Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 1999, pages 19, 92

The Subcontinent

India’s BJP Loses Three Critical Elections and Pakistan’s Prime Minister “Satisfied” With U.S. Visit

By M.M. Ali

In a serious setback for Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who heads India’s coalition government, his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost elections in late November in three important states that have been its strongholds. The defeats in Delhi, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh led the Times of India to headline “BJP Bites the Dust.”

Other Indian newspapers and magazines also described the electoral results as ominous for the BJP’s future, and some predicted that the Congress Party, which was the winner in all three states, may ask for a confidence vote in the parliament to force Vajpayee to call for mid-term elections. Others felt that Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, Italian-born wife of the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, would instead let the BJP coalition partners read the message in the election results and decide to leave the combine and thus bring about the fall of Vajpayee’s government.

What is significant is not the numbers by which BJP lost, but the areas in which its support has eroded. The residents of Delhi, the seat of central government where the prime minister and his stalwarts had focused their attention, voted against the BJP. Madhya Pradesh was considered a hotbed of the Hindu right-wingers who form BJP’s core coalition. But constituencies that had returned BJP ministers to the state legislature in most cases voted them out. Similarly, in Rajasthan, the state where India detonated its nuclear bombs, the voters also rejected the BJP.

In all instances, local issues mattered little and national questions determined the vote. The runaway cost of consumer goods, and the extremist policies of the BJP, particularly the belligerent pronouncements of its allies, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Shiv Sena, apparently persuaded voters to support the Congress Party, which had not predicted this margin of victory.

Praful Bidwai observed in the Times of India on Dec. 1: “Such negative votes can only be a punishment for misgovernment and base erosion.” He suggested that BJP’s “hard-line adventurism on issues of internal and external security,” its “controversial stand on education and religious minorities, its Kashmir policy and its emphasis on order through extreme forms of punishment” all played a part in the voters’ choice.

Political parties that have collaborated with the BJP in the formation of the central government have also been meeting separately, weighing their options. Vajpayee will have to hold on to his coalition partners at all costs for the survival of his government. The partners in turn now have an opportunity to ask for greater shares of the national portfolios, and also to have their regional demands met. Once again, Jayalalita from Tamilnadu with her regional agenda will become a major player in the politics of New Delhi.

With anti-BJP winds blowing, indications are that the Congress and other moderate left-wing groups will strive for change in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra next, and then allow the BJP at the center to succumb under its own weight.

Applying Force in Karachi

This fall, for the third time around, the government of Pakistan is seeking a military solution to a political problem. Karachi, the major port and the largest industrial area of Pakistan, with a population of more than two million, has become a hotbed of intra-ethnic and intra-religious killings.

A large segment of the Karachi population consists of Urdu-speaking people. Others include the Sindhis, the Pathans and the Punjabis. The city was the first capital of the country until Mohammed Ayub Khan moved it in the early 1960s to Islamabad in the province of Punjab.

It was Zia ul-Haq who, in the 1980s, shortsightedly sowed the seeds of dissension between the Urdu-speaking people and the Sindhis, the Pathans and the Punjabis by creating a separate political niche for each. Thanks to regimes that followed Zia, the Urdu-speaking group itself is now divided into two bitterly feuding elements.

The metropolis also is saturated with modern weaponry that trickled down from the northern frontier at the close of the Afghan war. With the breakdown of law and order, no one is safe anymore. Suspicions have focused on even the police and the para-military Rangers in several shooting cases.

Under incumbent Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s earlier government, Gen. Asif Nawaz carried out a search-and-destroy military campaign called “Clean Sweep,” with few results. Under Benazir Bhutto’s subsequent regime, the home minister, Naseerullah Baber, conducted a series of raids on neighborhoods of Karachi, imposing additional death and distress on an already suffering population, with no tangible change in the disorder.

Now Prime Minister Sharif has dismissed the provincial Sindh government on Oct. 30, appointed a retired military man as governor, and promised the creation of military courts to try and punish expeditiously those found guilty. Since then hundreds have been jailed.

The largest political party, the Mohajir Quami Movement (MQM), consisting of descendants of Muslims who fled India for Pakistan when the subcontinent was partitioned in 1947, has accused Sharif of targeting its rank-and-file alone. The new governor, retired Gen. Moinuddin, has promised to find and remove all the arms hidden in private homes and buildings.

Suspension of the civil administration and imposition of a military government can produce a temporary respite in the unrest that has resulted in so many killings. It cannot provide lasting peace, however. Military action has to be supplemented with serious political negotiations.

If arms are to be surrendered, the administration has to regain the confidence of the affected people. Their legitimate grievances have to be heard and met. Strong-arm tactics have been tried twice before in Karachi itself.

On one of those occasions it caused the country to split apart, when East Pakistan declared the establishment of independent Bangladesh in December 1971. It is time that Pakistan begins to learn from its past.

Nawaz Visits the U.S.

The condition of economically strapped Pakistan, with proven nuclear capability and a menacing history of unresolved disputes with India, provides little comfort for the prospects of peace in the subcontinent, or for nuclear non-proliferation in the world. That seems to be the premise on which President Clinton invited Pakistani Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif to visit Washington in December. No one is suggesting that Pakistan is using its nuclear capability, whatever its size or sophistication, to get itself out of the economic hole into which it has fallen. But the inherent dangers of nuclear proliferation and Russia’s present inability to finance the cost of securing its own nuclear stockpiles are reasons enough for the United States to worry about both India and Pakistan.

Pulling Pakistan out of the economic doldrums is no big deal for the United States. What is important for Washington is to achieve at least a semblance of balance between its own 21st century global objectives and those of India and Pakistan.

This is not going to be an easy task, especially in view of the narrow focus of Pakistan’s policies, India’s global aspirations and the U.S. desire to look good without really meaning to do good. Much depends on how Clinton measures the stakes. To be effective, the U.S. will have to do some of the heavy lifting. It is in this context that Nawaz Sharif’s visit to Washington will have to be evaluated.

Early Outcome

When the Pakistani prime minister emerged from his Dec. 2 talks with President Clinton at the White House, he said he was “satisfied” with the meeting. It was evident, however, that there were no agreements to sign and no joint press conferences to address.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, who had several separate meetings with Pakistani Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmed and Indian Minister Jaswant Singh last month, laid down in advance in a Nov. 14 speech at the Brookings Institution the U.S. conditions for the total removal of sanctions that were imposed on the two countries following their nuclear tests in May. Talbott said that the U.S. would like to see India and Pakistan sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, halt production of fissile material, restrict development and deployment of delivery systems, and ensure curbs on transfer of dangerous technology to other countries. U.S. nuclear concerns apparently remained paramount in President Clinton’s talks with Prime Minister Sharif.

It appears that the United States also sought Pakistan’s cooperation in curbing terrorism, a clear reference to the case of Osama bin Laden. On the positive side, the U.S. disclosed that some of the Pakistani money that had been paid for F-16 aircraft that the U.S. refuses to deliver would be made available to Pakistan because New Zealand has agreed to lease the aircraft for 10 years.

Similarly, Washington indicated that it supports the IMF loan and rescheduling package to Pakistan providing it adheres to IMF terms. On the key issue of Kashmir, President Clinton expressed his willingness to do whatever he can “to remove this thorn” and open up better India-Pakistan relations.

Ironically, India conducted large-scale ground, air and sea military exercises on the borders of Pakistan coinciding with Nawaz Sharif’s visit to Washington. What kind of message Delhi was sending is open to interpretation. It certainly did not add to confidence-building in the region.

In any case, Prime Minister Sharif’s visit to the United States may reduce some of his economic worries for the time being. However, American concerns for nuclear security in the subcontinent will remain.