When the Neighbour's House Catches Fire By M. K.

Bhadrakumar AP Pakistani security officials escort American CIA contractor Raymond Allen Dav is, center, to a local court in Lahore. Mr. Davis' detention soured U.S. - Pak r elations, and the fallout of the episode has affected subsequent American strate gy in West Asia. File photo India should evolve a joint strategy with Pakistan to fight terror and build a r egional initiative on Afghanistan. Two things that happened in the subcontinent last Wednesday promise to be a game changer in regional politics. That they happened simultaneously in India and Pa kistan and manifested an unspoken harmony of spirit although by no means coordin ated make them meaningful. First, seldom, if ever, would soft-spoken Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram feel the need to raise his voice and firmly contradict a newspaper story as he did on Wednesday in the Indian capital. But then, the New York Times story was, as Mr. Chidambaram said, highly exaggerated. It was based on the musings of an erstwhile unidentified Pakistani militant comman der who apparently fell out of favour with his mentors in the security establish ment in Islamabad for unknown reasons, to the effect that the Pakistani military establishment is keeping in reserve an army of trained Kashmiri militants numbe ring 14,000 to be unleashed on India at a future date. The import of the narrati ve is all too apparent: succinctly put, India is barking up the wrong tree by tr ying to sustain a dialogue with Pakistan. From a slightly different angle, the m essage is also that India and the United States are sailing in the same boat and that the commonality of interests demands that they act in concert to squeeze P akistan a sort of variant of the hammer-and-anvil proposition that U.S. commander in Afghanistan David Petraeus used to propose to the Pakistani army chief, Parve z Kayani, in happier times with the intent to squeeze the Pashtun tribes on the Durand Line. Equally, on Wednesday, Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani made a significant speech in Mingora in the Swat valley not far from Jammu and Kashmir. From all ac counts, the speech had two halves one full of unease over the U.S.' recent attem pts to destabilise Pakistan and the other an overture to India. Mr. Gilani said: Pakistan views India as the most important neighbour and desires sustained, subs tantive and result-oriented process of dialogue to resolve all outstanding issue s, including the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir. We sincerely hope that [the] o ngoing process of comprehensive engagement will be fruitful. However, India will have to play a more positive and accommodating role and respond to Pakistan's l egitimate security concerns. Mr. Gilani travelled to Swat with General Kayani and they shared the podium from where the Prime Minister made his speech. Clearly, there is a larger backdrop. It all goes back to the detention of the U.S. intelligence operative and former army man, Raymond Davis, in Lahore in January in circumstances that are not stil l quite clear. At any rate, ever since Mr. Davis' detention in January, the U.S. -Pakistan relationship has been in disarray. Mr. Davis was kept under detention for two months and subjected to intense grilling. It stands to reason that the P akistani authorities got to know all that they wanted to know and were afraid to ask their American allies for quite some time about the gamut of their covert a ctivities in Pakistan vis--vis insurgent groups and the Pakistani military and se curity establishment. The chilling truth is that U.S. President Barack Obama per sonally intervened to get Mr. Davis released but Pakistan held on to him for yet another month in an extraordinary display of defiance. Suffice to say, the alch

