The mid-summer ferment

Until not so long ago, summers in Southasia meant bright mornings, languid afternoons, balmy evenings and slothful nights, all endured listlessly by the power elite with endless glasses of nimbu paani, spiced mattha, sweet lassi, cold coffee or whatever else they drink in private. Everything on the political front would remain more or less at a standstill, as everyone waited for the monsoon downpour. But times have changed. Even though winters are now warmer and summers hotter, the wheels of political economy in the region have begun to turn irrespective of the weather cycle. And from Islamabad to Dhaka and Kathmandu to Colombo, decision-makers make moves from their climate-controlled lairs, with repercussions far and wide into the periphery.

The summer of 2009 has, thus far, been marked by momentous events all over Southasia. From Pakhtoonistan and Waziristan in the northwest to the Karen homeland in the east, and from Kashmir up north to Jaffna in the south, the entire region is passing through multiple, simultaneous convulsions. The ferment underway midway through this hot summer will undoubtedly have cataclysmic impact; but at the moment, it is difficult to be definitive about the changes that the current turmoil will bring in its wake. As dry westerly winds blow relentlessly and the monsoon is delayed, fear and apprehension hang thick that the rightward drift of politics could weaken an already sluggish pace of democratisation in the Subcontinent.

To start in the west of the region, US strategists have firsthand knowledge of what ferocious Taliban fighters are capable of doing. It was under the stewardship of the Pacific Command that mujahideen warriors waged jihad against godless Marxists in Afghanistan. Now, some 'unconventional war' experts have openly begun to speculate whether 'Af-Pak' will turn out to be President Barack Obama's Vietnam. Yet another set of Pentagon schemers fear that Pakistan too might fall apart, necessitating an Afghanistan-style takeover of a failed state. In this confusion, a military solution appears the most attractive option by which to tackle religious extremism; but it is also the least likely to succeed in an area known for a long tradition of defying distant authorities and resisting imperial control.

Taking its cue from American benefactors, the Pakistan Army has declared war against the Taliban in the Swat Valley (see also ´Mingora and beyond´ by Iqbal Khattak). The military now says that the ground offensive will soon cease, and that the bearded zealots have been roundly defeated. A similar strategy of encirclement on the ground backed by relentless aerial bombardment is being tried in South Waziristan. Faced with a fight-to-the-finish with one of the largest armed forces in the world, Taliban combatants are most likely on the run. But all is not quiet on the western front, where US drones bomb anything suspicious that either moves or remains stationary, even when most victims seem increasingly likely to be innocent civilians. It is a lot easier for Taliban fighters to come down to the plains of Sindh and Punjab and melt into a sympathetic crowd of dissatisfied urbanites in Karachi, Hyderabad, Lahore and Islamabad – at least, so goes the rising anxieties of urban-based political parties.

The end of fighting in the northwest will ease the pressure on NATO and US forces across the Durand Line. But defence forces of Pakistan might have helped to spread the poison of religious extremism far and wide into its heartland. General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani has sown the wind, and President Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif will be required to reap the whirlwind when acolytes of Maulana Fazlullah and Baitullah Mehsud begin to multiply, demanding Sharia rule throughout the Land of the Pure.

Taliban fighters in the northwest have a cause – howsoever abhorrent it may appear to the comfortable class of Islamabad – to kill and die for, in victory, defeat or stalemate. To a warrior of faith, battles do not end in this world. But the Pakistani defence forces are hamstrung by the perception that they are fighting someone else's 'war on terror' against their own people. Battles can be fought on the basis of directives from higher authorities, but no war can be sustained for long in the absence of a clear ideology. When Taliban militants begin to appear to be better Pakistanis (after all, it is supposed to be an Islamic country, and hirsute mullahs look more appropriately Muslim) than many of their senior officers, soldiers may begin to question their organisation's mission.

