Indian Defence Review

India, despite her size and power, is, ironically, the country most targeted by terrorism originating from her neighbourhood. Although terrorism is now considered a global threat, the consensus that it should be fought collectively by the international community, has been largely forged. India is still threatened by this menace as Pakistan, where the epicenter of terrorism lies, has not yet been summoned by the international community, acting through the UN, to eradicate it. The US and her allies want Pakistan to control terrorist activity directed at them in Afghanistan and deal as well with domestic terrorism that threatens to impair Pakistan’s capacity to support them. Terrorism directed at India remains a secondary western concern. Even US pressure, however, has not compelled Pakistan to break its links with the Haqqani group. The rise of religious extremism within Pakistan and the surrounding Islamic world, extending now to North Africa, is creating conditions for more jihadi violence. Pakistan’s failure to take any substantive step in the last four years to try those responsible for the Mumbai terrorist attack and the unwillingness of its leadership to accept that terrorism remains a crucial outstanding issue in India-Pakistan relations, indicates that the nexus between the jihadi groups and political and military power centres in Pakistan will not be easily broken. India by herself lacks the capacity to coerce Pakistan to abjure terrorism as an instrument of state policy, especially as Pakistan now has the nuclear cover for its lawless activities. Pakistan sees the extremist religious forces that resort to terrorism as allies against India and potentially in the takeover of Afghanistan after the western forces depart.

Within the SAARC region, apart from the recognition by the Karzai government of Pakistan’s sponsorship of terror, the other countries keep their political distance from the problem. Each of them, barring Bhutan, has interest in maintaining good ties with Pakistan for a mixture of motives that include leveraging Pakistan’s hostility towards India to their own advantage, combining forces against the threat of Indian domination, putting constraints on India’s freedom of action within the region, not to mention the need to politically manage their own Muslim communities. Pakistan, of course, has always had interest in undermining India’s leadership role in South Asia. SAARC conventions on combating terrorism have had little meaning given Pakistan’s complicity with terrorist groups. Pakistan in fact uses Nepal and Bangladesh as bases for infiltrating terrorists into India or in the case of Bangladesh, using local extremists for targeting India, though with Sheikh Hasina’s government in Bangladesh this activity has been greatly curtailed.

The debate about unilateral concessions versus reciprocity is somewhat besides the point in international relations. A big country has no less responsibility than a small one to legitimately maximise its own interests. No country can sustain a policy of making unilateral concessions. If the logic is accepted that it is for the bigger country to make concessions, then it could be argued that the US should base her international policies on making unilateral concessions to all. And so should China. India has tried a policy of unilateral concessions in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, but the results have been meagre. It is ultimately a question of pragmatism. If making a concession in one area can yield a return in another area, it should be made.

In any case, reciprocity need not be confined to balanced exchanges in specified areas. If Nepal, for instance, had been more sensitive to India’s security interests because of the open border, India could have been generous in areas of Nepal’s interest. If Bangladesh, as is the case now, is more cooperative in dealing with anti-Indian insurgents seeking shelter on its territory, it would certainly make India more receptive to some of its demands on the commercial side. In fact this has already happened. What does India do in a situation in which Nepal has for years blocked any progress in implementing joint water resources projects or Bangladesh has until now even refused to talk about according transit rights through its territory to north-eastern India or make a joint effort to promote energy security along with Myanmar?

Rather than look at such issues within the framework of bilateral relations between India and her neighbours, they should be looked at within the framework of SAARC. The problem of unilateralism or reciprocity disappears once the SAARC countries as a whole agree on terms of trade and economic exchanges. Unfortunately, Pakistan right from the start worked to limit progress within SAARC so that its own policy of linking trade exchanges with India to a resolution of the Kashmir problem did not get undermined. For this reason, it did not adhere to its obligations to India under SAFTA. Indeed, because of Pakistan’s obstructive policies economic integration in the SAARC area is poor. This situation is beginning to change with fruitful talks between India and Pakistan to enhance trade with each other. Pakistan has agreed in principle agreed to grant by the year-end MFN treatment that it has long denied to India. With the just concluded Commerce Secretary level talks, substantive steps on the trade and investment front have been listed in the joint statement. This change in Pakistan’s attitude has occurred not because of India’s prodding but because of an internal assessment Pakistan has itself made on the advantages to it from expanded economic ties with India, given the dire economic straits Pakistan is in.

Pakistan has not yet felt the same compulsions on terrorism and other differences with India and hence it clings still to its negative political postures. Now that Afghanistan has joined SAARC, common sense would dictate that Pakistan accord transit rights through its territory to facilitate Afghanistan’s trade with India as part of the process of stabilising Afghanistan and giving its people economic opportunities so that they can, amongst other benefits, expand their legitimate economy and conditions are created for the reduction in size of the economy based on trade in illegitimate drugs.

