An Indo-Pak Dilemma: Politics vs. Realpolitik
By Dr. Dawood Khan
Chicago, IL


It looks like a ‘Bollywood’ movie (and I cringe at the coined label and its popular permutations!): a family, separated somehow, siblings growing in different environs to be different people, melodramatic speechifying, gratuitous violence, the usual song-and-dance, and the near-misses. This make-believe takes about three-and-a half hours (read, a life-time; perhaps more than one). The denouement still out there somewhere, perhaps after some other song-and-dance.
This is what, I feel, the Indo-Pak political situation boils down to, with periodic sprinkling of water or oil, as the case may be, to keep things going. This still seems to be what I’d call ‘the sub-continent psyche’, about 58 years (over 2 generations) after the Partition. It could easily continue, but can we, as neighbors, each with its own set of some still-unresolved basic problems, afford it in the 21st century?
Considerable room exists for ‘triangulation’ in this neighborhood of three nuclear powers, and it could get too hot, too suddenly. Complexity is the middle name of international politics, but it is hard to understand why a culture that seems determined to blindly follow anything Hollywood (or the West) continues to miss what Western countries and cultures have also done: That is, to go beyond merely taking care of life’s very basic problems and make their neighborhoods mutually pleasant by reducing their differences, increasing mutual trust and understanding, without putting national integrity or anything else at risk.
That kind of selectivity reflects our culturally schizophrenic attitude: On the one hand, there is eagerness to return to our pre-Raj days and proudly change Bombay to Mumbai, Madras to Chennai and Calcutta for Kolkat, and on the other, great pride in playing second-banana to Hollywood, even to the point of reducing the industry to ‘Bollywood’ (not Mollywood for Mumbai, though), ‘Lollywood’, and other such imitations.
The subcontinent has at least two sets of Western examples it can consider and follow: US-Canada and the European Union (EU).
The US has a huge border (total 12,034 km): it shares, 8,893 km with Canada to the north (including 2,477 km between the US Alaska and Canadian Yukon and British Columbia), and 3,141 km with Mexico to the South. The “new reality” emerged four years ago, on 9/11. For obvious reasons, there’s a heightened sense of security under the “Smart Borders” policy (created in 1997 – before 9/11/01), but the daily commerce and civilian flow of traffic continues unabated, and you would still not find armed, military face-off at either border (quite unlike the Indo-Pak counterpart).
Going from US to Canada used to be so easy: you would drive into a border crossing, a minute or so later (sometimes the INS officers would just check your driver’s license and ask a couple of questions about any fruit/drug import, but mostly a routine, problem-free formality), you are barreling down a Canadian highway. About the same to and from Mexico. Both borders also used to be notoriously ‘porous’; quite a few entry-points, totally unmanned and in deserted unprotected property. This was a major concern on the southern border; NOT on the northern one, despite it being nearly 3x longer and having, traditionally, much lighter monitoring. Besides, part of the Northern border also goes through waters of the 4 out of 5 Great Lakes straddling the US-Canada border (Lake Michigan being entirely on the US side), and a portion of the St. Lawrence river, a primary outlet of the inter-linked lakes. Any border problem or disagreement between the countries could have disastrous effects for both.
Because of concerns over illegal Mexican immigration, you see a lot more INS officers today at the southern border, per unit length, than on the northern one, but the traffic (civilian and commercial) moves fairly smoothly every day at the southern border, just as it does across the northern one. And, except for lnger lines and consequent delays, the daily traffic (both ways) at almost every border crossing, northern or southern is just like you faced before 9/11. The ‘smart borders’ collaboration merely tries to ensure that the “border remains open for business but closed to terrorists and criminals” and mutual economic security.
Canada and the US enjoy the largest bilateral trade relationship in the world, one being the biggest customer of the other. According to government estimates, US$1.2 billion in goods and services and 300,000 individuals moved across the border, daily in March 2005 alone. Eastern Border Transport Coalition (EBTC) serves about 50 million people and about 75% of the total US-Canadian surface trade flows through the eastern US-Canadian borders. In 2000, the surface trade between them amounted to $400 billion, according to EBTC figures. In fact, more commerce flows between Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan than through any other border crossing in the world. Similarly, US is Mexico’s biggest trading partner: According the 2003 figures, about 88% of Mexican products were imported in the US, mostly by surface borders.
