India-Pakistan: End of zero-sum game? This article is by Ejaz Haider in The Friday Times of Pakistan, dated Feb 4-10, 2000. In the article, Haider asks whether Pakistan's pro-active Kashmir policy based on the forces of jihad is compatible with other more compelling interests.

The Friday Times Feb 4-10 2000

India-Pakistan: End of zero-sum game?

Ejaz Haider asks whether Pakistan's pro-active Kashmir policy based on the forces of jihad is compatible with other more compelling interests

Washington has sent a stream of high ranking people to Islamabad in recent weeks to convey one central message to the military government: given certain aspects of Pakistan's foreign policy, the opportunity costs incurred by Pakistan's national security policy have reached unsustainable proportions.

The US Assistant Secretary of State Karl Inderfurth's January 21 meeting with General Pervez Musharraf had a clear agenda: The US considers the activities of Islamists groups operating from Pakistani soil a "clear and present danger" to its interests and wants Islamabad to take appropriate measures to put these groups down, beginning with declaring them "terrorist" groups. Appropriate to the occasion, Inderfurth was accompanied by Michael Sheehan, the US Department of State's chief co-ordinator on counter-terrorism and David Kamp, US National Security advisor.

While the issue of terrorism formed the main plank of the visit, other US concerns included Pakistan's return to democracy, the pace of economic reform in the country, nonproliferation, including signing of the CTBT and regional stability, especially a dialogue with India. Earlier, a similar, five-point message was delivered to Islamabad by a team of four senators led by Senator Tom Daschle, the minority leader in the US Senate.

What does this bode for Pakistan?

Consider some of the facts. The focal point of Pakistan's national security policy is its rivalry with India. That rivalry itself is sustained by the conflict on Kashmir. However, since the end of the Afghan war that conflict has undergone an essential change. With the introduction of non-state actors and the acquisition by Pakistan of its nuclear capability since the late eighties, the Pakistani state has evinced much greater confidence in its ability to take on India. Additionally, the Kashmir conflict now informs the very nationalism of Pakistan in a manner that it never did previously. This is not only owed to the state's greater confidence in its capability to hurt India but also because the Kashmir conflict has gathered unprecedented violent momentum in the last decade, especially the last year or so.

But the situation has also bred its own contradictions. The non-state actors that operate in Kashmir are the same Islamist groups, or the continuation of those groups, that were thrown up by the Afghan war. They operate in Kashmir in the same manner and for the same reason as they do in other parts of the world. The state has tacitly allowed them to operate in Kashmir because they provide Pakistan with a perceivably low cost option against the Indian security forces in Kashmir. Tactically, this appears a sound strategy because it allows Pakistan to hurt India militarily and keep a large chunk of the Indian army tied up in Kashmir. But the opportunity costs have multiplied over the years. In fact, some of these groups make no bones about arming, training and sending their cadres to fight inside Kashmir. The state has clearly done nothing to put these groups down even though the Constitution of Pakistan lays down very clearly in article 256 that private armies are forbidden.

The provisions of this article are specific and do not provide any exception. However, the dynamics of the competition with India have not only allowed such organisations to develop and spawn but have compelled the state to look the other way while these armed militias go about their business.

Clearly, however, the problem is not merely related to constitutional subtleties. The real issue is that these groups are not beholden to any state. They are only beholden to an ideology underpinned by a certain political exegesis in Islam. Paradoxically, therefore, while Islamabad might have allowed them to operate with a degree of freedom it is a misconception to think that it can dictate its own terms to these groups. It is this inability of Islamabad to control these groups that now threatens to circumscribe its freedom of action in terms of tailoring the India policy to bring it in conformity with the changes taking place regionally and globally.

The dilemma

Pakistan wants to sustain the Kashmir conflict. This is considered important because it not only keeps the conflict alive internationally, it also keeps a large chunk of Indian army tied up in Kashmir. Keeping the conflict alive is significant because of Pakistan's emphasis on the original UN Security Council texts, which have declared Kashmir a dispute to be resolved through a plebiscite. While the present resistance started in Kashmir as an indigenous uprising, the momentum for some years has been sustained by Islamist militias. This is not because the Kashmiris have become reconciled to Indian rule but because they could not have sustained their struggle against the Indian military might without external support. The resistance is therefore now a mix of Kashmiris and Islamist groups that train and arm in Afghanistan.

Since Washington's 1997 about-face on Afghanistan's Taliban militia because of Osama bin Ladin and the linkage of groups fighting in Kashmir with the Taliban, Pakistan's Kashmir policy has steadily fallen foul of Washington. India has shrewdly capitalised on this development and since Kargil has played up the theme of Islamist "terrorism". In this, India has in fact been helped by these Islamist groups' rhetoric against the United States. Pakistan has reacted slothfully to this development and because of the state's inability to control these groups now finds itself in a bind. If it bans these groups, it is likely to hurt its present Kashmir policy, besides running the risk of angering these groups, which could create internal security problems for it. If it does not ban these groups, it runs the risk of totally discrediting its Kashmir policy and allowing India to isolate it further by convincing Washington to declare Pakistan a terrorist state.

