As it scoots from Af-Pak, US 'bargain' may sell India short

In the army headquarters at Rawalpindi, the mood following US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s tough-talking visit earlier this week to Afghanistan and Pakistan is certain to be one of restrained celebration.

That’s because for all of Clinton’s public hectoring of Pakistani leaders about the “dire consequences” their country faces if it fails to go after the Haqqani group of terrorists – and her colourful invocation of serpentine metaphors – the US appears to have thrown in the towel and yielded ground in significant ways that could seriously jeopardise Indian interests in the region.

In effect, the US, which is winding down its troops presence in Afghanistan and with its relationship with Pakistan at its lowest ever since the assassination of Osama bin Laden in May, is reconciled to the fact that the 10-year war in Afghanistan is unwinnable without Pakistan’s support.

Rather than prolong the agony by staying on Afghanistan – and continuing to have a combative relationship with Pakistan, despite its well-documented ties to jihadi terrorists - the US now calculates that the shortest exit route lies in handing over to Pakistan the keys to the Afghan ‘kingdom’.

In fact, influential US policy thinktanks and diplomats are recommending just such a course as part of a “grand bargain” with Pakistan that, if implemented, would sell India short on Kashmir.

As articulated by former US diplomats and strategic advisers Teresita Schaffer and Howard Schaffer, the “grand bargain” would work like this:

The US gives Pakistan what it wants in Afghanistan – but on two conditions: Pakistan assumes responsibility for preventing terrorism out of Afghanistan, and Pakistan agrees to settle Kashmir along the present geographic lines.

In other words, as it cuts and runs from Afghanistan, the US would concede Pakistan’s primacy in Afghanistan (thereby effectively limiting Indian influence in any new Afghan dispensation), and furthermore push for a settlement of the Kashmir dispute with the existing Line of Control as the international border.

The fact that such a hideous proposal is even put on the table by the Schaffers, who are intimately familiar with the geopolitics of the region – and particularly with the mechanics of Pakistan’s bloody-minded negotiations with the US – is mind-boggling. It’s perhaps an acknowledgement of the extent to which US strategic options appear to have shrunk in the estimation of even its keenest minds.

The perils embedded in such a “grand bargain” are blindingly obvious: It rewards Pakistan in the present (with primacy in Afghanistan and a settlement on Kashmir), but requires that Pakistan deliver only in the future (with a pledge to prevent terrorism). Such a deal would revolve around Pakistan’s promise of peaceable conduct for ever and ever more. As America’s own experience of recent months, where it was the victim of Pakistan’s perfidy on several occasions, shows, such a promise from Pakistan is meaningless.

Even otherwise, such scenario-building overlooks two critical considerations relating to Pakistan’s yearning for a slice of Kashmir. The first, Pakistan’s sponsorship of jihadi groups that operate in Kashmir is aimed not just at wresting the border State from India – but at dismembering India.

As Lisa Curtis, a South Asia expert at the Heritage Foundation who served in former President George W Bush’s administration, has observed :

“the Kashmir issue is more a symptom of the larger problem between India and Pakistan; it’s not as if dealing with Kashmir will make these terrorist groups melt away. The aims of India-focussed groups like the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba are broader than Kashmir: they’re trying to wreak havoc throughout India and dent India’s image as an emerging power. They use the situation in Kashmir to justify what they’re doing, but they’re not interested in Kashmir. The idea that if the US intervenes in Kashmir, it would help focus Pakistan’s attention on dealing with militant groups is a mischaracterisation of the problem and a misunderstanding of the situation.”

If Pakistan is ‘rewarded’ with primacy in Afghanistan and a Kashmir deal – despite its blatant sponsorship of jihadi terror targeted at India and the US – it will only embolden it to leverage its ‘suicide bomber’ mindset for yet more bloody gains.

Second, Pakistan’s hopes of wresting Kashmir from India have, if anything, been dashed in recent years, largely owing to its own descent into the hell-world of the terrorism that it spawned. And although India has in the past considered a Kashmir solution along the lines advanced – acknowledging the Line of Control as an international border – it has rather less incentive to yield any ground to Pakistan, which is on a losing wicket.

The notion that Pakistan’s Generals and Pashas can somehow be trusted to keep Pakistan’s end of the bargain – by reining in terrorists from here to eternity – is fanciful in the extreme.

During her visit, Clinton signalled that the US and Pakistan were “ 90, 95 per cent in agreement … about the means of our moving towards what are commonly shared goals.”

A Pakistani official was even more candid, speaking of a “breakthrough” following an agreement on a “broader framework and a concept of reconciliation for Afghanistan.” It was, he claimed, an acknowledgement that Pakistan could not be bypassed in matters related to Afghanistan.

That alone should set alarm bells ringing all the way from Srinagar to New Delhi.