The Hindu Business Line : Looming Pakistan...<br> Clouds India's South Asia vision

The seemingly fatal attraction of policy-makers to Pakistan has all but blinded New Delhi to its relations with other neighbours. India's ambitions of being a major world power will remain a mirage if it chooses to continue with this obsession that has led to a democratic, pluralistic and economically vibrant India being equated with a terrorist infested, military ruled, desperately aid-dependent country like Pakistan, says G. Parthasarathy.

A NUMBER of important documents such as the Social Charter, the South Asian Free Trade Agreement and an Additional Protocol on Terrorism were signed at the recent South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation Summit in Islamabad.

But despite all the bonhomie displayed and noble sentiments expressed by SAARC leaders, the political dynamics within South Asian States are such that terrorism and violence are only going to increase in the region unless New Delhi adopts a much more dynamic and pro-active policy than it has followed in recent years.

Pakistan has been and will remain the epicentre of global terrorism for a number of years despite all New Delhi's Herculean exertions and often misplaced hype and optimism. But what has happened in recent years as a result of the excessively Pakistan centric fixation of our political elite and media, is that scant attention has been paid to the serious problems posed by the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, the increasing support for Islamic Fundamentalist organisations and Indian Insurgent Groups (IIG) in Bangladesh and the spiralling Maoist violence in Nepal all of which have the potential to spill across the border into the neighbouring States of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

New Delhi's claims to be a major regional power will lack credibility if it fails to address these developments in its own backyard imaginatively.

With people across the nation remaining glued to their television sets watching the absorbing India-Pakistan cricket series and the political leadership engrossed in its election campaigns, momentous developments were taking place across the Palk Straits.

The Sri Lankan Government has decided to build a memorial in Colombo for soldiers of the Indian Peace-Keeping Force who laid down their lives for preserving Sri Lanka's unity and territorial integrity. Colombo expects New Delhi to play a more pro-active role in resolving its ethnic crisis and moderating the LTTE. India will have to respond more imaginatively and pro-actively to this expectation than it has in the recent past.

But with New Delhi virtually switched-off, Colombo involved in the formation of a new government after recent elections resulted in a virtually hung Parliament and the Norwegian led Monitoring Mission again displaying its pro-LTTE tilt, Velupillai Prabhakaran struck militarily, by attacking the Tamil leadership in the Eastern province and forcing the ouster of his rival "Colonel" Karuna.

Unlike Prabhakaran, Karuna was prepared to respect the unity of Sri Lanka, realised the folly of LTTE's involvement in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and showed sensitivity to Indian concerns and strategic imperatives. On the other hand, the LTTE had participated in an orgy of violence and killings in the run up to the elections. On April 2, rivalries between security organisations in Bangladesh led to the revelation that port authorities in Chittagong were busy unloading a huge consignment of arms that included around 1,500 rifles of various types, 150 rocket launchers, 25,000 hand grenades and two million rounds of ammunition.

There is growing evidence to establish that members of the ruling alliance that includes such parties as the fundamentalist Jamaat Islami were involved in what was evidently not the first instance of such arms inflows.

Following the ouster of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, several members of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front from outfits such as the Harkat ul Jihad ul Islami, the Rohingyas in Myanmar and the Jemayah Islamiyah in Indonesia sought and found refuge and support in Bangladesh.

Begum Khaleda Zia has also given a free hand to the ISI to step up support for insurgent groups such as the ULFA (United Liberation Front Asom) in our North-East. Bangladesh is therefore becoming a destabilising factor not only for India, but also for its ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations) neighbours including Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore.

There is, therefore, a need for far greater exchanges with the ASEAN neighbours of Bangladesh and with powers such as the US on the need to mount pressure on Bangladesh to mend its ways.

While Nepal has shown understanding of our concerns on ISI activities on its soil, the kingdom is itself unfortunately caught in the vortex of domestic violence by Maoist groups — violence that has claimed over 8,000 lives in the past eight years.

India and the US have provided Nepal with military assistance. But military action alone cannot resolve the problems that Nepal faces from its Maoist malaise.

Nepal is today ruled under a "State of Emergency" declared on November 26, 2001. Three rounds of peace talks between the Government and the Maoists last year have yielded no results. King Gyanendra has also not helped matters by curtailing democratic freedoms and appointing only hardcore royalists as Prime Minister.

Though the present Prime Minister, Mr Surya Bahadur Thapa, is an experienced and capable administrator there can be no solution to Nepal's Maoist menace unless the Monarch realizes that he needs widespread political support to succeed.

New Delhi has to move dexterously and expeditiously in its diplomacy in Nepal. The King has to be persuaded to set up a government that enjoys wide political support. Absolute monarchies are anachronisms in the 21st century. Long overdue socio-economic reforms need to be expedited in Nepal.

India will also have to back up its political and diplomatic initiatives with substantially increased economic and military assistance to the Himalayan kingdom.

Problems in Sri Lanka have been compounded by external powers such as Norway and Japan that give far too much consideration to the views of the LTTE and constantly equate the LTTE with the democratically elected government of Sri Lanka.

In June 2003 the Tokyo donors' conference pledged $4.5 billion as aid to Sri Lanka. But the Japanese have made disbursement of such aid conditional on progress in talks between the Sri Lanka Government and the LTTE.

They have thus, in effect, made aid to Sri Lanka conditional on the progress that country's elected Government makes in talks with a terrorist outfit with an avowedly separatist agenda.

Further, unlike the US, the British Government appears to be far too relaxed in its links with pro-LTTE outfits and NGOs in Sri Lanka. Finally, domestic developments in both Sri Lanka and Bangladesh affect ASEAN countries like Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.

New Delhi should work with its partners in the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) to devise mechanisms for Sri Lanka and Bangladesh to interact with members of the ARF, as the spread of terrorist and separatist violence in the Bay of Bengal Region is matter of direct interest to these countries. More important, military and intelligence cooperation has to be enhanced with Sri Lanka so that the LTTE leadership is persuaded that it cannot escape facing justice in India, after having assassinated a former Indian Prime Minister on Indian soil, in the midst of a national election campaign.

One of the major flaws in our diplomacy in recent years is the virtually fatal obsession of the policy-makers with relations with Pakistan. It is this obsession that has led to a democratic, pluralistic and economically vibrant India being equated with a terrorist infested, military ruled, desperately aid dependent country like Pakistan in the eyes of world powers.

New Delhi's ambitions of being a major world power in coming decades will remain a distant mirage if it chooses to continue with its Pakistan fixation and pays inadequate attention to its relations with other neighbours, as it has been given to doing in recent years.

(The author is a former High Commissioner to Pakistan.)

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