Can China Spark a Detente in South Asia?

When Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif landed in Beijing on Monday for talks on diffusing the growing Kashmiri border crisis, he expected friendly ears from Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji and President Jiang Zemin. Instead, he got an earful.

Faced with a choice between blindly supporting a longtime regional ally almost universally condemned for its actions in starting the latest crisis or reaping the multiple benefits of playing South Asia’s peacemaker, China appears to have chosen diplomacy over friendship. Beijing seems to have seized a unique political opportunity to improve ties with India through demonstrable neutrality on Islamabad’s Kashmiri gambit.

Meanwhile, Washington, eager to repair fractured China-U.S. relations in the aftermath of the Belgrade embassy bombing, may have been content to subordinate its role as global peacemaker to Beijing in this case. China’s political clout with Islamabad has far outweighed U.S. influence there since the end of the Cold War.

Beijing’s willingness to work with the U.S. in mediating an end to the current Indo-Pakistani conflict (it too has a lingering Kashmiri border dispute with India) is an encouraging sign of China’s diplomatic maturity. It is also a tacit admission that years of unwavering support for Pakistan’s increasingly Islamist army and meddlesome intelligence operatives as well as its constant flow of off-the-shelf nuclear bomb designs and M-11 missile technology to Pakistan’s semi-indigenous nuclear program may need serious rethinking in future Asian geostrategic planning.

Beijing is now asking the same question many foreign policy planners have been asking for years: Can the world trust Pakistan’s political, military and intelligence leadership to keep the peace in an unstable region laced with extremism on every glacier? For the moment, the answer appears to be “not easily.”

Three problems face China and any other country seeking to diffuse the crisis caused by Pakistani-backed “freedom fighters” crossing over Kashmir’s “line of control”:

* It is unclear who is running Pakistan. Is it Sharif? Is it his Talibanist father? Is it the traditionally powerful army, increasingly populated by Islamists? Or is it some group of radical Islamic extremists running intelligence operations behind the veil of corrupt politicians?

Uncertainty over who makes the ultimate decisions in Pakistan are fueled by unconfirmed reports of politically authorized wiretaps on the army chief’s home telephones in the weeks since the Kargil initiative was launched, possible internal leaking of incriminating military-to-military conversations taped by Islamists inside Pakistan’s intelligence services and clear indications of how closely army officials still control what civilian policymakers say and do in times of crisis.

* Face-saving gestures are needed for all sides. One credible proposal under discussion at the moment would have the Chinese, with heavy U.S. input, offer more concerted diplomatic efforts to pressure New Delhi into earnest bilateral discussions over Kashmir’s future, but only after Sharif publicly declares Pakistan’s willingness to “cease and desist” all current and future misadventures into Indian-controlled Kashmir.

To achieve this admission of Sharif’s faux pas, President Clinton might need to provide Sharif with a face-saving exit, such as a one-on-one meeting on the president’s next European excursion or possibly even a White House invitation, to coincide with the International Monetary Fund’s release of Pakistan’s next $100 million funding tranche. Any slip-ups by Sharif and the IMF funding would be withdrawn, and any push to ease U.S. congressional economic and military sanctions against Pakistan would be shelved.

To save the Pakistan army’s face abroad and prevent a Pakistani military coup at home, China could ask India to lower the intensity of its anti-guerrilla air campaign until September’s heavy snowfalls as part of a wider Kashmir resolution proposal. The Islamic insurgents could then slip out under the veil of Mother Nature’s skirt while campaigning Indian politicians could claim peace dividends with China if not Pakistan.

* There must be a viable solution for the Kashmiri people. China could take the first step in a wider Kashmir solution by suggesting mechanisms to resolve its own border dispute with India in Kashmir. Warmer relations between New Delhi and Beijing would ease Indian anxiety over the Islamabad-Beijing axis and reduce Indian insecurities to cut a fair deal with Pakistan for the oppressed people of Kashmir. Reduced Indian belligerence would permit the alarmingly few moderate voices left in Pakistan to reassert reason and coherence in its conflict resolution dialogue.

Ultimately, India and Pakistan have to agree on a formula for Kashmiri self-determination.

If Pakistan is a responsible nuclear democracy like Sharif asserts, he must make rational and thoughtful decisions rather than allow Islamic zealots to run amok. But if he is not able to or does not want to embark on the more rational course that his Chinese counterparts implored him to take, China working with India, need not be complicit in Pakistan’s recklessness to make South Asia safe once again.