Afghanistan Post-2014: The Pashtun Factor

Prabhat P Shukla, 

Distinguished Fellow, VIF

There is an effort among some western commentaries – taken up and amplified by the Pakistanis - to try and project the situation in Afghanistan as a proxy war between India and Pakistan. The drumbeat of this thesis grows as the draw-down of western forces from Afghanistan draws near. Such a view sounds strange to Indian ears, for we were labouring under the belief this last decade that it was a straight, though covert, fight between the US and Pakistan.

And that is how, moreover, people like Negroponte and Mullen projected it too – and you would expect them to know. However, it is important to understand the reality of what is happening in Afghanistan, and for that, the narrative must begin some decades back.

To anticipate the conclusions of this essay: one, the fight is not between India and Pakistan. Ever since 1947, India has kept out of Afghan-Pakistan affairs, and Afghanistan has kept out of Indo-Pakistan affairs.

Two, the fight is between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and has its own logic, going back to the dispute over the Pashtun issue, with Baluchistan also steadily in focus. It has acquired an additional facet in recent years, since Afghanistan has no interest in becoming any other country’s “strategic depth” – indeed, deeply resents the idea, and rejects the Pakistani military push behind the concept.

Three, Afghanistan has become a battleground indeed, between Pakistan [aided occasionally by outside powers] on the one hand, and the USSR, the US, and Afghan nationalism by turns.

And four, and most important, there is a coded message behind this analysis. The message is that Pakistan is going to continue to meddle in Afghan affairs, and seek once more to inject the Taliban, in their newest iteration, into Afghanistan, and no one should oppose this. India is simply shorthand for the fact that all the neighbours of Afghanistan – Iran, the Central Asians, and countries like India and Russia – are concerned at the ceaseless sponsorship of terror and extreme groups by Pakistan. If they oppose Pakistan, that becomes a proxy war.

The Afghans themselves want none of this Pakistani interference, but that is also conveniently skipped over. The truth is, if Pakistan does not promote the extremist Islamic groups, there will be no push-back from the Afghans or anybody else; it is entirely emblematic that in all this lofty talk about avoiding a proxy war, the Pakistanis refrain from mentioning anything about their solemn, repeated – and repeatedly broken – promises of non-interference.

The history of the face-off is well-known: Afghanistan never accepted the Durand Line which divided Pashtun from Pashtun, and this was made clear to the British authorities from the 1920’s onwards. By 1944, when it was clear that the British were to withdraw from India, the Kabul authorities asked the British Government in London to allow the Pashtuns in British India to choose to accede to Afghanistan or opt for independence as well; instead, they were only given the choice to accede to India or Pakistan. The number of registered voters was a fraction of the total population, and even among them, the support for accession to Pakistan was barely above 50 percent. The hill tribes, who are in the centre of the fighting today, were not allowed to vote because they were not considered part of the administered territories.

Pakistan showed its militant colours within a few months of its independence – it sent “raiders” in September 1947 to the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir [violating the stand-still agreement it had signed earlier with the state] from the Pashtun areas. Already, as early as 1947, Pakistan was seeking to portray this operation as an Islamic campaign, a jihad. Afghanistan was opposed to the use of the Pashtun tribes for this purpose, and the Afghan ulema responded with a fatwa denying that there was any need for a jihad against the Indians and denying any religious sanction for the campaign. This was done in the context of preventing Pakistan from exercising influence over the mountain tribes in the North-West Frontier Province, which was not Pakistani territory in their eyes.

The subsequent two decades saw frequent tensions over the Pashtun question between the two countries, and even saw a limited skirmish in 1963. As a result of this last, King Zahir Shah dismissed his Prime Minister and cousin, Mohammed Daoud Khan. In turn, Daoud overthrew the King a decade later in 1973, and thus began a new era in South Asian history – not only because it ended the Durrani monarchy, but also because it saw the first formal launch of jihad in the subcontinent.

