Old Wine, New Bottle

[muse]

A new Project Pakistan


Shekhar Gupta Saturday , Aug 08, 2009 at 0245 hrs


In a news discussion on Pakistan earlier this week, NDTV’s Prannoy Roy asked me, with a mix of exasperation and longing, if it would be possible some day for India to leave Pakistan behind (aside?) and carry on?

The cause for exasperation that particular evening was the Pakistan government’s declaration in their national assembly that they had banned Jamat-ud-Dawa — while the organisation continued with its activities brazenly and its chief had been freed just the other day. Longing, because if only India were to be rid of that deadly distraction that hobbles it at every step, it would be so much better placed to leverage its many newfound strengths.

Now, at a pinch you can even shake away the burdens of history. But geography? Can you ever escape that? Can an entire nation collect green cards or H-1Bs or whatever and migrate some place far, far away? While it is a simple enough truism that you cannot choose your neighbours, our most difficult neighbour is also a product of recent, bitter history. It makes it that much more challenging for an Indian leadership to “leave it behind” or “aside”. Pakistan can be neither our Canada (there is far too much historical baggage), nor Mexico because that kind of disparity is just not there. Yet, somehow India’s leaders must find a way now to peel away. We have invested a whole decade of foreign policy effort to get the Americans to de-hyphenate their India policy. Are we now capable of de-hyphenating our own foreign policy from Pakistan? Can we think creatively enough to even move in that direction? I use the expression “creative thinking” because for so long now our immediate reflexes and even policy responses have come to be governed by the same hostility and insecurity that block any new thinking.


If you look at how similar conflicts have been resolved in the recent past, the most interesting example is the Camp David Accords that ended the conflict between Israel and Egypt. That one agreement ended the possibility of an all-out war for ever in the Middle East, and it came within a decade marked by two all-out wars and several smaller ones. The essential feature of the settlement that resulted in Egypt recognising Israel, which in turn returned the Sinai desert, was that the Americans pretty much back-stopped it entirely, Israel’s security was under-written, and Egypt’s armed forces were promised — and given — all the toys they wanted but on the condition that they were going to be of no nuisance to Israel. Could a customised variant of this ever work in the Subcontinent?

I raised that question in a tiny group that Colin Powell met on one of his visits as secretary of state. Probably sufficient time has passed now to recount parts of that conversation. He was discussing likely ways to a solution and I asked if an Egypt-type approach may work for Pakistan. One of his senior aides piped in to ask how such a thing would ever work when the moment the US even offered Pakistan as little as a replacement for a damaged F-16 undercarriage “you Indians go ballistic”. He also said that even on that visit (in the course of Op Parakram) “the Indians only talk to us about five LeT guys who were caught infiltrating last week” rather than engage on what to do with Pakistan. But Powell was more patient, willing to engage in what he thought was “an interesting yarn”. “I am new to your region,” he said, self-effacingly. “But Musharraf as Sadat... that might be something to think about. But your situation isn’t more complicated than the Middle East in the seventies.”

I said I wasn’t so sure because I did not know enough on the Camp David Accords, but asked, somewhat wickedly, that now that his government had embarked upon some kind of a “Project Musharraf”, did they have a Hosni Mubarak parked in some closet just in case Musharraf disappeared from the scene like Sadat? Powell was still game. “That is a very good line, sir, and I will use it in Washington, DC many times,” he said, and then added after a long, mischievous grin: “And you can be sure that you shall be given no credit for it.”

It is by now evident that Washington’s “Project Musharraf” was indeed a variant of the old Project Sadat. And the graduated movement towards some kind of a permanent solution with India, marked by the Islamabad Declaration with Vajpayee, then Manmohan Singh and back-channel diplomacy led on the Indian side by Satinder Lambah, was linked with this. It also failed so close to the finishing line because fate took Musharraf away from power. Not through an assassin’s bullet, but through his own political stupidity and big-mouth arrogance. And when he went away, particularly the way he went away, swept aside by a democratic upsurge, there wasn’t a Hosni to be ushered out of the closet. It ended in failure, but it was the last, and so far the most creative shot at an agreement that would have enabled us to move on, leaving Pakistan behind, aside. Or, in a more perfect world, even taking it along as a partner, not adversary.


How close that process, sustained through a government change in India, came to a breakthrough is the best reason why original thinking should not be discarded as we move on, and through many setbacks, perfidies and betrayals. We can’t go into a shell every time Hafeez Saeed appears in public even as we press for his prosecution. Saeed and the many Lashkars are not the problem. They are a symptom, or even an instrument. The basic problem is the virus that sits embedded in the mind of the Pakistani military-intelligence-
bureaucratic establishment. It has built and nurtured the Lashkars as a strategic asset to keep India off-balance in “peace” time, and to be a force multiplier in war. No matter what their assurances, they will not give up on that asset until they are fully dissuaded, or persuaded, that India is no longer either a military threat or opportunity.

India has to engage with the rest of the world in the search for that new creative solution which may, ultimately, be a variant of the earlier one, except that Pakistan now does not have a Musharraf equivalent. That, in fact, is all the more reason why a new settlement, if it were to be achieved, must be backed by some kind of international or big-power guarantees. It will be tough, but not impossible. No nation of India’s size that wishes to rise to its true potential can do so with almost all its borders unsettled. It is now evident that the Chinese won’t settle with us as long as the Pakistanis don’t, and give them the opportunity to play balance-of-power. Similarly, Pakistan will continue using China to play its own balance-of-power with us. The first step for us to break out of this triangulation is to find peace with Pakistan, and that can only happen with the Americans not merely leaning heavily, but even under-writing some Egypt-like arrangement to change the very nature of Pakistani society and establishment. That is how we can de-hyphenate ourselves from our geography, and even some history.

