Fission for compliments

Of course India needs US friendship. But why through the N-deal

It would seem that push has finally come to shove. Not too long ago, Washington launched its Ultimate Weapon with the landing of Henry Kissinger in New Delhi. He, of the guttural charm and Germanic weltenschaung, did not come just to receive a bouquet from the Leader of the Opposition. He came to generally render gratuitous advice to sign on the dotted line of the nuclear deal. Henry Paulson, George W. Bush’s Treasury Secretary, was here too, lauding the benefits to India from the deal. Fatwas from Washington and heavy breathing in New Delhi gives US officialdom the finesse of a battering ram.

There has been controversy about the implications and benefits of the 123 Agreement or how this agreement and its enabling legislation, the Hyde Act, will be interpreted by the US and India in the future. The intense debate, mostly outside Parliament, was divisive for the country, threatening at one stage the continuation of the government. Essential questions, even basic ones like the price per unit of nuclear energy, remain unanswered. Doubts about long-term strategic implications have been lost in hopeful obfuscation that the deal holds the key to superstardom.

Assuming that the deal is the best thing that has happened to India in a long time, why has the US been pushing it with such single-minded dedication? Why is the US willing to welcome India to this elite club as an honorary member when the pursuit of nuclear non-proliferation has been an article of faith with that country? Why the hard sell? What is it that we are all collectively missing? Surely the obvious gains — Indian markets, defence sales to India and engaging India (as the Chinese fear) as part of the US strategy to encircle China — could have been achieved without the Indo-US nuclear deal. Logically, therefore, there must be a larger US interest beyond the obvious.

The US naturally wishes to maintain its global superiority. Nations attain this status not through magnanimity or virtue but through the use of military might, superior technology, fixity of purpose and ruthlessness. The Republican Party’s foreign policy commandments have their origins in the neo-con thinking of the Defence Planning Guidance of 1992. One of the many guidelines was that “we [the US] must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role”. Another document of importance, ‘Rebuilding America’s Defences — Strategy Forces and Resources for the New Century’, in 2000 reaffirmed that the 1992 document provided the blueprint for maintaining US pre-eminence and preventing the rise of a rival power. All this led to the National Security Strategy of September 2002, which also laid out the justification for an endless war on terror against phantom enemies and the need to strike at them pre-emptively anytime anywhere. Simultaneously, the US must continue to have access to cheap energy and control its distribution. Any disruption of this is perceived as a threat to US security.

Fortress America was suddenly vulnerable to terrorist zealots on September 11, 2001, and a terrorist armed with a nuclear device was the ultimate horror. Pakistan was seen as the home of al-Qaeda, an unstable country with a thriving terrorism industry, possessing nuclear weapons and a dubious record of proliferation. This became an intolerable risk and US interests dictated that not only al-Qaeda and Taliban be destroyed, but that nuclear weapons in Pakistan be secured.

The new Bush doctrine formulated immediately after the 9/11 attacks (Nuclear Posture Review, March 2002) postulated that the US would not accept that governments in which they did not have confidence or countries where they could not verify facilities should hold nuclear weapons. Pervez Musharraf had come on board for the war on terror but the US wanted control of Pakistan’s nuclear capability, and quickly. It even wanted to place sufficient force on the ground to control access. Yet, since Pakistan was needed for the war on terror, its leaders could not be seen as having submitted themselves to nuclear blackmail for fear that this would arouse Islamic anger further.

There were reports that in March 2002, American troops, primarily drawn from Special Operations Command, along with scientists from Nuclear Emergency Search Teams arrived in Pakistan. According to George Friedman (America’s Secret War), they were deployed to all of Pakistan’s nuclear reactors. Inventories were quickly made and the Americans concluded that Pakistan was not in a condition to deliver a nuclear device to al-Qaeda, given the US monitoring of Pakistani facilities. The US discovered that there were “advanced Chinese plans for other devices that had not been built at that time but these would have made Pakistan much more dangerous by increasing the reliability and sophistication”. Friedman asserts that the US had secured Pakistan’s nuclear facilities, although it was only nominally observing them. Musharraf agreed to keep this a secret and also purge the ISI. It also appears that at the confirmation hearing of Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State, she was asked about the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear facilities should something happen to Musharraf. Eventually, she reassured Senator Kerry that the matter had been taken care of, but did not elaborate. Recent debate in the American media about the safety of Pakistani nuclear weapons, accompanied by official assurances that they are safe, suggests that the US may have reason to be confident.

