Bringing India's foreign policy home
By Chietigj Bajpaee
A deteriorating security situation along India's periphery requires a
reevaluation of the country's foreign policy priorities. Despite emerging as a
major global economy with a growing middle-class, which has been partially
shielded from the global economic meltdown by its less export-dependent economy
and robust banking system, India is not immune to instabilities in its own
neighborhood.
Threats grow closer to home
The threats along India's periphery have been highlighted by a string of recent
developments including the growing Talibanization of Pakistan; growing
dissension within the ranks of the Bangladeshi military following last month's
mutiny within the paramilitary Bangladeshi Rifles (BDR); spill-over from the
ongoing
military campaign against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in northern Sri
Lanka; and Nepal's Maoists being unwilling to rid themselves of their radical
and rebellious elements despite leading the interim government.
The wake-up call for India was last November's terrorist attacks in Mumbai,
which directly targeted symbols of India's image as a cosmopolitan,
multi-cultural, investor-friendly economy. The fact that this was followed by a
string of similar fedayeen-style attacks on government ministries in the Afghan
capital of Kabul in February and attacks on the Sri Lankan cricket team in the
Pakistani city of Lahore in March demonstrate a shift in militant tactics from
quick and rudimentary suicide bombs and improvised explosive devices aimed at
merely maximizing casualties toward more sophisticated, high-profile, prolonged
attacks aimed at maximizing exposure.
Whether India likes it or not, the Kashmir issue has been effectively
internationalized as insurgents have shifted their targets from India's
periphery to high-profile soft and symbolic targets in the heartland. In the
process, Afghanistan has re-emerged as the turf war in the India-Pakistan
detente while Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and
North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) have emerged as the training grounds for
insurgent groups.
Beyond the growing Talibanization of Pakistan, other regional developments also
present a threat to India's stability. The pre-mediated and brutal nature of
the mutiny at the BDR headquarters in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka in February
suggests that it was driven by more than a dispute over pay and working
conditions. Instead, it was reflective of a deeper fissure within the military
and the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence between secular and Islamist
factions, which could spillover into India's northeast.
To the south, the Sri Lankan military's ongoing offensive in the last remaining
Tamil Tiger strongholds in the northern Mullativu district has resulted in the
rebels compensating for the weaknesses in their conventional military
capabilities with renewed asymmetrical attacks on soft targets throughout the
country. For India, the Sri Lankan military offensive has also been accompanied
by grievances in India's southern Tamil Nadu state over the deteriorating
humanitarian situation in Sri Lanka.
Finally, the unwillingness of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) to
make concessions on its radical ideology and disarm or integrate its People's
Liberation Army (PLA) with the regular armed forces threatens to revive
instabilities in Nepal while serving as inspiration for the Naxalite
insurgency, which remains the greatest threat to India's internal security.
Outsourcing its foreign policy
India is famed for its "cart before the horse" approach toward economic
development, which has led to such contradictions as a world-class service
sector amid a still developing manufacturing sector and dominant agricultural
sector, basic infrastructure bottlenecks amid the provision of greater luxury
products and services and growing income disparities.
This approach has also spilled over into the arenas of the country's foreign
policy and defense doctrine, which has been dominated by improving relations
with major powers such as the United States and Europe, economic and political
integration in the wider region as part of its "Look East" and "Look West"
policies and facing up to the threat of a rising China. Meanwhile, improving
relations with states in its neighborhood and quelling instabilities within the
country and on its periphery have been neglected.
India can no longer afford to outsource its foreign policy in its neighborhood.
While the era of imperial rivalries marked by "spheres of influence" and
"buffer states" has long gone India cannot allow itself to be squeezed out of
its neighborhood. No where is this more apparent than in the case of
Afghanistan where talk of engaging with moderate Taliban is paving the way for
renewed Pakistani influence in Afghanistan and a return of the Afghan state as
a source of "strategic depth" in Pakistan's rivalry with India.
The United States, which is increasingly preoccupied with addressing its
deteriorating economy, is looking for a viable exit strategy from Afghanistan,
which entails a temporary surge in its military presence, outsourcing security
to tribal militias, engaging “moderate” Taliban, strengthening local and tribal
governance structures while marginalizing the central government of President
Hamid Karzai and shifting its goals from fostering the development of a
democratic, stable state to merely ensuring that Afghanistan does not re-emerge
as a hub for planning attacks on the United States.
However, India cannot afford such quick-fix solutions given the direct linkage
between the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, al-Qaeda, anti-India and
Kashmir-based insurgent groups and India's home-grown Islamic extremist groups.
In this situation India is facing both the light and dark side of globalization
with the growth of transnational radical Islamic extremist groups being the
other side of the coin to India emerging as a beneficiary of globalization
through the business and knowledge process outsourcing sectors.
In search of a true regional solution
A regional solution to the Afghan insurgency is not detrimental to India's
interests given the inter-linkages between the instabilities of the region.
However, the current framework with Pakistan and Iran at the core of such a
process while India remains at the peripheries is not favorable as demonstrated
by the renewed discussions of the Pakistan-backed initiative of a rapprochement
with the Taliban.
A true regional approach to the Afghan insurgency would need to look beyond the
Taliban and al-Qaeda to address the fundamental grievances that fuel regional
insecurity, including Pashtun and Baloch nationalism; strengthening the
devolution of power to Pakistan's provinces to address the marginalization of
the FATA, Balochistan and NWFP within the Pakistani state; the disputed status
of the Durand Line dividing Afghanistan and Pakistan; the weaknesses of
Pakistani civilian government institutions, which have been exasperated by the
country's personality-driven politics and the encroachment of military and
intelligence services into the political sphere; the issue of Kashmir; and the
legacy of Indian partition in fueling mistrust between India and Pakistan.
A regional solution would also need more engagement with ethnic and tribal
groups, whose identities are often stronger than Afghan and Pakistan national
identities. Finally, while quelling Afghanistan's insecurities with regard to
Pakistan and Pakistan's insecurities over India, a regional approach would also
need to address India's insecurities over China, whose "all-weather" support
for Pakistan continues to be a thorn in the side of regional integration.
Chietigj Bajpaee is an Asia analyst. The views expressed here are his
own. He can be reached atcbajpaee@hotmail.com.
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