This happened in the summer of 1973 itself, and it was declared by Jalaluddin Haqqani – of the now-famous Haqqani network - against the government of Daoud, which had taken a high-profile position on the Pashtun question. The call to jihad was given practical shape by a Pakistani, Naseerullah Babar, himself a Pashtun, who was then serving as the Inspector-General of the Frontier Corps. It was he who advised Zulfikar Ali Bhutto that the solution to the Pashtun problem lay in overwhelming Afghan irredentism by using the Islamic card. He sprang some of the important Islamic leaders from Kabul, whose names read like a who’s who of the anti-Soviet war of the 1980’s: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Burhanuddin Rabbani, Ahmed Shah Massoud, Noor Mohammed Mohammedi, and others. At this stage, the Islamists were not all Pashtuns – the heavy reliance particularly on Ghilzai Pashtuns was to come later, under Gen Zia-ul-Haq. But the idea of using Islam as a weapon to blunt the Pashtun nationalist issue both internally and vis-à-vis Afghanistan was born at this time. In part, this was based on Pakistan’s use of the Islamic card to motivate the tribes in the north-west; in part, it was based on the experience of 1971 in the former East Pakistan, when the Islamists had remained loyal to Pakistan, while the Bengali nationalists were motivated by their regional identity.

This group launched an uprising against Daoud centred in Panjsher in 1975, though it covered other parts of the country too. Daoud was shaken by the event, and gradually began to re-think his strategy towards Pakistan, including on the Durand Line. In his interaction with the Americans, he indicated a willingness to seek an accommodation with Pakistan. The Shah of Iran, flush with petrodollars and as suspicious of the Soviet Union as Bhutto and the Americans, also helped by offering economic assistance to both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The only fly in the ointment was Daoud’s fear that the USSR would seek to destabilise him if he tried to change course. In a long and serious conversation with Secretary of State Kissinger in Kabul in August 1976, he informed the latter that he and Bhutto were close to a settlement of the Pashtun and Baluch questions. The only guarantee he asked for – and was assured of by Kissinger – was support against internal subversion by the supporters of the Soviet Union, especially the Soviet-trained officers in the Armed Forces. A quick exchange of visits took place between Bhutto and Daoud in 1976, and there was indeed every prospect of a settlement.

Before a deal could be settled, Bhutto called for elections in 1977 and, in the turmoil that followed the rigged elections, the Pakistan Army stepped in once again, in July 1977, and Gen Zia became the military ruler. Although he seemed to be inclined to pick up the threads where they had been left off by Bhutto, he did not have the time to do anything substantive: Daoud himself was overthrown in April 1978, and the US guarantees proved unavailing.

The People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan [PDPA], which came to power, was indeed propelled into power by Soviet-trained officers from the Armed Forces, and once again raised the Pashtun issue as a high priority. And once again, Pakistan responded by unleashing the Islamic forces – this time with a heavy reliance on the Pashtuns, and the Ghilzai Pashtuns in particular. The USSR responded to the worsening situation in Afghanistan by sending in its own troops into the country in December 1979, and a new Afghan war began, pitting the Soviet forces against pretty much all the regional and global powers.

Through the 1980’s, the Pakistanis controlled and guided the anti-Soviet campaign. It was one of the conditions that they imposed on the Americans that the ISI would control the funds, arms and training of the insurgents. This is worth analysing in substantive terms, because it showed that the Pakistanis were clear that the ultimate winners would have to be beholden to them and to no one else, not even the Americans. Further, because they had suffered bad relations with the Durrani Pashtuns – Zahir Shah and Daoud were both Durranis, as were the earlier Kings since Abdur Rehman signed the first agreement on the Durand Line – they were determined to do their utmost to block the emergence of any Durrani to power in Kabul.

An interesting incident illustrates this Pakistani attitude of mind: in March 1979, before the Soviet invasion, a group led by Gul Mohammed, a Barakzai [a Durrani] had made significant progress against the PDPA forces in Herat. The Soviets and the Afghan Army hit back with ferocity against the fall of Herat, and the rebels turned to Pakistan for help, but were rebuffed. Pakistan was building up the Ghilzai to oppose the Soviets, and almost the entire top leadership of the Seven Party Alliance belonged to this branch of the Pashtuns.

