WANTED AN ASIAN INITIATIVE FOR AFGHANISTAN

WANTED AN ASIAN INITIATIVE FOR AFGHANISTAN

By Bhabani Sen Gupta


India’s foreign policy and diplomacy went into recession during the first term of Dr Manmohan Singh’s ascendance to leadership of the
Government in 2004. His first four+ years stood out for a persevering,
And finally successful, quest for a close friendly relationship with the United States, an osmosis in relations with the nations of the world
That could not be achieved during the cold war. To balance the strategic alliance with the United States, the prime minister concluded
A low-level ‘strategic partnership’ with China, and embraced Russia as a substitute of India’s oldest ally, the USSR ( mysteriously and unceremoniously dead in 2001) .
In his characteristically quiet and unassuming style, the prime
Minister took control of foreign policy as soon as Natawar Singh resigned after a year’s uneasy tenure at South Block.He operated
through a competent foreign secretary, Shyam Saran, and drew heavily
on another quiet and efficient bureaucract, the national security adviser, N.K. Narayanan, former intelligence chief to the Union Government.. Pranab Mukherjee as defence minister helped
in concluding the ‘strategic alliance’ with the U.S. His political weight had diminished as a result of his electoral dependence on the CPI-M
in Murshidabad. When Mukherjee was given external affairs in the last
year of the first term of the UPA coalition, he was kept busy with chairmanship of a raft of GOM===group of ministers---and hardly made a distinctive contribution to foreign policy and diplomacy.
In his second term as prime minister, Dr Singh enjoys a very
elevated stature in the government as well as the country. He was Mrs
Sonia Gndhi’s only choice to head the second UPA coalition in which
the Congress party commands a near majority in the Lok Sabha on its own strength. And the prime minister asserted his primacy by keeping foreign affairs under his own control by appointing a former
Congress chief minister of Karnataka who knows little of world affairs
And has shown less interest in diplomacy. Mr Krishna.s highest qualification is his total loyalty to the party boss; he is a thorough gentlemen, as nimble in appearance as in private and public manners.
He is also impeccably attired.
The second UPA regime, however, has failed to make the capital of the great electoral victory that was thrust upon the Congress party in
the general election of May. It is hobbled by a rainless summer with
a slump in food production, and, inevitably, a lot of hunger and thirst.
Politically, only the Trinamul Congress chief. Mamata Bannerjee has
fully exploited the collapse of the CPI-M and the Left Front in West
Bengal. Sonia Gandhi,, perched at the pinnacle of power, seems to be
frozen in a narcissist state of political dyslexia, unable to read the meaning of the writings on the wall. She has not convened a meeting
of the AICC. The four or five general secretaries of the Congress party
who have been given berths in the new Central cabinet continue to retain their party offices. Not only does this amount to be burial of
the one-man-one-office norm she announced several years before, it
mutilates performance at both governmental and party levels.
After two heart surgeries, Dr Manmohan Singh is not in the best
of health. He also happens to be 77-78 years old. Maybe he would have
liked to retire from public life. But who would have led the UPA coalition at the Centre? The party woefully lacks in leadership material.
There are certain unwritten geopolitical rules in the politics of India.
The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty has acquired an imperial flavour. The world’s largest second largest political party ( after the Communist Party of China), the Congress is also the enduring Mughal of post-
colonial India. The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty is the great Mughal of
the huge political space that is the Congress party.
Herein lies great opportunities for Dr Manmohan Singh. Not
so much in the domestic space as in the global arena. The economy
has maintained respectable growth, one of the best in the world that
is now trying to writhe out of global recession. The very impressive
performance of the Asian economies in 2007-09 has enabled Asia
to decouple itself from the US-led Western economy. The ‘astounding
feat’ has driven an unmistakable message to the world. The global
economic ( and therefore political ) order is now evenly balanced between the West led by the United States and Asia led by China and
India.
The Economist, of London, regarded worldwide as the mirror of
the Western leadership of the global economic order, carried on the
cover of its issue of August 15-21 a herald of this tremendous change.
“Asia’s Astounding Rebound” was narrated in two long reports and
captured in the first editorial. It noted:
“Emerging Asia’s average growth rate of almost 8% over the past
two decades -----three times the rate in the rich world----has brought huge benefits to the rest of the world. Its rebound now is all the mote
useful when growth in the West is likely to be slow. Asia cannot replace
the American consumer: emerging Asia’s total consumption amounts
to only two-fifths of America’s. But it is growth in spending that really
matters. In dollar terms, the increase in emerging Asia’s consumet
spending this year will more than offset the drop in spending in America and the euro area. This shift in spending from the West to the
East will help rebalance the world economy.”
It is not enough to rebalance the world economy. There must be
rebalancing of world politics. Since the end of World War II, Asia has
bore the brunt of all American wars---the Korean war, the war in Vietmam, the American war in Iraq, and the American war in Afghanistan. America’s presidents have had no hesitation to acknowledge that the US and its allies fought these wars in ‘legitimate
defence’ of its own national interests.
It is high time that Asian countries, now that they have established the continent’s coming of age after centuries of domination
by the Western imperialists, join together to defend their own legitimate
national interests. This does not mean a polarization between Asia and the West. It means recognition by the West that Asian countries have their individual and regional interests to be protected and secured in
cooperation with the West on the basis of equality.
Even as the ‘emerging’ countries of Asia have proved that they can outdo the West in the economic areas, they lack unity of minds and
muscles in the political space. History has witnessed long years of ‘collective imperialist conquest of Chinese territories including ports and big cities; British colonization of India got European and American
backing after initial years of armed rivalries among European colonizers. The wars in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq rallied most European powers behind the American superpower.
If the West still lost each of these three major wars of the post
second world was period, it was because they were fighting wrong wars,
they were fighting against the inevitability of historical change, because
even collective military might of colonialists could not keep resurgent
nationalist forces of Asia.
The last of the West’s post-colonial wars has been raging in Afghanistan for three decades. This war showed the ugly Western face of the USSR when it invaded Afghanistan to defend a ramshackle
“Marxist “ regime in 1979, a misadventure that was probably the
single most fatal factor that led to the collapse of the Soviet state itself.
Taliban was the ferocious offspring of American militarism and its
foster child, the Pakistan Army. The Taliban, spearheaded by Pushtoons, the largest ethic group in Afghanistan easily won the war
in Afghanistan as it was fighting for Afghan nationalism mobilized
by militant Islam, an entirely new mighty ‘non-State’ actor in
international politics. Backed by the Pakistan army, the Taliban regime
in Afghanistan might have endured for years if its militant leaders
were not swallowed by far more radical and aggressive Islamic fundamentalists that have grown into a veritable force in the secret
alleys and bylanes of Saudi Arabia’s claustrophobic, ultra-orthodox
Wahabi Islamic political system.
It is the Wahabi militant Islamic elements in Saudi Arabia who
spearheaded the 9/11 air attack on New York and Washington DC,
which turned out to be a massive blow at one of the four foundation
planks of America’s post-War global leadership.-----Western Europe,
led by Britain as the principal ally, Wahabi Islam as the basis of
U.S,-friendly social and political stability in the vast Islamic space
Extending from West Asia to North Africa, total and unconditional
support for Israel, and cultivation of as many authoritarian, dictatorial
nationalist regimes in Asia as could be enticed by offers of weapons and
Dollars as the two arms of Uncle Sam’s embrace.
The United States has been, for decades, the world’s strongest
Economy, as well as the world leader in technology and innovation.
Indeed, American hegemony in these crucial areas has been
spectacular, even awesome; the US will remain the leader despite
strong strades made by the European Union, Japan, China, India
and other Asian countries. Wars and high military spending
have not eaten into America’s technological, educational, innovative
and economic leadership. But something else also has happened.
There is a slump in America’s status and prestige in the world
community, and a steady decline in the world’s esteem for its
leading position. As a hugely narcissist nation, Americans can hardly
endure the current big downturn in the world’s image of their
country. They now seem to share the global feeling that the
U.S. is in decline, and that it days of global dominion will soon
Come to an end.
Fareed Zakaria has argued that America has failed in its domestic politics rather than in its economy and technology. He has
written in his excellent book The Post-American World ( penguin, 2008)
that what distinguishes the current period of world affairs is not so much as the decline of the United States as the ‘rise of others.” Where
Americans have failed, he adds, is in the field of politics. “As it enters
the twentyfirst century, the United States is not fundamentally a weak
economy or a decadent society. But it has developed a highly dysfunctional politics. An antiquated and overly rigid political system to
begin with------about 225 years old---has been captured by money, special interests, a sensationalist media, and ideological attack groups.
The result is a ceaseless virulent debate about trivia----politics as theatre---and very little substance, compromise, and action. A ‘can-do’
country is now saddled with a ‘do=nothing’ political process, designed
for partisan battle rather than problem solving. By every measure===
the growth of special interests, lobbies, pock-barrel spending---the
political process has become partisan and effective over the last three
decades.”
If the U.S. is now caught in political decay----old age, mental and
intellectual inertia and a slump in its own ability to handle complicated
global issues---it will be even more incapable of facing up to its own foreign policy mistakes and blunders. And as the US fumbles with the war in Afghanistan, the currently last of its Asian wars since World War II, it is imperative that Asian powers themselves step in to help
President Barack Obama to walk out of Afghanistan with his head
nwot too bent. Indeed, I have reason to believe that if China and India,
with the helpof several other Asian countries step forward to find an
Asian solution for Afghanistan, Obama will be much relieved, and indeed to bow out to such a desirable Asian initiative.
An Asian initiative for Afghanistan is in fact both desirable
and possible. It is also eminently achievable. Both Pakistan and the
freshly re-elected president of Afghanistan will be glad to cooperate.
since the Asian Initiative must come jointly from a cluster of Asian
countries----certainly including India, China, Iran, Pakistan,Indonesia
and Afghanistan----the Islamic radicals of Pakistan and Afghanistan
will certainly welcome it.
I earnestly beckon the UPA government, specially prime minister
Manmohan Singh and foreign Minister Krishna, as well as the new foreign secretary Nirupama Rao ( fresh from the embassy in Beijing)
to mull over the idea of an Asian Initiative in Afghanistan and start
sounding China, Iran, Pakistan and Indonesia////////

