Arms control in South Asia

IN the first half of September, foreign secretaries and foreign ministers of India and Pakistan would have set the stage for a meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Musharraf on September 14 on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in New York. This is an occasion to assess if the composite dialogue is beginning to yield tangible results especially on the vexed issues of Kashmir and a strategic restraint regime essential to mutual security.

In India, the attention may well focus on how far Pakistan is willing to proceed on trade and investment without a significant breakthrough in contentious areas. There are two conflicting reactions to the developments so far: satisfaction that dangers of military conflict are gradually receding, and, secondly, dismay at the little progress towards resolving the underlying causes of conflict.

Kashmir continues to hang like a dark shadow on the composite dialogue and is a principal reason why it has not so far produced a credible set of measures to enhance mutual security. Perhaps it would be salutary to re-visit the security scene and see if the objectives need to be scaled down in the light of emerging regional and global realities. Perhaps the two countries would be better advised to aim only at relative security embedded in a dynamic balance of reciprocal measures and agreements.

The emphasis that Pakistan put on bilateral disengagement and arms control in 1998-99 under the rubric of a strategic restraint regime was vindicated by the subsequent military stand-off between the two countries. One may, however, note a basic flaw in Pakistan’s approach: its proposals were an extension of a long sequence of utopian projects that gave Pakistan moral high ground but failed to make any impact on Indian military policy. Proposals ranging from a nuclear free zone to a zero missile regime in South Asia simply did not mesh with the deep-seated Indian conviction that global realities dictated a policy based on power. India’s disastrous war against China in 1962 only deepened this belief.

It is not easy to fault India on its perception of the role of military power in international affairs. A prime dynamic of state policy all over the world has been the pursuit of military power. The five permanent members of the Security Council have preached peaceful settlement of disputes and differences but have, together with Germany, provided increasingly sophisticated weapon systems and military technology to nations located in the global conflict zones.

According to the figures given in the latest CRS Report to US Congress on conventional arms transfers, worldwide arms deliveries during the period 1997-2004 added up to more than $312 billion, out of which the United States accounted for more than $130 billion. Considered together, Russia, France, the United Kingdom and Germany represented another $125 billion. The major suppliers delivered arms worth $187 billion to the developing nations during this period. The report grimly notes that “the value of all arms transfer agreements with developing countries in 2004 was nearly $ 21.8 billion”, a substantial increase over 2003.

During 1997-2004 India signed agreements for the import of arms costing nearly $16 billion. India and Pakistan each took actual delivery of arms worth little more than eight billion dollars. This was the period in which Pakistan was fighting its way out of one of its worst economic crises.

In Pakistan’s view, its investment in conventional and nuclear deterrent capability is largely reactive inasmuch as India continues to make quantum leaps in defence expenditure. India explains that its vast rearmament programme is not Pakistan-specific even though its inventories bulge with hardware designed for the plains of Punjab and Sindh. The noted British diplomat and security specialist, Sir Michael Quinlan, once wrote that “defence is not about high and hopeful visions” and that “defence planners must accordingly be in some degree professional pessimists”. South Asian security policies have, indeed, reflected much pessimism since the advent of independence.

If large conventional forces equipped with state-of-the-art weapon systems constitute the cornerstone of India’s policy to dominate the region, nuclear weapon capability is the bedrock of its quest for a major power status in the global context. This is not to underestimate India’s deft diplomacy and economic reach; it is simply to point to its faith in military power as the currency of international influence and advantage. The five major nuclear powers have shown little readiness to move towards the promised nuclear disarmament. Nuclear weapons are more lethal than ever before. New frontiers in Ballistic Missile Defence gave a short shrift to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

India has always considered global disarmament as a precondition to its own restraint. In its absence, it will energetically pursue its nuclear doctrine that seeks to develop a triad of nuclear weapons based on land, sea and the air. Given the vertical and horizontal proliferation of weapons and delivery systems in the world, the notion of a general and progressive disarmament in South Asia is a non-starter. In foreseeable future, India will continue to build its conventional and strategic military strength. Instead of scoring debating points, Pakistan should engage in diplomacy that promotes security through realistic bilateral negotiations.