Shortly before he died in August 1988 in a plane crash, Gen Zia stated that Pakistan had earned the right to have a friendly government in Kabul. “We won’t permit it to be like it was before, with Indian and Soviet influence there and claims to our territory." This was said as the Geneva accords were being worked out, and reflected one of the most important motivations behind the Pakistani strategies towards Afghanistan. No longer would Pakistan permit, to the extent possible, any claims on its Pashtun lands by the rulers in Kabul.

This approach survived Zia; in fact, it reflects the current national consensus, public demurrals notwithstanding. Naturally, therefore, as early as 1989, Pakistan made its bid to capture power and pushed Hikmatyar into a pitched battle in Jalalabad. The widely-held expectation, and not just in Pakistan, was that the Najibullah government would crumble, but it fought off the Hizb forces of Hikmatyar. In retrospect, this was not surprising, because Hikmatyar’s record during the 1980’s was quite patchy, whereas the PDPA forces were well-trained and -equipped. The Soviet Union had also continued to provide financial aid amounting to $3 billion annually to Najibullah even after 1989, and it was only after the collapse of the USSR and the rise of Yeltsin as Russian President that the financial aid was stopped. Within three months of this, Najibullah was gone.

Even then, the replacement was not the kind of government that Pakistan would be satisfied with, for the two pillars of the new regime were Massoud and Dostum. Both had stayed away from Pakistan during the war against the Soviets, so neither was beholden to Pakistan in any way. Moreover, neither was a Pashtun, and this too was unacceptable to the Pakistani leaders, especially to the security establishment.

The story of the rise of the Taliban from 1994 onwards is well-known, and the only point worth emphasizing is the role of the self-same Naseerullah Babar, now the Interior Minister under Benazir Bhutto. It was he who put together the Taliban force in 1994, with the intention of capturing the western parts of Afghanistan. The aim at this stage was to have a swathe of territory under their control which would allow Pakistan, in cooperation with the Central Asian hydrocarbon-rich countries, to set up trading links with the rest of the world. A US hydrocarbon company, Unocal, also contributed to this effort. The strategic objective was to block Iran and Russia from any role in this trade. This was despite the fact that, as far as Russia was concerned, all the existing pipelines ran through Russia or Russian-controlled territory. This was also despite the fact that, apart from Russia, Iran was the most economical route for evacuating the oil and gas from Central Asia.

What we see thus is that the stakes in Afghanistan have changed since the days of the Soviet occupation. For the US, it was initially the need to beat back the Soviet Union, and to undermine the unity of that country, and they succeeded in their strategy. For this purpose, they were willing to use the obscurantist forces that Pakistan had nurtured, even though they were aware that at least some of them were anti-West and specifically anti-US as well. But they felt then that they could control the fallout, especially with a friendly Pakistan to keep things under control. The Chinese feel the same way today, and are comfortable seeing the US humiliated in Afghanistan.

However, by the 1990’s, with the destruction of the USSR complete, the stakes had changed, and the US strategy was to impose a double blockade for trade and strategic purposes – against Russia and Iran. This was conceived and driven by the US, and embraced willingly by Pakistan in the South and Central Asian regions. It is worth emphasising that India had virtually no role in any of this. Its hands were full dealing with internal security issues, the need for ensuring economic growth, and later, addressing the diplomatic fallout of its nuclear tests.

India got involved only after the rise of the Taliban and the fall of Kabul, and in this it was not alone; this was an issue that touched nearly every country both in the region, and in the wider world. It is worth emphasising one important aspect of the militant movements in what has now come to be called the AfPak region: this is the growth of extremism, from generation to generation. The Taliban of the 1990’s made the mujahideen of the Rabbani-Mujaddidi type look reasonable. The TTP and the other militant groups of today have similarly outflanked the Afghan Taliban and are making the Quetta Shura look comparatively weak and peaceable. And now we have the ISIL. This point is worth exploring in some detail.