Afghanistan
By Bhabani Sen Gupta

Afghanistan which, together with Pakistan, is snowballing to become
the most critical issue for the United States as well as India, albeit for very
different reasons, also promises to bring together the NATO and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) for bringing peace and order
to Afghanistan. The SCO session held in Moscow at the end of March
was also the first bridge, thin and lean though was it, between the strategic
divide between the US and China. It got little space in the world media
but made its mark on the emerging world atlas of diplomacy.
For the sheer attendance it received from the strategic groups of
Nations on the two sides of the strategic divide if not for the depth and substance of the explorations that took place at the two-day event, the Moscow session of SCO marked a watershed.
The core group of the Shaighai Six---China, Russia and the four
Central Asian countries ( seven, with the full membership of Mongolia)
was joined by an astonishing an array of observers from the United States,
Western Europe, NATO, Afghanistan and India. The most high profile
personality present was the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon.
The Group of Six turned out to be a Group of 36.
The Government of India sent to the Moscow meeting a former
Diplomat, Satiinder K Lumba, picked up by prime minister Manmohan Singh
to represent his govt at parleys related to the Afpak Agenda of the US
President, Barack Obama Lumba is a former High Commissioner to
Pakistan. It should be noted that exchanges with Obama’s trouble-
shooter for issues packed together with the Afpak acronym is, so far,
the foreign secretary, Menon. Richard Halbrooke, during his day-long
visit to New Delhi on April 7, after his half-a-week long diplomatic
explorations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, met with Menon, and not with
the foreign minister or with the minister of state at the Foreign Office.
India has not so far been involved in depth at the political level with
Obama’s Afpak strategy.
The European Union and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in
Europe were represented by senior officials, Britain and France were
conspicuously absent.
The SCO session in Moscow proved to be completely non-confrontational in discussions. The foreign ministers of China and Russia
Stressed that neither the economic recession nor the financial crisis nor
Indeed the political-strategic issues and regional conflicts could be resolved
Without cooperation between and among the nations poralised by the
Bush administration in the eight years of the new century. Both welcomed
Barack Obama’s offer to bridge and if possible close the divides that plague
The global world order.
There was a consensus that problems posed by militant Islam in
The Pak-Afghan region and other areas needed increasing cooperation
Between and among nations globally as well as in the conflictual regions.
Foreign ministers of the Central Asian countries affirmed their readiness
to work with Pakistan and the US for resolving the conflicts if their
cooperation is sought on the basis of equality of status, respect for
mutual political, religious and cultural systems, and an agreed praxis of
international relations free of unilateralism, hegemony, and trade, racial
and ideological barriers.
Indeed, foreign ministers of these countries and also of Afghanistan
affirmed that full cooperation of the Central Asian republics, Iran, China
and Russia was essential for resolution of the problems of multiple,
inter=secting conflicts raging in Pakistan and Afghanistan’
The Moscow session of SCO provided opportunities for informal
Contacts, including ice-breaking ones, between governments locked in
Conflicts---such as the U.S. and Iran and Afghanistan and Iran. Ice-breaking
Contacts were established between representatives of NATO and the
Shanghai Six relating to cooperation for resolving the Afghan-Pakistan
Or Afpak problems.
Satindra Lumba stressed the importance of increasing coordination
Between various groups exploring separately prospects and problems of
Regional and global cooperation .His point was supported by several
Foreign ministers attending the session, including those of China, Russia and
Kazaghstan///

