Watch out, General’s stretching

It did not escape anybody’s notice that Musharraf was reaping praise in Bangladesh, a country whose brutal independence from Pakistan was midwifed by none other than India 31 years ago, for ‘‘apologising’’ .

Or that he received a 21-gun salute when he landed in Colombo and warm words from president Chandrika Kumaratunga both for helping her country in its fight against the LTTE—Pakistan provided emergency military assistance in 2000 when the Tigers threatened to overrun Jaffna—as for his support of the US-led war against terror.

Significantly, Musharraf’s travels have taken place at a time when India’s relations with Bangladesh are particularly strained—External Affairs minister Yashwant Sinha doesn’t even have Dhaka on his we-love-our-neighbours itinerary over the next few months—even as Kumaratunga herself, forced to keep the SAARC crown in Colombo for two extra years because of New Delhi’s refusal to meet Pakistan after Kargil, never really hid her differences with the BJP-led government.

New Delhi’s troubles with Dhaka, after the election of the Khaleda Zia government last year—she defeated Sheikh Hasina, whose father Mujibur Rahman was helped by India to become Bangladesh’s first prime minister in 1972—have reached a new low in recent months.

Trade talks in Dhaka between Commerce secretary Deepak Chatterjee and his Bangladesh counterpart in February nearly faltered when Dhaka stopped the import of cotton yarn from all its land routes. With Bangladesh surrounded on three sides by India—the fourth leads to the sea—New Delhi knew that Dhaka was targetting Indian suppliers. The February talks barely survived, with both sides signing on an agreement which allowed the export of 16 lines of related goods (around 40 products) into India.

But till date, Chatterjee has refused to allow the Bangladeshi imports to take place, arguing that Dhaka must first ‘‘do something’’ about the cotton yarn. According to independent estimates, the total annual revenue that Bangladesh would earn from its 16 lines of goods would be less than $10 million, while India loses about $250 million as a result of Dhaka’s refusal to buy the cotton yarn. But despite Bangladeshi pleas, the Ministry of Commerce remains unmoved.

Meanwhile, here was Musharraf in Dhaka this week, eloquently apologising for the sins of an earlier generation. Coming from a military man and addressed to Khaleda Zia, wife of the former military dictator Zia-ur Rahman, his ‘‘apology for 1971’’ had the effect of a massive catharsis in Bangladesh. With Bangladeshis unable to forget, and perhaps to forgive, the collusion of its own Urdu-speaking elite with the Yahya Khans and the Ayub Khans of Pakistan, Musharraf’s public acknowledgement of the agony of a people wronged by faraway Islamabad three decades ago came as a relief.

Observers pointed out that it was none other than Musharraf, in fact, who got the Hamoodur Rahman report—which investigated the debacle of the 1971 war, and especially the transformation of East Pakistan into Bangladesh—written by a former Supreme Court judge of Pakistan as long ago as 1974, released only last year.

Certainly for Musharraf, the fact that Hasina lost the election to Khaleda considerably helped. Hasina never forgot how her entire family, from her father to her 10-year-old brother were brutally massacred one hot, August night in 1975, and the reason why she and her sister survived was because they were out of the country.

Part grief, part revenge, part memory and partly plain libertarian tendencies, made her speak out, again and again, in denunciation of dictatorships and in favour of democracy.

A few years ago, Hasina kept Musharraf waiting for so long at the margins of a UN General Assembly that the meeting never took place. At the 1999 Commonwealth summit, it was Hasina and the Nigerian president who persuaded the organisation that Pakistan should be suspended from the Councils of the Commonwealth. Musharraf never forgot the insult.

Meanwhile, more recently, as Khaleda Zia convalesced after her knee surgery in the US some months ago, she shot off a letter to SAARC chair Nepal, offering to mediate in the India-Pakistan crisis. India protested, saying that the SAARC charter did not allow the resolution of bilateral disputes, but the damage had been done.

Back in Sri Lanka this week, Musharraf’s signature of a free trade agreement with Colombo bore all the hallmarks of Colombo’s free trade agreement with New Delhi. Except that the India-Lanka FTA, supposed to have been a model for the region, seems to be moving along pretty lamely. For all practical purposes, New Delhi has banned the import of tea and garments—Sri Lanka’s strengths—in the name of domestic protection. Privately, Sri Lankan traders, especially the smaller ones, say it’s simply impossible to get around the huge wall of Indian bureaucracy. While, a $100 million credit line offered to Colombo about two years ago has been hardly utilised because interest rates are so high that Sri Lanka finds it cheaper to take a loan at international market rates. The only silver lining seems to be Sri Lankan PM Ranil Wickeremesinghe’s determination to build a special relationship with India.

So the old story, of India’s obsession with Pakistan at the expense of many of its smaller neighbours, repeats itself. As Musharraf flew back from Colombo—the last time he did so, in October 1998, he was sacked in mid-air by Nawaz Sharif, so he simply reversed the charges when his plane landed in Karachi—having successfully passed over India in his journey across South Asia, New Delhi searches for new ways to reinvent its old influence in the region.