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Comment: Indo-Pak relations —Zafar Hilaly

The subcontinent today is a tinderbox and any miscalculation or ill-considered action may ignite it. In the circumstances one would have liked Dr. Manmohan Singh to have willingly withdrawn Indian forces from the border to enable Pakistan to deal with the terrorists that he so loudly abhors

For a moment Dr. Manmohan Singh had us fooled. His repeated assurances that India wished Pakistan to stabilise and to prevail over the Taliban were beguiling. We took him at his word believing, like Goethe, that as “hatred in most societies is strongest and most violent in those where there is the lowest degree of culture”, the cultured Indian Prime Minister meant what he said. Fat chance; Dr. Singh had to be badgered by the Americans for an assurance that India would not take advantage of the redeployment of two Pakistani divisions from Kashmir to the Afghan border having initially refused such a reconciliatory gesture on the grounds that India had 80 (Pakistani) nukes pointed at it. He had sought and apparently received “comfort” on this score from the Americans. The source of this tale is Seymour Hersh, admittedly not someone noted for his acquaintance with the truth but nevertheless a journalist of renown who backed up his assertions by quoting a number of Indian officials in sensitive posts in Delhi.

Assuming that Hersh’s version is not mere fiction — he is after all a Pulitzer Prize recipient and not a novelist — the question that arises is not why Dr. Singh finally agreed, but why he hesitated to do so in the first place. How, for example, would it further his professed desire to have Pakistan prevail over the Taliban, avowedly also India’s enemy, if India continued to tie down Pakistani forces on the Kashmir border? Moreover, why was it necessary for Pakistan to await an assurance from India before redeploying a part of her army? After all, if India were to attempt a strategic land grab taking advantage of the absence of defenders, would that not risk a nuclear conflagration which, when last war-gamed, produced 100 million casualties on the Indian side (while all of Pakistan became a nuclear wasteland) and rendered large tracts of India uninhabitable? Would Dr. Singh, therefore, risk nuclear war for the sake of an additional few square miles of Azad Kashmir? Additionally, would the cerebral Dr. Singh allow himself to be outwitted by terrorists bent on triggering an Indo-Pak conflict if, or rather when, the next Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) terrorist attack is launched — notwithstanding that today Pakistan is now an even greater target of the LeT than India.

A factor that the Hersh story illumines is the intrusive interest that the US has acquired into operational aspects of Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine and the lengths to which it will go to “secure” these weapons. No option it seems is off the table. Also highlighted in the Hersh story is the mistrust that has developed between the two countries over the years, which has been reinforced by America’s determination to extract Pakistan’s cooperation in the war against al Qaeda and by the strategic alliance that the US has formed with India in which defence cooperation has the foremost priority. These developments have virtually ensured that Pak-US relations will, at some point of time, sour and even perhaps become adversarial. Already America’s unpopularity in polls in Pakistan is almost as low as that of India. Obama’s recent letter to Zardari asking him to “do more” at a time when some here feel Pakistan is already doing “too much” is another step in that direction.

The subcontinent today is a tinderbox and any miscalculation or ill-considered action may ignite it. In the circumstances one would have liked Dr. Manmohan Singh to have willingly withdrawn Indian forces from the border to enable Pakistan to deal with the terrorists that he so loudly abhors. His diffidence begs the question as to why it is that India never misses an occasion to let slip an opportunity to improve relations with Pakistan.

Interestingly, when India faced a similar threat on its north-eastern borders several decades ago, Ayub Khan offered the services of our army to defend India. Nehru’s reply, “Joint defence against who?” ensured that never again would such an offer be contemplated, let alone made. Resultantly for the next 50 years the two countries have remained at daggers drawn. History is repeating itself only because while political leaders can be presented with opportunities, they cannot be made equal to them.

India’s unhelpful reaction to the predicament in which Pakistan finds itself, Delhi’s half-hearted, staggered approach to addressing the many issues that plague relations, its condescending demeanour, its attempt to derive advantage from Pakistan’s difficulties are grist for the mill of those who have a stake in keeping the two countries apart and wedded to confrontation. The prospects of a genuine reconciliation or, for that matter, progress in the composite dialogue has seldom looked so dismal. And if, following Dr. Singh’s visit to Washington later this month, Obama and he emerge with a “strategy for dealing with Pakistan” that is reached without the participation of Pakistan, resentment between the two neighbours will further escalate. Stiff arming Pakistan, as India is doing, may not only prove self-defeating but self-destructive.

For those who worry at the shape of things to come there is every reason to do so. Pakistan is on a collision course with the US as much as India. And while it will not matter who is to blame were it to occur, a little more understanding and a little less conceit on all sides may have perhaps averted it. But then, one supposes, those involved will have plenty of time to repent.

The writer is a former ambassador

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