India, Pakistan and the Shanghai spirit

India and Pakistan have been engaged in an uninterrupted multi-level and multi-dimensional dialogue for nearly three years. Opinions would vary, perhaps sharply, on what has been achieved so far and what still defies meaningful progress.

The glass may be seen as half-full or half- empty. But even a rudimentary analysis of the situation would show that multilateral diplomacy, especially in regional organisations, offers opportunities to narrow down differences on many issues and discover perfectly negotiable paths for pursuing common interests. Such a discovery would doubtless impact favourably on the onerous effort in the so-called secret channels reportedly grappling with proposals to resolve difficult bilateral issues.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) certainly provides one forum where the two sub-continental powers could put aside zero-sum games and pool their creative resources, as indeed, talent to strengthen the six-nation grouping to their common advantage.

The just concluded summit marked the 5th anniversary of the original Shanghai Five transforming themselves into an organisation that has now Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan as members with India, Pakistan, Iran and Mongolia as observers. All of them except India participated at the level of the head of state. Afghanistan, a strategic neighbour, which does not as yet have even an observer-status, was present at the summit as a special guest in the person of President Karzai. India was, however, represented by its petroleum minister.

Viewed from energy-starved South Asia which has a particularly high stake in energy-related diplomacy and which may, as a region, also benefit from a multi-polar world order, the situation at the summit was ironic. Over the years Pakistan has accumulated much frustration as its ambitious Central Asia policy was constrained by disorder in Afghanistan.

At the conceptual level, Pakistan had to overcome a wall of distrust with Russia and perhaps smaller obstacles with the fellow Muslim states on the other side of the Oxus. But the last two summits of SCO engaged Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and President Musharraf personally and Pakistan went to the fifth summit with an intensely argued brief for full membership on the basis of great dividends for itself as well as the organisation.

The professionals in the Pakistan Foreign Office would surely have alerted their president to the possibility that too strong a plea for full membership might be a trifle unseasonable. Donald Rumsfeld had already launched a broadside at Iran's presence in a summit which focuses on terrorism in the hope that his special semantics would confuse the enlargement issue. Moscow knew of New Delhi's new ambivalence and would not have committed itself wholeheartedly to a debate on this question when Pakistan loomed large but India was fading away on the horizon - by choice.

Musharraf made the right choice. Even if the musical metaphor militated against it, he struck a powerful chord by committing his rhetoric to Pakistan's desire to join the organisation and, no less importantly, to what Pakistan could do for it.

In the emerging strategic environment, President Putin's announcement that Gazprom would be ready to participate in the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline was a note in a major key. Despite what Rumsfeld said, and perhaps because of it, SCO members and observers had no quarrel with Iran's energy policies. Nuclear weapon capability apart, no regional power is impressed by anti-Iran terrorism charge. What the leaders of Iran and Uzbekistan said bilaterally may well reflect the general drift of thought in SCO.

By comparison, India seems to have been hobbled by the immense weight of prudence demanded, in its judgment, by the state of play in its strategic breakthrough with the United States. President Bush has still to steer his agreement with Manmohan Singh through the Congress. Its implications for US legislation on nuclear issues, global non-proliferation regimes and South Asia are momentous.

Congressional scrutiny remains a delicate matter even if the outcome is reasonably guaranteed. India must have calculated that it was not the right moment to assume a high profile in a regional organisation that is beginning to attract pre-emptive diplomatic fire from the West as the Warsaw Pact of the East, forcing its founding members to issue urgent disclaimers.

But is prudence during the congressional passage of the 'India bill' the only reason for India's procrastination? If so, the portents are not too bad. But India may well be moving away from an active participation in the creation of a more balanced world order. Its stand on the Iranian issue in the IAEA was an early warning of the implications of its new partnership with the United States.

SCO embodies many of the principles that India invoked in writing resounding declarations with Moscow. For India, they meant instant support on curbing the uprising in Kashmir. But now that SCO is poised to go far beyond the pieties of anti-terrorism and anti-separatism and demarcate, for open-ended cooperation, a part of the globe that would have nearly half the world population and a large portion of its known energy resources, it is beginning to act coy.

There is no chance of a militaristic NATO vs SCO battle lines in the region. But inevitably there would be rivalry and competition for sources of energy and the pipelines that carry it. If Iran and Pakistan become full members, a vast stretch of land from the Pacific to the Gulf and deep into South Asia undergoes a subtle strategic change.

India can extend it to the limits of the Indian Ocean. Will India opt for that or weigh in on the other side to strengthen the United States' bid for dominance? Russia has legitimate interests in the region and China is driven both by economy and national security to support all moves that prevent hegemony by any single power over this crucial area. In the Foreign Office and elsewhere, Pakistan has the expertise to read the next generation great game. It is time to put this expertise to maximum use. The fifth SCO summit has set the agenda.

(Pakistan Daily Times)