Chomsky on Pakistan

Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri cites a change in India-Pakistan relations, agreements have been forged requiring a pre-notification of missile testing, and both countries will soon engage in a fourth round of composite dialogues. What else needs to happen to provide a positive tipping point in Indo-Pak relations?

There are a couple of major problems that need to be dealt with. One of them, of course, is Kashmir. The question is, can they figure out a joint solution to the Kashmir conflict? There are other questions: about energy integration, for example, pipelines going from Iran to India. India and Pakistan are now joint observers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which, if it works, will tend to bring about closer integration of the Asian countries altogether. So is Iran, and the Central Asian states, China of course, and Russia too. So basically the whole region except for South Korea has joined. And Japan probably won't join.

Meanwhile, India-China relations are certainly improving. They are better than they were 20 or 30 years ago. There are now some joint energy projects. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation was China-initiated but there is also an India-initiated programme by the former [Petroleum and Natural Gas minister Mani Shankar Aiyar. He had been initiating similar plans for Asian integration. And China and Pakistan have pretty close relations so through that connection India and Pakistan may overcome some of their conflicts.

In general, the conflicts in the region, the internal conflicts, most of them have been softened, so they are less sharp than they were in the recent past. This is partly because of economic integration, partly because of the danger of confrontation, partly because of outside enemies. All of them want to become integrated with the west Asian energy producing system. That brings them together as well through joint projects.

So I do not know if there is an actual tipping point. But I think there is a gradual improvement of relations and a willingness to put aside what could be major tensions, like a terrorist operation in Mumbai or something attributed to Pakistanis. There are attempts at reconciliation, which is a healthy development. Now Kashmir is going to be a difficult one.

Do you think Kashmir is a territorial issue or an issue related to secular or religious identity?

Yes, obviously there is the identity factor in it. The Muslim population and the Hindu population do separate on those lines. Does that mean they have to be broken up? Not necessarily. There are 160 million Muslims living in India. There has been tension and some serious atrocities but it has been over the centuries a reasonably integrated society. There are real dangers. The Hindu nationalist danger is certainly serious.

Do you think the Pakistan and Indian diaspora in the United States or the UK are doing anything to escalate tensions?

For some reason, which I do not entirely understand, that is a very general fact about diaspora communities. In fact, almost every one I know of. For example the Jewish community in the US, its organized part, is much more rapid and extreme than Israel. The Irish community in south Boston was much more extreme than Northern Ireland. Take, say, the Armenian genocide. All Armenians want to have it recognized but the pressure for having national declarations is mostly coming from the diaspora. Within Armenia itself, people have other concerns. For example they would like friendly relations with Turkey.

I suspect that the tendency towards a kind of extremism in diaspora communities may have something to do with keeping them unified. Otherwise they would tend to assimilate. In the home country they are not going to assimilate, you do not have to prove you are an Armenian or Israeli or Irish. But if you are in the US and you want to maintain some kind of cultural identity as a group it's going to have some relation to the home country. And often more extreme positions are taken than in the home country because of the need to maintain identity. The one that I know best is the Jewish community but, as far as I know, others are much like it.

So yes, going back to your question, what I have seen of the Indian diaspora -- I do not know much about the Pakistani diaspora -- is that it tends to be more extreme, more pro-BJP than the native population would. At least that is what I have seen.

India is attempting to re-negotiate its nuclear agreement with the US, specifically to remove a US legal requirement that it halt nuclear cooperation if India tests another nuclear weapon. If India is successful in renegotiating that agreement, what are the implications for Indo-Pak relations?

As soon as the US made the agreement with India, that had immediate and predictable implications. This agreement was in serious violation of American law, the export law from the early 1970s that was passed after the Indian test ["Smiling Buddha" in 1974]. It was also in violation of the rules of the two major international organisations, one that controls, or tries to control, nuclear material exports, the other that tries to control missile technology exports.
There are two nuclear missile control regimes, and they both require notification before anybody's going to do anything that would be inconsistent with their rules. And the US did neither, did not even notify them.

