CIAO DATE: 01/03

The U.S. and South Asia: New Priorities, Familiar Interests

Teresita Schaffer

The South Asia Monitor
Number 38
October 1, 2001

The Center for Strategic and International Studies

 

The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon turned U.S. South Asia policy temporarily upside down, bringing Pakistan to center stage and putting parts of the U.S.-India agenda on hold. In the medium term – after the military operation most observers expect to take place in Afghanistan – the U.S. agenda will become more complicated. Besides pursuing its long term geopolitical interests, the United States will be trying to promote stability in the countries at the epicenter of the terrorism campaign. It will also need to deal with the incompatible agendas of its coalition partners.

Pakistan: Besides sharing a long and porous border with Afghanistan, where apparent terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden has set up his home base, Pakistan has been exceptionally close to the Taliban regime. Pakistan provided financial and other assistance for the Taliban’s rise to power in the mid-1990s and steady support since then. In a high-pressure bid for support, the United States made four main requests: intelligence on Afghanistan and on bin Laden; use of Pakistani airspace; logistical support; and use of Pakistan’s full relationship with the Taliban as leverage in conveying U.S. demands. Putting its positive response into action, Pakistan sent two delegations to talk with Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Both groups included the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence Division (ISI), the Taliban’s “home base” in Pakistan. The government has also been actively involved in military discussions with the United States.

Hopes and fears: Either a “yes” or a “no” in response to the United States carried serious risks to the Pakistan government. President Pervez Musharraf believed that the economic and political costs of a negative decision were potentially fatal to his government and to his hopes for the country.Musharraf lined up the support of the army before agreeing to the U.S. requests. He reached out to the mainstream political parties, and has thus far been able to keep the opposition of the religious parties and militant groups within manageable limits. He appears to be closing down the offices of the Harakat ul Mujahideen, one of the militant groups that figured on the U.S. terrorism list, though this group has already re-invented itself once with a new name. Pressures from these groups and from “the street” will grow if there is military action in Afghanistan. Fissures could develop within the army if other top generals become dissatisfied with Musharraf’s ability to keep things quiet, or if they feel he has not done justice to Pakistan’s goals in Afghanistan or Kashmir.

Musharraf couched his decision in terms of the Indian threat. In a speech to the nation, he argued that India wanted Pakistan to be branded as a terrorist state, and that he was not going to fall into that “trap.” He listed four key national interests that Pakistan would defend at all costs, including its nuclear arsenal and its “sacred cause in Kashmir.” This list of issues reflects Pakistan’s hopes for eventual U.S. political support and its extreme sensitivity about any suggestion that it is making common cause with India against fellow Muslims.

Conflicting agendas:The United States will not want to distract attention from its focus on bin Laden’s Afghan refuge in this first phase, but will soon have to deal with diverging U.S. and Pakistani interests and expectations.

The United States will want to decrease violence in Kashmir, so as to reduce the risk of an India-Pakistan confrontation. Pakistan remains dedicated to pursuing its claims in Kashmir. Groups that are at least temporarily under wraps in Pakistan and Afghanistan may be all the more eager to be active in Kashmir. The bombing and gunfight at the state assembly building in Srinagar on October 1, for which Jaish-e-Mohammed militants claimed responsibility, is an ominous sign. Pakistan wants a firewall between the antiterrorism campaign and Kashmir, but rising violence in Kashmir will make that difficult, especially if civilians are targeted. Similarly, Pakistan stands by its goal of installing a friendly government in Afghanistan, whereas for the U.S., stable leadership in Afghanistan is the key post-crisis objective.

The United States will also be concerned about future stability in Pakistan itself. The need to calibrate U.S. approaches to Pakistan on Kashmir, Afghanistan, and other issues against fears of a further weakening of the Pakistani state has been a central issue in U.S.-Pakistan relations for the past several years. Economic aid will be an important element in U.S. policy. The crisis has already sent a new flood of refugees toward the Pakistan border, and they will need international support. In the present context, U.S. interest in stability will probably weigh more heavily than it has in the past year.

India condemned the September 11 attacks and responded with prompt support for the U.S. antiterrorism campaign making an unprecedented and controversial offer of military cooperation. India wants to use this crisis to strengthen relations with the United States. National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra came to Washington, D.C. in late September, followed by External Affairs and Defense Minister Jaswant Singh in early October. The high-level access that both received illustrates the improvement in Indo-U.S. relations in the last five years.

