Their war, not ours

SINCE the yardstick of the success or failure of India’s foreign policy is linked to Pakistan’s standing in the international community, it is hardly surprising that the popular perception in the country is that our neighbour has unfairly stolen a march over us in the US led war against terrorism. There is a general feeling that Pakistan has grabbed centre stage while we have been pushed to the sidelines.

The impression is all the more galling given our simplistic belief that there is a right and wrong side in every international dispute and that the world will give us due credit for ethical posturing. Our fuzzy thinking on foreign policy bequeathed to us by our first prime minister Jawharlal Nehru is that as in spaghetti westerns the good guy eventually comes out on top. Ironically, Nehru’s propensity to turn international forums into pulpits for lectures on morality was cited by Henry Kissinger in his classes at Harvard as a shining example of how not to conduct diplomacy.

Our foreign policy initiatives over the years have been largely confined to convincing the rest of the world that we are the good guys in Kashmir. After all we regularly go through the motions of holding elections in Kashmir, even if only five per cent of Kashmiris came out to vote. We may have posted huge numbers of military and para military troops in the state, but we do have a free press and a human rights commission to make a hue and cry whenever there is an excess of brutality. We are after all a democracy which permits unlimited free speech, unlike our neighbour Pakistan which has even dismantled the limited oligarchy it once practised. We believe in peace, but across the border they have been busy fomenting violence in our territory, training terrorists in their camps. We are always willing to engage in talks with Pakistan, even if we are not willing to yield an extra comma in the endless on-again off-again Indo-Pak meets.

With this good-guy bad-guy mindset, our hopes soared high when we learnt that the US was coming to our part of the world to launch a battle against international terrorism. We felt vindicated that the Americans had finally understood the seriousness of our complaint that our neighbour was sponsoring terrorism in our backyard. We simplistically assumed that America would finally dub Pakistan a terrorist state. Pakistan, which has sheltered Osama bin Laden in the past and spawned the Taliban, would finally be brought in line. Which is why we fell all over ourselves to write out a blank invitation to the US to avail of whatever of our facilities she cared to. We sent our two of our most high powered emissaries, Brajesh Mishra and Jaswant Singh, rushing to America. Behaving like a neglected busybody we even feel the need to speculate officially on future government formations in Afghanistan while the present one is still in place.

But the scenario turned out rather different from what we had initially envisaged. The US wasn’t really interested in our offers. It shrewdly saw far more sense in dealing with the Taliban by teaming up with Islamic Pakistan, which had played a stellar role in creating the present conflict in the first place, than secular India, whose presence would be resented by the entire Islamic world. The long expected pat on the back by the US for good behaviour by way of lifting of sanctions was almost vexing considering that we were lumped together with bad boy Pakistan. Aware that its interests lie at the moment in keeping Pakistan as a long term ally the US government ignored the voluminous evidence presented by India when preparing its list of terrorist outfits. Even after the Jaish-e-Mohammed actually took credit for the horrendous assault on the J&K assembly the US didn’t exactly rush to put Jaish on its hit list. Instead it condemned in general terms the attack on ‘‘an Indian facility’’. The manner in which the US government refer to the J&K legislature is self evident where US priorities lie at present.

If Madan Lal Khurana, who signed a protest letter on terrorism in blood, feels a trifle betrayed by the Americans it is understandable. Most of us have come to cynically accept that the US’s international war on terrorism will not automatically mesh with ours. Foreign policy after all is about self interest and not about principles and ethics. Our foreign ministry, however, still clings to the rosy illusion that the US will act at the appropriate time against India’s war against terrorism, even if it is tactically silent for the moment because of Pakistan. Foreign minister Jaswant Singh piously avers that ‘‘India is not in the game for rewards’’, when it is pointed out that the Americans seem rather myopic about Pakistan’s role in terrorism.

The Indian government’s need to over emphasise that we are active members of the US’s global alliance against terrorism is part of its Pavlovian response to any issue in which Pakistan is embroiled. In the bargain, we seem to be losing sight of the real advantage we have over our recalcitrant neighbour at present. While Pakistan does not have the luxury of keeping away from being actively involved in the US-Taliban conflict, in the process weakening its own state and alienating itself from a section of the Islamic world community, India has the happy choice of largely avoiding the whole messy business. And yet our foreign office actually wanted to throw away the chance. By offering not just refueling facilities but air space and military bases to the US we would have been sucked into an unnecessary and a long drawn out conflict. A conflict in which a sizeable section of our volatile minority population’s sympathies lies with the other side. And though we tend to categorise bin Laden’s support along communal lines, the TV clips of poor and terrified Afghans fleeing their homes in droves, evokes sympathy across the religious divide. It is human nature to root for the little guy in a David versus Goliath combat.

Already India is a target of terrorism due to Kashmir. Heedless involvement in America’s military operations in Afghanistan would leave us infinitely more vulnerable long after the US has left our neighbourhood. Those who assume that the might of the US will ensure a quick fix solution in dealing with these fanatical invisible enemies without permanent addresses, are being short sighted. Perhaps we should learn a lesson or two in foreign policy from the Chinese, who realise that in diplomacy nice guys end up last. China while condemning the mindless havoc in America added the rider that it would be even more understanding of the US, if it now supported China’s own position in Tibet and Taiwan. Actually we don’t even have to go as far as China to learn sound common sense. Any smart Indian shopkeeper will tell you that the first rule when trouble erupts in the marketplace is to try and keep out. As they say,‘‘hame kya lena hain.’’

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