President Clinton would probably want to talk about designer dhotis and cyberspace when he is here, and may also reel off stanzas from the Song Celestial to delight his hosts. But there can be little doubt that the true import of his visit can be gauged only after he has departed Islamabad. And it is not just the Foreign Office that might see things this way.
Indeed, Prime Minister Vajpayee and Clinton did reflect on India-Pakistan relations themselves, when the American leader phoned to say he would be touching base with his Pakistani friends, after all. Perhaps the public American agonising over it was not real at all.
The US decision may dismay Indians (as it did Vajpayee), but it should cause no surprise. It is just as well to be clear-headed about these things. The President is stopping by in the Pakistani capital not because it is on the way, but precisely because he is hitting Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai before that. Otherwise, there might have been no need. After all, an American leader doesn't go rushing to Iran just because he has accepted an invitation from Pakistan. The India-Pakistan context is clearly unique.
It is not a matter of catering to sensitivities. And the point may not really be that the US is equating Pakistan with India, though many Indians are paranoid about this. Anyone can see the two are vastly different places even if the food, people, language and bazaars are the same. While one tries to be a growth-oriented, parity-seeking, pluralist, modern democracy and economy, the ruling cliques in the other prefer medieval charms. These dangerous men, in the name of Islam, consciously harbour unguided missiles that wear beards and chant holy war. They are accountable to no one and are a cause of acute and unending pain to the Pakistani populace itself. They also have an infinite capacity for harm all around the neighbourhood, especially now when they possess nuclear arms.
Therefore, the real issue is perceived American interests in the Pamir region and Kashmir on account of their proximity to gas-rich Central Asia, China, and the underbelly of Russia. The US believes wrongly that it must kowtow to the Pakistani rulers' every unreasonable demand if it must retain leverage with them. Indeed, this is a plausible enough reason why Clinton may have chosen to disembark in Islamabad, even if only for a few hours.
But he miscalculates if he thinks this will keep Pakistan on course for being classified as a moderate Islamic state. Those who know that country realise there is nothing modern or moderate about even those members of its elite who speak English, wear western clothes, have been trained in the UK or US, and know their table manners. At the gut level, these elements are the cream of a self-serving feudal order, who have a vested interest in bleeding internal democracy, such as may exist.
In Pakistan today, this is best done by knitting the gun-toting rabble and the mullah elements together. Indeed, it is not unfair to suggest that Pakistan is among the few places where terrorists and law-breakers are in cahoots with the so-called respectable members of the system.
Naturally, in courting the present Pakistani ruling elite, Washington grossly overestimates the capacity of the generals, and the feudal and tribal chiefs, to rein in the terrorist subversives, who operate in the name of religion with flagrant official abetment, indeed with official budgetary support. India must vigorously persuade the Americans that they are all part of the same political family, who are together taking the US and democratic world for a ride.
In order to do this, India will have to essay a course of diplomacy quite different from the one it has traditionally pursued. This calls for a vastly different policy imagination and dimension from that prevailing. A significant element of policy under Vajpayee is calling Washington's attention to Islamabad's subversive activities in Kashmir, and its harbouring and guiding international terrorist networks. But this alone does not appear to be sufficient.
Time may have come to mobilise international opinion with the aim of establishing grassroots democracy in Pakistan. Only on this basis can terrorism be effectively challenged in ideological terms, and strategic peace established in the region. This, rather than exclusive recourse to shooting at terrorists, is the way to durable calm.
The effort needs to rival the one the world saw after the fall of the Soviet Union, when the attention of the UN, and of many private agencies, charities and philanthropic entities, was drawn to help set up democratic structures in countries of the erstwhile East bloc. Specialised agencies of diverse kinds, and financial resources on a substantial scale, will be called for.
Pakistan is located in a part of the world that is sensitive politically and economically. It should be in the interest of the international community as a whole, and not just of India or the US or the former Soviet republics, to ensure that the area remains stable, peaceful and geared toward democracy. Above all, this will be in the interest of the Pakistani people themselves, most of whom resent the system they have lived under, but do not know how to free themselves.
If US support had not been available to Pakistani dictatorships, things might never have come to such a pass in that country. The only way to end the support systems that today sustain the likes of Osama bin Laden is to stop playing fairy godmother to the corrupt and bloody-minded elite presiding over the destinies of ordinary Pakistanis, and do everything to help foster democracy instead.
If New Delhi can impart such a directional change to the discourse on Pakistan and Kashmir when the US President arrives, a huge reality chasm would have been bridged. Indeed, there would be little immediacy then left to continue probing each other only on weaponisation and strategic aims, though these questions deserve to be addressed on a global basis.
To sound credible while raising with the world the issue of democracy in Pakistan and the peace dividend inherent in it, New Delhi may benefit from a certain unilateralism. It could allow the inflow of Pakistani goods, the posting of Pakistani journalists on an unlimited basis, and opening entry points for Pakistanis not only at Wagah, but also at a port like Mumbai and, who knows, even in Jammu and Kashmir.
These would go a long way in convincing the world that war is not imminent, only that Pakistani rulers play reckless games that need to be understood and checkmated. The establishment of democracy in Pakistan should be turned into the strategic aim that counts, and the only one that can, in the long term, negate the arsenals the generals have built.
