The
U.S. is pig in the middle
between Pakistan and India
By
Jonathan
Power
May 3, 2002
LONDON - After the publication this week of two
important reports - one by the ambassadors of the
European Union to India and the other by Human Rights
Watch - confirming that what took place in the Indian
state of Gujarat was nothing less than a state
government-planned massacre, when Hindu mobs ran amok
through Muslim neighbourhoods, we should start to worry
less about a supposed Muslim/Christian clash of
civilizations and worry more about the actual
Muslim/Hindu divide of civilizations, especially so when
the two sides have nuclear weapons pointing at each
other.
Why any Indian government should now expect to solve
the Kashmir problem in its favour is beyond
comprehension. If 180 million Muslims can no longer feel
safe and secure inside India, despite the Herculean
efforts of the country's founding fathers to make the
world's largest secular democracy function without
religious rancour, there is no chance that the Muslim
dominated state of Kashmir will ever feel comfortable
inside the Indian union.
Yet Muslim agitation in Pakistan over Kashmir has
jangled on Indian nationalistic nerves for so long it was
only a matter of time before Indian angst spilled out in
this appalling way. Not for nothing did the Muslim mobs
taunt their victims in Gujarat with cries of "dirty
Pakis". Until very recently both the U.S. and the
European Union have preferred to stay on the sidelines of
Hindu/Muslim disputes. But so deep have they been drawn
into the affairs of the sub-continent by the Afghan war
they no longer can sidestep the issue. On the one hand,
America has embraced Pakistan with such fervour that not
much these days gets decided in Pakistan without an
American say. On the other, America, understandably, has
taken advantage of India's euphoria in seeing Pakistan's
ally, the Taliban, get its comeuppance. India has rushed
to do what it never has done before, welcome a foreign
power with open arms to use its airbases, military
facilities and anything else that America needs to wage
its war on terrorism.
America, to put it bluntly, has become pig in the
middle. On the Pakistani side, President Pervez Musharraf
has been courting Washington's favour as a useful prop to
his own regime. With American largesse poring into what
was before September 11th a near bankrupt country he has
been able to face the electorate this week in his bid to
be an elected dictator without fear of significant
opposition. Yet he has paid an enormous price for running
with the Americans. Pakistan's northern ally in the war
of attrition with India is now out of the picture. The
anti-Western militants who moved in and out of service to
the Taliban and Al Qaeda to help in harassing India from
Pakistani Kashmir have had their wings clipped. Thus the
undermining of India's grip on Kashmir is for now
effectively stalled. Not least, the Americans de facto
have put under their custodial protection Pakistan's
stock of nuclear weapons. Everyone now knows should
either the Pakistan government move to deploy them for
action against India or should militants make a move to
topple Musharraf and grab them, the U.S. special forces
would move in to secure them before you could say
Kashmir.
On the Indian side matters are no less serious if
perhaps a little more complex, partly because if Pakistan
was bankrupt enough and small enough to be pushed around,
India is too large, too economically independent and too
democratic to be dealt with in quite so blunt a manner.
On the one hand, Washington has realized that the U.S.
and India are victims of the same forces and that its own
earlier mistakes have contributed mightily to the
situation. Washington has accepted that it was the U.S.
and Saudi funnelling of arms to the anti-Soviet
guerrillas in Afghanistan through Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence agency that led to the
Afghani war veterans coming to haunt first the security
of India and then later that of the U.S. itself. Thus
America and India are truly brothers in arms. Moreover,
America does not have to watch its back in India as it
does in Pakistan. On the other hand America can only see
disaster ahead if Hindu/Muslim violence gets out of hand
as it did in Gujarat and if the central government seeks
to excuse it and tolerates senior members of its
political camp perpetuating it. One suspects that
Washington is no longer going to allow India such an easy
ride on Kashmir, however much India wants to dress the
dispute up as a war on terrorism.
Fifty three years ago the UN mediated an agreement to
a four-part sequence - a cease-fire in Kashmir, followed
by the withdrawal of Pakistan's forces from all occupied
territories, the thinning of India's military presence
and a plebiscite to ascertain to which country the people
of Kashmir wished to belong. Only the first two and a
half steps were taken.
These steps look uncannily right for today's
situation. Pakistan has already been forced to do some of
its somersaults. India will have to do its in due course.
Never since the parting of the ways between India and
Pakistan has the opportunity for a peaceful settlement
looked more necessary - or more propitious.
I can be reached by phone
+44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2002
By JONATHAN POWER
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