Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Two Twitchy Scorpions In A Very Small Bottle

India and Pakistan both have a nuclear capability. India's atomic arsenal is much larger than Pakistan's. The new US-Indian deal on fissionable materials allows India to divert its entire domestic production of uranium to the bomb making assembly lines so its ability to green glass large swaths of Pakistan will grow.

Although well behind India in the numbers and perhaps yields of its weapons, the Pakistanis are currently enlarging their production capacity. Even without an increase, Islamabad has more than enough splittable neutrons to ruin India's (and the world's) whole day.

Making life all the more anxiety producing for those who hope to avoid the planting of mushroom shaped clouds in the sky over the sub-continent, both India and Pakistan have shown a truly awesome capacity to avoid cooperation on key existential issues, reject any sort of roadmap for a final settlement on the disputed lands of the Kashmir and, at least un-officially, wave the nuclear card as if it were actually one which could be played. While India every now and then indicates that the nuclear option is a rational one, the Pakistanis are far more willing to endorse the notion of nuclear war as a viable policy approach.

In the relationship between India and Pakistan it is the latter which is the more distrusting, the more apprehensive, the more willing to reach for a threat, including the nuclear one. But, India, when provoked as it was by the Mumbai Incident, can equal or outdo Pakistan in the dire threats department.

Currently there are two issues which yawn like a World War I trench system with the two combatants glaring at each other through the sights of their guns. One is the matter of Pakistani complicity in the Mumbai Incident. The other is water.

There is little doubt that Islamabad has been sleep-walking through the motions of judicial proceedings against Pakistanis accused of having played a role in the Mumbai Incident. More debatable but far from rebuttable is the contention that the Mumbai Incident involved some level of support from instruments of the Pakistani government, most probably the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI.) The obvious lack of promptness and candor on the part of the government of Pakistan (GOP) in pursuing either allegations or suspicions of its citizens or agents involvement in the Incident have fueled the darkest of dark Indian suspicions.

The shocking (dare the Geek say, "Perry Mason" style) confession of the sole surviving Mumbai terrorist in open court poured napalm by the gallon on the worst Indian conjectures. It seems likely that the Indian government which is not a monument to either stability or cautious reflection before taking action will come under heavy pressure to do something unless the GOP takes effective, public action to act on information contained in the so far secret (or at least gag rule suppressed) confession.

At the very least the confession of Ajmal Kasab has the potential of perturbing, even rupturing, the tentative rapprochement made between India and Pakistan on the sidelines of the recently concluded Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) conference in Sharm al-Sheik, Egypt. The meeting of the minds at Sharm al-Sheik was neither comprehensive nor free of mutual suspicion to the extent that India and Pakistan might well engage in a rush away from it.

(It should be mentioned that SecState Hillary Clinton stepped on her diplomatic tongue with golf shoes when she averred surviving heavyweights of al-Qaeda were still holed up in Pakistan's FATA. The implication was this state of affairs could not exist without the tacit approval of either or both GOP and ISI. While both the sanctuary and the implication might be factual, it is not at all appropriate to say so at this critical juncture in Indo-Pakistan relations. Ms Clinton deserves to be taken to the woodshed.)

Pakistan needs to feel free to turn its back on India as it gets on with its fight against Taliban. More specifically Pakistan needs assurances, credible, verifiable assurances that India is not seeking a strategic advantage by its presence in Afghanistan. Only the US can serve as an honest broker in this matter and SecState Clinton's ill-advised imitation of Joe (I'll-Say-Anything-That-Crosses-My-Tongue-Without-Involving-My-Brain) Biden will do nothing to enhance the American role in this matter.

Our Secretary of State is correct when she pats Pakistan on the back for its "serious" efforts to defeat Taliban. The military portion of the anti-Taliban campaign is continuing with continued superficial indications of success. More important than the body count touted is the underlying fact that the majority of the ground fighting is still being carried out by the second string units of the paramilitary Frontier Corps and not the regular Pakistani army.

This means simply that GOP has not felt free to redeploy substantial numbers of their regular forces from the Indian border. Continued reliance upon the Frontier Corps, which is, relatively, less well trained, equipped, and officered than the Regulars will assure the campaign moves slowly, perhaps too slowly to continue effective public support and political will. The faltering of support and will has been the ruination of previous anti-Taliban efforts. The same dynamic is not far from the surface today.

