Author: Lawrence F. Kaplan
Publication: The New Republic Online
Date: June 6, 2002
URL: http://www.thenewrepublic.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020617&s=kaplan061702
When it comes to U.S. foreign policy,
it's not true that September 11 changed everything. In the case of America's
relationship with its cold war client Pakistan, it actually restored the
status quo. In the months before September 11, relations between Washington
and Islamabad rapidly soured as the Bush team became enthralled with India--a
country that, unlike Pakistan, offered a valuable market, a democracy,
and a potential strategic partner against China. Last summer Deputy Secretary
of State Richard Armitage lumped Pakistan in with other "rogue states";
announced that our cold war friendship with the country was a "false relationship";
and worried about its nuclear program, while expressing no similar concern
about India's. But September 11, and the need for Pakistani cooperation
in Afghanistan, moved the clock back to the cold war. Since then, President
George W. Bush has lauded Pakistani autocrat Pervez Musharraf as a "leader
with great courage and vision"; Secretary of State Colin Powell has praised
his "courage and foresight"; and State Department officials have likened
him to Ataturk.
They were closer to the truth the
first time: In their rush to reembrace Pakistan as an ally against the
Taliban and Al Qaeda, for months American policymakers willfully disregarded
evidence that Musharraf has been a less- thanreliable partner. Hence, the
Bush administration has greeted with silence Musharraf's rejection of its
demand that he impose order along Afghanistan's lawless border. Pressed
to account for that refusal last month, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
lamely explained that Pakistan is "a sovereign nation." Silence, too, has
followed Musharraf's refusal to hand over the central suspect in the murder
of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and to provide American investigators
full access to Pakistani nuclear scientists believed to have had contacts
with Al Qaeda. And the Bush team barely uttered a peep when Musharraf rigged
a referendum extending his rule two months ago. But when it comes to Musharraf's
refusal to stanch the flow of terrorists into Kashmir--a refusal that explains
why South Asia now teeters on the brink of war--the Bush administration
has been worse than mute. It has responded with ostentatious praise.
"You have to give him credit," Powell
said of Musharraf's effort to halt Kashmiri terrorism in January; and in
New Delhi one week later Powell asked his Indian hosts to give the general
a "chance." Bush, too, has pressed India to "let Musharraf bring terrorists
to justice," adding that the Pakistani leader has been "responding forcefully
and actively to bring those who would harm others to justice" and "cracking
down hard" on terrorists. Or as a Pentagon official put it to The New York
Times in January, "The United States thinks that Musharraf is for real
and has undertaken fundamental changes. We have been trying to persuade
the Indians to take 'yes' for an answer." But "yes" was never Musharraf's
answer at all. And by pretending for so many months that it was, the Bush
administration may have brought the two countries closer to war.
The claim that Musharraf has been
"cracking down hard" on cross-border terrorism was always a questionable
proposition. After Pakistani terrorists attacked the Indian parliament
last December, prompting India to mass troops along the Pakistani border
in response, Musharraf heeded the Bush team's demands by arresting extremists
at home and by condemning terrorism in a nationally televised speech. But
no sooner had the crisis passed--and the parade of administration officials
shuttling back and forth between New Delhi and Islamabad came to a halt,
as the Bush team turned its attention to the Middle East--when the Pakistani
dictator reverted to type. The general has since released almost all the
militants he rounded up in January. He has refused to hand over to India
20 terrorists linked to the attack on its parliament, and he still touts
his support for "the Kashmiri struggle for liberation." Most important,
administration officials concede that the flow of militants--which had
subsided when snow blocked infiltration routes from Pakistan during the
winter--has resumed with the spring thaw. In fact, just three weeks ago,
Pakistani-backed militants murdered 34 Indians at an army base in Kashmir.
If the Bush administration has averted
its gaze to Pakistani malfeasance, it hasn't been for lack of warning by
Indian officials. As early as last December, Indian Prime Minister Atal
Behari Vajpayee complained bitterly about being subjected to American "sermons
about restraint" while Washington turned a blind eye to Musharraf's antics.
On a trip to New Delhi three weeks ago, Assistant Secretary of State Christina
Rocca was ambushed by officials from India's foreign ministry, who told
her they were exasperated by U.S. admonitions for restraint and were tired
of Washington's "double standards." One week later Indian Defense Secretary
Yogendra Narain conveyed the same message to Armitage and Rumsfeld. "We
told them that our patience [had] almost come to an end, and what Musharraf
had promised in his January twelfth speech, he has not lived up to it,"
Narain said after meeting with his American counterparts. "We also felt
that the U.S. had not done enough to control or advise Pakistan on this
issue." And last week Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh went so far as to
declare that the presence of U.S. forces at Pakistani bases would not be
"an inhibiting factor in [India's] policy determinations."
