China’s reluctance to declare the JeM chief Masood Azhar a global
terrorist is evidence of its symbiotic ties with Pakistan. It will protect it
to keep a check on India’s influence in the region
By Col
R Hariharan | Global Trends | India Legal | March 24, 2019 |
Are we missing the wood for the trees by focusing on China
putting a “technical hold” on the listing of Masood Azhar, chief of
Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), as an international terrorist under the
UN sanctions regime? It would seem so because China’s response was not
unexpected; it had been taking the same stance for the last decade. And it is
Pakistan, not China, who is the main villain of the piece. India’s relentless
campaign to get the UN Security Council (UNSC) to list Azhar as a global terrorist
is not the whole, but part, of its efforts to internationally isolate Pakistan.
The fact that 14 members of the UNSC supported listing the JeM
leader against China’s lone negative vote speaks for the success of India’s
campaign against Pakistan for sponsoring and supporting trans-border terrorist
operations against India.
The proposal to designate Azhar under the 1267 Al Qaida
Sanctions Committee of the UNSC was moved by France, the UK and the US on
February 27, nearly two weeks after a JeM-inspired suicide car bomb attack on a
CRPF convoy killed 40 people in Pulwama in J&K. The committee members had
10 working days to raise any objection to the proposal.
China had put a “technical hold” on the proposal, seeking “more
time to examine” it. It said the move would give it time for a “thorough and
in-depth assessment” of the case and help the parties concerned to engage in
more talks to find a “lasting solution” acceptable to all. China’s explanation
would have been laughable, except for the grim fact that it enables Pakistan to
delay concrete action to dismantle terror groups operating from its soil
against India.
The anger against China after it blocked the UNSC move was
palpable on Indian social media. People could not understand what was
“technical” about recognising Azhar as a global terrorist. There were calls for
boycott of Chinese goods, though they have become indispensable to trade and
commerce and to the growth of mobile communication and the power industry in
the country.
The public outrage against China is understandable as the grim
sequel to the Pulwama attack took India and Pakistan to the brink of war. India
had responded to the attack with an air strike on a JeM training centre at
Balakot in Khyber Pahtunkhwa province in Pakistan. The Pakistan Air Force’s
counter-strike in J&K two days later and the capture of an Indian fighter
pilot, Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, in Pakistan turned the situation
ugly.
Further deterioration of the situation was averted when the US,
China, Saudi Arabia and UAE intervened and claimed credit for defusing the
situation after Pakistan released the Indian pilot. But the security situation
along the India-Pakistan border and LoC in J&K continues to be anomalous.
Pakistan continues to fire across the border while Indian troops are carrying
out operations to eliminate terrorists and security agencies are uncovering and
dismantling sources of supply and finance of Pakistan-inspired terrorist
support networks within the state.
High public expectations on l’affaire Azhar have to be
understood in the context of events that preceded it. India had been regularly
briefing foreign diplomats about the situation leading up to the UNSC meeting.
It gave a detailed dossier on Azhar and JeM involvement in terrorist activity
to the members, including China. The media gave a huge build-up before the UNSC
met to consider the listing of Azhar.
Unfortunately, the “friend or foe” binary vision of the visual
and social media in the country got very shrill in the events leading up to the
UNSC meeting. As the Indo-Pak confrontation happened close to the general
election, it inevitably led to a lot of chest-thumping of the ruling party,
countered equally and vehemently by the Opposition. Cumulatively, these
developments influenced their understanding of China’s stand on the Azhar
issue. People expected China to be more sensitive to India’s concerns about
terrorism as their hopes were kindled after Prime Minister Narendra Modi met
Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Wuhan unofficial summit last year.
In this context, the statement of Liu Zongyi, senior fellow at
the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, quoted in the Communist
Party of China’s tabloid, Global Times, is interesting. He said the question of
whether to list Azhar as a global terrorist has been a long-lasting dispute
between China and India. In 2017, New Delhi’s demand was partly behind the
Doklam stand-off. “If New Delhi succeeds in having both JeM and its leader
black-listed, Islamabad would be branded a state sponsor of terrorism and
isolated on the international stage. This is what India wants to pursue till
the end,” he added.
