8 Degree of Separation :: March 4 2010

A terrorist attack in Pune greeted India’s announcement of resumption of talks with Pakistan. And no sooner had the foreign secretary-level talks in New Delhi concluded than a bomb attack killed a number of Indians, including three army majors, in Afghanistan, the new front in the Pakistan-orchestrated jihad against India. These strikes have ended the 14-month lull in terror attacks against Indian targets, underscoring the wages of talking to an implacable adversary.
There are at least eight reasons to be concerned by the renewed talks. The first is the abrupt U-turn in Indian policy, which Pakistan correctly has viewed as a major diplomatic climb down by India, emboldening its military and intelligence. A second reason is that the shift in the Indian position occurred without the government so much as offering a reasoned explanation to the public for the switch. Indeed, the shift occurred at a time when, as the PM has admitted, the level of cross-border infiltration by terrorists is increasing.

A third reason is that Indian overtures beget only more terrorism. Without undermining India’s presence in Afghanistan, Pakistan cannot regain its political and military influence there once US president Barack Obama’s “surge, bribe and run” strategy reaches its logical end. India’s role to strengthen the secular and democratic sectors of Afghan society, backed by $1.4-billion investment, threatens Pakistan’s use of extremist forces to achieve political ends in Afghanistan. The Pune and Kabul attacks prove that the terrorist elements, far from being autonomous, are very much under the control of the Pakistani military establishment, which is able to use them at will.

The fourth reason is that the Indian decision to resume talks
seemed designed to aid America’s Af-Pak strategy. The publicly acknowledged US strategy to reconcile with the Pakistan-backed Afghan Taliban has only increased US reliance on the Pakistani military and intelligence. After persuading India to agree to resume talks with Islamabad, the US launched the Marjah offensive as a show of force and got Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to assist in the “capture” of several Afghan Taliban leaders. These stage-managed arrests were part of the plans to squeeze the Afghan Taliban first so as to negotiate from a position of strength.

A fifth reason is that instead of applying direct leverage against Pakistan, India is depending on the US to lean on Islamabad. India has been loath to use economic and security levers against Pakistan. Its decision to resume talks with Islamabad shows that it also is reluctant to employ the diplomatic card. Yet Indian reliance on the US carries high risk. After all, American policy in southern Asia is being driven by narrow, politically expedient considerations, as illustrated by the manner in which the Obama administration is propping up Pakistan through generous aid and lethal-arms transfers. As US ex-senator Larry Pressler has warned, “When the US leaves Afghanistan, India will have a Pakistan ‘on steroids’ next door and a Taliban state to deal with in Afghanistan.”

The sixth reason is that the Indian government has sought to pull the wool over the eyes of the Indian public by claiming that the resumed dialogue process is centred on terrorism when in reality it is about the usual issues, including Kashmir. Nothing better illustrates this than the fact that New Delhi bent backwards to arrange a meeting between the visiting Pakistani foreign secretary and Hurriyat leaders, including Syed Ali Shah Geelani. In fact, the Pakistani foreign secretary came to NewDelhi for two sets of dialogue: One with the Indian government, and the other with Geelani and his fellow Hurriyat leaders.

The seventh reason is that New Delhi is engaging not the actors that wield real power in Pakistan — the military establishment — but a civilian government that is neither responsible for the terror attacks against India nor is in a position to stop them. Yet, New Delhi has begun a “graduated” process of talks with the Pakistani government, effectively giving the Pakistani military a carte blanche to continue to wage its war by terror. With external affairs Minister SM Krishna telling Parliament that the foreign secretary-level talks were an “encouraging step” towards restoring full discourse, New Delhi is headed toward resuming the composite-dialogue process before long, to Washington’s delight.

The eighth and final reason is that such talks only reinforce the India-Pakistan pairing when the need is for India to de-hyphenate itself from the quasi-failed, terror-exporting Pakistan, which is a global crucible of extremism and fundamentalism. More than Washington it is NewDelhi’s unimaginative diplomacy that is responsible for the continued India-Pakistan hyphenation internationally.