Avoiding Armageddon

by Bruce Riedel

  American reluctance is understandable. The major thesis of this book and its review of American diplomacy in South Asia for the last seven decades is that the United States has been unable to achieve most of its goals in the region; every president from Roosevelt to Obama has found the subcontinent to be a tough place to get ahead. Dealing with India and Pakistan has been a zero-sum game, and often American presidents have struck out with both sides. In 1965, 1971, and 1998, the United States sanctioned both countries and achieved virtually none of its goals. The puzzle has been too hard to put together.

  Howard Schaffer, a former American ambassador, has argued persuasively that the Kashmir issue in particular has been very resistant to U.S. intervention. The title of his masterly study on American diplomacy, The Limits of Influence, underscores that point. He rightly notes that no president since Kennedy even seriously attempted to intervene in Kashmir—and Kennedy struck out. But Schaffer also rightly argues that the issue is too important to be neglected and that the timing for an American initiative is more propitious now because of the rapprochement between India and America.18

  Indians and Pakistanis will have to be the primary actors in efforts to shape their future. That is how it should be. American diplomacy in South Asia will always be secondary to their diplomacy. History has shown that American actions can make a bad situation worse, and it has shown only limited evidence that they can make things fundamentally better. The United States is best at conflict management, not conflict resolution. So humility is in order in thinking about grand projects in South Asia.

  But that should not be an excuse for defeatism. A unique opportunity now exists for quiet American diplomacy to help advance the Kashmir issue to a better, more stable solution. The U.S.-India civil nuclear deal has created a steadier and more enduring basis for U.S.-Indian relations than at any time in history. The deal removes the central obstacle to closer strategic ties between Washington and New Delhi, the nuclear proliferation problem, which held up the development of their relationship for two decades. Obama’s support for a permanent Indian seat at the UN Security Council, the so-called high table of world leadership, has added more weight to the new policy of strategic partnership, and the U.S. rapprochement with India, begun by President Clinton and advanced by presidents Bush and Obama, is now supported by an almost unique bipartisan consensus in Congress and in the U.S. foreign policy establishment.

  The next president in this new era of U.S.-Indian strategic partnership will have an opportunity. Washington should quietly but forcefully encourage New Delhi to be more flexible on Kashmir. It is clearly in the American interest to try to defuse a lingering conflict that has generated global terrorism and repeatedly threatened to create a full-scale military confrontation on the subcontinent. It is also in India’s interest to find a solution to the conflict, which has gone on far too long. Since the Kargil war in 1999, the Indians have been more open to an American role in Kashmir because they sense that Washington is fundamentally in favor of a resolution to maintain the status quo, which India can accept.

  The key to Indian cooperation will be whether the United States can make clear to Pakistan that some red lines regarding terrorism are real, especially a red line on Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. If Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Singh can point to real evidence that LeT is being broken up and dismantled in Pakistan, then they will have the political clout to advance the back-channel talks to secure a peace breakthrough.

  What would a peace deal look like? Would it be a Galbraith solution, like the one on the Saar? A Kashmir solution would have to be based on a formula for making the line of control both a permanent, conventional international border (perhaps with some minor modifications) and a permeable frontier between the two parts of Kashmir so that the Kashmiri people could live more normal lives. A special condominium might be created to allow the two constituencies to work together on issues specific to the region, such as transportation, the environment, sports, and tourism. For example, both the Indian and Pakistani currencies could become legal tender on both sides of the border, an idea recently floated in India. That would be a win-win-win approach. The Kashmiris would be the biggest winners since they would finally have peace and would be reunited. Pakistan would be a winner since it would no longer have to spend so much of its limited resources on trying to keep up with much larger India; it also could finally attack the jihadist monster that it has created, which threatens its democracy and future. India would be a winner as well, since it would no longer face an insurgency in Kashmir and terrorism in its cities.

  The Kashmir solution would be embedded in a larger regional framework that strengthens the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation and removes both formal and informal trade barriers. Visa requirements for travel between the South Asian countries would be removed or at least required for only a small number of military and diplomatic personnel. Average citizens should be able to travel and trade without complex border controls, much as Americans travel to Canada or Europeans travel within the European Union. As transit and trade grow, so would cooperation on the environment, water resources, and other issues.