International columnist Fareed Zakaria’s quote that “foreign
policy is a matter of costs and benefits, not theology” applies to China’s
negative stand on Azhar. It has shown that China’s approach to India will be
transactional, selective and based on the hard reality of its national
self-interest rather than ephemeral notions of harmony and bonhomie.
China-Pakistan relations are built upon what Chanakya said long ago: “There is
some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without
self-interest. This is a bitter truth.”
Pakistan is increasingly becoming dependent on
China—strategically, economically, politically, diplomatically and militarily.
China will continue to use Pakistan’s vulnerability to protect and pamper it,
not merely because it is its long-term friend and strategic ally in South Asia.
It suits China that Pakistan firmly keeps a check on India’s strategic strength
and influence in the region. Pakistan enlarges China’s options in handling
India, its potential challenger in the region and beyond.
Moreover, China is under pressure to make a success of the China
Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in which it has invested over $40 billion to
showcase the Belt and Road Initiative which has come under heavy weather.
CPEC’s infrastructure would enable China to flex its strategic naval power to
secure its interests in the Indian Ocean Region and South Asia, which had been
dominated by India’s naval power.
Diplomat Gautam Bambawale, who served as India’s ambassador to
both Islamabad and Beijing, while addressing the Indian Association of Foreign
Affairs Correspondents, recently put the Wuhan meeting in perspective. He said
he was averse to the term “Wuhan reset” as some people have described the
informal summit. He said both India and China “saw what happened at Doklam,
analysed that particular experience and drew their own conclusions from it”.
Then they independently came to the decision that it was “much more important
to have a relatively harmonious and balanced relationship between the two most
populous states on the globe”.
He cautioned that “if the word (Wuhan) ‘reset’ in any way
implies that the tensions and ill temperedness of Doklam was being brushed
aside or under the carpet, then I strongly object to this term”. He added that
he would go along with the use of the term “reset” if it described “a cool
reappraisal of the relationship and a desire to put it on an even keel”.
On the Azhar episode, the diplomat was of the opinion that India
must have a transactional approach to the issue. “Perhaps China will permit the
listing to move ahead if there is something we can do for them or offer them in
return? If there is, a bargain can indeed be struck,” he added.
So it is not surprising that despite all the media hoopla over
the Azhar episode, India’s take on the issue was realistic as the Ministry of
External Affairs’ (MEA) carefully worded statement showed. The statement did
not even name China, but merely expressed disappointment “by this outcome. This
has prevented action by the international community to designate the leader of
Jaish-e-Mohammed, a proscribed and active terrorist organization, which has
claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir on
February 14, 2019”. However, one wishes the MEA had named China in the
statement, at least to signal that India was not happy with its role.
China is here to stay as a powerful neighbour. It is in India’s
interest to maintain a cordial working relationship with it, regardless of the
hiccups in bilateral relations from time to time. Bambawale in his speech
suggested an eight-point Pune Plan to build better relations with China.
These include maintaining high-level political relations,
enhanced and expanded military exchanges between both countries, working to
increase Chinese tourist visits to India through public-private partnership,
focusing on attracting more Chinese students, creating a financial model for Chinese
firms to modernise our railway stations, persuading it to join the
International Solar Alliance as a member and expanding engagement with the
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.
However, some of these proposals might become politically
controversial or inconvenient. But any foreign policy strategy to deal with
China runs the risk of getting mired in political controversy.
After Modi took foreign policy initiatives to the political main
stage with his signature showmanship, foreign policy has become one of the
mainstream issues in the national political discourse. In a way, it has become
a victim in the raucous election campaign, with rival political leaders making
short shrift of nuanced policy initiatives to dispense their penny wisdom to
the masses. Can political parties and leaders rise above petty politics to
build a consensus on foreign policy?
American elder statesman Henry A Kissinger may well be speaking
of India when he remarked that “our great foreign policy problem is our
divisions at home. Our greatest foreign policy need is national cohesion and a
return to the awareness that in foreign policy, we are all engaged in a common
national endeavour”.
Can our polity prove that Kissinger’s words do not apply to
India?
—The writer is a
military intelligence specialist on South Asia, associated with the Chennai
Centre for China Studies and the International Law and Strategic Studies
Institute
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