Fighting Taliban: Why India should stay the course with US

Chanakya

Colin Powell is to visit Pakistan and India, and many in India are anxious to impress upon the United States that it should expand its war on terrorism to cover the cross-border terrorists operating in Kashmir. Our government is anxious that the US does not become an enduring ally of Pakistan out of the need to fight the Afghan war. There is a fear in Delhi that the US might as a result bolster Pakistan militarily and economically to a point where we will discover that it has become a stronger enemy of India, intractable to deal with. The government is keen to get the US declare openly that it is engaged in fighting a war against all the terrorist groups, including those based in Pakistan.

I believe we would be on the wrong track to pursue this argument with Mr Powell. I believe that by forcing the US into a corner on this, we will be forcing it to take positions that will be damaging to us diplomatically in the longer run. We need to follow a different tack.

I don’t think we have much to gain by pointing to the inconsistency of the US position or the moral case we have, if the US is not willing to come into the open about the Pakistan-based terrorists at this stage. For the truth is, the US needs Pervez Musharraf to fight the war in Afghanistan; and General Musharraf, in turn, is fearful that as the war progresses—and I suspect we have many surprises in store—he will find it increasingly difficult to retain control.

If there is not a coup already in the making in Pakistan, it is because the Generals who have been sidelined by General Musharraf know that in the current circumstances they will not survive in the face of the US opposition, the Pakistani regime wants to get out of the hole it has dug itself into in regard to the Taliban; and the business and the middle classes want to emerge from the shadow of the fundamentalist forces. But as the war in Afghanistan progresses, and civilian casualties mount, the mob in the street will become more assertive, aided and inspired by unrest in the Muslim World.

The capture of Osama bin Laden, when it happens, can create a very dangerous moment for the Musharraf regime. The shadow of a coup against Gen. Musharraf has thus not gone away. The US, therefore, does not want to do anything that will further make Gen. Musharraf’s position precarious. If it was seen to be declaring an open war on the Pakistan-based terrorists operating in Kashmir, the Mullahs in Pakistan will be able to consolidate opposition to Musharraf on the basis that he has sold out Kashmir to India. Kashmir is very much etched on the minds of the Pakistanis.

So, what should we do? From the point of view of India, it is better that the US, with the help of Gen. Musharraf succeeds in destroying the Taliban, and in installing a regime in Afghanistan that is less hostile to India. That is a war goal that is as much to our benefit as to the benefit of Afghanistan and the rest of the world. If the US needs Pakistan in achieving that aim, we should not stand in the way.

Under these circumstances, if we insist that the US should declare its position openly on Kashmiri terrorists—and take up cudgels on our behalf with Gen. Musharraf—the chances are that the US will look for arguments for not doing so, arguments that will not be helpful to us in the long run at all.

Mr Powell, by all accounts, is a man who likes to have limited and definable war aims—aims which he feels the US is in a position to act upon and win. And Mr Powell knows that he will not get much joy out of Gen. Musharraf, if he presses on him to go to war on the Kashmiri terrorists; and he will not want to risk the overthrow of Gen. Musharraf by insisting an answer on this. Mr Powell needs Gen. Musharraf; so he will be caught in a bind if India presses him to a corner on the issue of Kashmiri terrorists.

And to escape with some dignity from this diplomatic impasse, Mr Powell will manufacture arguments as to why the US cannot entirely agree that the Kashmiri violence is solely due to the instigations of the cross-border terrorists. He will say that India should rethink its argument about the territorial integrity of India, and be open to arbitration on Kashmir. That is an answer, once obtained, will weaken us enormously—for Gen. Musharraf will have won diplomatically. Learn not to ask questions that might precipitate wrong answers—answers that would not walk away once uttered!

What we should do instead is to use Mr Powell’s visit to impress upon him the extent of terrorist networks in Kashmir; and why the struggle against the Taliban cannot be entirely divorced from it. We should convince him that it is in our and the US joint interests to prevent any cross over of the Taliban into India, when the Taliban comes under pressure in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We should tell him that when the Taliban is killed at its source, it is likely to result in peace in Kashmir also, if Pakistan can be prevented from supporting terrorism in the post-Taliban period.

At the same time, we should ask Mr Powell to put pressure privately on Gen. Musharraf to secure the border with India, and not to succumb to the temptation of lighting a fire in Kashmir in order to create a diversion. Build up trust and good relations with Mr Powell so that in the post-Taliban period, we can look for support on the Kashmir issue.

We, on our part, should use the space we have currently got for an all out war on terrorists in Kashmir, in the full understanding that the global forces fighting against terrorism will stand by us also in this effort. The truth is that it is not in the interest of Gen. Musharraf either to see the Taliban-based groups in Kashmir survive for they could become the nucleus of a group plotting against him. We should strengthen our alliances with all Islamic countries that see the Taliban as an enemy.

When Mr Powell comes to India, the government of India should not take the moral high ground and lose the larger war even if it looks tempting to win the current battle of words!