The current militant movement is more ideologically motivated than any of the earlier groups. The growth of this new ideology has been well-documented, and it is recognised as the fastest-growing among all the competing terrorist threats in the world. Their belief, which is widespread in several Muslim countries, especially Pakistan, derives from the Hadith regarding end-times. According to this, the war in Afghanistan is the prophesied Battle for Khorasan, and of course, they believe that their armies will be victorious. This Battle will embrace not just today’s Afghanistan, but also Iran and Central Asia. This will be followed by the Ghazwa-i-Hind – the campaign for India – which will cover today’s India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar, as well as parts of the surrounding countries. This will be followed by the battle to liberate the Holy Places, Mecca, Medina, and al-Quds [Jerusalem]. And that will lead to the restoration of the true world-wide Caliphate.

Such is the new ambition among the terrorist groups, and many of their spokesmen – inevitably men, of course – are willing to speak publicly about the contemporary relevance of these prophecies. What it means for them, and their patrons in Pakistan, who are playing this dangerous game with themselves and the entire region, is that there is an enormous amount of warfare to come. This suits Pakistan very well. These fighting forces are mainly Pashtuns, who would otherwise be looking to settling the Pashtun question. However, as long as they are doing what they see as Allah’s work in subduing lands that rightfully belong to Him, they will not look to issues such as their own national and territorial rights. And in this, they will continue to enjoy the support of the Pakistan Army and the ISI. The growth of violence and extremism within the country is a price worth paying for keeping these forces oriented outward.

The Pashtuns, along with the Kurds, are the two largest, most populous tribes in the world that have no homeland of their own. It is estimated that there some 45 million Pashtuns in the world, and they have all the attributes of a nation. They have the language, tradition and culture of nationhood, and recent memory of having ruled large parts of the region. This is what Daoud and the PDPA rulers were playing on; simultaneously, the Pakistanis were turning them towards Islam and jihad, with the calculation that this would raise their sights above narrower Pashtun territorial demands. In this, Pakistan has been successful, perhaps too successful. The Islamist forces they have let slip have become increasingly disenchanted with the Pakistani state, and regard it as un-Islamic, hence itself a target for jihad.

This is why it would be ahistorical to expect the Islamist forces to come to a negotiated settlement with the Afghan Government. The Taliban have, for example, in fact, declared that the new Afghan Government is unacceptable to them, and they will not accept anything less than a truly Islamic Government, which will follow Sharia in its true form.

For its part, Pakistan, especially in its current debilitated shape, cannot afford to let the Islamists lower their ambition, for then the Pashtun Question will be back in an even more aggravated form, and this time led by well-trained, and motivated fighters who will pose a serious challenge to the Pakistani state and its security forces. It will, therefore, have no interest in a negotiated settlement. What is more, these jihadi forces are the only asset Pakistan has in the politics of the region; if they were to give this up, they would have no value left. They do not have the financial or diplomatic wherewithal, or the soft power, to play any positive role in the neighbourhood.

This also explains why the Pakistanis are opposed to any arms for the ANSF beyond those that a constabulary would have. The Islamists must be able to make the military breakthroughs they need to expand north into and west into all parts of Afghanistan, and from there, into Xinjiang, Iran and Central Asia. Only a strong and well-trained ANSF can thwart these strategies. For exactly obverse reasons, the rest of the world needs to ensure that the ANSF is capable of defending the country.If there were any doubts about this analysis, recent events in Iraq should quell them.

Iraq provides an illustration of the kind of problem that may arise if the ANSF turn out to be under-equipped for the coming tests of strength. The way the Iraqi Army melted away in the face of the ISIL should be an object lesson for the rest of the world. The western and Arab countries were forced back into the fight, and the same will happen in Afghanistan if adequate preparation is not made for the coming trials.

What this narrative has shown is that Pakistan has been nurturing and promoting Islamic extremist forces since the early 1970’s, and not because it was fighting any proxy war with India. The reason was, and remains, the unsettled Pashtun question, for which Pakistan sought an Islamic answer. In the bargain, it has had to resort to growing extremism, and it has to continue to fan it the interests of its own survival. Therefore, any statement that it is willing to moderate its outlook, or to curb the extremists it has nurtured needs to be discounted completely.