Global Change

Global Change
By Bhabani Sen Gupta

“ A terrible beauty is born”. US vice-president Josef Biden used
these words from a poem of T. S. Eliot to give a select elite European
audience at Munich early this month a vision of the change in American
foreign policy contemplated by president Barak Obama. Biden did not
go beyond vague outlines. What he said, however, was enough to warn
Europeans that the era of projecting U.S. hegemony in the world, with
unilateral military intervention to assert or preserve American global interests, was coming to an end, and the US, under Obama’s leadership.
would try to create an inclusive, non-polarised, cooperative world order
trying to find regional, global and multilateral solutions to problems and
conflicts, and address the biggest challenge of kickstarting the world economy that is caught in a deepening recession..
Obama has given his cabinet members and White House advisors
sixty days to complete in-depth and extensive reviews of U.S. engagements in different regions of the world as well as global issues and submit their reports and
recommendations to the president. The three regions claiming priorities
are the Middle East---of which the focus is on Israel and the Palestinian
issue; the AfPak region combining Pakistan and Afghanistan and, at a
certain remove, Iran; and China in the larger regional context of North-East Asia. While the Middle East and AfPak regions have been
straddled by special envoys Senator Mitchel and Richard Holbrooke, the secretary of state,
Hilary Clinton herself, took over the task of reassessing America’s interactions with China with a weeklong tour of Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul
and Jakarta.
Relations with China are of the utmost importance. The Obama
administrations expects China to lend it much of the $ 787 billion Obama
has committed as stimulant to the sinking American economy, The
New York Times reported on February 12. Such borrowing will invest
China in America’s recovery. The New York Times report said that “a need to borrow China’s real capital could cost Mr Obama the political
capital as he and China’s leaders haggle over North Korea and Climate
Change.” An international affairs analyst observed on the BBC on February 20 that relations between the U.S. and China could develop as
the “most important bilateral relationship in the 21st century.”
This is only one of the ways the global economic crisis is changing
the power map of the world, noted The Times report. It is perhaps the
most important way because it will involve building of cooperative bridges
between the world’s leader of capitalism and its preeminent socialist power--- the upside down of the cold war that dominated the world order
between the end of World War II and the collapse of the USSR.

For India, a gradual lowering of America’s global hegemonic profile is generally welcome since the process will create larger space
for India’s foreign relations, both political-strategic and economic. Easier
U.S.-Russian relations will enable India to expand its economic infrastructural ties with Russia, particularly in building its
nuclear power generating capability. Easing of tensions and launching of
normal relations between the U.S. and Iran will open up larger and more
productive spaces of cooperation with Iran at the bilateral level and also
in concluding agreements with Iran to build oil and gas pipelines through
Central Asia as well as in partnership with Pakistan.
The strategic community in New Delhi will be alarmed by an
enhancement of China’s global status; the Indian media which are more
anti-China than the major political parties, will be highly upset, and will
respond with the construction of a big China threat to Indian interests and national security.. However, whoever forms the next government in New Delhi after the national poll
in April-May 2009 will be encouraged to expand economic and technological cooperation with China and to work together to secure much of Asia from a sharp economic meltdown At this time—in February 2009, the man who is piloting the Indian government, Pranab K. Mukherjee, is credited with the belief that closer India-China economic and political cooperation is the only way to insulate South-
SouthEast and NorthEast Asia from the U.S.-Japan-EuropeanUnion
type of a deepening and extended economic crisis.
Obama’s AfPak Problem
There is a spike of regret in New Delhi that president Obama
will go to London in April armed with policies and plans to initiate
a new global order when India will be entangled in a national poll,
waiting for a new government.to be formed. However, the bureaucracies of the Prime Minister’s Offce (PMO), External Affairs Ministry (EAM)
and Defence Ministry, all located in the South Block of the Central
Secretariat on Raisina Hills, will keep up the continuity in foreign and
strategic policies regardless of the composition of the next coalition regime in New Delhi,
Both leading political parties and the leading central bureaucracies
look darkly at the unfolding arms of the “AfPak” geopolitical thrusts of
Obama’s foreign policies involving Pakistan and Afghanistan and sucking in a host of other countries as well as the United Nations. In
Indian perception, the AfPak geopolitical concept took clear shape during the week-long diplomatic explorations by Obama’s special envoy, Richard Holbroke in Pakistan ( 2 days, Afghanistan 4 days and New Delhi 1 day) in mid-February 2009. Very soon after Holbroke’s return
to Washington DC, Obama announced on February 19 a troops surge of 17,000 to
join the 38,000 American troops already deployed in Afghanistan. He
said Afghanistan remained ‘a priority’ and that the war there was
“winnable.”
But Obama may find it hard to persuade U.S. allies in the West
to share the burden of his troops surge in Afghanistan. He had found even in the summer of 2008 during his visit to Western Europe as a presidential candidate that the Europeans partners of George Bush’s ‘coalition of the willing’ had
little will to contribute more troops or finance in the war in Afghanistan. Even the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, wanted his troops out of Afghanistan in 2009. Obama sent defence
secretary Gates to a meeting of the Atlantic Alliance in Paris on
February 20 to sell the Afghan surge to the NATO members. The
BBC reported that the NATO response was lukewarm. The president
himself made Canada the first country of his foreign trip after getting elected to the White House. The Canadian defence minister
observed, however, that a surge in the Afghan war on the Taliban and AlQeuda ‘must be led by Afghanistan itself.”

