Opinion Course correction

What do you do with a problem like Pakistan? That is one big question that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Barack Obama will surely be asking each other when they sit down for a quiet talk on Sunday night in New Delhi.No two world leaders have worked harder at building a productive relationship with Pakistan than Dr Singh and Obama. Yet,the Indian prime minister and the American president stand utterly frustrated.As part of his effort to normalise relations with Pakistan,Dr Singh has gone farther than any of his recent predecessors in finding a solution to the difficult issue of Jammu and Kashmir during 2004-07.For his part,Obama went beyond his predecessor George W. Bush’s instrumental approach to Pakistan. Obama increased the civilian and military assistance to Pakistan and offered to build a genuine partnership for the country’s economic and social development.Neither Dr Singh nor Obama has been able to get the Pakistan army to abandon its support to violent extremism. If Dr Singh and Obama have such high stakes in Pakistan,why is it that they can’t work together?A long answer will point to the historic burdens of the triangular relationship among Delhi,Rawalpindi and Washington. For India,the United States never seemed a neutral interlocutor on Pakistan. For Washington,Delhi was a problem to be managed each time the US reached out to the Pakistan army,headquartered in Rawalpindi,for a specific strategic objective.A shorter answer,however,is that both the US and India want to deal with Pakistan separately and on their own terms. Each wants the other to help,but neither wants the other to get too close to its own Pakistan policy.India wants the US to press the Pakistan army to stop its support to the Lashkar-e-Toiba. But India insists on “bilateralism” in its engagement with Pakistan and is opposed to any “internationalisation” of its disputes with Pakistan.Similarly,Washington would like Delhi to make a range of political concessions — especially on Kashmir and Afghanistan — that it thinks will reduce the anxieties of the Pakistan army and allow it to cooperate more comprehensively with the US. But Washington is either unwilling or unable to use its leverage with Rawalpindi to end its support to anti-India terror groups.It should not be difficult for Dr Singh and Obama to see that their bilateral approaches to Pakistan have not worked. Dr Singh’s belief that he can change Rawalpindi’s behaviour on terrorism through sincere negotiations on Kashmir is under cloud.The prime minister’s failed Pakistan strategy underlines a larger pattern in Indo-Pak relations. No bilateral political agreement with Pakistan has survived the leader with whom India had negotiated it with.The Shimla Agreement did not survive the transition from Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to General Zia-ul-Haq; the Lahore Declaration with Nawaz Sharif was thrown into the dustbin by General Pervez Musharraf; Dr Singh’s negotiations on Kashmir with Musharraf have found no favour with General Ashfaq Kayani.Washington too must come to terms with the fact that appeasing the Pakistan army has not,and will not,get the desired results in Afghanistan.Even if the US withdraws from Afghanistan and hands over the south and east of the country to the Taliban,the Haqqani network and the Pakistan army,the threat of violent extremism to the US is not going to end. Instead,they will become a bigger threat if they begin to control larger swathes of territory in Pakistan and Afghanistan.Dr Singh and Obama both know that the terror threat to India,Afghanistan and the US cannot be defeated without severing the links between the Pakistan army and the extremist groups.In their talks this weekend,the two leaders must accept a new proposition. If neither of them,on his own,can wean the Pakistan army from the extremists,they have no alternative but to work together.Having talked past each other for decades on Pakistan,Delhi and Washington may find this a tall order. But the time is now for Dr Singh and Obama to begin an honest conversation about their shared interests in Pakistan — promoting political moderation,economic modernisation and regional integration.If they do,the prime minister and the president will discover that they can offer a credible framework of incentives and disincentives to the Pakistan army.If Rawalpindi is willing to make a clean break with extremism,Delhi and Kabul must offer it legitimate eastern and western borders. For its part,Kabul can recognise the Durand Line and India can complete the logic of Dr Singh’s negotiations with Musharraf on the Kashmir settlement. The US can get the international community to endorse these settlements.If these borders are open,secure and commercially active,there should be little reason for the Pakistan army to pursue strategic depth in Afghanistan and destabilisation in India by promoting extremism and terrorism.If the Pakistan army is not ready for such an accommodation,a range of options present themselves to Dr Singh and Obama. Foremost among them is removing all political obstacles for a purposeful and comprehensive bilateral cooperation in countering terrorism.Second,vigorous political consultations and robust security cooperation among Delhi,Kabul and Washington will surely encourage Rawalpindi to rework its regional sums.Third,firm,consistent and explicit support from Washington and Delhi to Pakistan’s political parties will signal that they will not legitimise Rawalpindi’s claims to own the Pakistani state.Finally,Delhi and Washington can together pose sharper economic choices to the Pakistani people — a path to prosperity through regional integration or a slippery slope to economic ruin in alliance with extremism.If Delhi and Washington cannot work together to change Rawalpindi’s calculus,they will pay a big price for being too timid in clinging to their conventional thinking on Pakistan.

raja.mohan@expressindia.com