A whirlwind tour
Pakistan has staked much on the visit of Washington's top South Asia official, but is its faith well founded? Iffat Idris reports from Islamabad
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A Kashmiri Muslim offers prayers at the shrine of Sufi saint Hadrat Khawaja Baha-ud-din. Peace initiatives by India and Pakistan over Kashmir are viewed with hope and apprehension by the Kashmiris
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United States Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage concluded a three-nation tour of South Asia on Saturday, saying he was "cautiously optimistic" about peace efforts between India and Pakistan, and the normalisation of relations between the two countries.
Armitage's visit to South Asia came shortly after a dramatic move by Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to improve relations with Pakistan. These have been particularly bad since a militant attack on the Lok Sabha in New Delhi in December 2001. India blamed Pakistan for sponsoring this attack, and withdrew its High Commissioner from Islamabad in protest. The situation continued to deteriorate to the point where war seemed imminent. Atal Bihari Vajpayee's offer to make a "third and last" peace effort heralds the beginning of a new path to normalisation.
The Indian government followed through on Prime Minister Vajpayee's initiative with the announcement that it would be re- appointing a High Commissioner to Islamabad and restarting air traffic between the two countries. The Jamali government in Islamabad was very quick to respond positively to these moves. Prime Minister Jamali invited his Indian counterpart to Pakistan for talks. That offer was turned down, but Jamali then declared his willingness to go to India for dialogue. The Pakistani leader also made the dramatic announcement that Pakistan would give up its nuclear weapons programme if India did the same -- that offer was also turned down.
On the plus side, India has nominated senior career diplomat, Shiv Shankar Menon, currently the country's ambassador to China, for the key post in Islamabad. The Pakistani government said it would make every effort to speedily clear the appointment, and added that it was considering names for its own High Commissioner to New Delhi.
On Thursday, one day after Armitage's arrival in Islamabad, a delegation of Pakistani legislators left for a week-long visit to India to promote peace efforts. The delegation includes four senators and eight members of Pakistan's National Assembly. Their visit was organised by the Pakistan-India People's Forum for Peace and Democracy. Though an unofficial trip (without government involvement) it will definitely signal political endorsement of the latest Indo-Pak peace drive.
There has been much speculation that the current rapprochement between India and Pakistan was the result of American prompting. But both Americans and Indians have strongly denied this. The US actually expressed surprise at the Indian initiative -- even though it approved of the move. Washington is keen for a normalisation of Indo-Pak relations to avert the danger of a fourth, and potentially nuclear, war between the two states.
The focus of Armitage's visit to Pakistan and India was therefore to encourage and promote the current peace effort. In Islamabad, where he landed first, Armitage urged Prime Minister Jamali and President Musharraf to maintain the policy of banning Kashmiri militant groups and curbing infiltration across the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border between India and Pakistan. The Pakistanis responded by telling him that they had arrested 500 terrorists, six of whom planned to carry out attacks against American nationals in the country.
In New Delhi, though, the US deputy secretary of state was shown a completely different picture. Armitage met the Indian prime minister, Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani, Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha and opposition Congress leader Sonia Gandhi. He was apparently shown evidence of continued Pakistani support for "cross-border terrorism". India has repeatedly made it clear that the normalisation of relations with Pakistan is dependent on it ending its backing for separatists in Indian Kashmir. "Friendship is possible, but you have to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure first," said Advani.
Whatever his views about conflicting Indo- Pak claims about curbing militancy in Indian Kashmir, Armitage chose to confine himself in public to calling for an end to violence. He said that any loss of innocent lives was reprehensible. However, Armitage did not come to South Asia with a "roadmap for peace" along the lines of that recently unveiled for Israel and Palestine. Rather, he gave a ringing US endorsement to efforts by Indian and Pakistani leaders to normalise relations between their two countries.
India, Pakistan and the Americans are all well aware of the many obstacles that lie ahead -- not least the problem of so-called cross- border terrorism. Nonetheless, for now, all three appear united on the need to strive to overcome those obstacles.
Squeezed in between Armitage's efforts in Islamabad and New Delhi was a few hours' stopover in Kabul. Though there for only a short while, Richard Armitage tried to make full use of the time to hammer home the message that America has not forgotten or abandoned Afghanistan.
Since the defeat of the Taliban at the end of 2001, the US has come under criticism for focussing too much on the hunt for Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qa'eda, and too little on bringing peace and stability to Afghanistan and addressing the country's pressing humanitarian problems. The war in Iraq, and the US pledge to reconstruction there, has heightened fears among Afghans that the US will now completely forget its pledge to rebuild their country. Foreign Office Spokesman Omar Samad summed up those fears, "as resources mobilise for Iraq, we want to make sure that it doesn't in any way hinder or challenge our efforts to rebuild Afghanistan. The international community's effort has to be sustained."
Before his meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Armitage conceded that the situation in the country was "difficult". But he said he wanted to make a "dramatic demonstration" that the United States could do "two things at the same time". "We can be heavily involved in Iraq. We can [also] be heavily involved in Afghanistan, and for the long term." Proof of this commitment was a cheque for $100,000 presented by Armitage for the reconstruction of the Afghan National Museum. This was destroyed by civil war and the draconian edicts of the Taliban, who viewed its Buddhist statues as un-Islamic. The infusion of funds is welcome relief for the Museum, but ordinary Afghans will have been disappointed. America will have to make much more substantive proof of its commitment to Afghan reconstruction if it is to allay their fears.
