Implications of Indo-US nexus

AT THE end of his five years in office at the head of the BJP-led coalition government in New Delhi, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee can look upon the warming up of India’s ties with the United States as his major achievement in the diplomatic field. This is a far cry from the cold war years when India and the US were at the opposite ends of the pole.

In May 1998 Washington had imposed economic sanctions against India on account of its nuclear tests. Today the sanctions have all but disappeared. The US also appears to be unconcerned with the India’s acquisition of some of the most advanced military hardware, from whichever source, including Russia.

Israel has provided India with highly sophisticated radar equipment, possibly with the tacit approval of the Bush government. Neither communal violence in India nor country’s frosty relations with Pakistan has had a dampening effect on the growing warmth and dimensions of that relationship.

For the first time since the end of the cold war, the US has conducted a number of joint military exercises with India. A sort of strategic relationship between the two countries has been all but formalized.

In deterrence, possibly, to Washington’s sensitivity, India took its time in conveying its disapproval of the invasion of Iraq. It was only after the opposition, especially the Congress and the left parties, agitated against the government’s diffidence that the parliament adopted a resolution critical of Washington’s unilateral use of force against Iraq.

However, like Pakistan, it also stopped short of outright condemnation of the Bush administration for waging war without the UN sanction.

The strategic nexus between New Delhi and Washington does not directly affect Pakistan but it has made Islamabad somewhat apprehensive about the future of it special relationship with Washington over the past five decades.

During his first official visit to Washington as Pakistan’s foreign minister, Mr Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri, complained to the American officials about the growing US-India ties and also raised the subject in his talks with Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. While commenting on the issue during his meeting with the editors of the Washington Post, Mr Kasuri made no secret of his fear that the joint US-India air exercises, because of the use of the Russian-made planes by the Indian air force, could “blunt the nuclear capability of Pakistan’s (US-supplied) F-16s.”

He also told the Washington Post editors that in his opinion it would not be politically advisable for the US government to do anything that “could complicate matters for Pakistan.” According to the Post, Pakistan appeared “rattled” by the changing “tone and tenor of the Indo-US relationship.” Mr Kasuri also said, Pakistan would want the US to release the F-16s which it had bought in the late 1980s but whose delivery had been held up by the US government.

Pakistan’s growing concern about its security stems largely from India’s repeated allegations of Pakistan’s involvement in the so-called cross-border terrorism in aid of the Kashmiri freedom fighters. The situation has been particularly tense since the killing of 24 Hindus in Kashmir last month, which India’s deputy prime minister Lal Krishna Advani has blamed on Pakistan. In his words: “It is an act of our neighbour; violence in Kashmir and elsewhere in India is continuing only because of them.”

Lately Indian leaders have stepped up their campaign of vilification against this country, arguing that because of its involvement in cross-border terrorism Pakistan should be treated the same way as Iraq.

Foreign Minister Mehmood Ali Kasuri has categorically denied the allegation and proposed an independent inquiry into the carnage in held Kashmir by some international agencies. Not unexpectedly, India has rejected the proposal.

The US has debunked the Indian insinuation and propaganda line, saying that Pakistan could in no way be bracketed with Iraq — “there were no parallels between the two situations.”

But that has not deterred India, particularly its Foreign Minister Jaswant Sinha from repeating the threats of a ‘pre-emptive’ strike against Pakistan. The Indian foreign minister has gone on record saying that he did not agree with Washington’s refusal to see similarities between Iraq and Pakistan.

The situation in the subcontinent could perhaps remain manageable if the US took up a more forthright position on the question of peace and normalization. Ambivalent statements aimed at appeasing both sides would not serve the purpose. Pakistan has invariably proposed an independent (or joint) inquiry into India’s allegations of Pakistan’s involvement in infiltration which New Delhi routinely turns down.

The Indian leaders also do not react favourably to Pakistan’s offer of bilateral talks to resolve all outstanding disputes. The US, with its close ties with both India and Pakistan, could, perhaps, play a more effective role in defusing tensions and promoting a degree of normalization.

In fact, an initiative to this end may well be in the offing. According to Times of India, the US is becoming “alarmed” at the unabated war of words between India and Pakistan and that the US secretary of State Colin Powell or his deputy Richard Armitage may visit South Asia to prevent the situation from taking a turn for the worse.

For the present Washington may believe that the crisis may be limited to heated exchanges, but New Delhi has made it known to the US that “increasing public pressure on India’s elected representatives would make it difficult for the government not to take action on infiltrations and violence inspired by Pakistan.”

The Times of India report also maintains that “senior (US) government officials have gone on air at least twice to temper the situation and convey to New Delhi that the US does not see the need for India to take any military action, and to promise greater American involvement in resolving tension.”

Considering the menacing tone of Indian outbursts, Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali has been remarkably restrained in his response. In a recent statement, he has once again called upon the Indian leaders to come to the negotiating table, stressing that “extremism would not benefit either side.”

