Jammu and Kashmir -- Moving On

We need to do a few things to bring normalcy in Kashmir that go beyond tourism statistics. We need to go beyond the tokenism of nomenclature. We need to keep Pakistan out of the equation. We need to genuinely empower the elected government and its representatives and allow the state to be governed from Srinagar and not from Delhi. This means we need to ignore this group called the Hurriyat that represents at best themselves but usually Pakistani interests or periodic threats that political space grows from the barrel of a gun. We must not treat this is a Hindu-Muslim affair but bring back the Kashmiriyat, which also means the Kashmiri Pandits must feel safe enough to return.

True, there have been horrendous mistakes in the way we have handled Jammu and Kashmir and true these grievances need to be redressed. One of the best ways of doing this is to ensure that we do not repeat these mistakes. Statesmanship in Jammu and Kashmir does not mean coddling separatists with higher subsidies or promising the moon. Instead, statesmanship demands that we make realistic attainable promises. We also make it clear that there is no question of independence to ten districts in the Kashmir Valley on any basis and specially on the basis of religion. So Azadi is out.

Ulterior motives: Pakistan is not interested in the Muslims of the Valley, but in the water from the rivers that flow and irrigate the plains of the Punjab

Meanwhile, New Delhi should tell those with grievances in the Valley that they would be treated just as any other Indian would be treated in Bihar, Tamil Nadu or Assam. A truly fair treatment is also about equality with the rest of the country. The rest of the country wants to know why one state should continue to get preferential treatment. What is the good boy benefit for states like Mizoram for instance? Kashmiri youth also need to get out of their beautiful Valley and see the rest of their country, just as we find a Bihari in Mumbai or a Malayalee in Sikkim or a Sikh in Kolkata. There are opportunities waiting for them, or any one who has the talent and the determination to succeed.

Statecraft does not mean periodically setting up commissions and study groups who recommend action for the future but then nothing happens. It does not also mean that when Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, who holds an Indian Passport, turns to Pakistan we ignore this arguing that this is irrelevant and yet give the impression that Kashmir cannot be solved without the Hurriyat. To most Indians this is secessionist talk and there are some laws about this. The Hurriyat and Pakistan are not part of the solution. They and their surrogates are the problem. Eventually, AFSPA will go as soon as we can make a determination that Pakistan has wound down its terrorist infrastructure.

Our leaders in New Delhi and those unelected leaders in Srinagar, must realise the basic truth that problems in Jammu and Kashmir will not be solved through Pakistan. It is in Pakistan military’s vital interests to keep the Kashmiri pot boiling to preserve its primacy under the age old dream that the partition is incomplete without Kashmir. Pakistan is not interested in the Muslims of the Valley but in the water from the rivers that flow and irrigate the plains of the Punjab. A country that treats its own Muslims in the manner it does, is hardly likely to treat the Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir any better.

Statecraft would also have to ensure that the Kashmiri Pandits who left their state are allowed to return. In Kashmir Muslims do not eat beef and Hindus do not eat pork in deference to each others sentiments; both the Pandits and Muslims struggled together against the Maharaja in the 1930s. That was when Sheikh Abdullah renamed his Muslim Conference as National Conference. The Amarnath Yatra has traditionally been led by a Muslim shepherd carrying the Chhadi Mubarak. The Shankaracharya Temple overlooks the Dal Lake. The Ziarat at Charar e Sharif, a place of pilgrimage for all faiths, was destroyed by that Muslim terrorist Mast Gul not by any central Police force. There is Vaishno Devi in Jammu and the Zanskar Monastery in Ladakh. Kashmir and Kashmiriyat cannot be complete without its Pandits. Nor can we continue to dwell in the past that only encourages victimhood. If there has to be a ‘moving on’ it has to be all inclusive.

Source : Mid Day , Mumbai , 21st June 2012, The writer is a Vice President of Centre for International Relations , ORF.

Why is US Secretary of Defence Panetta so angry?

It was one thing to hold India  to ransom and periodically threaten nuclear blackmail. But it was not going to work against the US. The US, as always, learned the hard way that it was not or need not be all that dependent on Pakistani cooperation and generosity, says Vikram Sood.

US Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta was in New Delhi  for a short visit after the Shangri-La conference in Singapore which was not attended by the Chinese nor by the Pakistanis. Secretary Panetta had come here after meeting his counterparts in Vietnam and Cambodia. While he was here he was effusive in his hopes about the future prospects of India US partnership, cooperation and collaboration in many security related spheres. The visitor repeatedly talked about India US possibilities which must have gladdened many Indian hearts. Yet our official reaction appeared subdued.

