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Al-Ahram Weekly 23 - 29 March 2000 Issue No. 474 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 23 - 29 March 2000 Issue No. 474
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Focus Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Can Clinton charm South Asia?
By Gamal Nkrumah
Forget the official line. It is a question of time before India publicly caves in and permits third party mediation. And guess who will play mediator? The United States, naturally, is the most plausible candidate. But, of course, India might need a sweetener before it swallows the bitter brew of third party mediation. And what might the bait be? I suspect a permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council might be in the offing.
Last week, 65 Congressmen handed over a letter to the US president urging him to officially facilitate India's aspiration for a permanent seat at the UN's Security Council. The very prosperous, organised and dynamic Indian-American community, of course, have donated large amounts of campaign money to American lawmakers in this important presidential election year. As the Congressmen's letter indeed graphically confessed, "the millions of Indian-Americans have simultaneously enriched our lives even as they have bettered their own." It could not have more eloquently been put.
US President Bill Clinton's five-day tour of India, 12-hour visit to Bangladesh and four-hour stopover in Islamabad clearly indicated who carries more weight, whose friendship is more valued, and who must be kept in the doghouse. Pakistan clearly has the cards stacked against it. India received the lion's share of Clinton's time in the sub-continent. Clinton was clearly courting India, and he was on his best behaviour. He said and did all the right things, but alas, as elsewhere the American president was not taken very seriously.
Clinton slipped off his shoes, held his daughter Chelsea's hand tight, and bowed his head a little as he gilded towards Mahatma Gandhi's samadhi at Rajghat, leaving a trail of pink rose petals behind. He laid a wreath of chrysanthemums and planted a magnolia sapling on what he called "sacred ground." He also signed "The Vision Statement" with his host that was treated with derision and contempt in the Indian press. "Thin on specifics but full of motherhood and apple pie," read an editorial of the prestigious The Times of India.
But Clinton failed to cut ice with the vociferous anti-American constituency in India -- essentially a collection of nine leftist parties headed by the Communist Party of India and its rival, the Communist Party of India (Marxist). The objected to Clinton's remark that, "The US applauds India's success in opening up its economy." "India is not for sale," the CPI's and CPI (M)'s protester's placards angrily retorted.
A subject that sets many South Asian pulses racing is Kashmir. India's patience with the US over Kashmir is running thin. On the eve of Clinton's South Asian tour, the high-profile New York-based think-tank Kashmir Study Group proposed sovereignty for Kashmir. The most potentially explosive issue in US-Indian relations is Kashmir. Indeed even as Clinton toured the sub-continent, unidentified gunmen killed 36 Sikh men in Kashmir. Clinton condemned the killings. He also criticised Pakistan's lack of democratic process. The Indian Prime Minister expressed strong reservations about how Washington failed to issue a more strongly-worded condemnation of the coup d'état in Pakistan last October that ousted former Pakistani prime minister Nawwaz Sharif from office and brought Gen Pervez Mushharaf to power. Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihar Vajpayee publicly stated that Clinton's stopover in Pakistan would be "disappointment to the Indian people."
"There are many suggestions. But unless it is recognised that Kashmir is an integral part of India, there cannot be any enduring solution," insisted Vajpayee reiterating the traditional Indian position which rules out third party mediation citing the 1972 treaty signed by India and Pakistan which stipulates that the resolution of disputes be sorted out bilaterally. Pakistan, and most of the Kashmiri separatist organisations, want an international mediator to resolve the crisis.
On this key issue, India under Vajpayee will not budge. "There is no role for any kind of third party, however well-intentioned. We would like to solve the problems [between India and Pakistan] bilaterally," he said.
The simmering animosity between India and Pakistan over Kashmir that has plagued relations between the two South Asian neighbours, erupted into open conflict two times since independence in 1947. Last year's nail-biting Kargil episode when infiltraters from Pakistan nearly caused another war with India. There was also a third bitter war fought over the independence of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan), backed by India and opposed by the US, then Islamabad's fairy god-mother. In an ironic twist of fate, a US president now considers it more important to spend a few more hours in Bangladesh than in Pakistan. Islamabad can no longer afford to present visiting American dignitaries with a cacophony of demands. Today, the Pakistan Indian pundits love to banter and badger, is simply grateful just to be visited by an American president. And America obliges for old times' sake.
However, New Delhi still resents the fact that there is still an American ban enforced on arms sales to India. It is also sensitive to American criticisms of the proposed 28.2 per cent rise in this year's India's defense budget. Washington wants New Delhi to scale down its weapons and missile programme, and to sign the international nuclear Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Washington has also systematically blocked critical World Bank loans to India. But as columnist MD Nalapat pinioned, the success of Clinton's Indian visit can only be explained in terms of India, "shrugging off such pinpricks."
But, the important point to note is that there are growing signs that India is changing its strategy of containing what it perceives as a Pakistani threat -- from open hostility and punitive military action to one of cultivating grassroots democracy in Pakistan. Clinton's trip provides a golden opportunity for India to mobilise international opinion to help set up democratic structures in Pakistan. Ironically this policy shift was prompted by Musharraf's coup. "The establishment of democracy in Pakistan should be turned into the strategic aim that counts," wrote columnist Anand Sahay in The Hindustan Times.
Everything has changed and nothing has changed in South Asia. The sonic booms of US military jets darting about on practice runs over the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka would have been unthinkable in 1971 when Washington was trying hard to stop Bangladeshi independence from its chief regional ally Pakistan. With proven oil and gas reserves, militant Islamist and leftist groups who strongly protested Clinton's visit because they believe it was aimed at persuading Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to award lucrative energy deals to US corporations for gas and oil exploration. Sheikh Hasina, for her part, doesn't seem to mind that Americans are lustily eying her poor country's potential energy riches. Moreover, she seems to have graciously forgiven the Americans for not protesting the assassination of her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh's first president. Some of his suspected murderers live in the US. Clinton, glossed over America's questionable role in Bangladesh's turbulent history and praised Bangladesh as a "nation that has won the respect of the world."
An entrepreneurial India has grown alongside the once far more ubiquitous statist India. And Indian socialism and non-alignment is fast becoming a quaint piece of political memorabilia. The US is India's largest trade and investment partner. Financial markets, communications and information technologies have been transforming rapidly in India. The country has absorbed some of the attitudes of Western cultures it sometimes pretends to despise. In terms of purchasing power parity, India already has the world's fourth largest economy, one that the US can ill afford to ignore. "I believe that both the US and India are coming to realise that there was always something unnatural and regrettable about the estrangement of our two democracies," explained US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who accompanied Clinton on his South Asian tour.