Further, the threat posed by these forces is to all the neighbours of Afghanistan, including Russia and China. It is thus no India-Pakistan face-off. To the extent that Indian interests are affected, it will, of course, defend them. But as Iraq again has shown, the interests of the wider world community are also going to be hit, and the other affected countries need to be prepared for this.

Pakistan knows all this well enough, as do the puzzling, though dwindling, number of its supporters in the west. The real message behind this kind of writing is preemptive: Pakistan is going to make another bid for its proxies to gain complete dominance over Afghanistan once again, and countries like India should not stand in the way. That is the true meaning of the talk of a proxy war. It overlooks the reality that the war against Pakistani attempts to dominate Afghanistan will be fought by the Afghans themselves. And in this, they will be supported not only by India, but all of the near and distant neighbours.

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Published Date: 25^th November 2014, Image source: http://www.geourdu.com

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Vivekananda International Foundation)

India-US Ties: Opportunities and Challenges

Kanwal Sibal, 

Dean, Centre for International Relations and Diplomacy, VIF

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US was undoubtedly a great personal success. President Barack Obama, following the personal gestures made by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Modi and those made by the latter to Chinese President Xi Jinping, probably felt it would be diplomatically politic if he too could emulate them in some way. He made the unusual gesture of accompanying him for a tour of the Martin Luther King memorial, and through this show of regard sealing the reconciliation between a forgiving Modi and a defensive Obama on the visa denial issue.

By providing firm leadership, expressing determination to attend to some long neglected basic social issues, focusing on development, wooing the business community, emphasizing his agenda to make India a manufacturing hub, Modi has caught the imagination of Indians of course, but foreign partners of India as well as they see doors opening for more economic opportunities in India. By his remarkable self-assurance and the confidence he exudes, Modi is changing perceptions about India. This is in itself a major achievement. But now that he has raised expectations about the changes he intends to bring about, his performance in the months ahead will be closely watched.

Modi’s US visit presented him with a particularly difficult challenge, as the relationship between India and the US presents opportunities as well as problems that are on a different scale compared to our relationship with any other country. At the rhetorical level projecting the India-US relationship is easy, especially as rhetoric comes easily to the Americans and we too are comfortable with platitudes. The US can call its relationship with India as a defining one in the 21st century, though what it means is unclear and actual US policies towards India do not support that rhetoric. Our hype about India and US being natural partners- or “natural global partners” as embellished by Modi- is not justified by the record of our relations with the US ever since our independence. Even after the end of the Cold War, we were not brought together “naturally” and even now, with the general perception that India-US relations are marked by loss of dynamism and have entered a phase of stagnation, the rhetoric of a natural partnership seems unconnected with reality.

One big underlying problem is the widespread US grouse given vent to in US official and strategic circles is that India has not adequately rewarded the US for lifting nuclear sanctions on it through the bilateral nuclear deal and the NSG exemption. The assumption behind such thinking is that India should have had no grievance against the US for over three decades of sanctions aimed at stunting India strategically and confining it permanently to an inferior international status, and should actually be grateful for the reprieve given to it by the US. India has, in fact, made compromises when it comes to sovereignty over our nuclear programme by accepting oversight and safeguards that no other nuclear weapon state has conceded. We look upon the lifting of sanctions on India as a necessary step for India and the US to have normal ties, even though it is recognized that the US was politically bold to revise its nuclear posture towards India. But that is no reason for India to be so grateful as to abandon an independent view of its interests, and act as an ally of the US. That the US should expect its nuclear firms to get business in India is normal, but to behave as if the nuclear deal’s primary purpose was to open commercial doors in India for its firms does not make sense. The US can certainly lobby for an amendment to the Indian nuclear liability act in order to facilitate the business interests of its firms, but to make it almost a central reason for the malaise currently affecting the relationship is taking a transactional, not a strategic, view of the India-US nuclear deal.

