Bruce Riedel, a former CIA man and now affiliated with a Washington think-tank is no friend of Pakistan. This much was always clear from his writings. Now an article written by him and published in India’s Hindustan Times seems to indicate that he is no friend of India’s either. What he has proposed as an agenda for India’s new Prime Minister could lead to a disastrous situation in South Asia.
Mr Riedel and many others in the think-tank community are in a time warp. Their mind sets have not changed. They refuse to believe that countries like India and Pakistan can ever think straight and that they are forever condemned to stew in their own juices. They cannot see the changes sweeping the region or refuse to see those changes because if they did how would they justify the dire predictions that they need to make to stay in their think-tank jobs. There are many such experts around. One of the funniest sights on the Track II circuit is a group of eminent Indians and Pakistanis sitting around a table in discussions moderated and funded by Western think tanks with a ‘paleface’ telling the ‘Indians’ what is good and what is not good for them. Sad but true.
Mr Riedel seems to be telling Mr Modi that Pakistan is firmly and irrevocably wedded to the strategic depth doctrine and that come 2015 Pakistan’s ISI will team up with the Taliban to orchestrate a take-over in Afghanistan. Something that did happen once in the 1990’s but since then a lot has changed. Based on this hypothesis he goes on to advise Mr Modi to confront and rout the ISI in Kabul. He is unabashedly suggesting an India-Pakistan confrontation in Afghanistan. An unstated, but sinister design, in this suggested strategy maybe the idea of Washington, Delhi, Kabul and others putting their heads together to do in Pakistan and its ISI should such a confrontation become a reality. What happens to India and Pakistan—two nuclear weapon states—after that does not seem to be a concern.
Mr Riedel’s suggestion in the past was for US intervention to involve China and Saudi Arabia to coerce India to compromise on Kashmir. He thought at that time that with Kashmir resolved India and Pakistan would not face off in Afghanistan and the US would have its way there. The implication being that it was the India –Pakistan rivalry and not flawed US strategy that was the problem in Afghanistan. Now with the US leaving his thinking has changed to exactly the opposite—an India-Pakistan confrontation in Afghanistan. If this is also what the US wants then it does not make sense for it to roll over and play dead—it should be up and about with its Drones and other fire power decimating the Taliban so that the ISI strategy never takes off unless the idea is to actually let India and Pakistan confront each other so that India falls into the US lap.
Mr Modi has been voted in by his people in the hope that he will better the lot of all Indians and he has promised to do so. He can be a strong leader with an independent bent of mind and this is what disturbs the US think-tank community. Modi will think of India first. His focus will be the economy and domestic harmony. Confrontation with Pakistan is not likely to be his agenda unless such a situation is engineered by external interference. Pakistan is no longer for strategic or any other kind of depth. Pakistan wants internal stability and an end to violence and for this it needs to have good bilateral relations with it neighbors including India and Pakistan. Pakistan will not want confrontation—it will compete but it will cooperate. Like India its focus will be on the economy and its people. Those who think otherwise do so because they do not understand the changed dynamics in Pakistan or because they do not want to.
The future of their countries and the region is in the hands of two elected Prime Ministers—Mr Modi of India and Mr Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan. They will be wise if they keep external meddlers away and interact with each other for the sake of their people.
By Ghalib Sultan
The author is a freelance writer & thinker. Readers may contact the author through his blog: http://ghalibsultan.wordpress.com
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