The two to three million people now displaced from the war zone will carry the scars of internal war with them wherever they go. The challenge of relief and rehabilitation goes beyond assuring their return to Mingora and surrounding areas. Rather, the people of Pakistan need to be told that nurturing the Taliban during the 1990s for short-term tactical gains – what the Pakistan Army called 'strategic depth' – was a strategic blunder. Going beyond the admission of guilt, authorities in the northwest also need to assist the political leadership, which can begin the process of moderation of Islamist extremism. It is not that difficult to figure out who stands to lose if a war that pits Pakistanis against Pakistanis and Muslims against Muslims intensifies or spreads. Even hardcore Hindutva elements of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which swears by the idea of an akhanda bharat, must dread the possibility of Pakistan descending in a well of chaos before imploding as a failed state.

East of the Line of Control in Kashmir, the pathologies of prolonged military presence have begun to haunt Manmohan Singh's newly re-enthroned government in New Delhi (see also ´Tracing the aagurs´ by Ishfaq Tantry). The rape and murder of two Muslim women in Shopian, allegedly by Indian Army soldiers, has further eroded the already-fragile credibility of the Indian defence forces in the area. This could be one of the reasons that Home Minister P Chidambaram has promised to withdraw troops from heavily populated areas and relocate them closer to the LoC. On the face of it, Chidambaram's claim that the Indian government wants to "redraw lines of responsibility" between the army and local police in Kashmir appears promising. But unfortunately, it fails to address concerns that have forced India and Pakistan to fight several wars and battles since Independence. Such fiddling – for instance, 'hearts and minds' strategies on the part of the army, better policing and use of local militia to fight insurgents – has limited utility. Furthermore it often succeeds only in fudging the main issue: the final fate of a border where the Radcliff Line of 1947 does not exist.

President Obama may not like to openly link Kashmir with the Af-Pak imbroglio. But it would be difficult for the military brass in Islamabad to suddenly turn its focus from the eastern border to the western front unless its officers have something to show for their earlier withdrawal from 'near victory' in Kargil under US pressure. Journalist Mark Tully is no military strategist, but he has a point when he says that "something more than the LoC" has to be a part of any Kashmir solution that has a hope of establishing lasting peace in this troubled region.

Buddha's tears
Consigned to a high-security prison on trumped-up charges of violating the terms of her house arrest, in mid-June Nobel Peace Prize laureate and iconic pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi spent her 64th birthday in the notorious Insein jail, outside Rangoon (see also ´The pagoda´s repudiation´ by Larry Jagan). Meanwhile, her supporters the world over celebrated the event as a day of solidarity. But symbolic gestures have little impact on authoritarian regimes. The international community, which includes the countries of Southasia, has to devise more-innovative ways to dealing with the junta than continuing with mindless sanctions that have hurt innocent civilians most, even as the Burmese generals continue to further pauperise the hapless peasantry.

The shadow of the Chinese dragon over Rangoon is an inescapable component of the Burmese tangle. New Delhi embraced a defeatist diplomatic strategy – 'if you can't beat them, join them' – after it realised that Beijing has already established itself as the predominant patron of the praetorian regime in Burma. The Burmese generals have since served their masters well by acting as a conduit of Chinese strategic initiatives in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean in general. Soon after his bombardment of the north, President Mahinda Rajapakse undertook his first official visit abroad to Burma – ostensibly "to cement ties between the two countries". But the true import of the Rangoon-Colombo connection is unlikely to be ignored by militarist politicos in Kabul, Kathmandu, Dhaka or Islamabad. Apparently, if Europeans become too critical of human-rights records or if the Americans begin to preach democracy too stridently, the rightists of Southasia have a saviour to which they can turn in moments of crisis. Ever since New Delhi turned into little more than an outpost of the Pentagon's adventures in the region, the pull of Beijing has multiplied manifold.

The Sinhalese triumphalism in Colombo, however, is too demagogic to prepare the ground for lasting peace in Tamil-majority areas in the north of the island. As the fog of war slowly lifts, horrendous stories of the civilian casualties of the vicious war between cruel LTTE fighters and callous Sri Lankan Army commanders have begun to circulate. The Tamil diaspora suddenly finds that its dreams of a separate homeland have died with the demise of one of the most brutal organisations in the history of independence movements, anywhere in the world. For Jaffna Tamils, the end of insurgency and counterinsurgency promises to usher in the possibility of peace after decades of a violent conflict that has claimed over 100,000 lives. But even so, there is no sense of relief; Sri Lankan Tamils have to move around with downcast eyes as the majority-Sinhalese establishment swaggers around in victory.