Even before Richard Holbrooke landed in Pakistan on his ‘see and
listen” week-long tour, the American Generals concerned with the
Afghan war had asked that Pakistan and Afghanistan be treated as
a single zone of war if it had to be won, and their suggestion was accepted by the Obama administration. Dennis C Blair, a member
of the team of experts Holbrooke had gathered around him when he
was president of Asia Society of New York, and who was appointed
Director of Military Intelligence by Obama in the first round of appointments after inauguration, had told the Senate Intelligence
Committee on February 14 that Pakistan and Afghanistan had to be
treated together if the Al Queda and Taliban forces were to be denied
their sanctuary in Pakistan while fighting Americans in Afghanistan.
Blair also said that the Pakistan government “is loosing territory in
parts of the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan where insurgents ran free and while mounting economic hardships and
frustrations over poor governance have given rise to greater
radicalization elsewhere.” (NYT).
The New York Times reported that the Europeans had not been
brought into the new strategy that was shaped by the outgoing Bush
administration in the summer of 2008. The CIA and the Special Forces
were given the task of extending ground operations from Afghanistan to
the border regions of Pakistan as well as to areas in Baluchistan and
NWFP with the tacit consent of the military regime in Islamabad. This
escalation of the Afghanistan war touched on the sovereignty of Pakistan,
a nuclear power, and was thus “so dangerous and politically loaded…that
no American ally wants to be anywhere near it.”
When Holbrooke landed in Pakistan ---his previous visit had been made in
the early 90s---- he found the country with a split government and a bankrupt
economy, the elected civilian regime of president Asaf Ali Zardari denied power
by the Army and the ISI to enforce its writ in the NWFP and Baluchistan provinces as well as much of Punjab where his political rival, Nawaz Shariff
and his brother Shabaz Shariff ( who was also chief minister of Pakistan’s
largest and richest province) held sway. Holbrooke heard a litany of complaints
against America, much bitterness about the war in Afghanistan, and despair about the future of the Pakistani State. The loudest and most widely shared of resentment was about a number of secret agreements reached between the military ruler General Pervaiz
Musharaff and the Bush administrations allowing American troops to operate
in the frontier regions from bases within Pakistan, and also against the bombing
of tribal areas within Pakistan by American ‘drones’ killing hundreds of civilians including women and children, each strike arousing anger amongst
Pakistanis and boosting radicalization of the youth and the faithful Muslims.
Holbrooke visited certain tribal areas, listened to groups of women and
intellectuals, met with the army chief Kayani and the ISI chief General Pasha,
and of course with president Jardari and the prime minister, the foreign minister
and other officials.
Holbrooke met with ‘deep and widespread’ resentment with the U.S. in all sections of Pakistanis he met, especially the journalistic and academic communities as well as retired Generals and diplomats who had been warm
friends of America even in the recent past. He found the Army Generals and
corps commanders reluctant to fight the Taliban and Queda elements on the home front, something they had never done, nor were they willing to shift the
bulk of the Army from the eastern front with India to the West to fight the Taliban and Queda. Indeed, he was told by many of his interlocuters, including
president Zardari and Nawaz Shariff that the Pakistan State could collapse
if Washington forced on it a war it did not wish to wage---against its own people
with American arms, money and under virtual American command
Good Talibans, Bad Talibans
Taliban is a creation of the Pakistan army. It was born and nursed during
the ten year rule pf the late General Zia-ul Haque to fight the Soviet
forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Over the years, Taliban has not merely
expanded as a massive army of Islamic fanatics, it has taken different
shapes and colours in the four Pakistani provinces as well as in the tribal
borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan itself.
Taliban is a distinct and dispersed militant force controlled by different
different tribal warriors who have nursed their respective cohorts for decades.The cult of Taliban fundamentalism has penetrated the Pakistan army deeplypermeating its Other Ranks as well as the junior and middle level officers.
In Afghanistan and in the tribal areas, free-wheeling warlords command
the Taliban fighters who thrive on extensive cultivation of poppies and
a multi-billion dollar illegal opium trade spanning much of the world.
In Afghanistan as well as Waziristan, Holbrooke met with several
warlords who maintain Taliban as private armies. Hamid Karzai, the
Afghan president, has over the years built his own network of non-combatant relations with Taliban warlords. In fact, Karzai’s model of copting
‘moderate’ Taliban groups as part of a loosely federal political regime has been
tantalizing the top brass of the Pakistan army as well as part of the political
class as perhaps the only way to create and hold together a ‘stable’ regime in
Pakistan. Pakistani interculators told Holbrooke that governance hardly
prevailed in Pakistan, and, for the U.S., Pakistan’s political and economicmeltdown posed a far greater problem than a regime collapse in
Afghanistan. Hardly anyone in Pakistan suggested the sacking of Karzai
and nearly every one to whom the special envoy from Washington listened
told him that there should be no sacking of Karzai before the presidential
election scheduled for August 2009.
In Swat Valley, Waziristan, the Zardari government as well as the Army
have conceded political control to the local Taliban who have determined to rule
the once-reputed resort area under Shariat law. The idea is to come to terms with ‘moderate’ Taliban elements who enjoy widespread positive responses
from the masses of devoutly Islamic population of Pakistan and even large segments of the middle classes and intellectuals. Indeed, Pakistan was created
a Muslim State by the All-India Muslim League with British
support, and it has remained a Muslim state ever since. The distinction between an Islamic State and an Islamicist State escapes the bulk of the Pakistan people.The secularists in Pakistan are still a relatively minority group confined mostly to the main urban centres. The National Awami Party, Pakistan’s only
secular political group, has by and large succumbed to Islam after the death of its first generation of leaders. This party is in power in the NWFP. It has conceded Swat to the local Taliban.
The tactics of Good Taliban and Bad Taliban is getting attractive to Pakistan political leaders as well as the American military. More than one
Pakistani secularist who visited New Delhi recently seemed to believe that
‘adoption’ of ‘good Talibans’ to the Pakistani model of democracy is the only
way to build a stable political regime in the country.

