[sacw] [ACT] Engagement, not containment

[Harsh Kapoor]

The Hindu
26 January 2000
Opinion

Engagement, not containment

By Malini Parthasarathy

TO THOSE who view India-Pakistan relations as a zero- sum game, the fact
that the world's leading powers including the United States appear to
view the present military regime in Islamabad with distinct disfavour
and have begun to endorse New Delhi's suspicions in regard to its
sponsorship of terrorism in the region, is another feather in the cap
for India's diplomacy. Such a reading of the regional situation which
banks on the isolation of Pakistan in the global arena may yield
short-term diplomatic satisfaction but in the long-run, this complacent
approach would only put further pressure on the ground situation in the
region and could also narrow India's diplomatic and strategic options
sharply.

There is no doubt that all the elements in the current situation, most
particularly the fact that Pakistan today presents an incontrovertible
picture of serious instability and volatility, have added up to swing
the pendulum of global opinion towards India in the ongoing propaganda
war between the two countries. These are indeed tempting times for
Indian diplomacy. It is indeed all too easy to set aside the harder and
more challenging task of embarking step by step upon a comprehensive
course of reconciliation and instead rely entirely on a strategy of
``containing'' Pakistan. It can certainly be convincingly argued that
the prospects for a constructive and productive engagement of Pakistan
do not appear very promising given that the context of the bilateral re
lationship has deteriorated sharply since the October coup in Pakistan
and the Army takeover. But it is yet to be satisfactorily demonstrated
by those who dismiss the present regime in Islamabad as an untrustworthy
interlocutor, that the strategy of ``containment'' does not have high
diplomatic, security and political costs. It is also not clear as to
whether India can really absorb these costs in the long run without
substantial damage to its own credibility in the global arena and its
authority within.

This is not to suggest that India turn a blind eye to the factors that
are certainly deterrents in the pursuit of a policy of constructive
engagement of the military-political establishment that runs Pakistan
today. What are the deterrents? First, Indian diplomacy is still to
recover from and come to terms with the shock that it sustained when the
peace process that was under way with Pakistan, manifesting in the
Lahore Agreement of February 1999, was summarily abrogated by the
eruption of conflict on the Kargil heights. The peace process appeared
to have lost further relevance when the Nawaz Sharif Government was
overthrown and the Army took over, last October. It did appear that the
regime headed by General Pervez Musharraf set little store by the Lahore
Agreement. That the sanctity of the Lahore Agreement, with its
considerable promise of a substantive engagement on contentious issues
such as the Kashmir dispute, as a predecessor document, the agreement of
the two Foreign Secretaries in June 1997 had also entailed, was not
upheld by the Musharraf-led regime, did lead to doubts in New Delhi as
to the utility of contacts with Islamabad's new leaders. Second, of
course, was the natural repugnance that surfaced in regard to the idea
of having to do business with a military government that had ended 14
years of democracy in Pakistan. It was also feared that the Pakistan
military establishment which had directed the Kargil operation would be
disinclined to continue with the peace process that had after all
greater momentum and resonance under the aegis of democratic governments
such as that of Ms. Benazir Bhutto and Mr. Nawaz Sharif.

The recent spurt in terrorist activity in the Kashmir Valley and the
traumatic episode of the hijacking of the Indian Airlines flight from
Kathmandu in late December which culminated in the Government having to
capitulate to the demand to release three militants with links to
terrorist organisations such as the Harkat-ul-Mujahadeen have been seen
as clear evidence of Pakistan's sponsorship of terrorism against India.
Hence, the initial disinclination to deal with the Musharraf regime was
reinforced by this perception. While these considerations might
naturally colour New Delhi's sense of unease in relation to the
Musharraf-led regime in Islamabad, it will be a mistake to allow this
sense of distrust to overwhelm the requirement to pursue a more
realistic and less confrontational policy towards Islamabad. It would
also be extremely short-sighted to ignore the nuances that are emerging
in the bilateral and the international context. The Vajpayee
administration's post-Kargil and post-Kandahar policy approach to Paki
stan makes no secret of the fact that it hinges solely on a strategy of
containment of Pakistan.