Without a devolution package or an agenda of reconciliation, the Colombo establishment has announced elections and called for nominations for polls in Jaffna and Vavuniya. These elections may replicate the experiences of Jammu & Kashmir, where repeated elections since 1950s have failed to resolve the fundamental issue: the desire of a distinct minority for self-rule. The resurrection of the LTTE may not be possible, given its association with the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi; but it is impossible to rule out the emergence of other militant outfits with similar objectives if the Sinhalese majority fails to address the identity-related concerns of their Tamil brethren.

Yet the irony of both of the Buddhist states of Southasia, harbouring two of the most intolerant and repressive regimes in the region, fails to explain the relative passivity of the Tibetan population. Perhaps there is something here for religious scholars of Mahayana and Theravada to explore and explain.
Red upsurge
The spectre of LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran has prevented Nepali Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal from taking up guns all over again, to restore what he (the latter) calls 'civilian supremacy'. Nonetheless, his henchmen in the Young Communist Democratic League (formerly the Young Communist League) have begun to hit the streets, carrying the risk of breeding more militant gangs in future. In the early and mid-1990s, the Maoists of Nepal fed off the ideological carcass of what was, back then, the 'real' communist party – the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) or UML, which today heads the government. Yet should the Maoists too transform themselves into a slightly more-radical version of the right-of-centre UML, doctrinaire Maoist cadres would splinter into many autonomous groups, each waging its own version of the 'people's war'.

Throughout the process of his makeover from the fierce 'Prachanda' to the flexible Pushpa Kamal Dahal over the last two years, the chairman shows that he has many tricks up his sleeve. But his greatest challenge is yet to come. Keeping the revolutionary façade intact even while slowly turning an organisation of insurgents into a redoubtable electoral force is a task that will ultimately determine the destiny of the world's first-ever elected Maoist government – now in opposition. Meanwhile, the demoralised generals of the Nepal Army are watching from the wings. They are even less known for their respect for democratic norms than Maoist cadres, openly professing the totalitarian ideology of a 'people's republic'. The mainstream parties of Nepal suddenly find that they are, once again, hanging off the side of a cliff, as a 22-party anti-Maoist coalition struggles to keep itself together in the halls of power in Kathmandu (see also ´The new old´ by Aditya Adhikari).

Dahal's hint that some Indian interlocutors threatened to turn him into another Prabhakaran – disown, discredit and then decimate – may not be true, but the New Delhi propaganda machinery is certainly on full blast against the Nepali Maoists. Most recently, intelligence briefs were reportedly cited by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to convince Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee that Maoists from Nepal were somehow involved in the Naxal uprising in Lalgarh, West Bengal. (During his visit to Kathmandu in mid-June, Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon exonerated the Nepali Maoists of the charge.) But the Indian security agencies believe that combat tactics that the Naxalites have begun to adopt in Chhattisgarh bear an uncanny similarity to methods perfected by the Maoists in Nepal (see also ´Bad medicine´ by Sankarshan Thakur and ´Red-faced´ by Raja Sarkar). The implications of these allegations for the Nepali Maoists would be hard to predict, but clearly Dahal has no option but to live with the rest of his country's political parties. The lessons of Lalgarh for Indian counterinsurgency strategists, meanwhile, are loud and clear: the weakening of 'moderate' leftists invariably leads to the rise of communist ultras if social inequalities are too deep to be addressed by conventional parliamentary politics.

In Pakhtoonistan, Kashmir and Jaffna, identity certainly is the core issue. But it sells mainly because people in these parts have nothing else to look up to. In Chhattisgarh, Rolpa or Lalgarh, those who have nothing to lose have little hesitation in challenging the hegemony of those who have everything at their beck and call. The region is in ferment because those who should be cooling tempers have become prisoners of material comfort in national, provincial or district headquarters. Burma and Tibet may be aberrations; but elsewhere in Southasia, genuine democratic politics – devolution, empowerment, federalism, social welfare, and free and fair elections – still has the power to neutralise all forms of extremism.