Pakistan still perceives India as primary threat

Former senior Administration policy expert on South Asia, Daniel Markey, just back from Pakistan after meeting senior political and security officials in Islamabad, has said that for all of the internal terrorist attacks and continuing existential threats from extremist elements in Pakistan, India is still perceived as the primary security threat.

But he acknowledged that there is a palpable fear of what another Mumbai-type terrorist attack can entail in terms of an almost inevitable attack by India if it is found that this terrorist attack too had emanated from Pakistan.

Markey, who was the head of South Asia division in the State Department's Policy Planning Council in the George W Bush Administration and currently is Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, told rediff.com that there's been no dissipation of this perceived India threat in Pakistani circles that has been fueled largely by the military establishment but is also prevalent in diplomatic circles.

"I can say that across the board, there is to my eye, relatively little shift in Pakistani attitudes about what India represents," he said.

"But there is certainly an understanding and a fear—a palpable fear—that what happened after the last terrorist attack in Mumbai on November 2008, could happen again and would be a very, very dangerous for Pakistan. So, there is a desire to try to get out of the post-Mumbai rut, but that doesn't reflect some deeper shift in attitudes about the purported threat that India represents to Pakistan."

Markey, who currently directs the CFR's Independent Task Force on US Strategy Toward Pakistan and Afghanistan, reiterated, "I don't see a big shift there inside, and I think the (Pakistani) foreign secretary's comments in New Delhi (that Pakistan would not be lectured or sermonized by India) reflect a prickliness on the part of Islamabad. That was pretty clear while we were there."

He acknowledged that "they are open to talks and they see talks as a way to try to reduce tensions with India. But they don't want to be pushed around and one further point, the political dynamic in Islamabad is starting indeed to become a little bit clearer."

Markey recalled "we showed up in the midst of what seemed to be another crisis between the president and the chief justice and a question about whether this finally would be (President Asif Ali) Zardari's last stand. And, that got resolved with more of a whimper than a bang."

He argued that this "revealed what may be a relatively steady state situation, which is to say, recurrent crises don't necessarily upset an underlying balance or equilibrium, where the Pakistani military and intelligence essentially call the shots on foreign and defense policy, which has historically been the case and that their position, which is a harder line -- more hawkish position -- will be echoed by civilian authorities, from the Foreign Secretary to the Prime Minister to the President."

"So, you will get less in the way of people on different pages and more civilians essentially towing the Army's line. And, that's what we are hearing in some of the kind of pushing back by the foreign secretary in New Delhi. Sounds a lot like what we have traditionally heard out of the Pakistani army," he added.

Though the recent foreign secretaries talks in New Delhi turned out to be a damp squib and India was peeved that Islamabad had chosen to ignore the issue of terrorism emanating from Pakistan, which was India's top priority considering that the Mumbai terror conspirators are still to be brought to justice, Markey was optimistic that this diplomatic dance -- which is being pushed behind the scenes by Washington for its own vested interests and to make Pakistan feel secure enough to move its troops massed on the Indian border to the Western front with Afghanistan -- would continue.

He said, "I can say that personally, I am actually relatively optimistic about it because the basic structures in terms of interests and opportunities and trend lines that were apparent to (former Pakistani) President (Pervez) Musharraf several years ago and to both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and to prime minister (Atal Bihari) Vajpayee before him, are still in place."

"That is that India is a rising power and has achieved that on the back of economic growth and is looking for ways for assert itself on the world stage and perceives that its dispute with Pakistan could be existential as a threat, but also is an obstacle to India's continued rise and an obstacle that needs to be removed," he added."

Markey said that "Pakistan for its part, has come to the recognition that the sorts of tools that its tried to use in the past -- military, proxy war, terrorism and appeals to the international community for referenda and so on -- haven't yielded results and are unlikely to change the ground realities in terms of the basic demarcation and on the map and the situation of the people of Kashmir".

"Having reached those conclusions, the only thing left is to try to figure out a relatively good face-saving win for both sides to declare victory and go on with their business," he said. "And, that's where basically, where we were a couple of years ago."

Markey acknowledged, "That may not be popular in all quarters and it certainly isn't in Pakistan and some in India won't like it either. But, that's basically where we were and that's basically where we would be today if not for the fact of weak and uncertain leadership in Islamabad, which has not been able to pursue this and an army, which has been inclined under General (Ashfaq) Kiyani to want to keep its nose clean and not go out on a limb in ways that may be unpopular, because it had reached such a low level of popularity at the tail-end of the Musharraf years."

"So, it's a matter of timing," he opined, and added, "it's not so much whether but when and the when won't probably happen as long as we continue to see these Mumbai-like events that set back the Indian side and keep them from being able to negotiate with the Pakistanis for good reason or on the Pakistani side, as long as we don't have a civilian leadership that is truly confident in its ability to do a deal or an army leadership that fells like politically it can weather such a deal and that is in its interests."

Markey said "we don't have that right now, and so, the best that we can hope for in the near term is a return to formal dialogues because those are a good mechanism for reducing some of the tension between the two countries even if they don't actually begin to resolve in any final sense, the dispute," over Kashmir.