India and Pakistan seem to be currently engaged in a race in the development of missiles. Mindful of China’s DF-5, DF-31 and DF-41 missiles, which have a range of 8,000 to 13,000 kms, India is now poised to use the strides made in its space programme to build long-range missiles with land-and-submarine launch capability. The recent Indo-US defence agreement will considerably facilitate this project.

What is even more pertinent is the progress made by both India and Pakistan in short-range, intermediate-range and cruise missiles. While engaged in the present composite dialogue, India has tested virtually its entire range of missiles, including Agni-1 tactical short-range ballistic missile (range: 700 kms), Dhanush (range: 250 kms), the naval version of Prithvi-111, and the supersonic BrahMos missile.

Pakistan’s successful tests included Ghauri-Hatf-V (range: 1,500 kms), Shaheen-11/Hatf-V1 (range: 2,500 kms) and most recently, the cruise missile, Babur (range 500 kms). India may strive to upset this balance by acquiring an ABM capability with a short range, low-to-high altitude missile (PAC-3) or an arrow missile system capable of killing up to 14 incoming missiles simultaneously. But in the subcontinental geography that permits a warning time of three to six minutes and with the advent of cruise missiles, it is doubtful if it would neutralize Pakistan’s deterrent.

Pakistani analysts take their cue from Cold War models and give priority to agreements based on quantitative limits. This approach is worth exploring but has probably scant chances of success. Equitable numbers represent a concept that India, set free by Washington from the traditional linkage with Pakistan, may simply reject. Pakistan itself may not be ready for any deep cuts in its armed forcers and arsenals. What may bring better bilateral security is a qualitative approach to arms control that minimizes projection of power and privileges negotiations during the build-up of a crisis in relations. Clearly, this approach has to be located in a larger framework of improving political, economic and military relations.

The South Asian situation is not without a silver lining though. Those of us who have watched India-Pakistan crises in 1980s and 1990s from inside know that there was almost always an inherent restraint even as outside powers took total credit for averting a nuclear catastrophe. Generally, relations ebb and flow and find a tolerable level short of a resolution of underlying causes. There is merit in recognizing this time buffer which has, in the recent past, enabled the two sides to de-escalate and navigate cycles of high and low tensions safely.

Now that the leaders are pledged to transform this cycle into an uninterrupted trajectory of peace, a qualitative approach to arms control would help create an environment conducive to a grand political settlement.

Pakistan has its own limitations in developing arms control regimes. Interposing an extended demilitarized zone between armed forces can be a major risk-reduction measure. But the lack of depth does not permit Pakistan to locate its formations too far away from potential battlegrounds. Pakistan’s shorter communication lines are being countered by India by building new cantonments. The option of creating relatively narrow demilitarized and low-force zones is, however, still available The open terrain provided by the border provinces warrants an agreement on the stationing and deployment of main armoured formations. There will have to be a further refinement of the rather inadequate agreement on advance notice of military exercises, manoeuvres, and troop movements arrived at in April 1991.

Transparency is even more essential to questions of nuclear risk reduction. There is probably a natural ceiling on the number of warheads that the two countries would build. But it would augment strategic stability if information in this regard is shared. Pakistan is not in a position to embrace no-first-use as yet but several measures on deployment of weapons and delivery systems can greatly reduce nuclear threats. Instead of writing an elaborate nuclear doctrine, Pakistan can indicate its red lines to India. A Pakistani academic, Zafar Nawaz Jaspal, recommends consideration of a bilateral agreement on abandoning tactical nuclear weapons. Since both countries possess anti-tank missiles and ground support aircraft, a beginning can perhaps be made with a joint declaration on no-first-use of tactical low-yield nuclear devices that either side may be tempted to fire to break up overwhelming hostile forces.

Missiles with conventional or nuclear heads carry the risk of a crippling first strike. Perfectly reversible measures such as de-alerting and de-activating guidance systems act as firebreaks and provide useful time to decision-makers to defuse unfolding crises. In a triangular or multipolar situation, it is not easy to set down credible verification procedures. But in a bilateral context, nuclear targeting policies can carry considerable conviction even if arrangements are not foolproof. Early warning systems assisted by major powers can greatly reduce chances of conflict by misperception and accident.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Pervaiz Musharraf have met before and applauded each other’s sincerity. The backdrop to their next meeting contains some dark smudges of the paintbrush. They need to look afresh at the entire picture as statesmen and not as media savvy tacticians. In particular, they need to energize their appointed negotiators to add substance to their discussions on Kashmir and the agenda item code-named “Peace and Security”. Far too many meetings have ended up with inane statements or a Sisyphean march up and down the old familiar hills. Present governments cannot win public approbation by dressing up old agreements as new. The composite dialogue will carry conviction only by moving forward in a demonstrable manner.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.

