The photograph of the Kabul Intercontinental hotel in flames earlier this week brought back memories of Mumbai's Taj Hotel on fire on TV, nearly three years ago. But this column does not intend to either agonise over the demoniacal behaviour of the Al Qaeda-Taliban and how quickly they learnt from Mumbai, or the impending withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan — even if they stand between the Al Qaeda-Taliban and the rest of the civilised world.
In fact, Barack Obama’s decision to withdraw large numbers of soldiers (33,000 over the next year) as well as the death of Osama bin Laden in neighbouring Pakistan constitutes what the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson called “a historical moment”.
Henri Cartier-Bresson, the celebrated photographer, meant much the same when he described the peculiar juxtaposition of events that resulted from a collusion of his mind and the camera lens, as the “creative moment”.
Think of the unfolding Bresson-like sequences at play, here in Middle Asia: Osama bin Laden has been dead for two months, the withdrawal of US forces is a sure sign that recession-hit Obama is desperate to declare victory somewhere (since he can’t do so at home), Pakistan’s army dreams about a return to its policy of “strategic depth” in Afghanistan — and the Al Qaeda-Taliban are back. (That is, if they ever went away.)
Instead of the hand-wringing that could follow in the innards of Delhi, think, also, of the opportunities this throws up for India: Intensifying the relationship with the Hamid Karzai administration, talking to the Taliban (it helps that Karzai is also talking to them), opening up all channels of dialogue with Pakistan — political, civil society, the military — and reiterating to all those Nato nations readying to flee that India is willing to take responsibility for its part of the world.
Most significant, the impending chaos in the AfPak region allows India to rebuild bridges with all those nations Delhi has ignored far too long: China, Russia, Iran as well as the Central Asian states.
China, of course, has been studiously refusing to take any overt interest in the realignment of forces underway, so Delhi could show up a mirror which has the Deng Xiaoping commandment written all over it: Mozhe shitou guohe, he said (‘cross the river by feeling the stones’). The phrase was originally used by Deng to describe the liberalisation of China’s economy he was undertaking in the early 1980s. Take your time, Deng implied, weigh your words and measure your actions by the reality on the ground.
The problem is that India’s strategists have been taking the Deng commandment far too literally, by deciding to wait and watch and see how the game unfolds in Middle Asia. Some of the Taliban will return to share power with Karzai, others of the Mullah Omar school of thought will fight their former comrades, the warlords will want to rule the country their way (some of them even formed a political party last week), even as the Pakistani army will use terror groups like the Haqqanis to re-establish their own centre of power in Afghanistan.
In other words, things will fall so badly apart, the ensuing chaos could rival the mess that existed in the decade of the Nineties. Better India keeps its head down and stays out as far as possible. But that would be an incorrect reading of Deng. The Chinese leader advocated the careful route — especially since the Soviet Union was already beginning to implode and would, by the end of that decade — but at the same time he also systematically dismantled much of Socialist muddle the country had inherited, unleashing China’s animal instincts.
India must do both, too, taking into account dissonant statements that have emerged from the fast friends within Nato: The US first told Delhi, after Osama bin Laden’s death, that it believed the Pakistan army knew the Al Qaeda leader lived in a barricaded compound a stone throw’s away from its military academy in Abbottabad; indeed, that Osama’s home was a Pakistan army safehouse.
Now, it seems, other Nato allies have told Delhi the exact opposite: That Pakistan had no idea that Osama had been hiding in plain sight for six long years. If the mind boggles at this disagreement, never mind. Check out a new pebble in the river. This is the rare, if fragile, moment unfolding inside Pakistan, in which Pakistanis are rediscovering the courage to name their faultlines within.
Mark the intense churning taking place around the murder of Saleem Shahzad, the former editor of Asia Times Online, allegedly at the behest of the ISI, and the killing of an unarmed 18-year-old boy at the hands of the Sindh Rangers. Pakistan’s judiciary has served notice and a nation-wide revulsion against the state that Pakistan has become in 60 years, is taking place.
If India’s civil society — including the media — can show solidarity and support for its compatriots in Pakistan, this might become one of those transformative moments in South Asia’s history.
If the government can stop using the Mumbai attacks as an excuse and work harder to distinguish terrorists who don’t need visas to set fire to the Taj and common people who simply want to meet each other, if the rules for trade and commerce can be considerably simplified, Delhi can certainly shore up the yearning for normalcy next door.
Erik Erikson’s “historical moment” is at hand. Good idea if India can recognize it coming.