  In short, Galbraith’s concept of Kashmir as a place of reconciliation, like the Saar region between France and Germany, would be implemented. Given the history of pervasive mistrust on both sides, it is unlikely that the two states will be able to reach such an agreement on their own. A quiet American effort led by the president to promote a solution is probably necessary to any effort to move the parties toward an agreement. It should not be a formal, public initiative—discretion and privacy are essential.

  While U.S.-India relations are well poised to make such an effort, U.S.-Pakistani relations have deteriorated sharply in the last several years and are unlikely to rebound anytime soon. The decades of mistrust and betrayal between the two countries have left an enormous trust deficit. Americans are deeply troubled that Pakistan backs the Taliban, which is killing American troops in Afghanistan, and that Osama bin Laden was able to hide in the heart of the Pakistani national security establishment in Abbottabad for more than five years. Pakistanis believe that America has let them down repeatedly over the years, that it wages an illegal drone war on their territory, and that it is more interested in building ties to India than to Pakistan (they are probably right about India). Pakistan’s former ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani, has suggested that it is time for Pakistan and America to get a divorce.

  This is where other states, such as China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other Arab Gulf states can play a central role. China is Pakistan’s all-weather friend: 90 percent of Pakistanis trust China. Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai are second homes for many Pakistani leaders. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are trusted partners. Quiet, behind-the-scenes Chinese and Arab diplomacy with Islamabad and quiet work between Washington and New Delhi could become a mechanism to push India and Pakistan toward engaging in bilateral interaction.

  Other partners could help, too. The United Kingdom has a unique place in the history of South Asia. It both unified the subcontinent and divided it. It gave South Asians their common language. Today there is a large, vibrant South Asian diaspora in the United Kingdom—2 million British residents are either Pakistanis or descendants of Pakistani immigrants, and 700,000 are Kashmiris—and England is a favored destination for South Asian students and holiday makers. London can play a big role in helping to bring peace to the region. It can also take the lead in getting the European Union to be more active in diplomacy relating to South Asia. The special Anglo-American relationship has long worked as a force multiplier in South Asia.

  In his second term, President Obama should quietly but persistently work to create a coalition of friends of Pakistan that will come together to back a peace offensive to resolve South Asia’s unfinished business in Kashmir. It will not be easy, but it is critical. The choice is really between risking Armageddon and creating Nirvana. Resolution of the Kashmir issue would go a long wa
y toward making Pakistan a more normal state and reducing its preoccupation with India. It would also remove a major rationale for the army’s disproportionate role in Pakistani national security affairs; that in turn would help to ensure the survival of genuine civilian democratic rule in the country. A resolution of the major outstanding issue between Islamabad and New Delhi would reduce the arms race between them and the risk of nuclear conflict. By eliminating Pakistan’s desire to wage asymmetric warfare against India, it would also discourage Pakistan from making alliances with the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, and al Qaeda. Former ambassador William Milam, a seasoned South Asia hand, has rightly stressed that the “India-Centricity of the Pakistani mindset is the most important factor and variable” in the future of the country.19

  Such an agreement would not resolve all the tensions between the two neighbors; however, their disputes on issues other than Kashmir are comparatively trivial. More than anything else, a Kashmir deal would set the stage for a different era in the subcontinent and for more productive interaction between the international community and Pakistan. It could set the stage for a genuine rapprochement between India and Pakistan and nurture trade and economic interaction, which could transform the subcontinent for the better. A virtuous cycle could develop, making the subcontinent a zone of peace and prosperity, not war and terrorism.

  South Asia will always be on the opposite side of the globe from North America. The citizens of the two regions do not share a border, but they do share much history. Americans are notoriously averse to studying their history to understand why others like or dislike them. South Asians, in contrast, tend to wallow in their history and nurse their traditional animosities. Both need to revisit how they have interacted for the five centuries since Europe “discovered” them both in the 1490s. Only by learning from their past can they escape its deadly embrace. Today Americans, Indians, and Pakistanis share the dubious distinction of being nuclear weapons states. All have an awesome power to destroy. They urgently need to ensure that their actions never lead to Armageddon. They urgently need to seek a better future. Finding a way to put the pieces of the puzzle together to achieve that future is their common challenge.

