Asia Times: 'All is well that ends with Powell'


	January 23, 2002	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

'All is well that ends with Powell'
By Sultan Shahin

NEW DELHI - India and Pakistan came dangerously close to war last week. The army commander of one of India's three strike corps moved his forces too close to the border from its base at Ambala (Punjab) in a manner that could have been construed by Pakistani forces massed across the border as the beginning of an Indian attack, and forced them to respond in kind.

The move was "unauthorized" and the corps commander, Kapil Vij, has been directed to take leave for committing "tactical errors" during forward deployment of the strike corps, though analysts say that he simply couldn't have done what he did on his own.

"Highly unlikely," says Vishal Thapar of the Hindustan Times, "especially because this is a strike corps. At the very least, Vij would have cleared the movement with his immediate superior, Lieutenant-General S S Sangra, C-in-C [commander-in-chief] Western Command." This has raised fears that a section of the Indian army was trying to provoke Pakistan into crossing the border first.

But for an American satellite watching the India-Pakistan border, and the United States bringing the incident to the notice of Pakistan during the recent visit of Secretary of State Colin Powell, and then confronting India - which denied any knowledge - with satellite images, the incident could have taken a dangerous turn.

This is precisely the kind of "accidental" war that strategic analysts have been warning against for weeks. And there is no knowing where this would lead. As Indian Army Chief, General S Padmanabhan, pointed out in his press conference, "When two wild bulls decide to fight in the jungle they carry on regardless [of consequences]". What could this mean in the context of these two wild bulls being armed with nuclear weapons is best left to the imagination of those millions who might suffer the consequences of a bullfight.

Both India and Pakistan have amassed hundreds of thousands of their troops along their volatile borders and the Line of Control (LoC) in the state of Jammu and Kashmir for several weeks now. India says that it reserves the right to strike across the border at terrorist camps, unless Pakistan shows credible evidence that it has stopped cross-border terrorism. The US agrees. India has the right to self-defense, it says, in the context of terrorist acts on its soil. Practically every Indian commentator thinks that there is no reason why India cannot attack Pakistan as they say that it harbors terrorists, in the same way as the US invaded Afghanistan for harboring terrorists or as Israel attacks Palestine regularly on the same ground.

The recent speech by President General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan (delivered on January 12 and considered by many, including India's hard-line Home Minister L K Advani as historic and path-breaking), the arrest of over 2,000 militants in Pakistan and other functionaries of militant organizations, the closing down of 660 offices of these organizations across the country, etc, have had practically no impact on the government of India's thinking.

Indeed, although Powell expressed appreciation for all these actions during the course of a joint press conference on his recent trip to South Asia, India's External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh responded by demanding action, he did not even say "more action". But Powell, the former chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, says that de-escalation of mobilization of forces on the border is not the main priority. "He is used to 40 years of US containment pressure on the Warsaw Pact states," comments senior defense analyst K Subrahmanyam.

And it is this general perception in India's strategic circles that the US is putting the squeeze on Pakistan, not on India, that is making growing American intervention in South Asia, including now in Nepal, traditionally India's sphere of influence, acceptable in India. For if there is one thing that unites India, as Marisa Handler of the San Francisco Chronicle put it, it is the distrust of Pakistan. "A billion-strong democracy agrees on little except enmity for Pakistan," commented Handler.

A retired bureaucrat, Subrahmanyam is considered among the most influential strategic affairs analysts. His thinking may well represent the thinking of the government and may reflect inside information not available to most journalists. In an analytical piece in the Times of India (January 21), he basically makes the point that the US is deceiving Pakistan with the full compliance of the international media, particularly CNN.

His theory (or is it information?) needs to be studied in some detail. "When the US commenced its war against the Taliban with its bombing raid on October 7, many skeptics around the world, especially in the media, talked about body bags, the Afghan history, the difficult terrain, the coming winter and the network of tunnels and underground installations. Six weeks later, the skeptics were silenced by the sophistication of the US strategy, which achieved spectacular results with single-digit casualties." Similarly, he points out, there is a lot of misunderstanding about the second phase of the war against terror, where Pakistan has become a self-acknowledged battlefield. The traditional Cold War approach of analysts and the US media's cooperation with the government have helped the US administration to implement the strategy in this phase with "maximum deception".

Subrahmanyam asks us to look at the established facts in this order: "The Pakistani ruler has been coerced into acknowledging that Pakistan has been the breeding ground of extremism and terrorism. He has been compelled to initiate a path of reforms from which he personally cannot retreat. The mobilization of the Indian forces on Pakistani border subjects Pakistan to enormous pressure and costs which in terms of burden on GNP is much higher for Pakistan than for India. General Colin Powell, the former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and now the secretary of state, says de-escalation of mobilization of forces on the border is not the main priority.