It is possible ours is a policy decision for reasons one does not know but it would be tragic if we did not react merely because the decision was not to take a decision. So long as we remember all the time that the US remains the most important power globally even though it makes more than its share of mistakes, sometimes takes decisions that we are genuinely unable to accept or even appreciate as it impinges adversely on our interests and can be fickle as well.

Nevertheless, there is no country that can afford not to be friendly with the US and also that no country will jeopardise its interests with US for our sake. So when Panetta came, hopefully we would have heard him seriously, without being smug or cynical. It is well known that India is in the market looking for defence equipment including that from the US. New Delhi would remain hesitant so long as the intrusive and restrictive US laws like the LSA (Logistics Support Agreement) and CISMOA (Communications, Interoperability Security Management Agreement) are made applicable to defence purchases from the US. In contrast to the warming of India-US ties, the US-Pakistan relationship has soured.

No one would have failed to notice that Panetta by passed Islamabad and Rawalpindi to land in Kabul from where he launched another broadside against Pakistan. This was a reflection of the state of the US-Pakistan relationship at present where the US has expressed its frustration at continued Pakistani intransigence. A word of caution here; it is quite possible that this outburst was part of an election rhetoric for audiences back home. Come November and this window of opportunity may close or shut partially.

US-Pakistan relations already in a trough over the Raymond Davis issue, suffered another setback after the Osama bin Laden killing and the Salala incident worsened the situation even further. Pakistan used this injured pride to cover up for the embarrassment over the Osama killing, blocked the NATO supply route to recover lost prestige, exhibit ability to stand up for Pakistan's sovereign rights and make some money in the bargain. The move backfired.

The trump card of threatening to go under unless helped had been played for too long and far too often and it no longer worked. The world's superpower was annoyed; very very annoyed indeed. Consequently, having pushed itself into yet another corner, there are no more tricks up Pakistan's sleeve.

There have been periods in the past when US-Pakistan relations have had their highs and lows but they mostly related to Pakistan's numerous India specific adventures and its nuclear ambitions. The strategic aims of the two allies were always totally different. Pakistan saw events as an opportunity to get even with, and more, secure against India while the US pursued its global agenda.

Consequently, Pakistan did what it always did -- it used the US whenever it could and cooperated whenever it had to. Pakistan's rulers missed their best opportunity in 2001 to seriously get rid of the pariah status forever by whole hearted co-operation in the Bush War on Terror. It reaped in billions even as its co-operation remained half hearted at best and duplicitous most of the time while it shored up its terror assets not only against India and Afghanistan but even against NATO and the US.

Pakistan's rulers had reduced their country to a rentier state and the US-Pakistan relationship had become purely a transactional one. The country's territory was on hire for bases, guns and gunmen for hire in the jihad and now, much like a Mafioso, began to demand ransom per NATO truck before allowing them to transit through Pakistani territory.

Clearly Uncle Sam was not buying this; definitely not for the present. The generals in Pakistan had directly challenged vital American security interests in the region in election year. They had harboured, assisted and advised groups like the Taliban  and the Haqqani Network working against US interests some one that Admiral Mike Mullen  had last year described as a veritable arm of the Pakistan intelligence. They had used their nuclear umbrella to promote various terrorist groups against India and now seemed to be using the same tactics against the US. And they provoked the US further when the Pakistani local court in the Pakhtoon-Khwa province handed down a 33-year sentence to Dr Shakil Afridi, the man who had led the Americans to Osama. Barack Obama was livid.

It was one thing to hold India to ransom and periodically threaten nuclear blackmail, often through surrogates, it was not going to work against the US. The US, as always, learned the hard way that it was not or need not be all that dependent on Pakistani cooperation and generosity and Pakistan was probably beginning to realise that it had exaggerated its own importance. The US and NATO had been working out alternative northern routes; not the cheapest not the quickest but not subject to the whims of what was now increasingly seen as an unreliable partner.

Pakistani leaders keep forgetting the first principle of negotiations -- always have an escape clause handy for an honourable exit. Nations do not negotiate with superpowers only through obduracy because soon enough patience wears out and the law of diminishing returns takes over.

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari  had literally gate-crashed into the Chicago conference last month but was snubbed by Obama. The various cancellations of visits by the Pakistan military top brass including General Ashfaq Kayani who did not go to the Shangri-La Conference in June and the ISI chief General Zahoorul Islam to meet his CIA counterpart are symptomatic of the acute mutual distrust and dislike between the two governments. The financial restrictions on Pakistan by the US Congress are indicative of a growing impatience and irritation with Pakistan. The continuing drone attacks only indicates that the US is not about to relent. The real pinch that will hurt Pakistan would be when the International Monetary Fund takes a view.