The other US grievance colouring US views of India currently was the exclusion of its firms from the magnum combat fighter deal. After that “unfair” blow, the US now eyes a big share of the Indian defence procurement pie as compensation. On the economic side, apart from the slowdown of India’s economic reforms, particular in the financial sector, that has cooled off the ardour of US firms towards India, US corporations have launched a political campaign against India’s intellectual property, trade and investment policies for the damage they do to US corporate interests, especially in the pharmaceutical sector. On WTO issues, the US sees Indian positions as obstructing consensus. 

Unfortunately, the US government converts differences in a multilateral forum that affect several countries into bilateral differences. This then becomes a point of pressure on India bilaterally, adding to the list of divergences between the two countries on shaping the global trading system.

It is in this background that one must assess the results of the Modi visit. In effect, Modi and Obama have discussed these issues without being able to close differences. Normally, at a joint press briefing, both sides highlight the principal agreements and concrete understandings reached. A careful reading of Modi’s remarks shows that while discussions may have clarified respective positions, they did not produce concrete results. In his remarks, Modi said he “believes” that with the change in Indian policies and processes intended to make it easy and productive to do business in India, the India-US economic partnership will grow rapidly in the coming years. This is a reasonable expectation to have. On IT related issues, Modi pointedly mentioned that he had sought Obama’s support “for continued openness and ease of access for Indian services companies in the U.S. market”- a major concern for us. He did not clarify what Obama’s response was to his expression of dissatisfaction. On the “candid discussion” on the WTO stand-off over the trade facilitation-agricultural subsidies issue, Modi maintained the position that while India supports trade facilitation, he also expected a solution, hopefully soon, “that takes of our concern on food security”. It is to be hoped that Obama found force in Modi’s concerns and that India will not be berated diplomatically by the US in the WTO.

On a more positive side, he spoke about the great convergence on stability on “peace and stability in the Asia Pacific region” and of the US being intrinsic to our Look East and Link West policies. This is a significant statement as it recognizes the role of the US in our larger strategic calculus. However, on terrorism and the “new threats of terrorism in West Asia”, contrary to advice being proffered by many in the US and India, he did not mention the ISIL by name in his joint press conference, simply mentioning the agreement “ to intensify our counter-terrorism and intelligence cooperation”, which is unexceptionable. Modi’s reticence in supporting the US-led “coalition of the willing” in West Asia would have disappointed those campaigning for India to join Obama’s war against the Islamic State. Why India should not have learned the right lessons from the abysmal failure of an earlier such coalition in Iraq is not explained. The current US action is outside the UN framework, and to that extent is contrary to international law. Bombing Syria without obtaining the consent of the Syrian government is against international law too. Obama himself has been ambivalent about military action in Iraq, as the centre-piece of his strategy has been to extract the US from wars in this region. The US has decided to arm and train Syrian “moderate extremists” to fight the ISIL as well as the Assad government. With these kinds of legal and geo-political complexities, it hardly made sense for India to feel obliged politically or morally to support the US in its military action against the Islamic State, however odious this group is.

In his joint press conference, Modi especially welcomed “the U.S. defence companies to participate in developing the Indian defence industry”, without mentioning any specific initiatives, in particular the US offer of 10 co-development and co-production projects. It is unlikely that even with the FDI ceiling in defence raised to 49%, US companies will invest in India’s defence sector substantially and transfer technologies meaningfully. They would want majority shareholding, and even then they would deny certain technologies so that any recipient country remains dependent.

Those curious whether the joint statement would say more about the nature of discussions and the concrete outcomes would have not been better enlightened. The joint statement expresses positive intentions and decisions to set up committees or other mechanisms to deal with issues on the agenda, but without announcing any breakthroughs. Some are arguing that this vision statement has a longer-term perspective and not immediate deliverables. This begs the question why it was not possible to have immediate deliverables if the relationship is otherwise so fecund in prospects. Is there nothing achievable with the US in the short term? If not, what is the guarantee that the medium to longer-term prospects would be better?

