A Devilish Threesome

NOW that the torch has been passed from the Decider to the Professor, get ready to grapple with some seriously complex logic emanating from the White House. Exhibit A: Obama’s Afghan policy.

Ground zero for President Obama’s war against a “far-reaching network of violence and hatred” — a sophisticated, and more accurate, way of describing Bush’s ‘war on terror’ — is Afghanistan. But he’s not thinking in terms of ‘victory’, just a “hard-earned peace”.

He means business, and is expected to back up his words with 30,000 more American soldiers in Afghanistan — to add to the 32,000 Americans and a similar number assembled by the international community already there.

But Afghanistan will not be peaceful while militants are traipsing around in Fata and crossing the border into Afghanistan. Ergo, militant sanctuaries must be eliminated in Fata and cross-border infiltration curbed.

Obama isn’t gun shy — notoriously, and steadfastly, he vowed throughout the campaign to go after “high-value terrorist targets” in Pakistan — but the Americans’ Fata strategy cannot be executed unilaterally without causing Pakistan’s cities and towns to erupt. It’s no good solving one problem by creating an even bigger one.

Which means using Pakistani personnel in Fata. But those personnel ultimately get their marching orders from the Pakistan Army, which isn’t sold on the idea of turning its back on yesterday’s enemy, India, to turn on yesterday’s allies, the jihadi networks.

So here’s what Obama’s got in mind: ease Pakistan’s, read the security establishment’s, read the Pakistan Army’s, worries about India and it will be more willing to focus on the militants. Obama’s message to Pakistan isn’t ‘India good, militants bad’ — it’s more ‘everyone can be a winner’. The clincher? Renewed American interest in Kashmir, which Obama’s nominee for UN ambassador, Susan Rice, lumped together with the Balkans, East Timor, Liberia, Cyprus and the Golan Heights as a threat to international peace and security.

Here’s where it gets really complicated: India is allergic to any mention of outside interference in Kashmir since, well, Simla. Kennedy got involved in the 60s but both sides dug in their heels and the multiple rounds of talks were dead long before the last meeting was held.

If American interference wasn’t welcome before, the Indians find Obama’s logic to do so now even more galling. One of the signature foreign policy successes of the Bush administration was to de-hyphenate its relations with India and Pakistan, i.e. deal with one country without being overly cautious about what the other would make of it. The Indo-US civilian nuclear deal epitomised de-hyphenation: the Bush administration made it clear that Pakistan should not expect anything similar, even though some have warned that the deal has sparked a nascent arms race with Pakistan turning to China as a counterweight.

Obama talking about Kashmir has alarmed India that the new president wants to re-hyphenate America’s relations with South Asia’s sullen neighbours. Privately, the Indians are more than alarmed — they are downright furious. It isn’t hard to figure out why: in India’s eyes, Pakistan’s jihad policy in Kashmir is paying off. Dangling Kashmir as a carrot rather than using it as a stick to beat Pakistan upsets Indians because they believe it rewards us for being bad and a general menace to our neighbours.

The collective blood pressure of India probably rose by ten points when Obama, in an interview with Time magazine, asked of India, “You guys are on the brink of being an economic superpower, why do you want to keep messing with this?” ‘This’ being Kashmir.

But it wasn’t politic for an aspiring global power to tick off the presumptive leader of the current global power, so India bit her lip. Nevertheless, murmurs of unfairness and betrayal floated around in the media — and Kashmir stayed on the lips of the Obama camp.

Eventually, however, the Indians found a proxy to savage and, in doing so, make clear their position on foreign involvement in Kashmir. Enter the hapless David Miliband, UK foreign secretary and now the first casualty of Obama’s Kashmir talk.

Last week, Miliband penned an opinion piece for the Guardian and one sentence particularly riled the Indians: “Although I understand the current difficulties, resolution of the dispute over Kashmir would help deny extremists in the region one of their main calls to arms, and allow Pakistani authorities to focus more effectively on tackling the threat on their western borders.”

While prudence dictates American presidents are treated with deference in India, UK foreign secretaries aren’t so lucky. (In 1997, Robin Cook’s comments on third-party mediation on Kashmir were the catalyst for an infamous withering attack by the Indian PM, I.K. Gujral, who denounced Britain as “a third-rate power nursing illusions of grandeur of its colonial past”.)

Miliband’s trip to India was overshadowed by brutal condemnation in the media and by politicians, but, given what he said is very much in line with what Obama has said, he was just a whipping boy for the man the Indians dare not vent their spleen against publicly.

Yet, Obama isn’t naive; he acknowledged in the Time interview that Kashmir is a “potential tar pit diplomatically”. Fact is, the Americans have some leverage with India.

A report published by the Asia Society suggests the “US relationship with India will be among our most important in the future.” The report sets out ‘Vision 2012’ and advocates securing India’s leadership in multilateral institutions and expanding economic and security cooperation. In short, the US could offer India a seat at the highest table of them all — that of power exercised at the global level.

As for Obama’s much-vaunted regional Afghan policy, the Asia Society’s Task Force cautions India to not view it as re-hyphenation; “rather, it is the way to perceive the dense background against which our military and reconstruction efforts unfold.”

The Task Force, however, isn’t optimistic that India will relent on its Kashmir dogma. “The United States has been wise not to try to mediate” on a “point of extraordinary tension”, i.e. Kashmir. Instead, the Task Force suggests the Obama administration should encourage the resumption of the composite dialogue.

“Realism need be our guide. India and Pakistan are deeply divided. It will not be possible to overcome suspicion and long-standing habits of competition and confrontation. We can only aspire to mitigate their negative effects.”

All this in a report entitled ‘Delivering on the promise: Advancing US relations with India’.

Obama’s Afghan policy isn’t a pipe dream. But powerful forces, both in America and India, will want to bury the Kashmir piece of his elaborate jigsaw. It will take the very shrewdest of Pakistani and American minds to prevent that from happening.