  NOTES

  CHAPTER 1

  1. See the Hindustan Times collection of articles about the attack, 26/11: The Attack on Mumbai (New Delhi: Hindustan Times and Penguin, 2009), pp. 38–39, for my commentary during the attack on al Qaeda’s likely role.

  2. Laurence Chandy and Geoffrey Gertz, Poverty in Numbers: The Changing State of Global Poverty (Brookings, 2011), p. 12.

  3. Niall Ferguson, “Lights Out in India,” Daily Beast, August 6, 2012.

  4. Saleem Shaikh, “Need to Contain Surging Population,” Daily Times [Karachi], August 7, 2012. Michael Lugelman, “Don’t Drop That Bomb on Me,” paper presented at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, June 9, 2010.

  5. The details of the attack have been widely reported. A good summary is found in Angel Rabasa and others, “The Lessons of Mumbai,” Occasional Paper (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 2009) (www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2009/RAND_OP249.pdf), which also includes a useful chronology of the incident. Qasab’s confession was reported by the BBC, among others. See BBC News, “Excerpts from Mumbai Suspect’s Confession,” July 20, 2009 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8160243.stm).

  6. Rommel Rodrigues, Kasab: The Face of 26/11 (New Delhi: Penguin, 2010), pp. 76, 108–09.

  7. Ibid., p. 103.

  8 See the guilty plea agreement, United States of America v. David Coleman Headley, No. 09 CR 830-3, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, March 2010. The prosecutor was Patrick Fitzgerald. It is also useful to see the indictment released by the U.S. Department of Justice on October 27, 2009.

  9. National Investigation Agency, “The Interrogation of David Coleman Headley,” June 3–9, 2010 (www.investigateproject.org).

  10. Ibid., p. 92.

  11. “Mumbai Attacks: ISI Leaders Had No Involvement, Says Headley,” Express Tribune, June 1, 2011 (http://tribune.com.pk/story/179550/isi-leadership-not-involved-in-mumbai-attack-planning/).

  12. “Saudi Arabia, U.S., and India Cooperate to Capture Mumbai ‘26/11’ Attacker Abu Jindal,” Jamestown Militant Leadership Monitor, vol. 3, no. 6 (July 1, 2012).

  13. Animesh Roul, “Dawood Ibrahim: India’s Elusive Most-Wanted Man,” Jamestown Militant Leadership Monitor, vol. 1, no. 6 (June 30, 2010).

  14. United States of America v. David Coleman Headley.

  15. See Nawaz Sharif interview, “Vajpayee May Have Dealt Differently with Jaswant Singh,” Hindustan Times, August 23, 2009. Sharif says, “Look at the colossal damage that we have done to our own economies by the arms race.”

  16. Steve Coll, “The Back Channel: India and Pakistan Negotiate on Kashmir,” New Yorker, March 2, 2009.

  17. See his interview with Der Spiegel, “Obama Is Aiming at the Right Things,” Der Spiegel, July 6, 2009.

  18. Pratik Parija, “President Zardari Says Pakistan Won’t Use Nuclear Weapons First,” Bloomberg News, November 22, 2008, and “Fury over Zardari Kashmir Comments,” BBC News, October 6, 2008.

  19. Vined Sharma and Zia Huq, “There Is a Bit of India in Every Pakistani: Zardari,” Hindustan Times, November 22, 2008.

  20. Syed Saleem Shahzad, Inside al Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond bin Laden and 9/11 (London: Palgrave, 2011), pp. 67–71.

  21. David Ignatius, “The Bin Laden Plot to Kill President Obama,” Washington Post, March 16, 2012.

  22. For the creation of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, see Wilson John, “Lashkar-e-Tayyeba,” Pakistan Security Research Unit Brief 12, University of Bradford [U.K.], May 21, 2007. For more on Azzam, see Thomas Hegghammer, “Abdullah Azzam, the Imam of Jihad,” in Al Qaeda in Its Own Words, edited by Giles Keppel and Jean-Pierre Milelli (London: Belknap, 2008).

