India can close the gap

The death of Osama bin Laden, the prime minister’s visit to Afghanistan and some primary education in Pakistan about the consequences of playing with jihadi fire could be creating a new Indo-Af-Pak paradigm. The US launched its war on terror in Afghanistan after 9/11 in order to destroy al-Qaeda and get Osama. Osama is dead and a splintered al-Qaeda has been reincarnated in radical groups  like the Taliban and LeT, and Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (HuJI), whose amir, Ilyas Kashmiri, has also been killed. The US and NATO now have good reason to commence troop withdrawals from Afghanistan  starting July 2011, well ahead of the US presidential polls.

The war is not won but, rather, appears to have reached an uneasy stalemate. All sides, India included, now seem committed in one way or another to Karzai’s policy of ‘reintegration and reconciliation’. This in turn implicitly distinguishes between moderate and extreme Taliban elements. India’s endorsement of this view was reflected in Manmohan Singh’s remarks while in Afghanistan. He expressed India’s long-standing historical and cultural ties with Afghanistan, said India was there for the long haul and announced an enhancement of Indian assistance from $500 mn to $2 bn.

Recent track-II interlocutors from Pakistan, though still in denial, admit to shock, shame, despair, fear and frustration over what is happening back home. Yet they discern signs of resilience among the people and growing recognition that civil supremacy must be restored. There is a dawning realisation that India is not the major threat nor Kashmir the ‘core issue’ and that non-state actors and rogue elements within the establishment must be curbed. Heart is taken from the fact that the national assembly grilled military chiefs for almost 12 hours after the Abbottabad and Mehran incidents. Yet, no one is in any doubt that the military is still in charge.

Though the US is hugely unpopular in Pakistan and much of the Islamic world, sober Pakistanis know that China cannot yet substitute it as an overall strategic partner.

Pakistan has a close and legitimate interest in Afghanistan. It is concerned that India is using its presence there to destabilise it via Balochistan and undermine its critical Pakhtun interest by buttressing the remnants of the Northern Alliance or Tajik influence. It dare not take on the Taliban full scale in FATA for fear of the perceived threat from India in the east. These are fanciful notions; but hardened perceptions matter.

Perhaps the time has come for a frank Indo-Pak dialogue on Afghanistan where both sides can frankly set out their interests and concerns. India can then use its good offices to bridge the Pakhtun-Tajik/non-Pukhtun divide and also bring President Karzai on board. India could also try and broker a make-boundaries-irrelevant formula for the Durand Line on the proposed J&K LoC model. The Durand Line is 120-years-old and cannot be redrawn. But it can be made an even more porous border than it is at present by building cross-border institutions and arrangements for cooperative development and local governance without impairment of Afghan or Pakistani sovereignty.

In preparation for a progressive and accelerated US-NATO troop withdrawal, an international conference on Afghanistan should be held under UN auspices to encourage regional powers, including Pakistan, Iran, India, China, Tajikistan, Russia and some others to play the leading role in building peace and reconciliation.

The end of NATO presence and drone attacks will have a calming effect. The NATO and the US should however be part of a UN-led reconstruction plan for Afghanistan with backing from the World Bank and the ADB. Such a plan should logically include Pakistan’s FATA region, an ungoverned area that has become home to the Pakistan Taliban. India should not hesitate to contribute $1 bn to a FATA fund in lieu of transit through Pakistan to Afghanistan, which is a member of the SAARC.

Wider regional cooperation and infrastructure-building could be promoted by undertaking projects like the Iran-Pakistan-India and Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipelines, the building of a Central Asian-SAARC power grid based on Central Asian hydroelectric generation, water resource development of the Kabul and Helmand basins with Indian participation, and exploitation of Afghanistan’s iron ore and other mineral reserves for regional benefit. The growing Indian market could underpin such developments of which Pakistan could be a major beneficiary.

American intervention in Libya, Iran and elsewhere in West Asia has also proved disastrous. The ‘Arab Spring’ marks a process of awakening and an urge for democracy. The Saudis and other monarchies are literally bribing their people to win momentary support. This too will not work. How is India positioning itself in this new situation? Our very considerable interest in the region and the presence of a 4.5 million diaspora dictate a more pro-active role. Two policy strands suggest themselves. India, with Pakistan and Bangladesh, represents not merely by far the largest but the most advanced, progressive and liberal Islamic community worldwide. Their tragedy has been to allow their soft, humanistic, Sufi Islam to be radicalised by more fundamentalist Wahabi teachings largely imported from Saudi Arabia and funded by it. This process of ‘conversion’ has spawned ideas of victimhood, lost glory, false piety, religious nationalism and revenge as part of a new crusade.

The Muslims of South Asia have begun to see through the underlying fallacy of this approach. Situated as it is by and large within a liberal democratic framework, South Asia can play a part in redeeming world Islam by its example and through imaginative Indian diplomacy and use of its considerable soft power.

The other leg of this policy has to be a new, pro-active approach to the tragic Palestine-Israel divide. India has good relations with both sides — Arab and Jew — since ancient times. Netanyahu’s recent address to the US Congress had many positives but for his inability to bridge the crucial last mile, which rendered it almost totally negative. Can India not lend its good offices here to help close the gap? It has no axe to grind and could truly be an honest broker.