Obama-India
By Bhabani Sen Gupta

Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s special emvoy to Afghanistan and
Pakistan is believed to be assembling a team of persons who can work with him either formally or informally on his diplomatic mission. One
of these persons, probably Rubin, is likely to come to New Delhi to
listen to what the government thinks about the best ways of finding
solutions to four main issues related to his mission, namely, (1) make
Pakistan, specially the Pakistan Army focus exclusively on taming Taliban militancy in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries; (2) clearing the anarchist borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan
of different jihadist militant elements determined to obstruct U.S.-NATO
supply lines to troops in Afghanistan; (3) get together a regional framework of stabilizing peace and orderly development in Afghanistan;
and (4) get American troops out of Afghanistan before a situation of
attrition builds up there, thus sucking the Obama administration into
a quagmire.
The Indian authorities have been busy getting an adequate
understanding of the Obama administration/s overall approach to
the Afghan situation, particularly its expectations, the time-and-depth
of its commitments, and the broad frame of its operational thrusts.
It is an ongoing exercise of information and analyses. At the
present time, it seems that president Obama is determined NOT to get
into an Afghan quagmire. It does not share the Bush administration’s
political objective to build ‘democracy’ in Afghanistan. The primary
objective of Obama is to flush out, if not kill or capture, Taliban leaders
like Osama bin Laden and Mollah Omar who are believed to be living
in the tribal hideouts in the rugged borderlands, and declare that the American mission is accomplished.
It is possible, in New Delhi’s perspective, that the worsening economic situation would advise caution and circumspection on the part of the new president not to court a deeper military engagement in Afghanistan at least for three to six months. The special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan wound, in that case, spend a lot of more time
than has ever happened in American diplomacy listening to what others
have to say about Afghanistan before the action course is determined.

A DIFFICULT YEAR: THIS ONE
By Bhabani Sen Gupta


2009 is poised to be a difficult year of change in India and much of the world. The
recession in the United States and Europe seems will regress to a depression despite the
laboured optimism of the news media and political handlers of global affairs. Even though Asian economies have proved to be robust, pains of the shrinking economies have hit China
as well as India, and it will get worse before getting better. The deeply fragmented
political party system will face a parliamentary election in April ( or May, at the
latest), and though another coalition regime will be ruling the country, what it will
exactly be, and how durable or brittle will it turn out are at this time agonizing, if
willfully muted, anxieties. On top of all these, the international landscape will change
when the new president of the United States, Barak Hussein Obama, activates his
focus on Afghanistan for his own version of War on Terror. The new theatre of
conflict and tensions will be the massive sprawl of territory covering Pakistan,
Afghanistan, Iran, and Central Asia . The ripples and waves of the coming conflicts
will not halt at the borders of India, but spill over our country.
Pakistan is a deeply fragmented state. It has at least three power centres. There
is a government at Islamabad. It is run by the Pakistan People’s Party. The office
of the chief executive is occupied by a man who even two years ago was nowhere
at the centre of power. Asaf Ali Zardari is president of Pakistan mostly because he
is the husband of the slaim Benazir Bhutto who fell to the bullets of an Islamic
fundamentalist sometime included in a loosely networked entity called Taliban.
The Army is perhaps a stronger power centre than the government at Islamabad. Its chief, General Kayani is a former chief of the ISI. The Army is the
50-year-old subsidiary ally of Washington---whoever is in power in the U.S. capital.
The third power centre in Pakistan is the loosely and informally federated Islamic
radical force called Taliban with allies in almost all Muslim countries except Central
Asia and North Africa.
When, in the mid-fifties of the 20th century, Pakistan avidly joined Baghdad
Pact and CENTO, two Cold War alliances sponsored by Washington to confront the
USSR in perhaps history’s longest globally waged ideological contest for the conquest of human minds and the earth’s resources. Pakistan was Great Britain’s
challenge of the Republic of India designed to be for ever committed to challenge
India’s aspirations as an emerging giant in the post-colonial world.
Around the middle of the 20th century, the United States of America took
over the hegemonic role of the guardian of post-colonial interests of the imperialist
powers of Europe---Britain, France, the Netherlands and Belgium. At the dawn of
the 21st century, America became the self-appointed the global hegemonic power
ready to war anywhere in the former colonies of Europe to affirm its leadership
of the planet. This great global coups d’etat went virtually unchallenged. The
formidable USSR had vanished for reasons that were never convincingly explained. Europe supinely acquiesced, even collaborated. Russia was prostrate, China engrossed in the travails of post-revolutio0nary reconstruction.
In one of those mystical ironies of fates of nations throughout history, the
American Empire passed to the grip of a tribe of evangelical neoconservative
utterly narcissist political mortals who, in the incredibly short span of eight
years, plunged the richest and techno-economically the foremost state into
the depths of an unprecedented dissolution of political and economic power
Now Barak Obama is seen as the Great Redeemer. Even with the best of
resources and luck, it will be hard for the first Black president of America
to meet even a portion of the huge hopes reposed on him not only by Americans
but also much of the global humanity. He will make mistakes.
It is a pity that the rulers of India were not turned on by what has come
to be turned as Obamamania. The prime minister allowed himself to be charmed
by George W Bush who, in his final hours in the White House, was able to cite
India along with a whisper of countries that “loved” him. The corporate
media in India that saw itself as a junior partner of the globalised supercapitalism
of an unilateralist pugilist America either failed to rise up to the epic Meaning
of Obama, or rooted for the signs of the new President repeating the old mistakes
of Washington. And predictively, un-named ‘sources’ in the Foreign Office
and PMO bristled at the very mention of Kashmir or NPT-CTBT by people close
to Obama as issues connected with Obama’s still-to-unfold attempts to fight and
overcome Terror in Afghanistan.

THE ECONOMY

Economically, 2009 will be a difficult year for Indians.
. India has not officially slipped into a financial meltdown, mainly because of
the nationalized banks headed by the State Bank of India, and also because inter-
national finance companies have to operate under limited franchise. But. thousands
of medium and small companies have closed down, thousands of others are
near the edge. Unemployment is turning massive. The flight of foreign capital has
weakened the financial spine of the economy, while the long-neglected farm sector
threatens adequate supply of foodgrains for the poorer segments of people.
Tthe external sector of the economy is causing concern. Foreign
currency assets have begun to deplete. The exchange rate front is approaching a
critical situation. The value of the rupee has fallen, and is likely to fall further.
Exports have been hit, some tariffs have been raised. At the end of March 2008,
foreign exchange reserves stood at $310 billion. It declined to $ 245.9 billion at
the end of December. The Economic and Political Weekly, in its issue of December
20, reported that in 8-9 months India has lost foreign exchange assets amounting to
$63 b. The outlook for 09 is cheerless. The Satyam scandal, its ramifications coming
out in seemingly carefully handled exposure, shows the greedy, ugly face of the
first generation feudal-capitalists thriving on the internet revolution.
The offer recently made by China to a number of countries to use the Chinese
currency for trade ( Japan too has done the same) is said to be under close scrutiny.
Delhi. China is India’s second largest trade partner. The recent agreement between
Japan, China and South Korea to use their own currencies for mutual trade has
caught Indian attention without capturing its imagination. The ,
the decline of the US Dollar is expected to continue. The rupee is weaker than the
yuan, much weaker than the yen. The fear in New Delhi is that prices will start rising
in March-April. The state governments have collectively asked the Centre to pump
Rs 20,000 crore into their depleted exchequer ; the Centre’s own budget deficit will
certainly be much larger than anticipated..