The joint statement says that both sides “will facilitate” actions to increase trade five-fold, meaning that the figure will almost reach US-China levels. This might be a desirable objective but it is simply not achievable in any realistic time frame. India needs to modernize its poor infrastructure. Can the US realistically help build India’s physical infrastructure on the scale of India’s requirements? The two sides have “pledged” to establish an Indo-US Investment Initiative and an Infrastructure Collaboration Platform to develop and finance infrastructure. Is the US ready to develop industrial corridors like Japan is doing? Can it compete with more cost-efficient competitors in building highways, ports and airports etc? India has “offered” U.S. industry lead partnership in developing three smart cities, but then we have offered cooperation in this area to Japan, Singapore and even China. US technology in Indian railway networks is mentioned, but can the US compete in this area with Japan, France, Germany and now China? It is certain that some homework has been done by both sides about commercial possibilities in all the areas mentioned above, but details are lacking. The US no doubt has strengths in the education and health sectors, in biotechnologies, digital technologies, or what is generally called innovative technologies. Clean technologies is another area of its strength. One could have expected a big announcement during the Modi visit in the R&D sector- in solar energy, for example, for meeting India’s needs and those of other countries too. That would be relevant to climate change concerns too.

On the bitter WTO wrangle, the officials were “directed to consult urgently” along with other WTO members on the next steps. With India now believing that unlike at Bali where it got limited support on food subsidies, the number of countries now supporting India’s position has swelled. Would this make an India-US understanding on the subject easier? The two leaders “committed to work” through the Trade Policy Forum to promote an attractive business environment (how and what are the metrics?) and to establish an annual high-level Intellectual Property (IP) Working Group with appropriate decision-making and technical-level meetings as part of this Forum (will this bridge real differences, especially when the US is too demanding and India insists that our policies are TRIPS compliant?). Already “officials” on our side have made it known that India will not budge from its position and that the Working Group agreed to is not for making concessions to the US.

On civilian nuclear cooperation, the two sides have reaffirmed their commitment to implement fully the U.S-India civilian nuclear deal and establish a Contact Group to advance it. This poses the question whether we are willing to revise our liability act, and if not, is the US willing to work within it and find a mutually acceptable solution that limits the liability in time and in financial terms. On defence cooperation they “stated their intention” to expand it to bolster national, regional, and global security- which in effect would raise such cooperation to an unprecedentedly high level. Defence cooperation to bolster “global security” has far reaching implications, and because of this the scope of such cooperation is difficult to grasp under the present circumstances. What does expanded defence cooperation mean in terms of “regional security”? Is the US ready to change its accommodative policies towards Pakistan, deny it military aid and take steps to curb its nuclear programme. How does its talks with the Taliban fit into this scenario?

The decision to renew for ten more years the 2005 Framework for the U.S.-India Defence Relations is to be welcomed, but directing the defence teams of the two countries “to develop plans” for more ambitious programs and activities means that specific proposals are lacking at this stage. Nonetheless, the intention to be more ambitious in the sector is significant politically, and other partners of India will watch carefully progress in this area. Enhancing technology partnerships for India's Navy, including assessing possible areas of technology co-operation, will be considered, which is important if it can be accomplished. The agreement to upgrade the existing bilateral exercise MALABAR is important in terms of the two sides working closely together in the Indian Ocean to safeguard the sea-lanes of communication. Surprisingly though, there is no mention of the 10 projects US has offered for co-development and co-production.