India wants to make Kashmiri militant groups into objects of the continuing U.S. antiterrorist campaign. The initial list of organizations whose assets were frozen by the United States includes two with extensive activities in Kashmir. There is no chance that the United States will make a more sweeping move to include Kashmiri militants in its campaign in the short term. In the longer term, the United States would prefer to look for a diplomatic remedy.

India also wants to prevent Pakistan from becoming the driver of U.S. regional policy. Many Indians fear a replay of the U.S. involvement with Pakistan during the Afghan campaign of the 1980s. These concerns are understandable, but the zero-sum thinking on which they are based risks looking parochial from Washington’s viewpoint. The improvement in Indo-U.S. relations over the past several years is based on economic ties and geopolitical changes. The two countries’ common concern over terrorism will be an added bond. However, the United States is likely to emerge from today’s immediate crisis with a renewed conviction that making peace between India and Pakistan deserves high priority. The U.S. relationship with India will be greatly strengthened if India is able to accept the legitimacy of U.S. concerns about the stability of Pakistan.

Afghanistan:Ten years of intense U.S. involvement in Afghanistan during the period of the Soviet occupation were followed by a decade of U.S. detachment. During the first half of this period, Afghanistan was a vortex of political intrigue and internecine fighting. Once the Taliban took over, the United States insisted that they change their policies toward sheltering terrorist organizations, trafficking in narcotics, and treatment of women if they wanted to engage the United States. These policies reflect Washington’s profound pessimism. In the view of U.S. policymakers, the same fierce independence that made it possible for Afghanistan to drive out the Soviet army also meant that the United States had little hope of encouraging fundamental political change.

Beyond the immediate goals of driving out bin Laden’s organization and punishing its backers, the U.S. interest in Afghanistan is stability with at least minimally competent government. Absent these conditions, the country risks remaining a refuge for extremists. In practice, aid agencies have been doing almost all the work of distributing humanitarian assistance in recent years, and they and the international organizations will probably resume that role. As for political leadership, the country’s tribally fragmented society and 20 years of civil war make for a bleak outlook.

The tribal leaders and guerrilla commanders contending for power will be largely the same ones who failed to unite 10 years ago. Historically, Afghan governments have needed ethnic diversity, political savvy, and a broad network of understandings and arrangements with local leaders. The governments that had staying power have been headed by Pashtuns, but have included members of minority groups. The major players include:

• Taliban leaders, either individually or as a group, with some guerrilla support. They may well have extensive help from Pakistan. They are almost exclusively Sunni Muslims from the country’s largest ethnic group (Pashtuns, some 40 percent of the population).
• The Northern Alliance, a loose organization of tribal groups, chiefly Hazaras, Uzbeks, and Tajiks. Their leaders figured prominently in the first post-Soviet Afghan government, but never consolidated their control.
• Other guerrilla commanders prominent in the anti-Soviet campaign, some of whom have been living outside Afghanistan (such as former Pakistani favorite Gulbuddin Hekmatyar).
• Pashtun tribal leaders who had understandings with the Taliban but have now changed sides.
• The former king, Zahir Shah. He is 86 and has been in Italy for 30 years, but may have a role as a traditional authority figure. He has called for the summoning of a Loya Jirga, a traditional assembly committee of tribal chiefs. In the past decade, all efforts to convene such an assembly have failed.
• The list of outsiders who want to influence Afghanistan’s next government includes Pakistan, which had achieved that goal with the Taliban, but also India, Iran, and Russia.

U.S. Priorities:For the United States, the most elusive goal will be a more stable Afghanistan, and the most difficult partnership to manage will be the one with Pakistan. Of Pakistan’s three top goals, only one – political stability in Pakistan – is shared by the United States. Pakistan’s longstanding desire to install in Kabul a government beholden to it is likely to come at the price of extended fighting within Afghanistan, a process that proved very hostile to U.S. interests in the last decade.

In Kashmir, stepped-up violence by militants poses a real risk that India will hit back at Pakistan. An India-Pakistan crisis at this time would be most unwelcome to U.S. policymakers, and would strain relations with both India and Pakistan.

Fundamentally, however, India-U.S. relations should eventually emerge in good shape. The interests that led the U.S. to build up relations with India – shifting power patterns in Asia, Indian Ocean security, and growing economic ties – will remain important elements in U.S. foreign policy, with or without the antiterrorism campaign.