The K-word — Just another living fossil

Around the same time, the US administration had declared the Taliban regime non grata and imposed unilateral sanctions on it. Both New Delhi and Washington conferred and agreed on the dangers to open, democratic societies by terrorists who paid scant respect to borders. A newunderstanding was born.

In the last couple of months the dialogue has moved so fast that, some say, it might yet form the foundation of the bilateral relationship in the new millennium. After all, it was exactly 20 years ago that the US, rededicating itself to fighting Communism in an Afghanistan newly taken over by the Soviet Union, made Pakistan the linchpin of its South Asia strategy.

What then, besides the times, is changing? Analysts point out that the US — and therefore, most of the rest of the world may now be ready to transform its fundamental attitude towards India. Eighteen months after New Delhi went nuclear, Washington looks like it is willing to shift the compass again: a perceived ally of the Soviet Union in the Cold War years, a permanent dissenter in the last decade, and now, at the turn of the century, a potential partner?

It is to at least delineate these still-faint lines on the ground that Singh has embarked on his trip to the US. On the margins of the UN General Assembly, he meetsUS Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her deputy, Strobe Talbott (the selfsame gentleman who has been Singh’s direct interlocutor in the ongoing “strategic dialogue” between India and the US). Besides, there will be interactions with the powerful US business and strategic community, as well as with women and men at the frontline post in the business of ideas: Harvard University.

Singh’s party, the BJP, may or may not lead India into the new millennium, but the parameters of the new relationship that are being put into place may, ironically, have started with New Delhi going nuclear last May. Furious that a country with an abysmally low GDP and with half its population below the poverty line had thumbed its nose at the US which, starting with the break-up of the Soviet Union, had been attempting the establishment of a new world order Washington reacted by attempting to put New Delhi into a diplomatic black hole.

The long trek back to normalcy has been arduous. And strange as it may seem,terrorism radiating out of Afghanistan and Pakistan has in recent weeks served to cement the Indo-US relationship. Ministry officials were in Washington last month total to their counterparts on Afghanistan; last week, the US State Department returned the compliment by sending Ambassador for Counter-terrorism Michael Sheehan for talks in Delhi. As if on cue, the world’s best-known terrorist, Osama bin Laden, who is currently taking refuge with the Taliban, announced that his jehad would target “India and the US.”

Analysts point out that the phenomenon of the “globalisation of terrorism” is drawing both nations closer. For the last 15 years, as India’s borders have burned first Punjab, then Kashmir and the Northeast the Americans paid scant heed to Indian denunciation of “cross-border terrorism”, a euphemism for Pakistan-sponsoring insurgency in India. Washington persisted with the view that somehow, all these insurgent movements were rooted in “indigenous problems”. The significant differencesince Kargil, the analysts said, is that Washington has come around to New Delhi’s view that Pakistan’s role in stoking the home-grown violence is not a small one.

Washington’s interest in Bin Laden, on the other hand, is certainly not restricted to his hand in the US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania last year. That, the analysts say, is only the “tip of the iceberg”. They argue that the Taliban’s fundamental denial of human rights in Afghanistan the rights of women and children, of ethnic and religious minorities has sent worrying tremors across the American landscape. It has not escaped Washington’s eye that the Taliban’s Islamist warriors have been trained in the religious schools of Pakistan.

Significantly, Washington is also fearful about the Taliban’s brand of extremist Islam spilling over into the energy-rich but politically fragile states of Central Asia and the Caucasus. US officials have openly said that “stability” is a crucial determinant for the exploitation of oil in theseparts.

With the kidnapping of four Japanese geologists in peaceable Kyrghyzstan last month, the West went public with its fears. When Dagestan, a southern republic in Russia, exploded some weeks ago and Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused Islamist rebels trained in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia of seeking control over the oil-rich basins of the Caucasus Washington offered help. Since then, the Islamist terrorists have taken the fight to the major Russian cities, Moscow and St Petersburg. Moscow is growing increasingly fearful that if the insurgency continues, the Russian centre will not hold.

Meanwhile, Uzbekistan has already closed its borders with Afghanistan at Termez. Tajikistan, convulsed in a civil war against Islamic separatists since independence in 1992, has enlisted the help of Russia’s 201st Armoured Division to guard its long frontier with Afghanistan. Even China, which has had trouble with Uighur rebels in Xinjiang province, is believed to be extremely worried that they will drawsustenance from Islamic extremists in neighbouring Pakistan and Afghanistan.

By bringing the “T-word” to the top of its foreign policy alphabet, New Delhi hopes, the “K-word” will be forgotten forever. Jaswant Singh’s visit to the US this week is expected to complete this circle of awareness in the extended mind of the US establishment.