 

[muse]

Project India?
Ejaz Haider


Here’s my agreement with Shekhar Gupta (“A new Project Pakistan”; The Indian Express; August 8): I would not just want a green card or H-1B to migrate. I would like all of Pakistan, population and territory, to up and leave. Why take territory along? Because it’s great land, but in a lousy district.

In a decent neighbourhood, perhaps somewhere in Europe, Pakistan would be a big country. Next to India? Canada to the US, or worse, Mexico to the US — now, Egypt to Israel, forget the irony of size in that case.

Here’s the good news. India does want to live in peace with its neighbours, not just Pakistan. The bad news is it wants peace only on its own terms.

But let’s be more specific about India’s case: Pakistan is trouble; a rogue state with a rogue army that wouldn’t let India “leverage its many newfound strengths”. There is “longing” in India over how to solve this Pakistan problem; how to leave it behind or aside “or, in a more perfect world, even [take] it along as a partner, not adversary”. Not possible, perhaps because Pakistan is configured in the wrong way.

Corollary: Pakistan is congenitally bad. Dilemma: that, if accepted, would also mean India can do zip, zilch and zero to make Pakistan right. In the real world does such reasoning make policy? No.

Notice the emphasis. Pakistan must do this, that etc. The onus of change is on Pakistan. India and the world have to find some way of getting Pakistan to behave, realise the folly of its actions, maybe throw it some crumbs, toys for its uniformed boys, development money and so on.

Deconstruct this, shall I? India sits there, sage-like, shaking its head over the misconduct of a small brash boy who is always too big for his boots. Sometimes it is about the folly of Partition; at times it is about the ideology of Pakistan; now it is Pakistan’s military-bureaucratic combine and its hold over that country. India also has a Pakistan problem because Pakistan has a Kashmir problem.

Shekhar Gupta is spot-on when he talks about “creative thinking”. Let’s try it.

How about India begin to put Pakistan’s “perfidious” behaviour in a “context” given that Gupta himself has identified the “burdens of history” which impact further the tyranny of geography and in turn create more bad history?

Putting things in context is generally accepted to be helpful for problem-solving. For, at least in a moment of realisation, we can also feel the feathery touch of empathy.

Gupta’s “impatient” American interlocutor was right when he said that “‘the Indians only talk to us about five LeT guys who were caught infiltrating last week’ rather than engage on what to do with Pakistan”. He was implying just this. LeT is not the problem because it is operating — or is made to — in a context. Change the context and LeT will disappear. But no, it is much easier to talk and talk incessantly about LeT because that can dodge the real issue(s).

Of course the context can be changed in many ways, not all of which can be benign. India could kick Pakistan’s backside and alter the ground realities once and for all. But if that is not possible — and as a student of military affairs I don’t think it is, at least in the near future — then perhaps a new approach, more benign and fruitful for both sides, may be in order.

Should this approach, however, be based on an Egypt-Israel model; can it be? I have grave doubts. Gupta has been a Pakistan hand for a long time. If he almost laments that there was no Hosni Mubarak “parked in the closet” to replace Pakistan’s Sadat, then I am not too hopeful about those in India who haven’t had much of an opportunity to visit and/ or study Pakistan.

There is also a contradiction here, one deeply ironic. On the one hand the perfidy presumably flows from the military-bureaucratic combine. On the other the democratic transition is supposed to have first thrown out a Sadat, then blocked the way of a Mubarak and, resultantly, by that logic, thwarted the Egypt-Israel-like peace that was almost reaching fruition.

India does have a Pakistan problem but it is not about the “nature of Pakistani society and Establishment”; it is because India has an India problem, not just in relation to Pakistan but vis-à-vis all its neighbours. It follows the realist model for itself and seeks Lockean cooperation from others. That is what needs to change before we can be creative and think of new ways to partner each other even in an imperfect world.


Who dat?




This article originally appeared in The Indian Express. Ejaz Haider is Consulting Editor of The Friday Times and Op-Ed Editor of Daily Times. He can be reached at sapper@dailytimes.com.pk

 

[Awesome]

That was brilliant. I think if Indians are serious about resolving their issues with Pakistan they need to step up and really engage us, address our issues and stop behaving like they are superior beings that can look down upon the Pakistanis.

You can see Gupta's frustration at the fact that India can never be a super power till Pakistan lets it be one. Otherwise India will always be a nation that has to bend its back against a much smaller nation, in size, economy and military.

India needs to quit selling to the world that Pakistan needs to do this and Pakistan needs to do that. It needs to step up and say we can do this and that for Pakistan if it hopes to achieve Peace.

'The Peace' between Pakistan and India has been dismal. With Pakistan making all of the overtures towards Peace and India zeroing them all with off-incidents like the Mumbai attacks. Not to mention without even beginning - yes without even beginning a meaningful debate on Kashmir.

In fact at one point the Indians started talking as if, the peace, is in Pakistan's benefit and that we have to produce the goods. India does want peace... But only at its own terms - completely.

Egypt and Israel are not going to be Pakistan and India. Not like this. Not till the Indians get off their high horse and truly, really want peace.