emy of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship has since changed almost unrecognisably fr om both ends. Pakistan promptly began acting on Mr. Davis' revelations and drew the famous red lines asking the U.S. (and the British) military personnel to leave; demanding th at the U.S. cease its covert operations on Pakistani soil; insisting that future cooperation in intelligence should be based on explicit ground rules. In short, Pakistan understood that the U.S. had gone about establishing direct talks with the Taliban, keeping it out of the loop. A fundamental contradiction has arisen . Pakistan's cooperation in the U.S.-led war starting from the seminal understan ding reached between the two countries following the crucial visit by Secretary of State Colin Powell to Islamabad on October 16, 2001 has been predicated on th e American pledge that Islamabad would be a key player in any Afghanistan settle ment and Washington would accommodate Pakistan's legitimate security interests. But then, the war has transformed, the regional environment has changed and U.S. ' priorities have changed. What began as a Texan-style revenge act against the p erpetrators of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington is today imbued with the hidden agenda of the U.S.' regional strategies. It has become imperative for the U.S. to deal directly with the Taliban and not through intermediaries. Admi ttedly, the U.S. is looking for an end to the war and is willing to accommodate the Taliban, provided the latter acquiesces to its military bases in Afghanistan . However, Washington has factored in that after the Davis affair, there is no way Pakistan would cooperate with a U.S. strategy to establish a permanent military presence in Afghanistan. Put simply, Pakistan can never trust the U.S.' intenti ons and Washington is aware of that. Thus was born the U.S. counterstrategy to t urn the table on Pakistan. The sudden pullout of U.S. troops from Pech valley in the province of Kunar in eastern Afghanistan began on February 15 while Mr. Dav is was under detention, and it was completed in two months' time. What followed since then was entirely predictable various insurgent groups ranging from the Af ghani and Pakistani Taliban, Hizb-i-Islami, al-Qaeda affiliates and the Lashkare-Taiba have consolidated their safe haven in Kunar. Unsurprisingly, the U.S. in telligence has already made contacts with some of them. Therefore, what began ha ppening since May along the Durand Line can be aptly described as a low-intensity war against Pakistan. Cross-border attacks, shelling, terrorist strikes and wanton destruction have be come a daily occurrence. Armed groups come down from Kunar and neighbouring prov inces to attack Pakistani forces, which retaliate with artillery fire; insurgent groups fight against each other; the conflict zone has expanded beyond FATA to Chitral mountains in the Northern Areas in the upper reaches of Kashmir. The imp lications are devastating for Pakistan. The Durand Line question has been ripped open. Some obscure snake charmer has summoned the serpent of Pashtun nationalis m to raise its hood. Pakistan faces an existential challenge. For the snake char mer, this may seem the use of smart power to entrap the Pakistani military in a qu agmire of Pashtun nationalism so that it has no energy left to dabble in Afghan affairs. And, this may also be smart power at its best. For, the tensions on the A fghanistan-Pakistan border also threaten to spoil the new atmospherics in KabulIslamabad ties built around Pakistan's support for an Afghan-led' and Afghan-owned ' peace process led by President Hamid Karzai. Mr. Karzai is obliged to react to the violation of territorial integrity of his country, cross-border terrorism and Pashtun sub-nationalism. But he is also cons cious of the criticality of sustaining cordial links with Islamabad since Pakist an is his key interlocutor for both building up a durable settlement and checkma ting sustained American conspiracies to marginalise him. Mr. Karzai's predicamen t is vaguely similar to India's. The difference, of course, is that India's coop eration can actually be a force multiplier in the U.S.' strategy to isolate Pakist

an. But the Indian policymakers seem to continue to patiently plough the furrow of d ialogue with Pakistan by taking a differentiated view of regional developments t hrough the prism of India's long-term interests in a stable relationship with Pa kistan. The tone of India-Pakistan statements has changed lately. Foreign Secret ary Nirupama Rao's acknowledgment of the incipient signs of Pakistan moving towa rd a rethink on terrorism has been carefully noted in Pakistan. Thus, Mr. Gilani 's statement in Swat probably intends at reinforcing a salient in the India-Paki stan dialogue that is struggling to be born. That he made the statement in the p resence of Gen. Kayani needs to be noted. Indeed, this is not the time for India to display triumphalism that Pakistan fac es a challenge to its integrity from the menace of the cross-border terrorism wh ich, in many ways, it unleashed in the region. The fire in India's neighbourhood is spreading and it has reached the upper reaches of the Kashmir Valley. States manship lies in evolving a joint India-Pakistan strategy to fight terrorism and to evolve a regional initiative on the Afghan problem. A critical mass is gradua lly accruing to the effect that India and Pakistan's legitimate interests in the stabilisation of the Afghan situation are reconcilable. Afghanistan figured in Ms Rao's consultations in Tehran. The qualitative difference from the late 1990s is that neither Delhi nor Tehran is locked in a zero-sum game with Islamabad. T he time is ripe for India, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan to draw closer togethe r as the regional stakeholders with the highest stakes in ending the war and sta bilising Afghanistan. Pakistan intends to host a trilateral summit with Iran and Afghanistan by the ye ar-end, which could be an appropriate occasion for an enlarged regional initiati ve. However, for all this to gain traction, Pakistan must conclusively turn away from the use of force to settle differences with India. The writer is a former diplomat. Source: The Hindu, New Delhi URL: http://www.newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamCurrentAffairs_1.aspx?ArticleID=5018