  23. Hassan Abbas, Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and America’s War on Terror (London, East Gate, 2005), p. 211.

  24. See Arif Jamal, Shadow War: The Untold Story of Jihad in Kashmir (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Melville House, 2009).

  25. Quoted in Yoginder Sikand, “Islamist Militancy in Kashmir: The Case of Lashkar-i Tayyeba,” South Asian Citizens Web, November 20, 2003 (www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCollection/ArticlesArchive/sikand20Nov2003.html).

  26. See Praveen Swami, “The Well-Tempered Jihad: The Politics and Practice of Post-2002 Islamist Terrorism in India,” Contemporary South Asia, vol. 16, no. 3 (September 2008), p. 317.

  27. Ibid., p. 316.

  28. Jamal, Shadow War, p. 13.

  29. Jane Perlez and Salman Masood, “Terror Ties Run Deep in Pakistan, Mumbai Case Shows,” New York Times, July 27, 2009.

  30. Abbas, Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism, p. 212.

  31. Bernard-Henri Levy, Who Killed Daniel Pearl? (Hoboken, N.J.: Melville, 2003), p. 437. See also Bernard-Henri Levy, “Let’s Give Pakistan the Attention It Deserves,” Wall Street Journal, December 9, 2008.

  32. See Mukhtar A. Khan, “Hafiz Mohammad Saeed: India’s Most-Wanted Man Free Again in Pakistan,” Jamestown Terrorism Monitor, July 27, 2009.

  33. Michael Jacobson, “Saudi Efforts to Combat Terrorist Financing,” Policy Watch 1555 (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, July 21, 2009).

  34. John Kiriakou, The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror (New York: Random House, 2010).

  35. See Stephen Tankel, Lashkar-e-Taiba: From 9/11 to Mumbai (London: International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence, 2009), pp. 9–10. Tankel has also written a superb study of LeT, Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-e-Taiba (Columbia University Press, 2011).

  36. Tankel, Lashkar-e-Taiba: From 9/11 to Mumbai, pp. 12–18.

  37. One al Qaeda spokesman in 2009, Abu Yahya al Libi, did laud “the lions of Mumbai” in a statement but said nothing more. Another, Mustafa abu al Yazid, heralded the “heroes of Mumbai” in a statement threatening more attacks on economic targets arou
nd the globe.

  38. Zaid Hamid, Mumbai: Dance of the Devil, Hindu Zionists, Mumbai Attacks, and the Indian Dossier against Pakistan (Rawalpindi: Brass Tacks Security Think Tank and Defence Analysis Consulting, 2009).

  39. Rahul Singh, “India, Pak Were on Brink of War after 26/11,” Hindustan Times, June 1, 2009.

  40. See Walter C. Ladwig III, “A Cold Start for Hot Wars? The Indian Army’s New Limited War Doctrine,” International Security, vol. 32, no. 3 (Winter 2007–08), pp. 158–90.

  CHAPTER 2

  1. Patrick Wintour, “No Decision on Speeding Up Afghan Troop Withdrawal in 2013,” The Guardian, December 13, 2011.

  2. There is a huge literature on the British Empire in India. Among the best works are Lawrence James, Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India (New York: St. Martins, 1997); Jac Weller, Wellington in India (London: Greenhill, 1953); William Dalrymple, The Last Moghul: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857 (New Delhi: Penguin, 2006), and Denise Dersin, What Life was Like in the Jewel in the Crown: British India AD 1600–1905 (Alexandria, Va.: Time Life Books, 1999). Even larger is the literature on partition. Among the best works are Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Freedom at Midnight (London: Harper Collins, 1975); Stanley Wolpert, Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India (Oxford University Press, 2006); Alex von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire (New York: Picador, 2007); Yasmin Khan, The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan (Yale University Press, 2007); and Narendra Singh Sarila, The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India’s Partition (New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2005).

  3. “The Company That Ruled the Waves,” The Economist, December 17, 2011, pp. 109–11.

  4. Saul David, Victoria’s Wars: The Rise of Empire (London: Penguin, 2007), p. 283.