Brahma Chellaney, an Indian strategist
with close ties to the government, believes the present crisis might not
have arisen had the Bush administration responded more forcefully to ample
evidence of Pakistani misconduct. "So eager has the Bush team been to win
Musharraf's cooperation," says Chellaney, "that until last week they did
not press him on the issue of cross- border terrorism against India." Hence,
officials in New Delhi reacted furiously when Rocca repeated Washington's
praise for Musharraf last month. In fact, it was only after Rocca conveyed
their anger by telephone to Powell, who in turn informed the White House,
that the crisis received Cabinet-level attention--with Bush placing a call
to Vajpayee, and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice phoning her
Indian counterpart, Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra.
The Indians particularly distrust
Powell, who even members of the Bush team admit has established a kinship
of "fellow generals" with Musharraf. The chumminess has been noticed in
Delhi, too, particularly since Powell has repeated Musharraf's contention
that Kashmir is the core issue in Indo- Pakistani relations--something
India denies. "The Bush administration and particularly Secretary of State
Powell [have made] Musharraf feel that they go to great lengths to please
him," complains Gopalaswami Parthasarathy, India's former high commissioner
to Pakistan. "General Musharraf was so sure of United States support that
he blatantly rigged a referendum and has continued to aid terrorists in
Jammu and Kashmir." One of the reasons the White House dispatched Rumsfeld
to South Asia this week rather than Powell was precisely, as one senior
administration official puts it, "to show that we take this very seriously."
The perception of American
bias has been made worse by the reality of American ineptitude. "The administration
doesn't have a plan, just a crisis management policy," says The Brookings
Institution's Stephen Cohen, author of India: Emerging Power. "They haven't
been engaged at all." After meeting with Musharraf in February, Bush said,
"I hope we can facilitate serious and meaningful dialogue between India
and Pakistan"--this, despite the fact that India loudly opposes third-party
intervention. The next day, however, Rice said, "[W]e don't believe this
is something that mediation or facilitation is going to help." In a similar
vein, the National Security Council's director for Asian affairs, Harry
Thomas, announced in March that Pakistan should either try suspected terrorists
or hand them over to India. A week later the State Department said that
was a matter for the countries themselves to decide.
Adding to the disarray, relations
between the American Embassies in India and Pakistan have become almost
as tense as relations between the two countries themselves. Wendy Chamberlain,
the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, and Robert Blackwill, the U.S. ambassador
to India, have spent the last few months bombarding Washington with cables--arguing,
in Chamberlain's case, that Musharraf has done everything in his power
to halt incursions into Kashmir and, in Blackwill's case, that he has done
nothing of the sort. According to one official, "Their reporting completely
distorts our picture of what's happening on the ground." And if the presence
of Chamberlain and Blackwill has confused administration policy, their
sudden absence could muddle the picture further: Chamberlain has just vacated
her post to join her children in the United States, and Blackwill--the
subject of a State Department inspector-general review for what an official
called in The Washington Post "treat[ing] his staff like furniture"--may
soon be departing the region as well.
But this much is clear: The Bush
team needs a new road map for South Asia. U.S. officials readily concede
that if war breaks out on the subcontinent it will be because India invades
to counter Pakistani provocations in Kashmir. The obvious administration
strategy, then, would simply be to address the source of India's complaint.
After all, the Bush team knows the charge has merit: "Musharraf," says
an official directly involved in managing U.S.-Pakistani relations, "could
clamp down on infiltration in a minute if he wanted to. He's certainly
done so before." Even the Clinton team, which generally made a hash of
South Asia policy, understood the proximate cause of Kashmir's woes. In
a recent paper published by the Center for the Advanced Study of India
at the University of Pennsylvania, Bruce Riedel, a special assistant to
the president, recounts Bill Clinton's response when faced with the possibility
of a nuclear exchange over Kashmir in 1999. Reasoning that to do otherwise
would reward Pakistani aggression in Kashmir, Clinton placed the blame
squarely where it belonged--publicly demanding a Pakistani withdrawal from
Indian- controlled Kashmir; assuring Vajpayee that he was "holding firm
on demanding the withdrawal [of Pakistani troops] to the [line of control]";
and turning down repeated pleas to intercede with India on Islamabad's
behalf. The Pakistanis backed down.
Today, of course, there is a new
ingredient in the mix: America's need for Pakistan's assistance in flushing
out Al Qaeda forces. But that imperative hardly justified the Bush team's
boundless solicitude for Musharraf. Having created and sponsored the very
government that harbored bin Laden, Pakistan had little choice last fall
but to cooperate with the United States in the war on terror or face its
wrath--a message Armitage bluntly conveyed to Pakistan's intelligence chief
last September. To do otherwise would have led to Pakistan's international
isolation, wrecked its already spiraling economy, and--as Musharraf himself
argued--drawn Washington and New Delhi closer than ever. The logic still
holds true. Rather than coddle Pakistan, then, the administration might
take New Delhi's warnings a bit more seriously. Alas, even today many in
the administration suspect that India's current buildup is aimed merely
at frightening them into applying pressure on Pakistan. "This is really
a case of the boy who cried wolf," says a senior State Department official.
"[India's] strategy ever since September eleventh has been to prevent us
from getting too cozy with Pakistan, and so they're always complaining
about Musharraf and threatening to take action if we don't." But it really
shouldn't take a war to get Washington's attention.
(Lawrence F. Kaplan is a senior
editor at TNR.)