It is a sharp blow against two of the elements of the international system that is trying to prevent proliferation of nuclear technology, weapons technology, and missile technology. It was predictable that as soon as the US broke it someone else would break it too. And shortly after, China approached Pakistan with sort of a similar agreement. I do not know exactly where it stands now but it is clear that's what they would do.

Russia will probably do the same and others will do the same. Once you open the door others are going to follow. And that is a serious blow to the whole non-proliferation system.

That is why there is a very serious critique of the US agreement with India within the disarmament community. People like Gary Milhollin, for example, very sharply criticised it. Michael Krepon who is the founder of the Stimson Centre and a major specialist, has an article in a recent issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warning that this could very well lead to the breakdown of all nonproliferation systems. Milhollin also said for the US it is being done partly just for commercial reasons. It opens exports markets in India. In fact, Condoleezza Rice testified in Congress to that effect: that it would have commercial value to the United States. Milhollin suggests, if I am remembering correctly, that the main exports might be military jets. That is exactly what we do not want because that's going to again be a trigger for escalation. India gets more advanced offensive military forces, Pakistan will want the same, and China will want the same.

You mentioned the existence of extremism in the diaspora, but looking internally within South Asia, how much has the US-Pakistan alliance in the so-called war on terror been responsible for the rise of extremism in Pakistan?

I am not sure it has. These are very complex problems internal to Pakistan. For example, is the United States concerned about acts inside Iran from groups based in Pakistan? It is probably fostering them. One has to be a little cautious when talking about terrorism. From the US point of view, there's good terrorism and bad terrorism. And Pakistan has its own problems. Musharraf has to walk a very delicate line, also with regard to allowing some democratic opening in the country, which is not easy.

If extremism is on the rise in South Asia, which a lot of people say it is, how does one go about undermining extremism, in this case religious extremism?

In India and Pakistan there is a very dangerous development. One of the roots of the BJP is a quasi-fascist Hindu extremist movement. And for India that is extremely dangerous, as is Muslim extremism, as is Christian extremism in the United States. These are very dangerous movements. They are not inherently destructive. They could take a constructive path but that's not the way they usually develop.

How do you combat them? The same way you combat any other dangerous movement: education, organisation, looking at the issues that make them arise. Often they arise out of real or perceived oppression, as a reaction to it. So, for example, take Islamic radicalism. A large measure of it was a reaction to the fact that secular nationalism was destroyed -- partly because of its own internal corruption, partly because of external force.

When you destroy the opportunities for secular alternatives to develop, people are not going to give up. They may turn to religious movements for identity. That is one standard reaction to oppression and a loss of opportunity.

You can see it happening very clearly in the Islamic world, the Muslim world. In fact, the United States and Israel both fostered religious extremist movements in an effort to undermine secular nationalism. Hamas, for example, is an outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was supported by Israel as an attempt to undermine the secular PLO. Hizbollah was the direct result of the Israeli conquest of part of Lebanon, in an effort to destroy the PLO -- and ended up with Hizbollah on their hands.

The US has almost always tended to support the most extreme religious fundamentalist group in the region. Take Saudi Arabia, the oldest and most valued ally of the United States and also the most extreme Islamic fundamentalist state. By comparison, Iran looks like a flourishing democracy. And there are good reasons for it. I do not mean good in a moral sense. There are understandable reasons.

Similarly, inside Pakistan, the Ziaul Haq regime, which did drive the country towards religious extremism, was very strongly supported by the US and its Saudi ally. During those years, the Reagan years, that is when Saudi Arabia was developing its network of madarssahs, religious extremist schools. Ziaul Haq was introducing Islamic extremism in the higher educational system, in social life, and so on, fully supported by America because this was part of their global policies.

Micheal Shank is a doctoral student at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .