Pakistan’s Janus face
Brahma Chellaney for The Hindustan Times
Wednesday, February 20, 2002
Since the attack on Parliament, the Indian government has played its cards well. In cooperation with Washington, New Delhi has compelled Pakistan to reverse its jehad policy
and ban the terror groups it had itself nurtured.
However, a lot more needs to be accomplished through sustained external pressure before Pakistan ceases to be a
problem State regionally and internationally.
The Pakistani State has been so hooked to bleeding India cheaply through surrogate terror groups that Islamabad refuses to see the present reversals as anything but temporary. After all, the export of terror helps Pakistan to debilitate an enemy it cannot confront militarily, and to keep the spotlight on the Kashmir dispute.
Many Pakistani elements that New Delhi would like to see changed are important Pakistani army assets, providing the latter with the capability to monitor, artillery spot,
raid, disrupt, interdict and terrorise within Indian territory. It will be wishful thinking to expect the Pakistani army to voluntarily yield to the material destruction of such capability.
That is why India needs to maintain pressure through a durable strategy, with clearly defined objectives and the full menu of possible retributive measures, but without the
fickleness that stood out in the pre-September 11 aeon. Resolve is pivotal. It took India’s post-December 13 threat to wage war to compel Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf to publicly unveil a reforms package.
But after banning the proxy terror groups and detaining several hundred extremists, Musharraf has engaged not in reforms but in vile international propaganda against India. With Indian leaders busy in state elections and New Delhi shying away from further sanctions, Islamabad seems to think Indian pressure is easing.
The fact is that the Pakistan military and its ISI agency have not severed their links with terrorists operating against India, but rather asked them to lie low, as part of their strategy to buy time. India’s military options will narrow once the snow -blocked mountain passes open up along the Indo-Tibetan frontier in May, and monsoon rains later make an Indian armoured and mechanised assault into Sind impracticable.
India thus should invigorate its current strategy and incorporate new elements, both for the long haul and for near-term contingencies. The strategy needs to go beyond the
terrorism-linked issues to highlight the need for structural changes in Pakistan, particularly an overhaul of the ISI. Having drawn a line in the sand, India also needs to keep the Pakistani generals on notice. India thus should:
- Re-examine the risks and rewards of a limited escalation, especially because the current level of full military mobilisation and war readiness cannot be sustained ad
infinitum without affecting troop morale. A willing -to-wound-and-yet-afraid-to-strike posture is counter-productive. Presently, the cards are stacked in India’s favour, with the Pakistani army loath to fight a war with India. Before long, India will have to either seize the present moment or shift to a different posture.
- Send clear signals to Pakistan by publicly debating how to administer some jabs before de-escalating. Limited retributive measures would aim not to seriously wound
Pakistan but to inflict calibrated pain and symbolically puncture Pakistan’s Kargil-rooted belief that its nuclear weapons are an effective shield against Indian retaliation.
India’s response to a major new terrorist attack could range from striking some pointed blows with its superior air and naval power, incessant firing of long-range artillery across the border to a swift but short land-grab in Sind. To buttress its limited aims, New Delhi would have to take into confidence Washington, which so far has wanted
India to do no more than keep the military heat on Pakistan.
n Expand the range and extent of non -military counteraction. It is important to keep up the pressure through new overt steps, even if they mean fairly small measures like withdrawal of India’s unilateral most-favoured-nation treatment to Pakistani exports.
- De-emphasise religious extremism as the threat. The Pakistani threat emanates not so much from the mullahs and jehadis as from the Scotch whisky-drinking generals
who have reared such fundamentalist forces. The Kargil invasion, with the Northern Light Infantry as the vertebral column, was carried out by such generals. So also the
1971 genocide in East Pakistan — one of the world’s worst slaughters of Muslims in the 20th century.
The generals’ agenda on Kashmir today is no different from their predecessors in 1965 or 1947-48.
But by passing the blame for their jehad policy to their mullah puppets, the generals have made many outsiders believe that the key is to contain the religious fringe, not
the puppeteers.
- Recognise that the West has placed its bets on Musharraf and, therefore, it is pointless to attack his legitimacy. The time to question his legitimacy was pre-Agra
when he was a virtual pariah. Indian diplomacy would do better by cautioning the West against excessive reliance on one individual and by stressing the structural steps his
military needs to take to forge stable, peaceful relations with India.
- Cultivate the US as a special partner on Pakistan, with a diplomatic and media strategy tailored to the shared Indo-US interests. President Bush reminded Musharraf in Washington that the new US-Pakistani relationship would continue “so long as we share the same ideals and values and common objectives”. India, however, cannot be
happy with all the trends.
The US is inserting itself diplomatically between India and Pakistan. Some in Washington also may be buying Musharraf’s line that he needs reciprocal Indian concessions on Kashmir for ending the proxy war. India has to do a much better job to present its case to the Americans.
The contrast between the bouncy, blunt, ready-to-fib Musharraf and the dawdling,rambling, meandering Indian representatives trained in Brahmanical traditions cannot
be more stark. Indian diplomacy needs more Omar Abdullahs who can talk straight in clear, plain English. What counts in international relations is not winning the argument
but winning the battle.
India needs the US firmly on its side. At present, New Delhi and Washington share the goal of deracinating the jehad culture from Pakistan. India should persuade Washington to also put reform of the Pakistan military on its agenda. Of course, the key to reform of the Pakistani army, or to bringing the ISI under civilian oversight, is the introduction of true democracy — a gruelling challenge in a militaristic, wayward State.
But Pakistan is more India’s problem than America’s. Instead of waiting for the US to bring Islamabad to heel, Indian diplomacy should be vigorously seeking to influence
Pakistan’s behaviour and the American agenda on that country. No Indian official has dared to say that Pakistan is where the next phase of the global anti-terror war must
unfold, or that the real axis of evil (the triumvirate Bush missed) forms a semicircle around India.
Pakistan’s Janus face makes a forward-thinking Indian diplomacy and media strategy very important in a world in which images and sound bytes mean more than the strength of one’s case. India cannot always count on Musharraf tripping up by telling implausible stories. As the Sheikh Omar Saeed case shows, Pakistan loves to pull wool over international eyes.
India needs to remind itself that the Pakistan problem springs more from the whisky-sipping generals than the rosary-holding mullahs. |