Pakistan needs IMF assistance to pay back previous assistance. The most likely tactic will be to wait till the very end when reserves touch rock bottom, put in a request with IMF for additional assistance and hope to be able to persuade the US to recommend this. If the US does not make any recommendation then Pakistan is really in a mess and at the deep end. Alternatively, it just might revert to form, seek a separate bargain and do what it has done all along -- be magnanimous, something Pakistan expects the world to do for it.
Bailing out Pakistan may not be that simple this time and the US may well call the Pakistani bluff of economic, political and terror and nuclear blackmail. There has probably been a reappraisal of policy in the White House and in his re-election year, President Obama may have accepted the assessment that Pakistan is a part of the problem and not a part of the solution.

If that be so, then US-Pakistan relations which are cold at present may go into deep freeze, at least until there is a reappraisal of Pakistani attitude and behaviour after the elections.

Source : Rediff.com, 11th June 2012, Vikram Sood , Vice President , ORF Centre for International Studies .

Nepal -- When you cannot get it right

 

 

If you do not get it right the first time, it is very difficult to get it right at all. So said Menaka Guruswami, a young Delhi-based constitutional lawyer while commenting on the constitutional fiasco in Nepal. It appears that this young lawyer may be right. But if one looks back India has been a very lucky nation. If we not had the kind of larger than life people drafting our constitution, who had the vision to imagine what kind of India they wanted to bequeath and the sense of humour to overlook a few cartoons, we may never have had a Constitution. The present lot of political leaders inspire little confidence that they would have given us what we have; but perhaps we would never have reached so far anyway without this document. But back to Nepal.

 

This country of nearly 30 million is facing its biggest political crisis ever. It is bigger than the Rana Revolt, bigger than the assassination of King Birendra, the Maoist revolt that accounted for more that 16,000 killed, the Jan Andolan of 2006 and today, despite the Constituent Assembly elections of 2008, the country faces an existentialist threat to itself. In a way, the crisis today is because of these elections and the manoeuvrings and manipulations that have gone on ever since. Overvaulting ambitions of an essentially entrenched feudal polity, mutual suspicions of the players which have included regional and ethnic interests and diehard ideologues, have been the ingredients of a lethal cocktail and led to the present impasse.

Rickety: A weak Nepalese administration gives a free run to the Maoist cadres to operate on both sides of the India Nepal border that also weakens the counter insurgency grid

Unable to come to an agreement on the kind of federal structure the country should have, unwilling to extend the life of the Constituent Assembly beyond May 27, 2012, the President dissolved the CA, announced that the PM, Babu Ram Bhattarai, would be the caretaker government who then announced that elections to a new Constituent Assembly would be on November 12, 2012. There seems to be no sense of the moment and of the possibility of making history, among those whom the people have entrusted with this task. This would only postpone the crisis further as the realities of today will not disappear by then.

Today, the writ of the government does not run beyond the doors of the Cabinet Office room. An impoverished country continues to be deprived of any economic benefits that might have accrued to its people as the country’s leaders continue their quarrels. The Bahun-Chhetri dominated Nepali Congress and the CPN(UML) have been reluctant federalists and trying to have a weak federation that is essentially controlled in Kathmandu. This has been the rock on which the ship of constitution building crashed this time and there is no guarantee this will not happen again.

The Maoists, the Madheshias of the Terai and the ethnic communities have been agitating; the Madhesias have been far more accommodating to the demands of the NC-UML and surrendered on the issue of including northern Sunsari, Morang Jhapa, Kanchanpur and Kailali as parts of the Madhesi belt. The Maoists scaled down their extreme demands and the Janjatis too compromised by accepting multiple names for the ten proposed provinces. But the NC-UML team would not budge. Inevitably, faced with chaos there will be quite a few who would begin to recall with fond nostalgia, the days of the Monarchy. A time may come when the Royal Nepal Army would have to take a view. Are Nepal’s politicians capable of rising to the occasion or would they prefer to squander great opportunities and wallow in their smallness? It could be latter, one fears.

An economically impoverished and politically unstable Nepal does not help the people of Nepal or India. A political vacuum in these times is doubly dangerous as it leaves the field open to inroads by various interests. A weak administration gives a free run to the Maoist cadres to operate on both sides of the India Nepal border that also weakens the counter insurgency grid. The need of the hour is for Nepal’s frontline political leaders to show largeness of heart, attune themselves to ground realities and accommodate other aspirations. That way they can hope to retain somewhat what they seek to retain in totality to the exclusion of others. Or risk losing everything and fade away into some punctuation mark in history.

This of course applies to all those who wield or pretend to wield power in South Asia.