Iraq at breaking point?

THE inability of Iraq’s current parliament, under American military occupation, to hammer out a constitution that would satisfy the aspirations of all of its major ethnic and sectarian segments — the Shias, the Sunnis and the Kurds — is a reflection of its artificial and perennially tenuous common identity foisted on its people by an erstwhile imperialist power to serve its own interests. Now another imperialist power’s greed and hubris has brought Iraq close to breaking point.

This latest tragic impasse in Iraq’s national life, with George W. Bush failing to ram down the Iraqi throat his template of democracy, brings back all the historical intrigues that went into the making of Iraq at the end of the First World War.

History serves ample testimony to the fact that Britain carved a new state, called Iraq, out of three Mesopotamian wilayats of the vanquished Ottoman empire at the end of the First World War for its own political and economic convenience. Oil, 20th century’s most prized natural resource, had been discovered at Kirkuk, in the then wilayat of Mosul, before war broke out, just as it had been struck, earlier, at Masjid-i-Suleyman in Persia, today’s Iran.

So Britain had to have its hands on the newly discovered black gold to keep its imperial navy, which had just switched from coal to oil, afloat. That necessitated its complete political mastery of the region surrounding the Gulf.

Hence the three Mesopotamian wilayats: Mosul, in the north, Baghdad in the centre, and Basra, in the south, were cobbled together to midwife the birth of Iraq.

Knowing that they couldn’t get the disparate constituents of their artificial national entity to agree on a local ruler, the British cunningly ‘imported’ a king for the new country from Hejaz, where they had earlier bribed and cajoled its Ottoman-appointed Sharif (vassal) to throw his lot with them against the Ottoman Turks. The ruling family of Iraq was transplanted from the Hejaz and Faisal, the second son of Sharif Hussain of Hejaz was proclaimed king of Iraq.

The British imperialists didn’t fancy democracy for Iraq the way their spiritual progeny George W. Bush has adopted it as his rationale for being in Iraq, but only on second thought. Bush’s pristine aim in invading and occupying a country that had done nothing to provoke his ire, and was not responsible in any way for the tragedy of 9/11, was as much dictated by imperialist aggrandisement as was Britain’s.

The Britons, congenital empire-builders and thus not concerned with dressing up their possessions into more marketable colours, opted for a strongman-rule in Iraq in order to give themselves unhindered access to its fabulous riches for wholesale plunder and exploitation. The Iraqis, themselves, experimented off and on with parliamentary democracy — but not federalism — without much success. Instead, Iraq was continually stalked and enthralled by one strongman after another, both under the monarchy and during the post-monarchical periods. The rise of Saddam in 1979 brought this process to its acme. Saddam’s iron grip over Iraq paled all his predecessors into mere shadows lurking in the faded corridors of history.

Of course, Iraq’s ersatz unity came at the cost of wanton disregard, and at times brutal suppression, of the rights of its Shia majority over a span of eight long decades. Surprisingly, nobody in the outside world ever felt any sorrow in for the wilful disenfranchisement of Iraq’s majority population in the way voices of concern have been raised in some western capitals about the rights of its Sunni minority, now deemed threatened.

Bush and his neocons were the first to pay lip service to the rights of the Iraqi Shias, for crass expediency no doubt, in order to have the Iraqi majority behind their plans. Otherwise, Bush Sr. had had no compunction in abandoning the same Shias of Iraq to Saddam’s marauding forces when they rose in revolt against him at the end of the Gulf War on his prompting.

However, the Bush neocons were either too ignorant or too naive not to realize that the majority, once given an opportunity to assert its democratic right and privilege, would want to have its own way, and dictate its own agenda, which is fundamental norm of democracy throughout the world.

