SSridhar wrote:The unusual interest that China had taken in the 'private religious visit' of Zardari to India and the swiftness with which the US welcomed Man Mohan Singh's acceptance of a visit to Islamabad indicate a concerted action. The US and PRC perhaps have different reasons for a change for the better in India-Pakistan relationship. The US wants to quit Afghanistan on time, less bloodied and more honourably than what appears now. China wants to have the resource-cake of Afghanistan after the US leaves. Both believe that Pakistan is the lynchpin for their goals. Tactically, they cannot allow a disturbed situation on Pakistan's eastern border. I believe that both are putting pressure on Pakistan to restrain PA/LeT/ISI from launching a murderous terrorist attack on India that even a docile India may no longer find it possible not to react to. Additionally, the US is putting pressure on India to sweeten the deal for Pakistan so as to be acceptable to it. Something happened between MMS and Gilani at the Nuclear Security Summit at Seoul that prompted a hurried visit by Zardari to hit the iron when it was still hot. Ajmer Sharif is a conveninet ruse to cover up the summit-level talks.
SSridhar, I think there is more to it than this.
First of all: ceteris paribus, the PA/ISI will *never* make it conducive for the US to leave Afghanistan. Why? Because the money they stand to collect every day that the US remains in Afghanistan, feeds their economic lifeline. Pakistan's economy would have collapsed by the middle of the last decade given economic trends from 1990 to September 2001. PA/ISI have got a huge reprieve from the funding received, chiefly from the US, since 9/11. But they have not taken advantage of the reprieve to create anything like a functional, sustainable economy at home. Their one and only source of earnings is to blackmail some foreign country with a lot of money by holding its interests hostage. So far it is the US to whom they have consistently played the client state, for this purpose.
So... ceteris paribus the Pakis will do *everything* to prevent the US from leaving. They will threaten to make it a disgraceful, shameful, credibility-destroying exit with all the means at their capability. They will think nothing of doing more 26/11s, or even more 9/11s, to achieve this goal.
What does this mean? It means that for the US to convince the Pakis to let them leave Afghanistan gracefully, *someone* must be made to fill the role of Pakistan's anna-daata. Some other country must be recruited, whose interests can easily be kept hostage by Pakistan to ensure the flow of funds even after the US leaves Afghanistan. Between the US and Pakistan, it has been decided that this role will go to India (world's 3rd largest economy in PPP terms, etc.)
The US has cleverly convinced the MMS GOI to play along with this. They have convinced MMS that showing largesse to Pakistan... agreeing to MFN without reciprocity, expanding trade underwritten exclusively by GOI and Indian businesses, giving regular and generous free gifts to Islamabad in political and financial terms... is India's best bet for making a client state out of Pakistan.
In fact this is nothing but India agreeing to a policy of political Dhimmitude and financial Jizya towards Pakistan... but MMS et al have been convinced that it's the other way round, that the effect will be to bring Pakistan under India's sphere of influence.
For India, this is the exact reverse of the Monkey Trap that was foisted on Pakistan and the West in earlier decades: India is the monkey, Pakistan is the jar, and the delusional goal of a "unified SAARC under Indian influence" is the delicacy that India is being tempted to reach for.
This Indian delusion is being encouraged in indirect ways as well. Take the example of oil. India is being pressured by the US to foresake Iran as an oil supplier, and seek its energy resources exclusively from Sunni GCC countries: Saudi oil, Qatari gas. India will pay the GCC countries hard cash for this energy. India will use this energy to fuel its industry, and the hard labour of Indian workers will create wealth in the Indian economy. This wealth, in turn, will be used to underwrite Pakistan (in the name of expanding trade for "peace dividends" which will never come.)
In effect, India will become the
value-adding conduit whereby Saudi Arabia, instead of spending its own money to underwrite Pakistan, will transfer oil to India (for hard cash)... and the wealth created in India from this oil will go as Jizya to feed Pakistan's coffers in perpetuity. India will effectively take the place of the United States as a hydrocarbon-dependent economy that ends up financing the ghazis.
Meanwhile the MMS GOI will remain convinced that everything they are doing is increasing India's "soft power" and economic influence over Pakistan. They will be happy to make any concessions on Kashmir, because after all, the concessions are being made to a country which they view as a potential "client state" for India.
Meanwhile, the metaphorical gun to India's head, which ensures that the "value-adding conduit" stays open, will be PA/ISI's ability to turn the terror tap on and off at will. The increasing successes of the Karachi project in opening cells in all parts of India, staffed by Muslim terrorists of Indian origin, will consolidate the extent of PA/ISI control over this tap... an inescapable consequence of the nature of electoral politics in India.
Only when assured of such a situation will the PA/ISI agree to create conditions that are conducive for the US to depart Afghanistan with H&D intact. It will suit the Americans very well too... they will have much less of a burden to bear in maintaining a lifeline for the Paki coffers, when that role has been passed on to India.
The US and West want a new sort of colonization regime to prevail over India. They want India to provide a large consumer market for their businesses and to serve as a pool of cheap, skilled labour to maximize their profits. What they do not want is for India to become militarily or politically successful at establishing any sort of hegemony over its near abroad.
All these purposes will be served by the Monkey Trap of making MMS GOI think it is "expanding influence over Pakistan via trade", while in fact it is paying Jizya to Pakistan in the US' stead.
The Chinese game is somewhat different. They have shown time and again that for many reasons, they do not want to replace the USA as Pakistan's anna-daata. They are quite happy to have India play this role, because they know that the net benefits to India will be zero... and that Pakistan will still remain willing to do Beijing's bidding even if it is Delhi which is financing Islamabad's lifeline. The Chinese do not want to get into the trap that the Americans have found themselves in for the last 11 years.
However, compared the US, the Chinese have a substantial stake in the survival of the Pakistani state... not quite as much as India, but far more than any western country. The US would be happy to move out of Afghanistan with H&D intact, and never look in Pakistan's direction again. For China the stakes are much more immediate. One of the things that will happen if Pakistan collapses is that there will be no state authority to prevent an indefinite number of ghazis from traveling due north, into Xinjiang. Some of the shrapnel released by the PA/ISI suicide-bomb will embed itself in China's flesh as well.
India's best bet may be to influence events in such a way that China's interests come more into alignment with India's (genuine) interests, vis-a-vis Pakistan. We will never, ever convince the West to align its interests with ours, vis-a-vis Pakistan: if even 9/11 and the ten years of double-crossing ISAF could not achieve this, nothing ever will. Right now we are putting ourselves in an even worse position, by allowing ourselves to be convinced that it is in India's best interest to align with Western interests regarding Pakistan. As I have described above, this is a Monkey Trap for India... a road leading to self-perpetuating Dhimmitude in financial and political terms.
On the other hand, our fellow potential victims of the PA/ISI suicide bomb... Iran, CARs, Russia and China... definitely have an incentive to seek the capping and containment (rather than perpetual bribery) of Pakistan. As long as India, Russia, China and Iran can develop a sufficient degree of trust between themselves to agree on the common ground view that Pakistan will always be more of a threat than an opportunity... we can collectively avoid the Monkey Trap that the West has set for us.