Neighborhood

“W e envy China’s neighborhood. Japan is world’s number two economic
power. Despite the cold political relationship, Japan has outsourced a lot of
industrial products to China. In 2008, political relations had been ‘normalised’
after a much publicized state visit to Japan by the president of China, Hu Jintai.
If the two-year-old recession in Japan gets more acute, Tokyo will expand its
trade with China, and, with South Korea, and China, set up a economically
powerful regional co-operation block, which may be joined by Russia.” This is how
Foreign Secretary Menon compared India’s and China’s neighbourhoods while talking recently to a newspaper reporter.

The Chinese leadership has been quietly pushing the concept of
an Asian NATO which cannot be launched without Japan’s participation.
The China-SouthKorea-Japan trade-financing accord is a step in the
direction of an ASIANATO. Russia will be glad to join it. ASEAN is already
the best-working regional block after NATO. China-ASEAN trade burgeons year-
to-year.. Vietnam and China keep their political relations low, probably by mutual
consent, for neither Beijing nor Hanoi wishes to create a ‘ Socialist Bloc ( with
the addition of Cambodia and Laos).in Asia. However Vietnam , Malaysia and Indonesia import considerable quantities of China’s industrial products.China’s own
economy has started to shrink. If China’s imports slide significantly, the entire
economy of Asia will bend down perceptibly.
“India does not have a neighbor that can be compared with the neighbors of
China in the north-east as well as south-east. India’s South Asian neighbors are
poor---economically, politically and resource-wise. India’s neighbors hardly nourish
India’s democratic polity. The first republican regime in Nepal has formally notified
to India its determination to get the India-Nepal treaty of the 1950s re-written. New Delhi cannot refuse to renegotiate the unequal treaty. At the same time, there are fears
in New Delhi that loosened from the advantage-India ties of the treaty, Nepal, with
its Left-led government, may not get closer to China. Nepal as well as Bangladesh
have asked China for substantial financial aid Both nations tend to see India as the
Big Brother with vested geopolitical interests. Pakistan is China’s all-weather friend,
an image that has not been tarnished by China’s recent refusal to come to the
rescue of Pakistan’s tottering economy, compelling Islamabad to fall in the embrace
of the World Bank.
After the gruesome terrorist attack in Mumbai on November 26, the Indian
media, television v as well as print, began to clamour for punitive action against Pakistan. The UPA government, trying to cover up big gaps in its counter-terrorism
apparatus, raised its rhetoric demanding that the non-effective government of
Asaf Ali Zardari dismantle the numerous jihadi-Islamic training centres in
Pakistan. The excessive zest of India’s corporate media for punitive measures
against Pakistan gave the Pakistani Army and ISI an opportunity to rekindle Pakistan’s anti-India rhetoric, and, this, in turn, raised the reciprocal rhetoric
of the Indian government. However, apart from some troops movement
to the border by both sides, which alarmed the Bush administration whose
focus was on escalating the NATO military role in Afghanistan, South Asia
has been spared a fourth India-Pakistan conflict, though the
the fledgling ‘peace process’ remained frozen with little chance of resumption before the Lok Sabha election. Indeed, both Congress and BJP will use tensions
with Pakistan’s patronage of Islamic terrorists for election purposes.

Afghanistan
Afghanistan is perhaps the most important issue on India’s foreign
policy agenda at the beginning of 2009. Barak Obama spoke of a surge of American military involvement during the
election campaign. In its last few weeks, the Bush administration started
shifting American troops from Iraq to Afghanistan, and laid bare its
strategic as well as tactical thinking on how to bring the “Greater Middle
East” under American overlordship and turn it into a zone of peace under
entrenched American patronage.
However, Hilary Clinton, Obama’s secretary of state, told
Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 14 during confirmation hearing
that the Obama administration would put diplomacy “front and centre” in the realm
of foreign policy. In the first weeks of January, several leading American
political personalities and civil-military seniors visited Islamabad ( some of them
New Delhi too) including Senators Kerry and John MaCcain, to ensure that
the divided power establishment in Islamabad did not use the rising tensions with
India to divert the military focus from Afghanistan to the border with India.
Obama maintained studied silence on Afghanistan after getting elected to the White
House. At the time of writing, he is about to appoint a special envoy to look into
the geopolitical as well as military-diplomatic demands of a major war against Al
Queda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Hilary Clinton appeared to be picking up John Holbrooke, president of Asia Society, New York, and a key diplomatic player in President Bill Clinton’s Balkan strategies, as special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan’
Afghanistan and Pakistan are going to be the testing region for Obama’s
statesmanship. The current mood in Washington DC is decidedly against working
with Hamid Karzai as president of Afghanistan. He is seen as a weak leader and
and too much of a Pushtun nationalist to play an American role in a crucial global
hotspot. India, on the other hand, has invested heavily in building non-military
infrastructure as well as schools and hospitals in Afghanistan. Karzai was hosted
in New Delhi in the third week of January. It is unclear if Obama would wait
for the Afghan people to chose new leader or extend a second term to Karzai in
national elections in August. Obama has indicated that he would triple non-military
aid to Pakistan provided Islamabad did more, much more, to destroy the Taliban
bases in the disturbed, indeed anarchic, mountainous expanse of sturdy Pushtuns
who fight their own wars against any intruder on their tribal preserves. The Pakistan
Army which created the Taliban duding the decade of Zia ul-Huq’s military rule, will
play hide and seek with the Obama administration.



In the weeks immediately before Obama’s inauguration,
leaders of the Indian government maintained a posture of studied caution about
the new administration’s diplomatic thrusts in Afghanistan. There was articulated concern about indications that Obama might bring the Kashmir dispute on the
agenda of his diplomacy in the north-west Asian region comprising Pakistan and
Afghanistan. Also whether the Democratic non-proliferation agenda would not
make the state department pressure India to sign the CTBT agreement before it implements the India-U.S, civil nuclear deal.