Was this inevitable? The answer is yes. These groups do not operate as part of any grand strategy worked out by Pakistan. They owe allegiance only to their own ideology and their own networks. These networks operate on the basis of the concept of civilisational conflict between Islam and a supposedly anti-Islamic consensus symbolised by the United States. It is, therefore, no coincidence that Pakistan finds itself in a bind today because of developments external to its Kashmir policy. If these groups were beholden to the state of Pakistan and worked in tandem with Islamabad, they would have avoided a confrontation with Washington while continuing to hurt India. However, that could not happen because such a strategy would presuppose a complete control by Pakistan of these groups.

Pakistan has faced a similar dilemma with the Taliban. While Islamabad has had to take the full brunt of the Taliban's policies, it has acquired no strategic gains from its support of the Taliban. Those analysts who hailed Pakistan's Afghan policy as a great success are today at a loss to find a way out of the present dilemma vis-ΰ-vis Kashmir. Should Pakistan declare these groups "terrorist" groups? The question is evidently being skirted. It must be clearly conceded that Pakistan's present dilemma over Kashmir is a necessary corollary of its Afghan policy.

The Islamist worldview

The Islamist worldview is simple. India is the enemy closer to home but it is not the only enemy. India's significance lies in that it has come to symbolise the struggle that also defines Pakistani nationalism. But the Islamists' nationalism has no secular roots. It is a nationalism that looks at the state not in terms of a nation-state but as a citadel of Islam. Consequently, the state is sacralised and nationalism defined in terms of faith. It is only through this paradigm that one can understand the Islamists' confrontation with the United States. This worldview does not take into account such diplomatic nuances as President Clinton's visit to South Asia, or indeed the issue of why must Pakistan sign the CTBT.

This consensus is symbolised by Qazi Hussain Ahmed's opposition to the CTBT. That opposition is not linked to the legal or other technicalities of the treaty or its text. It is also not related to whether Pakistan needs further tests, or can indeed exercise the option of any further tests. Neither does this view consider Pakistan's nuclear capability as India-specific, which has traditionally been Pakistan's policy. Qazi's opposition, and he is supported in this across-the-board by the right-wing, is pegged to the civilisational construct: the conflictual paradigm Samuel Huntington expounded in his controversial book on the clash of civilisations.

For the Islamists, therefore, the factors of economy and diplomacy are not important. They maintain, for instance, that Sudan has a thriving economy but Sudan is also a "rogue state" for Washington; that Pakistan, with its nuclear potential, stands a better chance because the nuclear potential gives it a greater nuisance value; that therefore, it must keep up its struggle against both India and the United States; and that the strength of faith will not only help people tide over the initial problems, but will also win in the end.

The nationalist state

The "nationalist" state is caught in a bind. It considers competition with India essential just as India considers competition with Pakistan essential since Pakistan would not accept its managerial role in the region. At the secular level there is even a degree of legitimacy to a competition that is fuelled, among other things, by the circumstances of history. Furthermore, nuclearisation has taken away any incentive the two states might have had in resolving their conflicts. There can be no total war between India and Pakistan in the sense that Edward Luttwak advocates, and which allows one party to put the weaker party down completely for a longer lasting peace. There is no weaker party now in the military sense. But weakness, like strength, is a multi-dimensional concept. India might not take Pakistan on and win militarily, but it could adopt a strategy that could bring to fore the inner contradictions of Pakistan. Being the status quo power, time is on India's side. It can hold itself together and let the competition weaken Pakistan.

Economic travails, diplomatic isolation, political uncertainty and pangs of identity are all areas where Pakistan is likely to hurt more than India. The present dilemma is just one manifestation of where the present strategy might be leading Pakistan. Nothing manifests the nationalist state's dilemma better than the Islamist consensus on the CTBT. This state needs the militias in Kashmir, but it also wants them to accept its pitch on the CTBT. But the Islamists will not bite. Such is the reliance of the nationalist state on these militias that the convergence of Washington and New Delhi on the issue of terrorism and these groups actually threatens to unravel Pakistan's entire Kashmir policy.

Pakistan's options

The state has to take certain decisions. It has to see whether it wants to lap up the Islamists' worldview of a civilisational conflict with the world and accept international isolation or reject that worldview and reformulate its policies in regard to the competition with India. As yet, however, it is not prepared to take a clear line on the issue. It wants to exercise both options: continuing to use the militias against India while denying that it is doing so. This is the strategy it adopted in Afghanistan. But it is also a strategy that has increasingly lost the element of plausible deniability.

If the state wants to keep using these militias, it will need to purge them of the civilisational paradigm. But that is impossible. Therefore, the only option it has is to reformulate its India policy. Such a reformulation would require a reassessment not only of the parameters but also of the nature of its competition. It is a misconception to think that anything short of a zero-sum competition would amount to surrendering to India. Or, indeed, that any reformulation on Kashmir in view of a realistic assessment of what can be achieved would be to give India an upper hand. Such an appraisal is beholden to an all or nothing mindset. Diplomacy, quite obviously, does not work on the basis of all or nothing but on the basis of what is achievable. In fact, efforts to co-opt the international community may well strengthen Pakistan's viewpoint, especially in the context of South Asia's nuclearisation. The idea should then be to wrest the initiative away from India rather than play into India's hands. Unfortunately, however, the present policy has failed on that count.