Déjà vu: Armitage Comes Calling

Déjà vu: Armitage Comes Calling
Ajai Sahni

In a recent speech at the Foreign Policy Association covering the imperatives of the global war against terrorism, US Secretary of State Colin Powell noted: "The issues are too important and the stakes are too high to posture for effect."

South Asia, however, remains a region where appearances and postures retain their primacy over reality. Almost a year since his last visit to India - when he carried a message from Pakistan's President Musharraf giving an assurance that cross border terrorism would "permanently end" - Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage revisited India, bearing Musharraf's contention that terrorist training camps had "ceased to exist" in Pakistan occupied Kashmir. "President Musharraf has told me nothing is happening at the Line of Control," Armitage declared, "He said that there are no camps in Azad Kashmir [Pakistan occupied Kashmir] and if there are, they will be gone by tomorrow." The diplomatic charade of patient hearings and dialogues continued, with India presenting the visiting delegation substantial proof that Musharraf was - as he had done in the past - simply lying. Armitage is reported to have conveyed the American position that India would have to make its own assessments regarding Pakistani compliance on the dismantling of Pakistan's infrastructure of terrorism and support to infiltration and cross-border terrorism in the State of Jammu & Kashmir. And there, apparently, the matter rests.

That there is, at least, a certain measure of deceit here should be apparent. There is a burgeoning body of American and international literature documenting Pakistan's continued support to terrorist organisations active in India - including many linked to the Al Qaeda - despite the fact that the US is periodically mollified with the arrest of an occasional Al Qaeda leader or cadres in Pakistan. The US State Department's Annual Patterns of Global Terrorism - 2002 report acknowledged that, "Like the United States, India faces a significant terrorist threat" and that extremist violence in Kashmir was "fuelled by infiltration from Pakistan across the Line of Control". And if this were not clear enough, the US Ambassador to Pakistan recently confirmed that Pakistan persists in its campaign of terror against India. In January, Nancy J. Powell had, in Islamabad, called on Pakistan to "ensure that its pledges are implemented to prevent infiltration across the line of control and end the use of Pakistan as a platform for terrorism." At Delhi, Ambassador Robert D. Blackwill had declared with no uncertainty that "the fight against international terrorism will not be won until terrorism against India ends permanently. There can be no other legitimate stance by the United States, no American compromise whatever on this elemental geopolitical and moral truth. The United States, India and all civilised nations must have zero tolerance for terrorism. Otherwise, we sink into a swamp of moral relativism and strategic myopia."

While 'moral relativism and strategic myopia' do not appear to have been entirely dispensed with in current trends in diplomatic dissimulation and obfuscation, there are, however, subtle shifts noticeable in the American position on South Asia. For one thing, the US has now clarified that it does not have any 'end results' in mind with regard to a 'solution' of the Kashmir issue, and that it seeks essentially to diminish tensions in the region and to prevent the escalation of conflict. It is, consequently, evident that the Bush Administration does not intend to emulate the ill-informed interventionist position that was emerging under Bill Clinton, when a number of political quacks were brought in to suggest crude surgery along communal demographic lines as a 'solution' to the Kashmir problem.

There is also evidence of a growing intensity in the engagement with India, and the separation of this relationship from the conventional triadic muddle that imposed inadvertent parity between India and Pakistan. While Armitage was in South Asia, India's National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra had meetings with State Department and Pentagon officials at Washington, as well as an unscheduled meeting with President George Bush, possibly signalling the President's increasing personal interest in developments in the region, and demonstrating, at the same time, a willingness to go well beyond protocol.

There is, equally, a dramatic shrinkage (though still not a complete disappearance) of the space available for Pakistan's strategy of terrorism under the cover of 'plausible deniability' and the contended distinctions between 'terrorists' and 'freedom fighters'. Christina Rocca had earlier and emphatically declared, "Terrorism is terrorism is terrorism. Terrorism against any country is part of the war on terrorism. Terrorism against India is as unacceptable as it is against America or any other country." Armitage reiterated the 'terrorism is terrorism' line during his visit to Delhi, adding, "whenever innocent women, children and non-combatants die, one has to call that terrorism. Our point is that all this violence has to end." Policy and strategic observers at Delhi read a US carte blanche on the character and scope of Indian responses to continued Pakistani cross-border operations - as long as the situation is not allowed to spiral out of control. There are also mounting reasons to believe that the US is gradually, but systematically, moving away from its earlier miscalculations that led it to support various fundamentalist Islamist regimes and forces, as well as military dictatorships - though such movement tends to be moderated in Pakistan's case by the transient tactical imperatives of securing cooperation in the hunt for the surviving al Qaeda leadership and cadres who have substantially relocated to that country. The US has, consequently, also set to rest any illusions or wishful thinking - rampant in segments of the Indian polity and the strategic community - that a rough-and-ready intervention by America, comparable to the 'pre-emptive' campaign in Iraq, will produce an outcome that the wilder imaginations in the regions have dreamt of.

Manifest pressure on Pakistan appears, nevertheless, to have increased, and this has had some impact over the past weeks - with a far more conciliatory stance emerging than has been visible over the past year. There was a significant climb-down when Pakistan was dissuaded from raising the Kashmir issue at the UN during its tenure as rotating President of the Security Council. The sheer alacrity with which Pakistan seized upon the opportunities of Prime Minister Vajpayee's offer of talks in his Srinagar speech last month is another measure of the mounting anxiety in Islamabad.

While Armitage's visit thus marks no radical transformation of US policy in the region, it demonstrates tentative shifts broadly in keeping with changing strategic perceptions of US interests, threat assessments and the course of the global war against terrorism. Within the context of the dynamic disequilibria that currently mark the entire Asian region, this cautious approach cannot easily be faulted, though those who hoped for swift and determined action against terrorism and its state sponsors have some reason for disappointment.

Courtesy: Institute for Conflict Management and South Asia Intelligence Portal