"At this stage, the US announces it has no objection to Israeli sale of Phalcons to India and signs a number of agreements with India in the defense field. It is also publicized that the US and the Indian navies are collaborating. Powell, after visiting Islamabad and New Delhi, agrees with the Indian prime minister that confidence should be restored by matching deeds with words and the democratic, sovereign republic of India would be the best judge on the sufficiency of action taken on the ground.

"Every day in the last few days CNN has run a program on which country the US might target next for its link with Al-Qaeda. Sudan, Somalia, the Philippines and Iraq were dealt with. But there was thunderous silence about the country which acknowledges thousands of its citizens were massacred fighting with the Taliban and against the Northern Alliance and the US, the country into which Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar have in all probability slipped into. Meanwhile, every day some nice words are said about General Musharraf and his courageous reforms and the need for Indo-Pak dialogue on Kashmir. Beyond verbal appreciation, there is no noticeable US and Western support in monetary terms for Pakistan. Put all these facts together and think about them. It will be clear that Pakistan is now under a strategy of squeeze and containment.

"Meanwhile, the US planners get as [a] bonus the vast deception exercise of the international media focusing obsessively on Indo-Pak tension and the Kashmir issue. The media pundits and the academics never have to say that they were wrong. The US will not hurt Indian interests in Jammu and Kashmir."

Subrahmanyam made the same point in an earlier write-up on January 19. "The US is fighting this war to uphold multiculturalism. Handing Kashmir over to Pakistan would violate that norm and will be a reward for religious extremism emboldening the two-nation theory. The US today wants to preserve multiculturalism in Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia and elsewhere."

This may indeed be the basis of Indian confidence in the United States and the reason behind New Delhi virtually allowing the US to mediate in the India-Pakistan dispute, though using other terms such as facilitation and assistance.

Interestingly, this reading of US-India-Pakistan relationship is shared by some analysts in Pakistan as well. One of the most respected columnists in Pakistan, Ayaz Amir, writes in Dawn: "By joining America's war effort we thought that we had neutralized the threat from India and indeed left India out in the cold. Now it turns out that it is we who were caught in a bind: helpless then, helpless now, but justifying every turnaround, every twist in the wind, by a reference to that mystical entity, the national interest. Eve would have fewer faces than the many faces of our national interest. We have a huge defense establishment. Britain, after the cuts inspired by the end of the Cold War, has an army of 106,000 men and women. We have five times that number. In the light of recent events, is it not reasonable to ask, what for?"

Like Subrahmanyam, Amir, too, wants us to get the sequence of events straight. "After the attack on the Indian parliament [December 13] when the US and India started turning the heat on us, and we realized that our earlier calculations about India being isolated were wrong, we started moving against the jihadi organizations and arrested both Hafiz Saeed of Lashkar and Maulana Azhar of the Jaish. But India was not satisfied. Perceiving our weakness and assured of American backing, it thundered for more.

"With greater grit on our side we could have said that as we were already dismantling the politics of jihad we would move at our own pace and would not be pushed around. But we succumbed to the pressure and started preparing for another historic about-face.

"The choice was not between war and peace. For all the hype from India, it was no child's play to impose a war on Pakistan. The choice was between standing fast and beating a retreat. India glared and we blinked. India bluffed and we could not call its bluff. Now we are all for peace and modernization, our martial bluster replaced by the cooing of the dove. Let us for argument's sake swallow the fiction that forsaking the cult of jihad we are reverting to the vision of the Quaid [the founder of Pakistan Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah] and building a modern Pakistan. The question we are not asking is whether we needed Mr Advani and Mr George Fernandes [Indian defense minister] to make us return to the vision of the Quaid? Mr Jaswant Singh chuckling over his whisky: is this too far-fetched a vision under the circumstances?"

There are high hopes in the Indian media for the potential benefits of US engagement in the region and the possibility of it proving a lasting engagement. An admiring Indian Express, for instance, commented on the Powell visit, "During his whistle-stop visit, Powell did more than just prove his skills as a messenger. At a time when India has unequivocally signaled its resolve to end infiltration of terrorism from Pakistani soil, he has given ample indication of long-term American engagement in the region. A flurry of crucial journeys after December 13 to and from Washington have more or less established one thing. That this bout of American involvement in South Asia is not a one-shot deal, that its spatial and temporal limits are not defined by the US's campaign in Afghanistan. Powell, while urging New Delhi to give General Musharraf more time to translate his words into concrete action, said the US would monitor follow-up, confidence-building measures taken by Pakistan.

"It is also well that the American secretary of state has appreciated the dynamics of India's coercive diplomacy in its own campaign against terrorism. De-escalation of tension along the border with Pakistan is dependent not on the two armies being ordered to retreat to peacetime positions. De-escalation hinges upon critical political and diplomatic breakthroughs - breakthroughs that can only be judged by a perceptible drop in cross-border terrorism. This, it is important to note, is a judgement call that cannot be made in a matter of days, maybe even weeks."

