The Hindu : U.S. and Indo-Pak. relations

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Thursday, Feb 14, 2002

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U.S. and Indo-Pak. relations

By C. Raja Mohan

September 11 has provided India with a rare chance to work with the U.S. in changing Pakistan's national course towards political moderation, economic modernisation and regional harmony.

AS PERVEZ Musharraf picks up rewards in Washington this week for services rendered in the last few months to the United States, India will not be too far down the General's agenda with his American interlocutors. To be sure, the Bush Administration will have a lot of questions to ask Gen. Musharraf on Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar and the large numbers of Al-Qaeda who are all at large. Settling the residual issues from the war against terrorism in Afghanistan and nudging Pakistan to clean up its internal act in relation to terrorism and democracy would indeed be at the top of American talking points with Gen. Musharraf. And so will be the question of how to de-escalate the current military confrontation between India and Pakistan. Gen. Musharraf will also look for a favourable formulation on Kashmir in the final statement from his talks with American leaders. Is there reason for India to worry? Not really.

India and Kashmir are never off Pakistan's checklist wherever its leaders travel abroad. But America has had a special place in Pakistan's desperate quest for strategic parity with India and in leveraging its relations with the rest of the world against New Delhi. India has always been uneasy with Pakistan's unending efforts to bring up their disputes in interactions with great powers. Instead of getting irritated with this, New Delhi needs to grant Islamabad's wish and encourage the U.S.to underwrite an early and final settlement of the Kashmir dispute. There is indeed a good chance that Pakistan might not find itself entirely comfortable when its wish is granted. At this point, however, the Bush Administration remains ideologically reluctant to get actively involved in dispute settlement between India and Pakistan. It is also aware of the deep political reservations in New Delhi about direct third party intervention. The primary American objective remains de-escalation of tensions in the subcontinent and the promotion of a dialogue rather than nudging India and Pakistan towards a resolution of the Kashmir question. It is really up to India to decide on how to play the American card in finding a solution to the Kashmir question.

Any mention of triangulating the Kashmir dispute, of course, sends many Indians into a paroxysm of protest against "internationalisation" and "third party mediation". For far too long, India has allowed issues of procedure to overshadow the political outcomes it needs to focus on. In his new year musings this January and the last, the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, has said the Kashmir issue is indeed at the top of his mind. Mr. Vajpayee has underscored the importance of such a settlement in letting the two countries to put aside the bitter legacy of Partition and move forward. Mr. Vajpayee has got India to take a big intellectual leap. We have moved from the unrealistic hope of the last 30 years that the problem of Kashmir will disappear if we just ignore it to a recognition that it has not. India has no alternative but to mobilise its political will and creative genius to find a way to settle the Kashmir issue — both in its internal and external dimensions. Having defined the objective, modalities do become important. India's preference since 1972 has been for a bilateral settlement of the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan. But that approach has not worked. The essence of the problem was in Pakistan' reluctance to give up the instrument of cross-border violence. New Delhi says it is ready for a substantive negotiation on Kashmir, if Pakistan is prepared to bring the level of cross-border violence down. But Islamabad wants to negotiate with a gun pointed at New Delhi's head. India could not persuade Pakistan to change this approach either at Lahore in February 1999 or at Agra in July 2001. It was the changed international context after September 11 and the American diplomatic pressure and the Indian military mobilisation after December 13 that extracted at least a verbal commitment from Gen. Musharraf to put the gun down.

India's opposition to involving others in a peace process with Pakistan was based on its bitter experience of going to the United Nations in 1948 and the subsequent Anglo-American attempts to interject themselves into the dispute. But the end of the Cold War and September 11 have profoundly altered the international context. The improvement of India's relations with Britain and the U.S. in recent years, their current unambiguous pressure on Gen. Musharraf to give up cross-border terrorism have begun to work in India's favour. India, then, has at hand a historic opportunity to mobilise the international community in favour of a quick and reasonable settlement of the Kashmir dispute wit Pakistan. To an extent, India's current strategy towards Pakistan has instinctively understood this. India's threat to go to war was as much a pressure tactic against Pakistan as it was aimed at getting the U.S. to move Gen. Musharraf to give up cross-border terrorism. New Delhi has also begun to recognise that external involvement need not necessarily work against India's interests. As we saw in the summer of 1999, the American intervention helped force Pakistan to unconditionally vacate its aggression across the Line of Control in the Kargil sector. Beyond that, the Clinton Administration also got Pakistan to acknowledge the "sanctity" of the LoC in a joint statement issued on July 4, 1999. And the intense American engagement with New Delhi and Islamabad since December 13 has also been instrumental in getting Gen. Musharraf to proclaim that he will not allow Pakistani soil to be used for terrorism against any nation.

India needs the international community's support in getting Gen. Musharraf to implement his words and create the conditions for a military de-escalation, negotiations on all bilateral disputes including Kashmir and a normalisation of bilateral relations. This does not mean, India either goes back to the U.N. or changes the shape of the table to bring in a third party. What it does mean, however, is that India effectively uses the current fortuitous global context to develop the strategy of drawing in the international community to change the behaviour of Pakistan. India is seeking this support not on the basis of expediency but on the basis of accepted norms of international conduct.

Does the Indian strategy of bringing the Americans into its conflict with Pakistan put the hyphen back into Washington's approach to New Delhi and Islamabad? There is some disappointment in New Delhi that just when it seemed to have a chance to peel off from Islamabad in American calculus and establish an independent non-hyphenated relationship, the events of September 11 put Pakistan back into the Indo-U.S. equation. But this despondency is misplaced. Indo-U.S. engagement under the Bush Administration has indeed brought forth a framework for bilateral cooperation that looks beyond the narrow confines of the subcontinent. That broader Indo-U.S. agenda by no means contradicts the importance of resolving the long-standing disputes within the region. September 11 has provided India with a rare chance to work with the U.S. in changing Pakistan's national course towards political moderation, economic modernisation, and regional harmony. India cannot accomplish this difficult task on its own; it must grab the opportunity to cooperate with the world in transforming the subcontinent.

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