July 19, 1999
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FIFTH COLUMN Opening of the American Mind Will the US wake up to the perils of pampering Pakistan? By Tavleen Singh The war that we have not dared call a war though more than 200 Indian soldiers have died fighting it is now nearly over. It's only a matter of time before Nawaz Sharif orders his Islamic mercenaries and his soldiers to withdraw from Indian territory. We have paid heavily for his folly and for the vainglory of his generals and, undoubtedly, he will pay an even heavier price. But if we want to make sure nothing like this happens again then we must learn the lessons that lie hidden among the dead and the debris on Kargil's unforgiving battleground. There are lessons for India, for Pakistan and for the US. Because whether we like it or not the fact that the Pakistani prime minister had to go scuttling off to Washington before he conceded "concrete steps will be taken for the restoration of the Line of Control in accordance with the Simla Agreement" means the US is involved. American officials like sneering about how south Asia is not even "on our radar screen". But the truth when seen from a south Asian perspective appears to be somewhat different. Seen from this vantage point it appears the US has always been involved in Kashmir and so far the involvement has come mainly in the form of support to Pakistan's case. Whatever reasons there may have been for this in the past, it is time for the US State Department to recognise that it needs to look again at its policies in south Asia. For a start we need to know whether the US seriously stands against international terrorism or whether its position on this is as hypocritical as its support for democracy in the old days -- when the flexibility of this support was evident in its open friendship with tyrants like Pakistan's Zia-ul-Haq. It was, in fact, on account of this friendship that the good general was able to turn Pakistan into an international centre for drug trafficking, arms smuggling and terrorism. The US chose not just to close its eyes to this but also to lend as much financial support as possible to Pakistan's conversion from a small-time military dictatorship into today's nuclear rogue state. In the past 10 years there has been ample warning of this. There were the bomb blasts of 1993 in Mumbai in which many of the men captured admitted to training in Pakistan. The main perpetrators of that crime, in which more Indians lost their lives than in Kargil, then availed for many years Pakistan's generous hospitality. Meanwhile, evidence of Pakistani involvement in terrorist acts in various Indian states continued to mount. But never once have we heard Washington raise its voice against Pakistan in quite the same way that we hear it raised against Iraq, Libya or Serbia. Why? Instead, India has always had to suffer the ignominy of being treated on a par with Pakistan in a peculiar diplomatic balancing act that makes little sense either economically or politically. American business may be more interested in India's markets than in Pakistan but when American officials visit the subcontinent they seem incapable of coming to Delhi without stopping off in Islamabad. Whatever our other faults India has always -- almost always -- been a vibrant democracy. But the world's most powerful democracy has always found more in common with Pakistan. Before the Cold War ended there were some obvious reasons for this but with the Soviet Union no longer in existence there should surely have been some changes. To come now to the lessons we in India need to learn from Kargil. We need to learn, firstly, that much as we cherish our democratic right to hold elections every five minutes instead of every five years this kind of constant toppling of governments leaves Delhi looking weak. Our parties need to remind themselves that the country is more important than their politics and that governments should not be toppled for silly reasons. And when we next have a stable government it needs to examine very carefully whether the incursion in Kargil would have happened at all if the army had not been using surveillance equipment that has been outdated for nearly 15 years. There are other shameful questions that need urgent answers. Our soldiers did not let down the country but did the country let them down by not providing them with even the most basic equipment in what is probably the world's most merciless battlefield? Could the bullock-cart pace at which the Defence Ministry functions be destroying the fighting fitness of our armed forces? The Government says this isn't the time to ask such questions but they will eventually have to be answered. Just as we will need to make a determined effort to find a final solution to the Kashmir problem. Which brings us to Pakistan. Hopefully, the Kargil misadventure would have made its generals and religious fundamentalists realise no kind of warfare, not even a jihad, is going to alter the borders in Kashmir. Since there are no signs though that this has either happened or is likely to happen soon, we come back to the role that America can play. Pakistan is its client state not just emotionally, evident from Sharif's need to rush to Washington, but financially as well. So instead of thinking about mediation, what the US could do is have an extended conversation with Pakistan's leaders and explain what could happen if the IMF decided to deny it any further loans. This may sound like a hard lesson to teach a country already on its knees. But on the other hand, can we afford another Kargil? |
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