General Election

Politically, the Great Event of 2009 will be the Lok Sabha election to be held
between April or May.. Both main political parties, Congress and BJP, have
limited voter appeal, both are obligated to form coalitions with regional parties
which, on their turfs, face challenges from other regional parties. No single
party has won even 160 seats in elections since 2000. The Congress won 157
seats in 2004.
The four elections to state assemblies held in the Hindi belt---Delhi,
Rajasthan. Madhya Pradesh and Chhatisgarh--- did not change the basic
character of Indian politics, namely, fragmentation of political parties and
stability of coalition government in New Delhi led by either the Congress or
BJP or---hypothetically,------ a third force without either of the two leading
parties. The Congress will have to work very hard to get back to power
after the coming poll. An economic decline and a war-inclining media-fuelled
public mood will likely help BJP rather than Congress.
At the state level, manipulation rather than ideology or organization seems
to be driving party politics. In the largest state, Uttar Pradesh (UP), political power
shuttles between the two main caste-based parties, the Samajwadi (Socialist) Party
mainly driven by Other Backward Classes or OBCs or Bahujana Samaj Party (BSP)
mainly mabilising Dalits ( former Untouchables). In Tamil Nadu, the non-Brahmin
Tamils are split between DMK and AIDMK, both offsprings of the first Dravida
party created by a man named Annadurai. Peninsular India, commonly called The
South, has gone out of the reach of the Congress party except for Andhra Pradesh.
In this last bastion of Congress power, the ruling party will find it hard to get

re-elected if the Satyam scandal hurts its image beyong a certain point.

In the North-East, the main states -------Bihar, Orissa, Assam and West Bengal—
have gone out of the Congress reach. The party’s ability to lead a coalition regime
in New Delhi rests on its vast countrywide, but largely moribund, organization and its historic image of
builder and leader of the independence movement and its inheritance of the
charisma of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. In other words, its past glories
rather than its current performance and its future promise.
Election specialist academics and journalists have built the theory that
the voters vote differently in electing local assemblies and the Lok Sabha. This
theory is based on sharply different outcomes of state and national elections.
The absence of party based elections to Panchayats and Zila Parishads
( village to district councils) may have created space for the theory to endure.
The Congress will most likely go into the poll floating the coalition that
has been in power since the election of 2004, with one major change: The SP of
Uttar Pradesh will be its most important partner and Mayawati, of BSP ( also of
UP) its principal rival. .
Political parties other than those of the Left Front are not committed
to ideologies ( the BJP, of course, has a strong Hindu orientation which is religious
rather than ideological) None of them observes inner-party democracy.
. Parties are run by their founder leaders or leaders chosen by
founders. Take the BSP; its founder-leader, the late Kanshi Ram, handed the baton
to its current leader, Ms Mayawati, who rules the party like a dictator. The DMK
leader in Tamil Nadu, K Karunanidhi chose his son K Stalin in 2008 as his successor.
Political families now control political parties in the entire country outside the
three small-state space occupied by the Left Front. The example set by the Congress
party is now emulated by almost all the rest outside the ideological Left.
If the Congress party cannot win 150 seats in the next Lok Sabha on its
own, there will probably be a vigorous effort to build a Third Front. Initiatives would probably come from some of the partners of the UPA coalition, notably the Nationalist Congress party led by Sharad Pawarr of Maharashtra, which has
11 members in the Lok Sabha . or SP, which has 37, or even the BSP with 17. ////

Lok Sabha Poll

Lok Sabha Poll
Election mode has begun to set in. The leadership of the Congress party is anxious
that the elections are held before the economic slow-down begins to bite the mass
of the voters. All over the country thousands of small and hundreds of medium
business enterprises have already closed down. Exports have fallen and imports
are being tightened. The present guess is that the elections will be held in April.
This is the time to have a close look at the political landscape of India.
In 60 years of independence, India has settled down on two issues basic to its
political personality. It is now firmly committed to parliamentary democracy; no
political party nor any cognizable thought-group offers an alternative model of
government. Secondly, though parties and groups demanding and acting for
autonomy of extra-mural geographical or cultural units---be it Kashmir or
Nagaland—India has settled down to the territorial and geographic boundaries
of the republic; its integrity of the two accounts is no longer questioned.
Within these two vital spatialities, volatile changes have occurred in
four ingredients of the State: political parties, social and cultural identities of
its massive population; social, political and moral values, and India’s relations
and interactions with the world.
Any attempt to take a close look at the country’s bodipolitik which is
shaped largely by these four factors interacting with one another must not
miss, nor trivialize, the historic birthmark of symbosis and separation. India
bestowed on the colonial power a respectability it would not have gained
if the traumatic process of the end of empire were national liberation instead
of decolonization or transfer of power.
As the British were allowed to decolonize with transfer of power, the
process of internal declonisation in India has means transfer of power from
the top to the lower reaches of the State, a gradualistic process that is still far
from complete.

Pakistan: "Prelude to Revolution"