The second example is EU, which may offer a far closer comparison to the Indo-Pak situation. One could even contrast the trends over nearly the same time frame, i.e., the past 60 years. Immediately after two World Wars, European political pundits knew that to prevent a recurrence of such conflict, they’d have to bring the two warring countries (France and Germany) closer. Then, starting in 1951 (only 6 years after WWII), they formed a regional economic agreement among six neighbors. From then on, they worked through various arrangements to EU today, a super-national organization of 25 European member-nations (10 joined in 2004).
EU is far more than a mere free-trade association (like ASEAN, NAFTA, or Mercosur). Actually, it has many attributes of independent nations — its own flag, own currency (Euro), own anthem. Euro, used all over EU (except UK, Sweden and Denmark), was launched on January 1, 1999, over six-anda-half years ago or about 55 years after the end of WWII). Another unifying measure of the EU is its Constitution: although its ratification was recently defeated by the French, it’s unlikely that EU or the decades-year old desire and spirit behind it is so damaged that it would disappear suddenly. Even the ‘Euroskeptics’ would concede that much. Some more palatable clauses can lure back the French, the co-founding members. After all, it was a French Foreign Minister (Robert Schuman) who in 1950 (within 5-6 years after the end of WWII and France’s own occupation by Nazi Germany) had initiated efforts to try to unite French neighbors (including West Germany), for an eventual union of all Europe. As an entity, EU already has several ongoing terms and functions with other nations and international agencies (common foreign and security policy).
EU countries are an economic powerhouse, with highly favorable economic and mutually beneficial arrangements among the member nations. It is a highly competitive force for the US and Japan in the world market. EU, with a combined population of nearly 457 million (or 1. 67x larger than the US population; July 2005 estimates), with fairly stable European economy and strong Euro (about US$1.22 = 1 Euro), allows a lot of ground to compete. A good number of EU members are former combatants in WWII (and/or WWI), who had (or still have) various national disagreements and conflicts, and some of these differences have been going on as long as or longer than the conflicts between India and Pakistan. EU countries share 11,215 km of borders among themselves, and the people can freely travel in other EU countries. EU is another example, rather another boat, that the Indo-Pak subcontinent has missed.
Comparison with the Indo-Pak situation would show that, other than a bus-link across the border, cricket-diplomacy and a few cultural-political exchanges, including those of ‘Bollywood-Lollywood’, the nuclear neighbors still have a huge reservoir of mutual distrust, which keeps their borders tingling with high-energy alertness. Since independence in 1947, about what India and Pakistan have to show for is: two wars over an issue that is an old-standby for keeping the pot simmering (a third one, unrelated that resulted in splitting East Pakistan off as Bangladesh), recurring border skirmishes, and little mutual trust, to speak of. No mutual commerce worth a mention and very limited travel across the border! With China, Indian relations have gone from ‘Hindi-Chini-Bhai-Bhai’ to the 1962 war and minor adjustments on disputed territory. India-Pakistan-China borders offer fertile ground for Clintonian ‘triangulation’.
Quite apart from my own personal, widely expressed appreciation, over the past decades, of the US-Canada border as a highly relevant comparative example for Indo-Pak situation, I was pleasantly surprised by some confidential diplomatic revelations in a recent book (2001) by Dennis Kux, “The United States and Pakistan (1947-2000): Disenchanted Allies.” Kux, a veteran South Asia expert, worked for 20 years on Indo-Pak issues at the US State Department. He also served in Pakistan (1957-59; 1969-71), and has had access to a lot of confidential State Department material, some of which he included in the book.
In this book, he refers to a private meeting in March, 1948 that Paul Alling (the first US Ambassador to Pakistan) and his wife were invited to at Jinnah’s beach cottage by the sea. Jinnah (then, 71) and Alling discussed many things on their walk on the beach. When Alling mentioned that the US would like to see India and Pakistan as friendly neighbors, Jinnah is quoted as saying “nothing” was “closer to [his] heart.” Then, reporting on internal memos on that meeting, Kux says: “What he [Jinnah] sincerely wished was an association similar to that between the United States and Canada. Jinnah said he had told Gandhi and Nehru that “Pakistan desired a defensive understanding with India on a military level… with no time limit, similar to perhaps to the [US arrangements with Canada.” Why have his successors in Pakistan or those of Gandhi and Nehru in India not followed or thought along these lines? If the US-Canada pattern doesn’t seem acceptable, how about the EU model ?
A ‘Bollywood’ movie would make you wait till the very last minute of a three-and-a-half-hour movie (that is, another life or more) to let you see the survivors living happily ‘thereafter’. Hope we don’t have to wait that long !

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Editor: Akhtar M. Faruqui
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