Source : MiDDay , 7th June 2012, Vikram Sood, Vice President , ORF Centre for International Studies

Too high maintenance

The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline agreement signed on May 23 is a follow-up to the December 2010 agreement but essentially a rerun of the aborted 1990s game with a few players changed and a few goal posts moved. Then, as now, Pakistan was impoverished and the US hopes that the pipeline will help it revive its fortunes. Then, as now, the US was dealing with the Taliban to arrive at a different kind of an arrangement. Reacting quickly to the TAPI pipeline deal, the US State Department gave its approval the same day, saying this was a welcome step towards energy diversification (meaning away from Iran).

There were conflicting interests of different States in the region in the 1990s. Father Communism had died in Moscow and the children had been orphaned in the resource five 'stans' of Central Asia. Enter Uncle Sam with his goodies and ideas to wean away these orphans from the old Soviet Union. The great game in the inhospitable terrain of Central Asia was about to begin — the prize being geopolitical power.
American energy firm Unocal and Argentine energy firm Bridas were in it for the profit. The Soviet Union was dead but Russia must not be allowed to live so the Americans were in it for keeping control on energy sources and Russia out of the vital energy region. Pakistan's Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in her second term was looking for routes to and from Central Asia that would make her country the gateway and pivot and additionally take her country out of penury. The Pakistan Army, a law unto itself, was seeking control of Afghanistan for 'strategic' depth against enemy India.

It was left to the intelligence agencies once again to operationalise this agenda. The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had its own plans to control Afghanistan with Pakistani troops backing the Taliban. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was helping the great American cause of controlling the gas from Turkmenistan and other American interests. The Saudis, keen to Wahabbise Afghanistan, pitched in with the secretive intelligence chief, Turki bin Faisal, and his money for the Taliban. Iran, Russia and India were to be kept on the margins of this great game of modern buzkashi.

Assistant Secretary of State, Robin Raphel, who represented US interests, while visiting Kabul, said, "The US government now hopes that peace will facilitate US business interests." Later in Islamabad, she pronounced that the Unocal pipeline "will be very good for Turkmenistan, for Pakistan and for Afghanistan."
The US was ready at one stage to strike a deal with the Taliban, whose representatives had been feted in Texas, but for other reasons it collapsed. The Taliban shot themselves in the foot with their bestiality towards women and non-believers and pushed the Clinton administration into an embarrassed silence. The subsequent cruise missile attacks in Afghanistan in 1998 shut out further possibilities.

We are now being led away not only from Iranian oil and gas but also from Iran itself. We have identified ourselves more closely to Saudi sources and into the Turkmen grid, which is theoretically, at a later date, meant to compensate for losses from Iran. However, by moving away from the Iran option we are making our access to Central Asia, where China is already present in strength, that much more difficult. The US has pushed hard on the TAPI deal for its larger geo-strategic interests, although the Russians are not completely out of the game, Gazprom having shown interest in the consortium.

On paper the project looks attractive as it promises economic bounty from Turkmenistan to Bangladesh. However, even a cursory look at the map shows how unreal this 1,800 km pipeline worth $10-12 billion is, as it will cross the world's most turbulent areas today — Afghanistan and Balochistan — where security will be provided by Afghan and Pakistani forces.

The Oman-India pipeline (the hub for Qatari, Turkmen and Iranian supplies) at $4 billion, being considered in 2010, through the Arabian Sea avoiding turbulent and even hostile areas, is probably history. Deepwater pipelines should remain the preferred option, as this assures cheaper gas from diversified and secure sources. Gas from TAPI is expected to cost thrice as much as from domestic sources and India will also pay indirect costs for the security of gas supplies to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The US and Nato plan to pull out by 2014 and now the argument is that since this project is in the regional interest, these regional powers should also handle its security. There are serious doubts about claims that the Afghan forces are now ready to take on the burden. This claim is probably motivated by the need not to portray the impending departure as a retreat from an unwinnable situation.

The proposed pipeline goes through Kandahar, enters Balochistan, passes through Multan reaching India at Fazilka, Punjab. Given the nature of Pakistan-India relations one would have little confidence about the ability or even the intention of Pakistan to ensure uninterrupted supplies. How much or when Pakistan will plead inability to abide with agreements in the face of protests from elements of the devoutly anti-Indian organisations like the Difa-e-Pakistan Council, which oppose even trading with India, or prevaricate on some pretext, are legitimate concerns.

India's massive dependency on imported energy will continue to grow. There will also be competing interests for sources and India cannot afford to have either/or solutions nor assume hopeful situations that are unlikely to occur. Projections built on manifestly false or unattainable hopes will not provide energy security.

Source : Hindustan Times , 6th June 2012 , Vikram Sood is Vice President , ORF Centre for International Relations.