The second issue--water--has emerged in the past few weeks to complicate the relation between Pakistan and India. Water, and the potential for hostilities over it, has been highlighted recently by assorted Pakistani media and political figures. This means there is less inducement for India to take confidence building measures such as thinning out its forces on the common border which would allow Pakistan to concentrate its army on the abatement of the Taliban.

Water has been an issue between India and Pakistan since Partition. A series of agreements on the use and division of rivers serving the two countries, particularly those running through the disputed territories of Jammu and Kashmir, have been signed. In general these agreements have been observed to the satisfaction of both governments.

The Indus River Treaty of 1960 which was facilitated by the World Bank is the most important of these agreements. It has become a source of strain between the two countries in the past year or so. Covering the six river systems shared by the two nations, the Indus River Treaty is seen to be threatened by the Indian government's ambitious sixty-seven project program for dams, hydroelectric power production, and irrigation covering the Indian administered portion of Kashmir state.

From the perspective of Pakistani nationalists, the Indian development program whose centerpiece, Baglihir dam, went on line last year is an attempt to create an absolute and irrefutable fact on the ground in Kashmir and Jammu. In the view of these irredentist folks the Indian government is seeking to fully integrate the Muslim majority population of Indian controlled Kashmir and Jammu to the ultimate disadvantage of both Islam and Pakistan.

The Indian government says it is simply discharging its responsibility to the population of the two provinces while fostering both agricultural and economic development such as to benefit the locals and the nation equally. There is nothing outre nor exceptional in this position. It is what governments everywhere are supposed to do--and, at least on occasion, do actually do.

Not so fast, counter the irredentists of Pakistan. The massive project carries the potential of threatening the Pakistani agricultural use of the water to our collective loss. This argument carries a lot of freight with Pakistanis.

The consensus is Pakistan faces a water crisis in the near future. The country has been experiencing a decrement in water flow for the past several decades and may face genuine emergency conditions in the next five years. Compounding the problem is Pakistan has failed to build its own dams, resevoirs, and irrigation systems such that most of the water flowing through the rivers is lost to the sea without having been put to beneficial use along the way.

As Pakistan's population is expected to hit 250 million in the not too distant future, the impact of water shortages particularly when taken in conjunction with shortfalls in basic commodities would be severely dislocative. Even though the GOP is in large measure responsible for the looming water crisis, it is far more convenient and in keeping with historical experience to pin the tail of blame on the Indian donkey.

Various and sundry retired generals including a former head of ISI and the one time boss of the national water authority along with assorted nationalist politicians are now raising the accusation that India is using the water as a weapon. This crew loudly, repeatedly, and in a high visibility way has charged that the new dam and its associated projects are actually offensive weapons more deadly than atomic bombs aimed at the hearts of Pakistan and Islam.

Now, the charges have reached the point that purportedly responsible Pakistanis are contending that resorting to nuclear war in response to this Indian hydraulic assault is appropriate. What a concept! You have to admit it would work. After a brief exchange the resulting population reduction of several million would diminish the need for water--assuming any which did not glow in the dark could be found.

While there is no real (immediate) probability of the two countries going to nuclear war over water or any thing else, the mere fact of this irredentist thinking (to use the term generically only) is indicative of the underlying distrust, suspicion, and flat out fear which provides the context for all Indo-Pakistani affairs. It is emblematic of the gap which the US must help bridge in our own interest.

Secretary of State Clinton will have to be far more careful in both the wording and timing of her public remarks than she evidenced in the wake of the NAM if she is going to play the constructive role in nudging the governments of Pakistan and India toward a working relationship which will meet Pakistan's needs as it takes on Taliban. Unless and until both the government and politically articulate elite of Pakistan can grow beyond their reflexive and unreasoning fear of India, the task of squashing Taliban and akin Islamist threats will stay incomplete.

Unless and until Pakistan devotes its full energies and forces to abating the Islamists in its midst, the American effort in Afghanistan is probably doomed to fail. Time is against both the US government and GOP.

The reason time is on the side of the Islamists is the same in both Pakistan and the US. Sacrifice without evident success saps political will. SecDef Gates has warned that We the People will turn our backs on the Afghanistan war without real, observable success in the next twelve to eighteen months. The time frame in Pakistan is shorter, perhaps much shorter.

Ms Clinton and the rest of the Obama foreign policy team have their work cut out for them. The question is simply--Are they up to the task?

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