role in the limelight.) But now, the war stands out on its own.
The war now needs to be assessed on its merits and demerits. There is no alibi
to be found.
Kiani would never oblige Washington or Kabul and wade into controversies.
Therefore, as the Taliban's daring attacks on Tuesday in Kabul city's immediate
vicinity testify, the harsh reality cannot be hidden for long that ISI is only
part of the problem and if the Taliban enjoy extensive support within
Afghanistan, that may have precious little to do with the ISI's covert
operations.
An opportunity therefore presents itself to reassess the factors underlying the
Taliban's growing popularity within Afghanistan. Musharraf's exit inspires
sincere stock-taking. Equally, NATO cannot hope to endlessly shift the locus of
the war to Pakistani territory and to get away with it. Pakistan's tribal areas
are only an adjunct to the war theater: there is no hiding from the fact that
Karzai has miserably failed to inspire confidence as a ruler; his track record
has been abysmally poor and question marks remain over NATO's war strategy and
grit to keep fighting in the Hindu Kush for another three decades.
Least of all, the heart of the matter has been, is and will remain to be that
the US's global policies reverberate in Pakistan and Afghanistan. As long as
Bush remains in power, the impression will continue that the US is engaged in a
crusade aimed at humiliating and dominating the Muslim world. It is too late to
do much about this impression. It can be erased only in the fullness of time,
possibly with a change of guard in the White House under enlightened
leadership. It has nothing to do with Pervez Musharraf.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign
Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka,
Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
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