PAKISTAN: “Prelude to Revolution”
By Bhabani Sen Gupta
When the national election mode sets in once in five years, Indian
democracy retreats to a period of abstinence. Governments both at the Centre
And in the states suspend social activism in order to avoid frowns on the vigilant brows of the Election Commission The restraint shown by Government in responding to the
rush of a much-delayed. Much-hoped-for democratic explosion in Pakistan , however,
is more of a product of inadequate knowledge and understanding of what’s happening
across the western borders than restraint imposed by the Election Commission.
The visit of the two topmost intelligence officials of the U.S. to New Delhi,
their meetings with the intelligent chiefs of Indian government as well as the Home
Minister may prove to be embarrassing. Apart from underplaying the significance of
the visits, the Government’s media-relations managers in the PMO asked the media
leaders to make it clear in their reports that the visits had nothing to do with India-US
relations except the normal, expected pursuit of the post –Mumbai terrorist attack
offer by Washington to share with India all crucial intelligence about Taliban activities
in Pakistan.
The Times of India report on March 20 that CIA chief Leon Panetta discussed
“India’s role in Afghanistan” with Home Minister Chidambaram, and that “Wary of
Pak, US woos India” seems to be totally misleading. Since Holbroke’s brief visit to
New Delhi after his “look and listen” trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan, India has not
Been in the loop of Obama’s resurge strategy for Afghanistan, which is expected to
Be unfolded early April. In any case, only a suitably designated cabinet member of the
New American president will be competent to discuss with India Obama’s Afpak policies. Hilary Clinton would have been the most appropriate cabinet member for talks, but she skipped New Delhi in her first two tours outside the US as secretary of state.
There is some resentment in New Delhi and in the well-muscled American lobby in
India, especially in the media, that India has not figured at the top level of countries
Included I Obama’s search for New Diplomacy designed for building an inclusive world
Order that should have died with the end of the cold war in 1991-92.
Obama is not exactly wooing India, but he, or his administration may well be worried about Pakistan. There are signs of some kind of ‘colour revolution’ breaking out
in Pakistan. Even The New York Times has been tardy in reporting the events of the last
week or so, especially since president Zardari was compelled to reinstate to the office of
Chief Justice Iftikar Mohammed Choudhuri who had been summarily sacked by General
Musharaff two years ago when he was still president. Jane Perlez in her report from Lahore that was printed in the Times on March 20 laboured to be as implicit as she could in saying that there was rebellions both at the top and at the bottom of the police
Force in Punjab on March 15 against the authority of the Federal Government to keep
Nawaz Shariff in house arrest and use force to prevent a mass protest rally in Islamabad
against the authority of the president who had ordered both actions by the police in Lahore.
Police officers refused to enforce Nawas Shariff’s detention at his house. Policemen refused to stop people from building a massive march to Islamabad to
Protest the confinement of Shariff, the dismissal of his younger brother Shabaz Shariff
As chief minister and placing Punjab under central control, disperse by force the Long
March to Islamabad ( the distance between Lahore and the national capital is 200 miles),
And Zardari’s refusl to reinstate Chaudhury.
Whatever reports appeared in the media made it clear that Obama and his advisers
On AfPak scrambled together to prevent a ‘colour revolution’ to prevail in Pakistan.
It also seems clear that the Army leaders feared a revolt breaking out in the ranks and
Junior officers against a crackdown ordered by Asif Ali Zardari whose rating among the
People of Pakistan was almost at zero level. Hilary Clinton phoned Zardari and Nawaz
Shariff urging them to get back together to save Pakistan as well as Afghanistan from
A Taliban takeover.
Zardari seemed to have handed over the government to prime minister Yousaf
Ali Gilani who moved fast to reinstate the dismissed chief justice and remove the legal
Barrier to the Sharrf brothers to accept elected office, and thus defuse the on-rush of
Popular will get the better of the military-political complex that has ruled Pakistan since
the 1950s and made it virtually a vassal of the United States.
Earlier in March, General Kayani, Pakistan’s army chief, who had served as chie
Chief of the ISI was ib Washington for five days holding crucial talks with defence secretary Gates, special representative Holbroke, and a host of officials covering
Major aspects of Pakistan-US relations during the Obama years in the White House.
The talks resolted I broad agreements on a large package of American aid to Pakistan
---$ 5 billion in military hardware, and $1 billion for five consecutive years as development assistance. In return, Kayani committed that the Army would refrain
from staging a coup, and serve whoever the people elected to power
The turn of events in March should encourage the Obama administration to
go ahead with Holbroke’s reportedly regional approach to resolve the Afghan issue.
Mr Obama seems to have realized that the key to resolving the Afghan issue lies in
stabilizing the shaky democratic foundation of Pakistan’s political frame. This is
one of the points the Indian government has made with the Obama administration.
India was a partner of the post-colonial settlement in the subcontinent that gave
birth to Pakistan. However, the birthmark of enmity between India and Pakistan
has faded a lot at this 60-year-old remove from the time of partition, even though
it continues to be the convenient cry for politicians and the media. It has lost a lot
of purchase with the people of both countries.
However, the Obama administration seem to be wary of a Pakistan in which
The will of the people prevail. Because, the vast majority of the Pakistani people,
Especially the expanded middle class and the clutch of independent television channels
seem to be firmly against making America’s war in Afghanistan their own war. This
is the great stumbling block that Obama’s Afghan strategy faces in a democratic Pakistan.
General Kayani evidently assured the Obama administration that Pakistan’s
Armed forces would partner a much larger military onslaught on the AfPak Taliban forces both on Pakistan and Afghan territory., and that Americans would be free to
Attack Taliban forces including their suspected hideouts in the two Western provinces
Of Pakistan as well as in the vast rugged borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan
Indeed, American drones dropped lethal bombs freely on Baluch, NWFP and border
Taliban sites inflicting civilian casualties in the last fortnight.
But this is not acceptable to the bulk of the middle class Pakistanis as well as the
Vocal Pakistani diaspora in the U.S. and Britain.
This stern roadblock to Obama’s AfPak strategy became sharply clear in
The assertion of people’s will in Pakistan in the ides of March. Uncle Sam who
has been generous to Pakistan for six decades, may well turn back and cry out,
Thou, too, Pakistan!!
` Nawaz Shariff gave an interview to Geo TV from his car when on March 16,
after breaking out of his ‘house arrest, he was being driven towards Islamabad.
He spoke into the microphone, “this is a prelude to revolution.”
Nawas Shariff, a big landlord and a political leader not particularly known
For moral scruples, is not a man of revolution. If anything, he is against radical
Change. But often in history a role is thrust on political leaders unfit and unready
for creating history.
On March 21, CNN ran healines to a newscast. One of them was The Battle
For Pakistan. Indeed, the clap of words was well taken. But what Pakistan is going
Thorugh was not just one battle, but three.
First, there is a battle between America and the Taliban groups united by
Fundamentalist Islam and their strong, old, enduring linkages with the Taliban in]
Afghanistan. Secondly, there is a battle in Pakistan between the collective strength
of the Taliban and an expanding middle class increasingly committed to parliamentary
democracy and its allies in the urban working classa and segments of the rural poor.
The third battle or battles are among the competing centres of power that plague
Pakistan in its tortunous transition from military rule to its own type of democracy
And rule of law.
As these battles rage, it is getting increasingly clear that the middle class in Pakistan is getting out of the State’s birthsuit of hostility towards India. In India too
Pakistan is no longer the ‘natural’ enemy. Not at any rate for the political class as its
Diverse constituents jostle among them selves to assemble a coalition that can govern
India after each election amidst a systemic meltdown of the post-colonial party system.
The media of course continues to stir embers of the flames the flames of
India’s historical religious divides nourished and used by the colonial power After
the terror onslaught on Mumbai on November 11, the media put a huge pressure
on the Government to strike at some Taliban centres in Pakistan. It did not work.
New Delhi kept its cool. And it was rewarded by a growing realization that Terror
and Taliban posed a threat to both Pakistan and India and indeed to Afghanistan,
a threat that challenges the world community to work together to strike it out of
history.///