The Iraqi Shias have the bitter lesson of history on their side not to put their faith in the unalloyed concept of a unitary Iraq that treated them as second-class citizens and grew powerful at the expense of their resources, while they grovelled in misery and penury. Any visitor to Iraq cannot fail to see the appalling difference in the levels of development, in economic and social sectors, between the central and southern parts of Iraq.

The southern areas, with one hundred per cent Shia demography, come out a poor and distant second-best by any comparison. This is despite the fact that Iraq’s largest known oil deposits are located in the heart of the Shia areas. Even in terms of water resources, and rich cultivable lands irrigated by this water, the southern parts of Iraq have a much greater potential for an agrarian “green” revolution.

The swamps of the Shatt-ul-Arab are rich not only in flora and fauna but feed rich alluvial soil to the neighbouring tracts of arable land. It is regrettable that no government in Baghdad ever focused seriously on exploiting the potential of the south for a breakthrough in agricultural autarky for Iraq.

By the same token, the Shias have the example of the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq working as a powerful magnet to attract them to the concept of a looser, and less regimented, system of government in which the central authority shouldn’t have a suffocating grip over the rest of the country.

In the years since the end of the Gulf War of 1991, the Kurdish areas thrived and prospered in virtual insularity from Baghdad because the Americans wanted to weaken Saddam’s rule over them. The Kurds were pampered and molly-coddled — while the rest of the Iraqis suffered under the American-imposed sanctions — under the sheltering canopy of a “no-fly” zone over northern Iraq rigorously kept in place by the Americans until Iraq was invaded by their land troops. Hence the Shia insistence that a democratic Iraq must be pegged to a federal system, giving its three constituent units the right of full autonomy to safeguard and promote their own economic and political destiny.

At the back of this is the feeling that the majority Shias have so far had no role in wielding the levers of economic power generated overwhelmingly by the strength of oil exploited in their part of Iraq.

There is every fear that the October 15 referendum, mandated by the American-imposed interim constitution, may well see the Sunnis rejecting the new draft constitution and triggering a grave crisis by potentially threatening the moorings of Iraq’s cosmetic unity as a nation. They would do so because they perceive in it — and there are palpable signs of it — the end of their political domination of Iraq. The anomaly of less than 20 per cent of the Iraqi Sunni population lording over the country in disregard of the basic principles of democracy had to come to an end one day.

We, in Pakistan, can understand and appreciate the nuances of the crisis threatening to burst on the Iraqi national scene based on our own historical experience as a nation. We went through an identical trauma of epic proportions in 1970-71 when the minority in the western part of Pakistan hunkered down and sought to dictate its terms to the majority population of the eastern wing. As friends of the Iraqi people we cannot wish them the outcome we experienced.

Ironically, the great champions of democracy among the Bush neocons will bear the biggest culpability if Iraq comes unstuck at its national seams. They were the ones who sought to arm their Kurdish protege with virtual veto power to block any constitution that didn’t measure up to their aspirations for full autonomy. Now the Sunnis may wield it to torch the Bush dream of a united and democratic Iraq. The biggest losers would be none other than the Americans who thought of turning Iraq into the launching pad of Pax Americana in that part of the world.

This would in no way mitigate the tragedy of Iraq and the Iraqis. Iraq may end the way it had begun: because of the meddling of power-drunk imperialists into the affairs of a people, and area they knew so little and cared even less about when things went horribly wrong, as they have in Iraq since the Americans invaded it. Bush may not have an exit strategy for Iraq but his clueless imperialism has become the noose around Iraqi national unity.

The writer is a former ambassador to Iraq.

Gate 23

Everyone has an airline story — delayed and cancelled flights, lost luggage, etc., etc. But Meyerhoff’s beats them all.

He told me, “I flew from Chicago to Washington yesterday, and my plane took off and landed on time.”

I said, “You made that up. Nobody’s plane takes off and arrives when the airline says it will.”

Meyerhoff said, “Well it happened to me. I arrived at the airport 45 minutes before flight time, breezed through security and went straight to my gate.”

“Did they ask you take off your shoes?”

“Yes, but I don’t mind if it means keeping the country safe from terrorists.”

“What happened when you got to the gate?”

“First I looked at the departure screen. It said Flight No. 12 to Washington was on time at Gate 23.”