He has assured New Delhi that Pakistan is always ready for talks “in the interest of peace and tranquillity in the region.” Perhaps, Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri wished to convey the same message but more bluntly. In a statement the other day, he asked India not to make the mistake of starting a nuclear war, stressing the point that “our missile programme is far more advanced than that of India.”

This was obviously a riposte rather than a seriously meant threat of the kind that India has been holding out to Pakistan from time to time on the pretext of the so-called cross-border terrorism.

Faith in free trade eroding

FAITH in global integration as inevitable and beneficial is eroding. The sentiment was never unanimous of course, but the fight over Iraq has estranged the United States from many of its traditional European partners.

Fear of terrorism has led to increased doubts about opening borders to free movement of people and goods. Bedrock institutions of multilateralism — the United Nations, NATO, the European Union — are in various states of disrepair.

All the more reason, you would think, for the United States, Europe and Japan to press forward with the trade liberalization that has been proven to increase prosperity — and upon which the developing world so desperately depends. But in that field, too, progress is stalled and doubts are growing.

Bilateral trade negotiations have had some success, but there’s a danger that disputes over security will creep into the broader, multilateral negotiations, and that the World Trade Organization will become one more multilateral casualty.

True, the origins of the WTO stalemate have little to do with the broader political fracas. A reduction in agricultural subsidies and price supports, perhaps the most important goal of the current trade negotiating round, has long been stopped in its tracks by Europe’s inability to reform its own agricultural subsidy regime.

As a result, it now looks as if crucial negotiating deadlines, set for the end of this month, will not be met. Without a doubt, the primary victims of Europe’s intransigence are the world’s poorest countries, whose economies would benefit far more from freer markets for their commodities than they would from new injections of aid money. Indeed, until trade barriers are lifted, any conversation about “helping the developing world” will always have a farcical ring.

Meanwhile, the U.S. position on loosening patent rules on drugs for very poor developing countries is also in need of re-examination. It is unacceptable that millions of victims of AIDS, tuberculosis and other epidemics cannot afford the drugs that could cure them because the American drug industry keeps the prices too high. Talks on this issue collapsed last December, and although U.S. negotiators have agreed not to pursue poor countries that manufacture generic versions of critical drugs, the onus is still on the United States to make sure the drugs are genuinely and easily available where they need to be.

There are other, smaller ways to show more goodwill on trade issues too. Congress could, for example, finally pass rules removing tax exemptions for American exporters, thereby putting the United States in line with WTO rules.

But freer trade in agriculture and wider access to generic drugs are of the greatest importance, to the economies of the developing world and to the international perception of the United States. Failure to make progress in these two areas will send the wrong message about this administration’s priorities to the millions of people who can still only dream of taking part in the global economy that America helped create, and that American rhetoric continues to promote. — The Washington Post

An affront to autonomy of civil services

IN AN expected move, General Musharraf has appointed Lieutenant-General (retired) Jamshed Gulzar Kiani, the out-going adjutant-general (AG) of the Pakistan Army, to the coveted post of chairman, Federal Public Service Commission. While traditionally reserved for retired civil servants, this is the third consecutive time the post has fallen to an ex-military man. What is one to make of this latest appointment? What superior qualities did General Kiani or his predecessors possess that many well-respected and more suitable civil servants do not?

I recently asked a former general why he had been appointed ambassador of Pakistan to an East Asian country. His ironic response that he had successfully completed a “war course” at the National Defence College (NDC) captured in essence the specious assumption that is fast becoming part of the larger institutional legend in the army that the officer corps is capable of doing anything under the sun.

Former generals are technically less educated than most of the civil service candidates on whom they sit in on judgment. Even General Kiani’s only apparent qualification for the post, namely that he recently retired as the GHQ’s Principal Staff Officer in charge of administration and personnel management, is irrelevant to the tasks he is expected to perform as chairman, FPSC. Planning and managing the army’s personnel affairs is a task qualitatively different from that of selecting civil servants who are expected to manage the administrative, financial and external affairs of the country.

But military rulers, and their civilian counterparts alike, have hardly ever felt the need to justify military appointments in the civil service. It is therefore quite tempting to see General Kiani’s case as a routine matter. No less appealing is the proposition that he has been duly rewarded for his loyalty to General Musharraf, a criterion gradually emerging as the sole prerequisite for holding the highest offices of the state. Besides his long involvement with the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Kiani was commander, 10 Corps, during the indirect polls for nazims and naib nazims held under the military-led government’s devolution plan in 2001. Allegations about his more than partisan involvement in fixing the election results to suit Musharraf’s political game plan hardly augurs well for the public image of the office he now occupies. But these are all considerations secondary to the military establishment’s strategic calculus.