A more subtle and nuanced diplomatic approach would contain more than
one track. As for the issue of regional terrorism, India does have the
satisfaction of knowing that global opinion is gradually consolidating
in favour of India's argument that Pakistani territory is becoming a
base for dangerous terrorist activity. During his recent visit to
Islamabad, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Mr. Karl F.
Inderfurth, made plain his country's disapproval of Pakistan's failure
to crack down on the terrorist groups operating there. ``We believe,''
he said pointedly, ``that the presence and activities of these groups
gives Pakistan a bad international reputation in the world community.''
Such an acknowledgment by the United States would of course be a
vindication of oft- repeated Indian arguments and in that sense, a
welcome recognition of India's own predicament in the Kashmir Valley.
But to predicate the entire context of India- Pakistan relations on the
single issue of Pakistan's support for terrorism in the Valley, would be
to shut the window on several promising openings that could in
themselves lead to a qualitative change in the presently strained
bilateral context.

India's current diplomatic strategy to isolate Pakistan internationally
depends to a large degree on the ability to persuade and coopt the
United States and the other global powers to endorse this
characterisation and subsequently act punitively towards Pakistan. Not
only does such an approach reduce India to a position of virtually
abject dependence on the United States sharing its strategic view of the
region, but it also constricts the diplomatic space within the region
for India to make its own autonomous decisions in regard to relations
with its own neighbours. Thus, a strategic focus on the containment of
Pakistan requires an endorsement from the world's leading players and
that in itself is harmful to India's foreign policy interests in the
long run. While there is no question that the Vajpayee administration
will have to seek categorical and credible assurances from Pakistan that
it will not support terrorist acts against the Indian state and people,
it is important that such messages to Islamabad are delivered directly
and not by relying on the global powers to endorse India's position and
thereby securing a worldwide indictment of Pakistan.

The reluctance to start a dialogue with the Musharraf regime on the
ground that it is not a democratic dispensation and the continued
ignoring of the conciliatory signals that emanate from Islamabad would
only serve to harden the regime's public stance against improving ties
with India. In his conversation with this writer (published on January
17), Pakistan's Chief Executive, General Pervez Musharraf, did sound
several conciliatory notes. He made clear that he was not insisting that
the Kashmir dispute be discussed before any other issue, but was firm
that the dispute itself ought to be substantively addressed. In essence,
General Musharraf's position on the Kashmir issue varied very little
from the positions taken by Ms. Benazir Bhutto and Mr. Nawaz Sharif in
regard to this issue. The other significant point emerging from General
Musharraf's remarks was that he did not at all repudiate the idea of
bilateral diplomacy and did not once suggest that since bilateralism had
failed, only a multilateral initiative would work, as his predecessors
had sometimes suggested. It was evident during the course of the
interview that General Musharraf did want to be taken seriously as the
interlocutor for Pakistan by the Vajpayee administration.

The current diplomatic and strategic course that the Vajpayee Government
seems to prefer, which is to avoid an engagement with the military
regime in Pakistan and to rely mainly on a campaign to isolate Pakistan,
is likely to have high diplomatic and strategic costs. The public
pronouncements by members of the Vajpayee administration, including the
dangerous and provocative unveiling of a new doctrine of ``limited war''
by the Defence Minister, Mr. George Fernandes, would only inject fresh
tension into the strained atmosphere that prevails between India and
Pakistan. Nobody would question the emphasis being placed on sharpening
the counter-terrorist strategies required to combat terrorism in the
Kashmir Valley and the legitimate Indian insistence that Pakistan end
its support for cross-border terrorism. But the time has come to take
another look at the policy approach to Pakistan and to question the
premises on which it is presently predicated. An approach to Pakistan
must consist of several strands, including a recognition that an
engagement of the military regime in Islamabad is perhaps inevitable. An
engagement of Pakistan's ruling establishment does not mean abandoning
India's reservations or even wariness about the Musharraf regime's
strategies. Going down the other road of a strategy of containment
entails much higher costs and is far riskier.