On terrorism, which is a prime issue for both India and the US and on which there is much convergence in theory but less in terms of priorities and required action, the two leaders reaffirmed “their deep concern over the continued threat posed by terrorism, most recently highlighted by the dangers presented by the ISIL, and underlined the need for continued comprehensive global efforts to combat and defeat terrorism”. This is the only joint public reference to ISIL during the Modi visit. It can be taken for granted that India is strongly opposed to the kind of ideology that animates groups like ISIL. It is not the nature of the ISIL but the forces that have spawned it and allowed it by design or default to rise that account for India’s reticence in joining the US in its fight against it. The mere mention of ISIL in the joint statement is being cited by those pushing for Indian support for the latest version of the Coalition of the Willing, unheedful of the disaster of a similar coalition in West Asia in the past, as a welcome step by India to discard its nonaligned baggage and assume its global responsibilities as a rising power- as advocated by the US. On the other hand, Modi did not mention ISIL in his speech at the UN as many hoped he would. Actually, he obliquely expressed reservations about the combat against terrorism in West Asia as not being inclusive, implying that Iran and Syria were being excluded, when in fact it was a problem for all countries, irrespective of geopolitics. He did not mention ISIL in his speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in a gesture to please Obama before their meeting. The joint statement stresses the need for joint efforts, including the dismantling of safe havens for terrorist and criminal networks, to disrupt all financial and tactical support for networks such as Al Qaeda, Lashkar-e Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, the D-Company, and the Haqqanis. This is to be welcomed, but one must not see in this a new US determination to apply pressure on Pakistan. Notwithstanding a big bounty declared on his head by the US, Pakistan is not deterred from allowing Hafiz Saeed freedom to conduct his provocative activities. The omission of the Taliban from this list is noteworthy and exposes the limitation of what has been agreed to by both sides in combating terrorism.

Obama’s affirmation that India meets MTCR requirements and is ready for membership in the NSG, and his support for India’s early application and eventual membership in all four regimes, is a positive element in the joint statement, though it is not clear when this might happen. He essentially repeated the formulation he used in 2010 on India’s permanent membership of the UN Security Council, indicating no forward movement in the US position in the last four years, which is to be expected.

It is on Asia-Pacific that the joint statement shows a more substantial convergence of interests. Significantly, it makes a subtle link between India’s "Act East” policy and the United States’ rebalance to Asia. The joint commitment to work more closely with other Asia Pacific countries, including through joint exercises, points towards more cooperation with Japan and potentially Australia. The joint concern expressed about rising tensions over maritime territorial disputes, and affirmation of the importance of safeguarding maritime security and ensuring freedom of navigation and over flight throughout the region, especially in the South China Sea are significant in the context of China’s assertive policies in the western Pacific. Exhorting all parties to avoid the use, or threat of use, of force in advancing their claims is a clear allusion to China. In this connection, the importance of the trilateral dialogue with Japan and the decision to explore holding it at Foreign Minister’s level- a formulation used in the Tokyo Declaration during Modi’s Japan visit- assume significance. It is clear that on this subject, President Xi’s visit did not tie Modi’s hands in finding common ground with the US on the challenges China’s rise presents to neighbouring countries.

The scope of the India-US engagement is large and the stated intentions on both sides are always buoyant. The problem resides in the US expecting too much and too quickly, and India being unable to respond to the pace and scope of US demands because of sensitivities over issues of independence and sovereignty, disparity in power, non-identical world-views, different stages of economic development and policy and legislative changes required at the Indian end.

Overall though, despite the fact that the parsing of the joint statement brings out areas where the two sides are not on the same page, Modi’s visit to the US has been a huge publicity success, both for him and India. The rapturous welcome he got from the Indian American community in New York indicates the hopes he has raised about India amongst our people abroad, with his focused approach to making India strong. His appearance at the Central Park event was imaginative and dismissing such unorthodox initiatives as “event management” shows narrow-mindedness. His joint editorial with Obama was a coup as it equated the two politically and conveyed that there was enough convergence of their respective views on bilateral and international affairs to allow them to put their thoughts together in a public text.

The most important outcome of the visit was, in a sense, the self-assured and confident way Modi conducted himself, projecting in the process a new and confident India. He handled Obama as an equal and did not feel obliged to make any unilateral effort to establish the right chemistry with him and convince him of his own credentials and those of India as an eligible strategic partner of the US. This was contrary to the defensive advice proffered by many in the American and Indian strategic communities that Modi should assume the burden of responsibility in winning over Obama.

Resolving problems with the US will remain a challenge, but India should be wise to address that challenge as it needs good, stable relations with America for dealing with a very complex geopolitical chess board on which it must try to win advantageous positions.

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Published Date: 14^th October 2014, Image source: http://www.indiawrites.org/

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Vivekananda International Foundation)