Allies in the anti-terrorism war?

By Sudhanshu Ranade

India's External Affairs Minister visited Washington earlier this week to hold discussions with the American National Security Adviser, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, State Department officials, Senators and Congressmen. In his capacity as Defence Minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh's visit was reported to have assumed `significance in the light of India's support to U.S.-led efforts against terrorism'.

Whatever India hopes to gain through its repeated offers to actively collaborate in, or even actually `lead' some portions of the war against terrorism, the plain fact is that the U.S. has every reason to shy away from Indian involvement in such a war, which even without Indian help, can be counted on to further inflame radical sentiment in the Islamic world.

In the Gulf War, a decade ago, during Operation Desert Storm, one of Saddam Hussein's important gambits was to keep shooting his Scud missiles into Israel, in the hope of provoking some sort of retaliation. The tactic did not work then. But things have changed a great deal since, thanks to some sloppy fielding in the slips. Israel has completely shed the sobriety and restraint it showed during the Gulf war and in the years that followed. Palestine is well and truly aflame.

The U.S. will not find it easy to deal with the adverse impact, at the street level, of the onslaught of mighty Israel on a defenceless Palestine in recent months; even if calm returns to the area in the near future. David winning against Goliath, as in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, was bad enough; but at least nobody could then complain very much. A mighty Goliath thrashing the stuffing out of a puny David, before our very eyes, is a different matter altogether.

Still, America simply cannot afford to dump Israel. So it will have to manage as best as it can. The relationship with Israel matters; both for its direct value, and for its indirect, almost invisible, role in buttressing strategically critical moderate Arab states like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

No such considerations would weigh with U.S. policy planners in the case of India. Always, at the back of their minds, would be the fear that pogroms in the sub-continent, of the type and scale seen in January 1993, might suddenly begin again. Certainly the `jehadis', caring little for either Muslims or Hindus, would spare no effort to help bring this about.

Reacting to the killing of a large number of people during the audacious daylight raid by terrorists on the heavily fortified building of the Legislative Assembly in Srinagar, the Prime Minister said, `this is a symbol of their frustration because they know that terrorism does not have a future in India'. I wish this were true. But it is not easy to moderate, and impossible to reverse, the juggernaut that was unleashed in the mid-eighties. Sadly, our folklore makes a huge song and dance about heroes who `refuse to sheath their sword when once it has been unsheathed' - even after it has become obvious to them, and to everyone else, that it should never have been unsheathed in the first place.

Mr. Vajpayee has obviously made a determined effort to hold back his storm troopers in recent months. To be effective, such efforts have to be made behind the scenes; only the failures become known to the general public. This makes the achievement all the more impressive.

Hindu radicals, no doubt, have been publicly `warning' Muslim civilians that 10 of them would be killed for every Hindu who is killed by terrorists. Simultaneously, Mr. Singhal has been going around `rousing' Hindus with the message that soon it will be time for them to `lay down their lives' in the defence of their motherland. But, fortunately, things have gone no farther than that; even after the particularly gruesome and vicious acts of violence that have taken place in Jammu in recent times.

For us in India, Mr. Vajpayee's performance might hold out a ray of hope. But America cannot afford to take the risk of bottling up belligerent sentiments in Pakistan, without a single safe outlet. This thought has stirred up quite a storm in the Indian foreign policy establishment - to the point where all sorts of rash adventures seem to be under serious contemplation.

The day after the storming of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly by suicide squads, the External Affairs Ministry issued a `virtual ultimatum' to Pakistan, after having first cleared the matter with the Cabinet Committee on Security. `There is a limit to India's patience', said the statement that was released to the press. Mere words? Not so. `If the United States can travel thousands of miles to take out terrorist camps', Mr. G. Parthasarathy, who retired last year as India's ambassador to Islamabad, told the New York Times, `I don't see why India shouldn't do so when our cities are bombed and our legislatures attacked'. In effect, a pincer attack! But the `why shouldn't we' question is easy to answer : try it, and we will soon find out.

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