If correct, this should be good news. But no one was ever going to confirm this to the Indians as it would break the India-Pakistan hyphenation and leave India as the pre-eminent regional power. Besides, the National Security Strategy of 2002 categorised China and India as potential US rivals, though they were listed as current allies, and mentioned Russia as an emerging threat. US strategists would have some concerns about a militarily-strong, economically-powerful India 20-30 years from now, which might just as well go into a China-Russia-India or a Russia-Iran-India triangle with all its potentially anti-American possibilities. By then, India might even be able to master the three-stage cycle through breeder reactors that use thorium and not be dependent on imported uranium. This would leave India with adequate fissile material and energy production as well as make it independent of American control. All this could have devastating consequences for US interests and had to be prevented, alongside capping India’s nuclear weapons capability.

India had both to be stopped and enrolled as an ally, but the Pakistan route was impossible. The chosen route was the 123 deal, read with the India-specific Hyde Act flowing from the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. The Hyde Act says very clearly that one of the objectives is to “halt, roll back and eventually eliminate” India’s nuclear capability. It also mentions five times that if the US stops supplying nuclear material to India following a treaty violation, it will not allow other members of the NSG to supply this. Nicholas Burns reaffirms (Foreign Affairs, Nov-Dec 2007) that with the deal, India will come into the international non-proliferation mainstream. There were sermons on India’s foreign policy on Myanmar and Iran, with the suggestion that India should buy US combat aircraft.

The debate should not be about whether or not we need modern technologies and American friendship. Of course we do. Instead, the debate should be whether or not the deal, in its present form, ensures, enhances or impairs India’s strategic interests.

Very often it is argued that if the deal breaks, then Indo-US relations will suffer a setback.
Any relationship that is based on just one issue is seriously flawed.

Source : Hindustan Times , 27th Nov 2007

Islamabad to worse

The situation in Pakistan has spun out of Musharraf's control.

Pervez musharraf — Pakistan’s part- time President but full-time Army Chief, and the US’s ally of allies, with an approval rating less than that of Osama bin Laden — is in trouble like never before. The three main crises that he faces have acquired their own potentially devastating momentum, as they run concurrently at three different venues.
The political crisis, which is mainly Punjab-centric, has arisen from Musharraf’s desire to retain power. Musharraf may have shot himself in the foot by clamping martial law but in the months ahead this will be the least of the problems. The second crisis, momentarily swept under the carpet, is the silent Baloch insurgency. This crisis is not going to be easy to solve soon and needs major socio-economic engineering. The third crisis in the NWFP is now the most serious and complicated that Islamabad has ever faced, because this is now a mixture of Pushtun nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism.

The General’s speech, after he imposed martial law, gave the bizarre impression of General Musharraf indicting President Musharraf for eight years of misrule but both had to stay. In order to protect democracy, he locked out the unarmed Bench and the bar, choked the media and arrested mainstream politicians while releasing armed militants in the NWFP in exchange for captured soldiers. Unless the peoples’ movement acquires a totem pole soon, like the Myanmar students found Aung San Suu Kyi, and is backed by sustained international pressure, it will be crushed under the jackboot. Continued US indulgence and political divisiveness will lead to a stalemate and some kind of elections but with no winners. This is what the army would want, a fractured mandate that allows them to retain control but go back to the barracks, refurbish and return after the politicians fail, as they inevitably would.