There are those in India, too, who think that the US may be deceiving not only Pakistan but India as well, who think that the US is no friend of any country other than itself and indeed that is how it should be. But if the Indian and Pakistani ruling classes keep hating each other with the single-minded devotion they have shown in the last years, nothing can stop India becoming mere pawns in the US imperialist game - if India has not already acquired that status.

North India's largest-circulated newspaper, the Hindustan Times, for instance, warns (January 22) that "In spite of the earlier uneasy relationship between India and the US, it may now be considered natural for them to nurture a collaborative relationship in dealing with a common danger such as international terrorism. At the same time, it needs to be understood that even firm allies - such as Japan and the US - do not have identical interests or perceptions. It is true, of course, that after the end of the great ideological divide of the last century, the relationship of every country in the world with the US is that of unequals. In the case of the India-US equation, however, the asymmetry is ocean deep.

"Given the apprehensions about Washington's hegemonistic ambitions, all developing countries have to tread with caution in dealing with it [and its Western allies] in areas such as the setting of rules for global commerce and investments. India is hardly an exception. The disparity between its positions and that of America's is routinely highlighted in forums such as the WTO [World Trade Organization]. The gap between the two is even more dramatically indicated in the realm of international security. The question of nuclear arms and missiles is a case in point. Overall, it needs to be remembered that America's post-USSR vision is to exercise unassailable - total spectrum dominance - over the rest of the world.

"It may be salutary to keep this in view while upgrading India's defense ties with the US. The arrangements being contemplated - as suggested by the outcome of the recent visit of Defense Minister George Fernandes to Washington - include diverse elements. One category is the purchase of hardware, such as an engine for India's Light Combat Aircraft which has been in the works for years. Another is the ending of post-Pokhran II sanctions on the commercial sale of sensitive technologies to India. These two types of collaboration help to enhance India's self-reliance. But an altogether different category of cooperation will be the dovetailing of this country's intelligence and security template to that of broad US strategies for the world. It is to be hoped that the lines on which cooperation is being envisaged in fighting international terrorism do not end up being the thin end of the wedge in embarking upon a relationship that curbs this country's room for maneuver in its own region and the world."

Meanwhile, the merry-go-round continues with the breathlessness of fresh love affairs. Just studying the list of mutual visits by the highest authorities of the two countries makes one dizzy. Powell has been to India twice in 12 weeks. Indian External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh was spending so much time in the US that he has perhaps been restrained.

Instead, India's strongman Advani himself, seen by most as the prime-minister-in-waiting, visited Washington and was seen by all senior leaders, including President George W Bush himself. This was almost immediately followed by Fernandes visiting the US capital (or should one say the world capital?) while Powell was in New Delhi. During Powell's visit, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, too, paid a visit "to educate himself about Kashmir". Now, two days after Powell left, we are being visited by the Federal Bureau of Investigation chief and a US coordinator for counterterrorism.

Perhaps no courtship between any two countries has been so passionate. No wonder then that Indians are quick to feel jealous when the partner is seen in the embrace of arch-rival Pakistan. India's television channels and editorial writers spent at least two continuous days discussing the appropriateness and the implications of Pakistan's foreign minister Abdul Sattar kissing Colin Powell on both his cheeks in full public view at Islamabad airport.

In the meantime, Indians who had raised such a hue and cry when the United States established a military base in Diego Garcia, an island nearly 10 hours of jet flying time away from India's shores, jubilate over the fact that the Americans have bases at Jacobabad and Pasni, in Pakistan, just about an hour's - subsonic - flight from New Delhi. In 1987, Rajiv Gandhi's megaphones justified sending the Indian military to Sri Lanka because the Voice of America had set up a relay station there.

Today, says Shekhar Gupta, editor of the Indian Express, we might send a bouquet and a "best wishes" note if they were to set up fully-fledged broadcast stations at Kabul or Kathmandu. In the past, we would get neurotic even if a Royal Navy ship visited Trincomalee. Now we are happy to refuel and service the US navy at our ports, or run escorts, protecting their merchantmen from the pirates in the Gulf of Molucca.

No wonder common people are infected with the euphoria of this new-found love. People have begun to coin slogans for these hilarious times when we wait for a nuclear bomb to explode in our midst - New Delhi would surely be a target - and watch our best minds discussing in all seriousness whether it is appropriate for a male Muslim South Asian foreign minister to follow the Arab or Slavic custom and kiss both the cheeks of a male American secretary of state and then hold both his hands as if they were lovers. One reader of the Indian Express has coined a new slogan for the times: "All is well that ends with Powell!" Let us hope that he is right.

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