Tuesday146;s Child

At Agra, Vajpayee and Musharraf vainly tried to overcome the legacy of the Kargil war of 1999. The simmering tensions between India and Pakistan did not take long to boil over again, when terrorists launched a dramatic attack on Parliament on December 13, 2001.

Forced to respond vigorously, India launched the biggest military mobilisation in its history, with the demand that Pakistan cease terrorism once and for all. As New Delhi and Islamabad teetered on the brink of war, the Anglo-American powers intervened.

Because of that intervention, Musharraf promised in January 2002 that he would not support terrorism in the name of Kashmir. Musharraf, who in Agra contemptuously rejected the very idea of cross-border terrorism, was now moving a little forward under Anglo-American pressure.

With India refusing to relent and a renewed military crisis in May following new terrorist attacks in Kashmir, Musharraf promised the Bush administration he would end infiltration on permanent basis. This promise defused the Indo-Pakistani military confrontation.

The Anglo-American intervention, led by the Bush administration, also radically restructured the triangular relationship between India, Pakistan and the United States

The DC-Delhi duet

ON September 11, India naturally assumed the biggest terrorist attack ever would open the door for the long-awaited partnership with the US, especially in India8217;s own war on terror since the mid-1980s. That President George W. Bush was well disposed towards India and was committed to elevating Indo-US ties to a strategic level was widely signalled by senior American officials.

Unlike his predecessors, Bush refused to see India through the traditional prism of Pakistan and South Asia, and wanted to treat India as an emerging global power.

It was on this basis that India immediately offered all possible assistance to the US, including the use of its military facilities for action against the obnoxious Taliban regime that so humiliated India during the hijack of IC-814 in the final days of 1999.

Despite India8217;s extraordinary offer of support, it was Pakistan that the United States turned to. The logic of geography and the deep knowledge of the Pakistani military establishment about Afghanistan meant Islamabad was at the frontlines of the American war on terror.

The resumption of economic and military assistance to Pakistan cast a huge shadow over Indo-US relations. New Delhi feared renewed American cooperation with Pakistan would be at India8217;s expense.

TO its credit, the Bush administration was determined to prevent a return of the traditional zero sum game. While reaching out to Pakistan, it also sustained pressure on Islamabad to end its terrorist operations against India and ensured the ambitious agenda of bilateral cooperation with New Delhi remained intact.

Besides getting Pakistan to commit itself to ending infiltration, the Bush administration publicly declared support for the elections to the Jammu and Kashmir assembly in 2002.

Besides removing India8217;s longstanding suspicions about American intentions in Kashmir, the Bush administration transformed the former contentious debate on nuclear issues into a cooperative one.

The Next Steps in Strategic Partnership announced in the first Bush term were followed by historic nuclear pact early in the second term, in July 2005. A few days earlier, in June 2005, India and the US signed a 10-year framework agreement for defence cooperation.

For the first time in nearly six decades, Indo-US relations have begun to look expansive. The framework for the strategic partnership that eluded Delhi and Washington in the aftermath of 9/11 has now begun to fall in place.

Detoxifying Pakistan
THE new American agenda in Pakistan was not without a historic irony. It was the need to push the Soviet Red Army out of Afghanistan in the 1980s that resulted in the joint US-Pakistan promotion of a jihad against godless communists. This eventually resulted in the Taliban and Osama bin Ladin.

As the wheel turned full circle on 9/11, the very forces of religious extremism and violence instrumentalised by Washington turned against the US. As a shaken America took on these forces, the burden of cleaning up the mess now fell upon the very institution that nurtured them 8212; the Pakistani army.

Confronted with the choice posed by the Bush administration 8212; 8216;8216;With us or against us8217;8217; 8212; Musharraf chose, however reluctantly, to offer cooperation to the US in ousting the Taliban and hunting bin ladin and Al Qaeda.

In doing so, Musharraf hoped to protect his Kashmir policy, political investments in Afghanistan, as well as his nuclear weapons from American pressure. But on all the three, he had to make significant adjustments.

THE revelation of A.Q. Khan8217;s nuclear smuggling racket forced Pakistan to take steps towards curbing the kind of cavalier nuclear exports it had pursued since the late 1980s. While the US recognised the basic interests of Pakistan in Afghanistan as a neighbour, it was unwilling to give a veto to Islamabad on Kabul.

The US also maintained relentless pressure on Musharraf to root out Al Qaeda-Taliban from the Pak-Afghan borderlands. The US decision to establish a strategic partnership with Afghanistan dispelled any misconceptions in Islamabad that the American attention to Afghanistan would be shortlived.

On Kashmir, the American pressure on Musharraf to end infiltration and dismantle the terror infrastructure, while not entirely satisfactory to India, did begin to produce some results and created conditions for a credible peace process between India and Pakistan.

Peace, in our time
THE steps taken by Musharraf in relation to terrorism since 2002 8212; inconceivable without 9/11 and American nudging 8212; gave the political space for India to begin substantive negotiations with Pakistan.

Overcoming the persistent questions on whether India could trust Musharraf, Vajpayee extended the hand of friendship once again in April 2003. The quiet contact between the two sides resulted in a new framework for peace talks in January 2004.

The change of government in India in May 2004 did not affect the peace process, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh took to it in an equally vigorous manner. More positive developments have occurred in Indo-Pakistani relations, especially in Kashmir, in the past one year than in five previous decades.

In April 2005 Singh and Musharraf declared the peace process irreversible. They also came up with a broad set of propositions, such as making borders in Kashmir irrelevant, to define the new engagement.

Meeting again in New York this week Singh and Musharraf are expected to give a further boost to the peace process.

A new subcontinent
THE single biggest outcome of 9/11 has been the ouster of the Taliban regime. The routing of the Taliban allowed India to regain its influence in Afghanistan. If the rule of the previous military dictator, Zia-ul-Haq, produced a jihad in Afghanistan and promoted Islamic regression inside Pakistan, the Musharraf years will be remembered for a renewed effort to promote Islamic moderation and economic modernisation.

While Musharraf cannot yet claim complete success, his internal reforms and the peace process with India should have a longterm positive impact on Hindu-Muslim relations across the subcontinent, and undermine the forces of communalism and religious extremism.

The events of 9/11 also generated greater international interest and involvement in other conflicts of the subcontinent. The focus on terrorism, forced the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka to come back to the negotiating table. Thanks to 9/11, there is greater consultation and cooperation among India, the US, UK and the European Union in dealing with the Maoist challenge in Nepal, and the growth of extremism in Bangladesh.

While the region is a long way from a resolution of these conflicts, the external circumstances, especially the absence of great power rivalry, have never been as conducive for greater international and regional cooperation to promote peace and prosperity in the subcontinent.