Many would see the war as the sixth conflict between Arabs and Israelis while to some at least the war almost certainly took the features of a second Palestinian intifada, and, arguably, as some others would claim, it could be counted as a segment of the global 'war on terror'.
Yet the originality of the recent Lebanese war cannot be lost on New Delhi.
The extraordinary feature is, as well-known scholar Fred Halliday put it, a new region, not just a Middle East but a 'Greater West Asia' has emerged out of the Lebanese war, "with the result that what appear as individual conflicts the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the crisis in Afghanistan, the current Israeli-Lebanese war -- are connected and feed off each other".
This was strikingly brought home when even as Home Minister Shivraj Patil was berating Pakistan's ISI for fomenting what is increasingly becoming apparent as India's own private war on terror, across the border in Islamabad, Pervez Musharraf received a strange phone call from George W Bush expressing 'deep appreciation for Pakistan's role in fighting terrorism and the support Pakistan has been extending internationally in this regard'.
Bush suggested to Musharraf that when they met later in the month, they ought to exchange views on international developments and on 'measures to further strengthen the strategic relationship' between the United States and Pakistan.
Nothing could underline the sheer incongruity of what constituted India's own 'strategic partnership' with the United States even making allowance for Washington's pragmatic, self-serving, highly productive, 'de-hyphenated' relationships with New Delhi and Islamabad in the recent years.
Without doubt, the linkage of Pakistan to the Middle East as a whole, which Zia-ul-Haq used to speak about, has become a reality. This is the most important consequence of the Lebanese war from the Indian perspective.
But it is a reality of many faces. It is a reality of a new pan-Islamic consciousness that ties Arab with non-Arab causes (and vice versa) with potentially dramatic effects on the minds of young Muslims living anywhere, including outside the Islamic world in countries such as India.
It is a reality portending a protracted conflict with multiple centres that may well run and run, propelled by a seamless matrix of strategic detonators such as terrorism, militant Islam, nuclear proliferation, occupation and 'arrogance' and resistance to it, rejection of corruption, greed and injustice, and the sense of alienation in near-existential terms.
It is a reality where major protagonists include non-state actors jostling for space with established states, rendering negotiation, let alone conflict resolution, infinitely more complex and difficult to achieve.
Least of all, it is a reality of interlocking passions and interests and expediencies -- and of great fury and intensity. Hardly any ready solutions or even temporary palliatives are available either.
No matter whether Pakistan is a 'failing state', no matter whether its behaviour is of a 'rogue state', and indeed no matter the cascading Indian condemnations of Pakistan for fomenting terrorism on Indian soil, what New Delhi should expect is that for the foreseeable future, Islamabad will remain a key interlocutor for Washington on a variety of theatres of utmost consequence for American strategic interests -- coping with the Al Qaeda problem, Taliban resurgence, Iran nuclear issue, the emergent 'Shia crescent' in the Middle East and the Gulf, NATO's incremental role as the underpinning of regional security, etc.
It is completely irrelevant to Washington whether Pervez Musharraf would don his military uniform over his civilian attire or underneath. From Washington's perspective, Afghanistan alone underscores the absolute, irrefutable criticality of Pakistan's role as a stabilizing factor.
During the past week, some harsh words have been written in the American media suggestive of a deepening despair about the weak, indecisive leadership of Hamid Karzai in Kabul.
Bush has since spoken to Karzai asking him to go over to Washington for urgent consultations. But as the Afghan endgame approaches, Musharraf
Equally, Musharraf's role is also about the pessimism permeating Washington regarding the progress of the war in Iraq. Bush himself shifted the American rhetoric last week: "Sometimes I'm frustrated. Rarely surprised. Sometimes I'm happy. This is -- but war is not a time of joy. These aren't joyous times. These are challenging times and they're difficult times and they're straining the psyche of our country".
But the Lebanese war's lessons exceed Pakistan-centric considerations. A Chatham House report Wednesday underlines the enormous importance that Iran has come to acquire (thanks to the Iraq/Lebanon/Afghanistan wars) in the geopolitics of the entire region stretching from the Levant to the (Persian) Gulf.
The UPA government would be loath to admit, but it must harbour a sense of profound regret over one of the most catastrophic errors of judgement in foreign policy in years in alienating the friendly regime in Teheran.
It beats imagination how despite its commitment to place India as a natural ally of the US, the BJP government could sequester Indo-Iranian relationship from predatory raids by third countries -- and why a Congress party government should fail.
By that single mistake of epic proportions, India has ensured that its capacity to influence or modulate the events in the strategically vital region to the west of our country shall remain virtually nil for the foreseeable future -- all pretensions of India being an emerging influential regional player notwithstanding.
Also, New Delhi would be horrified to see in the coming period that despite all the hubris about the coming armageddon in US-Iran relations, Washington's next move might well be to gear up for serious negotiations with Iran.
Away from the glare of publicity, the Bush administration has reportedly given political clearance for the visit of the former reformist president of Iran Mohammed Khatami to Washington ostensibly at the invitation of Christian groups. Khatami is travelling to Washington via Tokyo where he sought Japanese intervention with the Bush administration. This is not the only strand in the wind.
Careering away from Orientalists like Bernard Lewis, Bush last Tuesday held a brainstorming with eminent Arabists like Vali Nasr who consistently believes that the present time is the right time in engaging Iran.
The James Baker Institute recently released a report -- endorsed by former secretary of state Henry Kissinger -- that the Bush administration must 'examine ways to engage the Iranians in a discussion of the future of nuclear power'.
The UPA government got its assumptions about the Iran nuclear issue hopelessly wrong. That folly carries a heavy price tag.
Again, the Lebanese war is also about the opprobrium that heavily hangs in the perceptions in the Islamic world around India's security relationship with Israel -- an aspect that demands cool, non-partisan policy reappraisal.
To carry on regardless would be as incomprehensible as if India were to have overlooked the horror and shame of bonding with the apartheid regime in South Africa (which had an efficient, high tech armament industry and an advanced nuclear weapon programme and possessed vast expertise in the use of brutal coercive methods in enforcing its will defying international law).
Finally, the Lebanese war has ensured that US foreign policy and political Islam shall remain deeply intertwined. The US is compelled to differentiate Islamists and to craft a more nuanced, pragmatic policy approach of engagement and dialogue. The US possesses an abundance of intellectual resources to realise that the salience of Islam will remain in 21st century Muslim politics.
An earnest effort is, therefore, bound to commence in Washington in distinguishing revolutionary Islam that relies on violence and terror -- an effort to understand what motivates and informs Islamism.
This offers food for thought to sections of our opinion that remain rooted in beliefs and canons that Islamism is to be equated with terrorism, that Islam is incompatible with democracy or that it is inherently a militant religion.
India too, in other words, will have to decide whether the primary issue is religion and culture, or whether it is politics.
The author is a former Indian diplomat
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