U.S. Visit Challenges Both of “The Two Benazir Bhuttos”

By M.M. Ali

"Two Benazir Bhuttos" were described recently by Paula Newberg of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. One is the enlightened, Harvard- and Oxford-schooled liberal seen in the international arena, and the other the conservative chador-wearing prime minister who entered into an arranged marriage and who has managed to bear and raise children while ruling over a Muslim country. Most political leaders shift comfortably from their "down home" to "national leader" personas and back again, but few face such a task in doing so as does Pakistan's prime minister.

At home, as she presides over male-dominated cabinet meetings and government ministries, she is closely watched by a self-righteous, self-appointed religious orthodoxy that relishes playing on the naïveté of the illiterate masses. On the external front she has to deal with a large and unfriendly India, Muslim countries still confused and divided in a post-Gulf war, post-Cold War world, and across the Atlantic with a former ally that emerged as the sole remaining superpower, and seems bent on pontificating and prescribing on every matter of concern to her country. Yet Americans like Paula Newberg expect Benazir to deliver equally on both fronts.

Such expectations and frustrations provide the backdrop to Benazir Bhutto's April visit to the United States. It has been billed not as a state visit but a working visit, meaning she will make few public appearances but will spend more time in closed-door business sessions.

Ironically, her government's decision to hand over Ramzi Ahmad Yousef, long wanted by U.S. authorities as the alleged "master-mind" behind the New York World Trade Center bombing, although no extradition treaty exists between the two countries, is being denounced by the religious right and her political opposition as "a sell-out" and "a capitulation" to the U.S. The subsequent murder of two American staff members of the U.S. Consulate in strife-torn Karachi has prompted the U.S. to dispatch an FBI team to investigate and to offer a $2 million reward for the capture of the culprits. Although such an award apparently prompted one of Yousef's accomplices to inform the U.S. of his whereabouts, Pakistanis view the U.S. moves as encroachments on their sovereignty, or reproaches against their own authorities.

In the U.S., where Benazir generally is viewed as a friend, she will encounter what may seem equally irrational hostility personified by Senator Larry Pressler of South Dakota. This Israel-oriented Democrat authored the bill that forced a cut-off of U.S. aid to its long-term South Asian ally on grounds that, like its neighbors on both sides, India and China, it was pursuing a nuclear weapons program. The administration of President Bill Clinton would love to see the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty extended for another 10 years, and having new members like Pakistan and India sign on would help. Now that both Islamabad and New Delhi have agreed to the setting up of nuclear monitoring stations on their soils, Washington has soft-pedaled the NPT issue, but hasn't given up on it.

The question may come up during her visit. If so, the administration would ask Pakistan to sign the NPT in return for an offer to ask Congress to remove the Pressler Amendment that has precluded Pakistan alone from receiving any kind of U.S. assistance, and also for a commitment from India that it would follow suit.

Otherwise, even the U.S. private investments that have trickled into Pakistan in recent years and the aid that reaches Pakistan from international agencies might be jeopardized. Benazir Bhutto's unwillingness to go along with such arrangements could even cool U.S. interest in helping to solve the festering question of Kashmir. Therefore, a whole lot rides on the U.S. visit of Pakistan's prime minister, who as a photogenic and U.S.-educated woman leader has considerable appeal to Americans who follow world affairs.

The Killing Fields in Karachi

Karachi, Pakistan's largest metropolis, has been for some time making news—all of it bad—as a city riddled with violence. The seeds were planted by the military strongman, Gen. Zia Ul Haq (the same army chief of staff who overthrew and executed Prime Minister Zulfikar Bhutto, Benazir's father) when he ruled Pakistan from 1977 to 1988. Initially a short-sighted political game was played when the Urdu-speaking Mohajirs, refugees who had fled from India to settle in and around Karachi, were encouraged to form their own narrow political organization—the Mohajir Qaumi (national) Movement. Soon they were pitted against the local Sindhis, as well as the Pathan and the Punjabi population. The political unrest then degenerated into violence, kidnappings for ransom, and widespread militancy—all fed by the Kalashnikov culture that accompanied the Afghan war.

Today, the lawlessness has taken yet another ugly turn into inter-Muslim Shi'i-Sunni conflict—manifested by tit-for-tat machine gun attacks on worshippers in both Shi'i and Sunni mosques. Rumor mills blame police indifference or complicity, local warlords, or a "foreign hand," generally implying Indian retaliation for rumors of a Pakistani hand in killings in Kashmir or in Indian cities such as Bombay. Because the government has yet to re-establish law and order in Karachi, Benazir is accused of spending more time abroad than at home.

