Pakistan: Now or Never?

from India Insight:

Mistrust, Afghan insecurity loom over Indo-Pak talks

By Annie Banerji

As India and Pakistan begin diplomatic talks between the two countries' foreign secretaries, Pew Research Centre published a survey this week that shows Pakistanis are strongly critical of India and the United States as well.

Even though there has been a slew of attacks by the Taliban on Pakistani targets since Osama bin Laden's killing in May, the Pew Research publication illustrates that three in four Pakistanis find India a greater threat than extremist groups.

In similar fashion, 65 percent of Indians expressed an unfavourable view of Pakistan, seeing it as a bigger threat than the LeT, an active militant Islamic organisation operating mainly from Pakistan and Maoist militants operating in India.

Moreover, a majority of Pakistanis disapproved of the U.S. military operation that killed Osama bin Laden in his Abbottabad compound, located 35 miles from Islamabad. Only 12 percent expressed a positive view of the U.S. and most Pakistanis view the U.S. as an enemy, consider it a potential military threat and oppose American-led anti-terrorism efforts.

In the midst of these unflattering opinions that India and Pakistan share of each other, U.S. President Barack Obama's decision to withdraw 33,000 troops from Afghanistan by next summer comes to the foreground as Washington's expectation is to see India and Pakistan jointly fill its shoes. However, India feels it will be left to babysit a dangerous neighbourhood riddled with militancy.

Though both countries wish to have improved relations, Pakistan worries about India's influence in Afghanistan as it would have to defend both its eastern and western borders from what it sees as its existential threat. In the same way, New Delhi fears the possibility of its nuclear-armed neighbour and the Taliban filling the vacuum left by the U.S. troops.

from India Insight:

Will India’s Kashmir talks offer break fresh ground?

New Delhi said this week it will adopt "quiet diplomacy" with every section of political opinion to find a solution to the problems in India-ruled Kashmir about four years after it opened a dialogue with separatist groups there.

The response to the announcement is on expected lines -- the moderates welcoming it and pro-Pakistan hardliners reminding any effort at peace without involving Islamabad would be futile.

New Delhi has not yet made a formal offer for talks. But the timing of the development appears to be significant.

Violence is at a low in Kashmir, elections there were largely successful and last year's angry public protests against Indian rule have now subsided.

On the other hand, the security situation is at its worst in Pakistan and the war in Afghanistan appears to be in a decisive phase.

There is also growing realisation in Washington about the impact of the India-Pakistan rivalry on the Afghan war as pointed out in this Reuters analysis.

Pakistan has long demanded that resolution of the Kashmir dispute be made part of any effort to stabilise South Asia, a move strongly resisted by India.

After Indian election, relationship with Pakistan back in focus

After a diplomatic pause enforced by India’s lengthy election campaign, the country will soon have a new government after the ruling Congress party won an unexpectedly decisive victory.  But analysts doubt the change of government will bring a significant change of heart in India towards Pakistan.

Despite Pakistan’s offensive against the Taliban in the Swat valley, they say India has yet to be convinced the Pakistan Army is ready to crack down more widely on Islamist militants, fearing instead that it will selectively go after some groups, while leaving others like the Afghan Taliban and Kashmir-oriented groups alone.  While Pakistan wants to resume talks broken off by New Delhi after last November’s attack on Mumbai, India has said it wants Islamabad to take more action first against those behind the assault, which it blamed on the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is expected to remain in office after the Congress election victory, is now likely to come under pressure from the United States to soften India’s stance towards Pakistan.  The current stand-off leaves both countries vulnerable to a fresh flare-up of tensions which could torpedo Washington’s plans for Pakistan and Afghanistan. It also complicates U.S. efforts to persuade the Pakistan Army to move troops from the Indian border to fight Taliban militants on its western border with Afghanistan.

So how will Singh respond?

Indian analysts are already arguing India must stand up to U.S. pressure to ensure its own interests are not sacrificed to those of the United States. In an editorial in the Times of India, Brahma Chellaney writes that U.S. policy — very much focused on Afghanistan — now runs counter to Indian interests. He argues that Kashmir-oriented groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba are of little interest to the United States. “Instead, Washington intends to goad New Delhi post-election to reduce border troop deployments, a step that would help Pakistan to infiltrate more armed terrorists into India.”

It may not be entirely correct to say that Washington is not interested in the Lashkar-e-Taiba.  The group was cited in media reports as a suspect in the London underground bombings in 2005, potentially making it as much of a global threat as al Qaeda. But Chellaney’s comments do underline a traditional suspicion in the region – both in India and Pakistan — about what is seen as a ruthless U.S. focus on its own interests.