He continued. “Then I went to the gate and checked in with the attendant. I said, “Are you sure my flight is on time? You people tend to lie a lot. She replied, ‘The computer says it is on time. I know as much as you do. I had a flight last week to Dallas and it was also on time. It is rare to see this. I have a lot of stories to tell passengers when a plane is late, but I have no idea what to tell them when the flight is on time.’

“I asked her what kind of stories she told them,” Meyerhoff went on. “She said, ‘The plane is late taking off from Portland’ or ‘It should be landing any minute’ or ‘We’re waiting for a thingamajig for the engine from Atlanta, and if it doesn’t arrive in three hours we’ll change planes.’

“I asked her, ‘Do passengers usually buy it?’ She said, ‘They usually do, but there is always one person in the crowd who says, “I don’t believe you.” We call him the passenger who never believed in the tooth fairy.”’

Meyerhoff said, “So my plane was sitting there and they announced over the PA system that it was ready for boarding. I was in business class so they let me on first. I had time to put my bags in the overhead rack. They gave all of us a chance to get comfortable. Now this is the part you are not going to believe. The doors closed exactly on time.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “How long did you have sit on the runway?”

“No time at all. We were second in line for takeoff.”

“Then?” “The pilot got on the loudspeaker and talked as if his airline was always on time.”

“I guess that’s what they’re supposed to say,” I replied. “So your flight was smooth, and you landed just like you were scheduled to?”

“To the minute. And the aeroplane’s doors opened as soon as we got to the gate. I usually have had to stand in the aisle until they find ground personnel to open the door.”

I said, “I believe everything you told me, but aren’t you spoiled for future flights?”

“I suppose I will be. But I’m still basking in the glow of this one. There was only one hitch to all this. My wife was to pick me up at the airport, and she was 45 minutes late.” —Dawn/Tribune Media Services

Spinning to the future

IT was a smart bit of spin by Jalal Talabani, Iraq’s president, to say that apart from the holy Quran, there was no book that could not be amended. Thus, he implied, there was hope that the draft constitution agreed under US pressure, but crucially without the approval of the country’s Sunni minority, could yet be improved.

Anyone who wants to see a happy end to the tragedy of Iraq must certainly hope for a document that can command the widest possible support. But it is not cynical — more a recognition of bloody reality — to dismiss rhetoric from Washington about the constitution being a “beacon of freedom and democracy”. It is terrific that five million copies of the new text are to be distributed — but that is against a background of vicious and unrelenting violence as well as chronic shortages of water, electricity and jobs.

The draft does contain language guaranteeing freedom of religion, association, speech and conscience, and an independent judiciary. It refers to crimes against the Iraqi people during decades of Ba’athist tyranny. It establishes principles, of accountability and the separation of powers, which are taken for granted in the west but are still rare in the Arab world.

But it also turns the Iraqi state moulded by Saddam Hussein from one with secular republican institutions controlled by a powerful central government to one with a weak central government and a distinctly Islamist cast that worries the secular-minded and women.

It is blindingly obvious that the document has been written by those who most benefited from Saddam’s overthrow, and not necessarily with a view to building a more harmonious future. The Shia majority relish the power denied them since the British carved Iraq out of the Mesopotamian provinces of the Ottoman empire.

The Kurds have consolidated the autonomy they won with western support after the 1991 Gulf war. It is far from certain that the writ of words crafted and polished by politicians inside Baghdad’s heavily defended green zone will be automatically respected by sectarians in Basra or Kirkuk.

Federalism remains the most difficult issue, despite agreement to postpone implementation of arrangements under which future oil revenues will benefit the areas that generate them. US pressure failed to secure greater concessions for Sunnis who fear strict de-Ba’athification laws will marginalize them permanently, even if they had no part in repression. It was more than symbolic that last Sunday’s presentation to parliament was boycotted by the regime’s most senior Sunni, vice-president Ghazi al-Yawar.

Meanwhile in Tikrit, Saddam’s hometown and the heartland of the insurgency, demonstrators yesterday lambasted the “Zionist-American-Iranian constitution” - a scathing reference to Tehran’s influence.

Not surprisingly, given the mounting domestic unpopularity of the Iraqi adventure, there has been heavy spin in Washington (and London) as well as Baghdad.

—The Guardian, London