Musharraf’s ploy was to keep the Americans reasonably happy by doling out some terrorist or the other periodically and collect a bounty each time as well. By September 2006, there had been 369 Guantanamo-bound renditions for millions of clandestine dollars. In reality, Musharraf allowed only a sporadic hunt of al-Qaeda while protecting the Taliban. Simultaneously, he also acquired military hardware worth $ 3 billion that is not meant for counter-insurgency operations but for use against India. This was justified as one of the ways to keep Pakistan’s top brass happy. But Stephen Cohen recently described Washington as the General’s ATM. Musharraf’s focus on self-preservation has hampered effective measures to deal with the emerging threat in the NWFP that has now spread to the rest of the country.
Musharraf had anticipated US and Western reaction accurately. Pursuit of US interests — at this moment the American war on terror and keeping nuclear weapons away from extremists — being the main consideration, fancy notions like restoration of democracy in Pakistan took a backseat. There was the anticipated table thumping for effect but nothing that would hurt.
It is, thus, Musharraf who holds the carrot and the stick — for his role in the war on terror, the possibility of the periodic capture of an important terrorist and the fear that the nuclear bomb could fall into the hands of a terrorist. He could even deliver a ‘high value target’ that might include Osama bin Laden or Al Zawahiri and then all sins, past, present and future will be forgiven.

Therefore, all the West wants is that Musharraf sheds his uniform and holds some kind of elections that they can call free and fair. The US would like Musharraf to use Benazir as a prop for legitimacy but the General would rather use Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the patron saint of the Taliban, for this. They are soulmates anyway and the Maulana is useful in curbing the nationalist aspirations of the Baloch. Balochistan seems to have gone off the global radar screen because Islamabad has put the province under a shroud of secrecy. It is, however, more like a pressure cooker about to explode. Not many hear of the bomb blasts, the gas pipeline disruptions or the arrests and incarcerations. Thousands of Baloch nationalists have simply disappeared and others have joined the underground. The Brussels-based International Crisis Group in a recent report concluded that “The insurgency is unlikely to subside as long as the military relies on repression, killings, imprisonment, disappearances and torture to bend the Baloch to its will”.
The Taliban takeover in the Fata is now being replicated in the rest of the NWFP. Three of the seven districts of the valley of Swat, Pakistan’s idyllic tourist spot, is today under the thrall of Taliban forces. Attempts by Musharraf’s security forces to oust them have failed. There are fears that this new development marks the arrival of al Qaeda outside Fata and represents the most potent threat to Pakistan’s security.

It is not difficult to see how grave the problem has become through neglect and connivance. The Lal Masjid episode which was followed by attacks on Pakistan’s armed forces in Tarbela, Rawalpindi and Sargodha indicate not only the ability of the terrorists to strike at will but also that they had inside intelligence. Even more important — they had access. The situation in the province also gets more complicated because of its trans-border connections. In Afghanistan, the Taliban have moved close to Kandahar for the first time since 2001 and have also occupied three other districts in western Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has been working on Pakistan-based leaders like Sirajuddin Haqqani to function as a leader within the Taliban. Sirajuddin’s Pakistani and Arab followers are uncompromising in their goal for a complete victory for al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Tribal loyalties, which are quite often trans-border, the Pushtun code of conduct and religious sentiments have become intertwined in the province. Recruitment among the devoutly religious locals is easy for the Taliban. Many of the counter-insurgent forces have remained ill- equipped and inadequately trained in contrast to the insurgents. Their morale is low and they are unwilling to fight fellow Muslims. Desertions are increasing. The Pakistani army, brought up on a single threat perception, is ill-equipped to play a counter-insurgency role. Besides, it would need local intelligence which will not be available to Punjabi troops operating in the absence of Pushtun troops. It will take years for the Pakistan army to cover this gap and, meanwhile, a Punjabi-Pushtun animus could set in.

Colonel Ralph Peters, formerly of the US Army, in his essay ‘Blood Borders’ (the Armed Forces Journal, June 2006) discusses redrawing borders in West Asia. Peters says, “What Afghanistan would lose to Persia in the west, it would gain in the east, as Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier tribes would be reunited with their Afghan brethren (the point of this exercise is not to draw maps as we would like them but as local populations would prefer them). Pakistan, another unnatural State, would also lose its Baluch territory to Free Baluchistan. The remaining ‘natural’ Pakistan would lie entirely east of the Indus, except for a westward spur near Karachi.” The essay is controversial and could not have pleased many, but does this reflect impending reality?
General Musharraf gives the impression of being firmly in the saddle, feet in the stirrups, reins held firmly, a gun at the holster and a Stetson hat. Only the horse is different. It is a horse in a merry-go-round, going nowhere but taking his rider into a spin that gets faster and faster.

Source : Hindustan Times , 14th Nov 2007