India, of course, physically dominates her neighbourhood. Most of her neighbours are very small in comparison, geographically, demographically and economically. Even Pakistan, the second largest country in South Asia, is less than 15 per cent of India’s size demographically and economically and is not too much more geographically. Beyond the disparity in size, India’s neighbours share with her strong civilisation, cultural, linguistic and ethnic ties that are deeply rooted in history. Normally these bonds should have brought the countries of the Indian sub-continent closer together, being theoretically the building blocks of an enduring people-to-people relationship. But this has not happened for various reasons. For one, India’s overwhelming cultural and historical influence makes the neighbouring countries feel insecure in their separate identities. As identity is a core constituent of a sense of nationhood, these countries want to foster it by consciously asserting their separate identity.

The ethnic links, such as those of the Madhesis in the Terai in southern Nepal and the Sri Lankan Tamils with the Tamils in Tamil Nadu, instead of being a human link between India and these countries, as is the case with the Indian diaspora and their country of origin, is a source of tensions. These sections of the population are not as yet fully integrated into the societies in which they live and suffer from disabilities. They are either suspected for their extra-territorial loyalties or are seen as instruments of Indian influence or the sympathy and support they receive from groups in India create an atmosphere of distrust in bilateral relations.

From the viewpoint of India’s South Asian neighbours, realpolitik would demand that they try to balance India’s weight by bringing into play external powers. This with the objective of giving themselves greater margin of manoeuvre vis-a-vis India, extorting more concessions from her than would be the case otherwise, not to mention making themselves more eligible for economic and military assistance from powers wanting to check-mate India’s rise or imposing costs on India for not following policies congenial to their interests.

Pakistan has, of course, in its obsessive pursuit of “parity” with and a pathological refusal to accept any status of inferiority vis-a-vis India, has been most instrumental in facilitating the entry of outside powers in the sub-continent. Today China is Pakistan’s biggest defence supplier. The US too has not stopped supplying modern weapon systems to Pakistan as part of its policy to obtain the cooperation of the country’s military to help combat the insurgency in Afghanistan. With the US more and more cognizant of Pakistan’s duplicity on the terrorism front, tensions in US-Pakistan relations are palpable and Pakistan’s support for the US in Afghanistan now a question mark.

The US policy of hyphenating India and Pakistan was decisively abandoned by the Bush Administration in its approach to the nuclear equation in South Asia, though the US thought it necessary to balance its leaning towards India by elevating Pakistan to the status of a “non-NATO ally”. With the change of administration in the US and the Afghanistan morass in which it is caught, Pakistan had found more room to leverage US dependence on it for its operations in Afghanistan to question the legitimacy of India’s presence and policies in Afghanistan, not to mention pressing it to extract some concessions from India on making progress on outstanding India-Pakistan issues without Pakistan being required to move credibly on the issue of terrorism directed against India from its soil. This has now changed, with the US openly supporting a stronger Indian political and economic role in Afghanistan, as well as in military training. India was the first country with which Afghanistan signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement. In Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, Indian and US policies have converged far more than was the case in the past, with the result that the governments of these countries are no longer able to leverage India- US differences as before to counter the Indian weight.

China, with her increased political, economic and military weight, continues her policies to counter what one of its commentators described as India’s hegemonistic policies vis-a-vis her neighbours. It continues to deepen its strategic relations with Pakistan, with current activity in the nuclear field, major road and power projects in POK and the development of Gwadar port. In Afghanistan, China is investing heavily in the mineral sector. Geopolitics seems to dictate close China-Pakistan cooperation in Afghanistan, despite current uncertainties about Pakistan’s ability to contain its own internal failures.

In Nepal, China is becoming more assertive in demanding that it be given equal treatment with India, one example of which is to ask for its Friendship Treaty with Nepal to match the one with India. With the Maoists now a powerful political force in Nepal, and given their ideological compulsions to be seen as drawing Nepal closer to China, coupled with their periodic ranting calculated to inflame public opinion against India, the political terrain has become more favourable for China to expand and deepen its presence and influence in Nepal. This can only make India’s task in handling Nepal more difficult.

China’s position in Bangladesh is entrenched. Even the friendly government of Sheikh Hasina would see it in its interest to maintain close ties with China for the many benefits it can derive from that, including giving India an incentive to woo Bangladesh more. China has earned the gratitude of the Sri Lankan government by supplying it arms that helped in defeating the LTTE militarily. Sri Lanka, along with Myanmar, Bangladesh and Maldives, are, in India’s eyes, targets for the naval ambitions of China in the Indian Ocean area to protect its vital lines of communication through these waters. The so-called “string of pearls” strategy involving construction of new port facilities in these countries may have commercial goals in view in the short term but is likely to have military goals in the longer term perspective, To promote these objectives China is bound to step up further its engagement with these countries, especially with increasing material means at its disposal, posing further challenges to India’s equities in its neighbourhood. India follows closely China’s initiatives in Sri Lanka on the political, economic and military front, including the visit in September of the Chinese Defence Minister to Sri Lanka, the first such visit ever. He seems to have emphasised that the Chinese Army’s efforts in conducting friendly exchanges and cooperation with its counterparts in the region are intended for maintaining regional security and stability and do not target any third party.