Elevating its retired officers to this most important constitutional post in Pakistan, a tradition introduced by General Zia, is part of the garrison’s systematic attempts to seek entry into the civilian power structures of the state. Historically, neutralizing the threat from rival centres of civilian power has been central to the regime survival needs of military dictators. After the political parties, the civil service (along with the judiciary) is typically the next target.

Unlike the politicians, however, the military needs the services of the civil bureaucracy to run the day-to-day affairs of the government. Thus the overarching aim is not to liquidate but to subordinate. Under General Ayub, the civil bureaucracy, spearheaded by the elite Civil Service of Pakistan (CSP), was the military’s strategic partner in the disastrous “decade of development” that culminated in the break-up of the country in 1971.

During the 1969 disturbances that led to Ayub’s fall, the CSP became the target of public wrath as well as the military’s scapegoat for accountability.

One of General Yahya’s first actions was to summarily sack hundreds of civil servants, both from the CSP and other central services. But it was under Zia that militarization was institutionalized. In 1980, 10 per cent posts were reserved for retired or released military personnel in BPS 17 and 18, creating the legal cover for inducting regular members of the bureaucracy from the armed forces. Another innovation was a 10 per cent reservation for military personnel in BPS 19 and above on a contractual basis. This was another of Zia’s innovations. In this way, the general directly undermined the autonomy and the career prospects of civil officers.

But General Musharraf’s frontal assault on the bureaucracy has been unprecedented. Like his predecessors, he too quickly seized upon the idea of controlling the bureaucratic levers of the state, appointing serving and retired military officers to key posts in the provincial and federal governments, besides embedding monitoring teams across the length and breadth of the country’s civil administration.

But in sharp contrast, his rule has been marked by gross violation of all rules, regulations and quotas. Even the institutional structures within the military that filters civil appointments have been frequently bypassed. Designed to weaken and undermine the bureaucracy, the military’s purported reform posture is quite accurately encapsulated in an NRB document entitled “National Reconstruction,” dated May 27, 2000.

At one place the document says: “The question is whether the army controls Pakistan or the bureaucracy. The conundrum is that it is not possible to transform the country without the bureaucracy and it is not possible to transform the country with the bureaucracy. It is necessary to transform the bureaucracy as an integral part of the reform process in order to make national reconstruction possible.

The army must control both political and administrative power to create the conditions necessary for national reconstruction.” The gaping theoretical holes in this argument notwithstanding, the sad truth is that the misplaced logic of wresting control from one bureaucracy to hand it on a platter to another has served the cause neither of the army nor the country.

Granted that the civil bureaucracy is hardly a paragon of effectiveness or efficiency. Granted that it is over-centralized and fraught with rampant corruption. Granted that bureaucratic machinations have been a major hurdle in the way of meaningful institutional reforms. But General Musharraf’s misguided, and by now completely discredited, devolution and accountability reforms have done little to address these problems. And while civil bureaucrats have traditionally been more comfortable working with the generals than politicians, these half-baked measures have only given added impetus to the institutional capacity deficits that afflict the bureaucracy. Many younger officers have already responded with their feet, taking leave form government service for greener pastures in the foreign aid and NGO sectors.

The appointment of yet another general as chairman, FPSC, is likely to be interpreted by career bureaucrats as the latest in a series of calculated affronts to the institutional autonomy of the civil services. Not least because the chairman, FSPC, now heads the Central Selection Board 1, which approves high-level promotions in the civil service. Quite an appropriate reform measure in itself, the strategic control of the CSB is likely to be an instrument of authoritarian control in the hands of a former ISI official.

While he is at it, General Musharraf might as well rename the Public Service Commission as Retired Generals’ Service Commission, ending once and for all the ambiguities surrounding the wholly meaningless distinction between the civil and the military. He can then leave it to the imagination of the new chairman to decide whether it is worth having a “civil” service in the first place when the military seems to have administrative skills far more superior to those of civilians. That seems to be the most logical conclusion to the military’s thinly veiled desire to decivilianize the state.

Coping with AIDS threat

TICKTOCK, two months and counting since President Bush announced a $10 billion commitment to AIDS prevention. Yes, it takes time to figure out how to spend so much money. But delay in this case is caused by myopic domestic obsessions that have little to do with the facts on the ground in Africa.

This past week debate in the House was dominated by concerns over condom distribution. Republicans on the International Relations Committee wanted it to be mentioned as a last resort, while Democrats wanted to give it equal status with emphasis on abstinence and fidelity in marriage.

The Democrats won, thanks to the persistence and patience of Chairman Henry J. Hyde, R-Ill., who has the pro-life credentials to push such a compromise. Countries in fact should not be restricted in their promotion of condoms in cases where that strategy may be most effective. But the larger picture is this: While members of Congress continue to seek and score minor political victories, people in Africa continue to die of AIDS. It is now a treatable disease, but in poor countries most people do not receive treatment. This is a crime.

Talks broke down six weeks ago over how much money would go to U.S. organizations and how much to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. — The Washington Post