In an editorial in The Hindu former diplomat M.K. Bhadrakumar says India must galvanise its regional diplomacy, rebuilding its once close relationship with Russia and Iran, to strengthen its hand. But he also writes that, “certainly, resumption of the composite dialogue with Pakistan ought to be a priority.”

Too much fighting, not enough talking?

David Kilcullen knows a thing or two about counter-insurgency.

A former lieutenant-colonel in the Australian army and a senior adviser to U.S. General David Petraeus, he helped shape the “surge” policy that is widely credited with pulling Iraq back from the brink of chaos. He has just written a book entitled “The Accidental Guerrilla: fighting small wars in the midst of a big one” which closely examines insurgencies from Thailand and Indonesia to Afghanistan and Iraq, including what it takes to contain and quell them.

Far from being gung-ho or militaristic, Kilcullen takes an analytical approach, putting a heavy emphasis on the need for cultural and linguistic understanding. Without a deep appreciation of history, politics and anthropology, defeat is all but guaranteed  in complex foreign lands even for the world’s mightiest of armies, he argues.

 Which is why it was particularly notable what he said at a book launch in London this week.

The U.S. military has about 1.6 million personnel all told, from frontline troops to cooks and drivers. But there are just 6,000 foreign service officers in the U.S. State Department, he said. That’s about 260 soldiers to each diplomat, a far higher ratio than in any other major military in the world, according to Kilcullen.

“There are more members of U.S. military marching bands then there are foreign service officers,” he said. “In fact, there are about ten times as many accountants in the U.S. military as there are foreign service officers in the U.S. State Department.”

His point hardly needed reinforcing. The U.S. military spends vast amounts — forecast to be $650 billion in 2009 — on ensuring its armed forces are able to fight whatever threat may emerge anywhere in the world at any given time, but a tiny fraction of that amount on diplomatic and cultural liaison work that might help understand a conflict better or even prevent it.

Obama and his South Asian envoy

There’s much talk about President-elect Barack Obama possibly appointing Richard Holbrooke as a special envoy to South Asia. The New York Times says it’s likely; while the Washington Independent says it may be a bit premature to expect final decisions, even before Obama takes office on Jan. 20.

But more interesting perhaps than the name itself will be the brief given to any special envoy for South Asia. Would the focus be on Afghanistan and Pakistan? Or on Pakistan and India? Or all three? The Times of India said India might be removed from the envoy’s beat to assuage Indian sensitivities about Kashmir, which it sees as a bilateral issue to be resolved with Pakistan, and which has long resisted any outside mediation. This, the paper said, was an evolution in thinking compared to statements made by Obama during his election campaign about Kashmir.

Before last year’s Mumbai attacks, Obama had suggested that the United States should help India and Pakistan to make peace over Kashmir as part of a regional strategy to stabilise Afghanistan. In this he was supported by a raft of U.S. analysts who argued that Pakistan would never fully turn against Islamist militants threatening the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan as long as it felt it might need them to counter burgeoning Indian influence in the region. Obama’s suggestion raised hackles in India, and broke with a tradition established by the Bush administration which had tended to be – publicly at least — hands-off about the Kashmir dispute. 

But since the Mumbai attacks, India has argued that any attempt to link these to the Kashmir dispute would be to reward what it has called cross-border terrorism from Pakistan. Pakistan, which denies involvement in the Mumbai attacks, has in turn insisted that the best way to resolve tensions with India would be to seek a solution on Kashmir. So the brief given to a South Asia envoy could turn out to be one of the first clear tests of how successful Indian diplomacy has been post-Mumbai in trying to convince the United States to see Pakistan, rather than Kashmir, as the problem. 

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Is Indian “patience” paying off over Mumbai?

Shortly after the Mumbai attacks, I asked whether India faced a trial of patience in persuading Pakistan — with help from the United States — to take action against the Islamist militants it blamed for the assault on its financial capital. India’s approach of relying on American diplomacy rather than launching military action led to some  soul-searching among Indian analysts when it failed to deliver immediate results.  But is it finally beginning to bear fruit?

Former Indian diplomat M K Bhadrakumar writes in the Asia Times that diplomatic efforts over the Mumbai attacks are entering a crucial phase. ”After having secured New Delhi’s assurance that India will not resort to a military strike against Pakistan, Washington is perceptibly stepping up pressure on Islamabad to act on the available evidence regarding the Mumbai attacks.”

Earlier this week, Pakistan admitted that the lone surviving Mumbai gunman, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, was a Pakistani. The head of Pakistan’s powerful spy agency, the Inter-Services intelligence or ISI, also gave a conciliatory interview to German magazine Der Spiegel.  Lieutenant-General Ahmad Shuja Pasha ruled out the possibility of war with India. “We may be crazy in Pakistan, but not completely out of our minds. We know full well that terror is our enemy, not India,” Dawn newspaper quoted him as saying.

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