Several distinct but related events have shown that India’s alleged Pakistan policy is either non-existent or self-defeating. First, there is the all-but-complete transfer of two 635-mw Chinese nuclear reactors to Pakistan, which will allow them to build 24 more nuclear bombs every year in addition to their existing stockpile of 70-90, already bigger than India’s.Second, the violence in Jammu and Kashmir is a direct result of the decision by the government to withdraw 30,000 troops. Third, the apparent willingness by Afghan president Hamid Karzai to cooperate with the intensely anti-India Haqqani network implies the total failure of India’s efforts to be a stakeholder in that nation.China has simply ignored the proforma noises that the US made at the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group regarding likely weapons proliferation because of the new reactors being transferred to Pakistan. Selig Harrison, writing in The Boston Globe, pointed out how proliferation is part of Pakistani national policy. Despite this, and despite all the government of India’s exertions to ram the so-called ‘nuclear deal’ down India’s throat, America has no qualms about the Pakistani stockpile.

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Thus the dubious nuclear deal has had the effect of strengthening Pakistan’s hand, while constraining India’s puny efforts at building a deterrent against China, exactly as opponents of the deal said, while the government proceeded with it in a haze of lies and subterfuge.

Second, the sudden upsurge of violence in Jammu and Kashmir is almost certainly a calibrated and calculated ratcheting up of tension by the ISI. Intercepted phone calls suggest that the ISI and pals like the LeT are paying ‘rage-boys’ to indulge in stone-throwing and other violence, expecting to induce over-reaction by the stressed-out paramilitary troops and police. This, then, can lead to manufactured ‘martyrs’. The ISI has reason to believe it is on a winning track. Statements by the prime minister in Havana, Sharm-el-Sheikh and Thimphu have implied that, succumbing to American pressure, India is willing to make concessions on Kashmir to Pakistan, the only issue being how to market such a climbdown to the Indian public.The coded talk of ‘creative solutions’ and ‘trust deficit’ have been interpreted by the Pakistanis as a ‘deficit of will’, and the likelihood that they can make J&K simply too expensive for India to hang on to. The proximate cause is the withdrawal of 30,000 troops. To the ISI, this spells “we have the UPA on the run”. They perceive a ‘backbone deficit’ and lack of will.

Intriguingly, this is almost the same feeling that the ISI has about the Obama administration after its disastrous declaration of a timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan. They, and their proxy, the Taliban, feel that all they have to do is to wait things out — the Americans have no will to fight. Apparently president Karzai implicitly believes this — witness his alleged overtures to the Taliban and the Haqqani network. Karzai, Taliban and Haqqanis are all Pashtuns.

Pashtuns account for about 40% of the Afghan population, with large groups of Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras among others. India has traditionally had good relationships with the Pashtuns but even better ties to the Tajiks, who, under the charismatic military genius Ahmed Shah Massoud of the Northern Alliance, held off the Soviets and then the Taliban.Now all the blood and treasure — hundreds of millions of dollars — that India has poured into reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan seem to be in jeopardy because the Pakistanis have convinced the US and others that India has no business whatsoever in Afghanistan. India was not even invited to talks about that nation.

The irony is that the Pashtun issue is one of Pakistan’s key weaknesses — the Durand Line arbitrarily divides Pashtun territory into Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pashtuns themselves have never recognised it, and if given a chance, would create an independent Pashtunistan on both sides of the Durand Line. This, of course, would be disaster for Pakistan, as it might induce restive Baluchis and Sindhis to secede as well. In fact, some analysts suggest just such a balkanisation to solve the Pakistan problem.

Somehow, the enterprising ISI has turned this weakness into a strength, by hijacking the Pashtun elements into their proxy Taliban. Similarly, the ISI, which faced the wrath of America after 9/11 with its peremptory warning to president Musharraf to behave, or else, has turned it into a $25 billion bonanza. Ironically, the Americans are in effect subsidising the Pakistani purchase of Chinese reactors!

Instead of containing Pakistan with a pincer movement with one front in Afghanistan, India is now in the unenviable situation that the ISI has achieved the ‘strategic depth’ it has always craved. Uncertain about its goals and ever-eager to appease, India has allowed a failing state one-seventh its size to smother it. Lack of strategic intent has led to dismal failure yet again.