Religious Right Gains in Indian Elections

In India, where problems are on a scale to match the giant country's size, the troubles can be divided into short- and long-range categories. Immediately, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao has to deal with serious electoral setbacks his Congress Party suffered in March in Gujarat and Maharashtra states after serious earlier losses in Andhra Pradesh and Karanataka. The defeat in Maharashtra is particularly damaging to Rao's own government and to the Congress Party. While it removes from the scene a potential political rival from within the Congress Party, Bombay Chief Minister Sharad Pawar, it weakens Rao's base and strengthens another rival, Arjun Singh, who resigned not long ago from the Rao cabinet and who has vowed to oppose him at every front.

The right-wing Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the extremist right-wing Hindu Shiv Sena made notable gains. It is clear that Congress no longer can rely on "the Muslim vote bank" or the large under-class voter list of Harijans and the scheduled castes. The next few months may very well determine the future course of political stability within the Indian democracy. Even a potential rallying point for the Congress Party such as Sonia Gandhi, widow of assassinated Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, may not be of much help now.

One thing going for India is the large quantity of investments coming in from abroad, especially the United States. The only down side of the foreign investments is the risk of creating an economy that suits the investor and not the local consumer. Growing inflation and the falling value of the Indian rupee already have hit the poor hard and there are no prospects of the trend being arrested soon.

Whatever economic gains are made are neutralized in no time by Indian demographics. India's registrar general says the population of the country will pass the billion mark within the next five years. At the present growth rate of 2.01 percent per year, India is likely to cross the two billion mark by the year 2050.

India has 50,000 new mouths to feed every day. Instead of concentrating on the population problem, however, politicians are promising cheap food grains to the electorate, knowing full well that their pledges are not realistic.

Alongside the rather dismal economic indicators are reports of corruption at all levels. According to a recent survey by the Times of India, bribes must be offered to receive such basic services as police protection, school admissions, bank loans and food ration cards. The Times reported that 80 percent of respondents condemned lawyers and 98 percent thought politicians were corrupt. Judges and journalists also were rated negatively, and 85 percent said corruption had increased during the past three years.

Against this backdrop of rising corruption and political instability many observers question India's giving priority to expenditures on defense and nuclear weapons development.

More Reasons to Solve The Kashmir Question

In his recently released memoirs, a former president of India, R. Venkatraman, observes that as Indian defense minister he had suggested in 1983 to Indira Gandhi that "Ladakh be made a Union territory as demanded by the local people, Jammu be given the status of a state, and the Kashmir valley be dealt with as a separate entity." The statement shows clearly that, like many others, he does not consider the Instrument of Accession signed by the maharaja of Kashmir (to which the government of India frequently alludes) as a legal document. Nor does he consider Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which accords a special status to Kashmir as part of India, as final. President Venkatraman could not, I am sure, make a similar statement concerning any other part of the Union. Foreign leaders who rush to offer their political support to India would do well to read the Venkatraman memoirs. If anything, the former president of India has said that the final status of Kashmir is far from resolved and that there are several possible equitable solutions. He has offered his suggestions.

When the U.S.-blessed India-Pakistan Forum met recently in Delhi to discuss ways of reducing tensions between the two countries, it attempted to tackle the Kashmir issue as well. The Forum is an exercise in conflict resolution. Men and women outside of the government are invited to express their views freely. Since they are not politically answerable, the views expressed are likely to be less inhibited. Thus far Kashmir has defied resolution.

If the rumor mills of Washington are to be relied on, it is understood that the Clinton administration has called upon both India and Pakistan to consider, besides joining Kashmir to India or to Pakistan, a third solution in their bilateral talks. That is that Kashmiris be given the option of independence, if they choose it.

If India and Pakistan should agree to the rumored U.S. proposal, the talks in the future could become either bilateral or tri-lateral. As the U.S. builds influence in the two countries, both India and Pakistan might be amenable to U.S. mediation, if not intervention. Particularly in the light of the latest Amnesty International and State Department reports of numerous human rights violations inside Kashmir, the dispute deserves immediate serious attention. That both India and Pakistan may have nuclear capability underlines the need to defuse this potentially incendiary issue.

M.M. Ali is a professor at the University of the District of Columbia.