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Veni, vidi, vici? Not exactly, but not bad, either

In a nutshell, the much ballyhooed Clinton visit to India went off better than I expected. The cooing noises between Clinton and Indian parliamentarians and Indian businessmen were nothing short of deafening. India did not cave in and sign the CTBT. Furthermore, the global media seems to have improved its opinion about India -- a striking reminder that propaganda, positioning and marketing actually work.

I guess India is breathing a collective sigh of relief that the Bill Clinton visit to the Indian subcontinent went off without any damage to Clinton. Of course, there was plenty of damage to innocents as a result of the Clinton visit. There were 'Clinton specials' courtesy Pakistani terrorists (Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and al-Badr) in Jammu and Kashmir: The massacre of 35 Sikhs in Anantnag, the storming and capture of a BSF outpost in Srinagar by a suicide squad.

Unfortunately for the terrorists, this was probably not the most tactically wise thing to do with the world's television cameras in attendance. But then they are not exactly known for their calm, rational thinking. If these acts indicated anything to the global media, it was that their perpetrators were not exactly "freedom fighters" -- it was clear that they were bloodthirsty men who are a disgrace to the tenets of Islam.

I mourn the deaths of these innocent Sikhs. I hope that some of those hotheaded Khalistanis will realise now that their enemy is not India; it is Pakistan which has been trying to manipulate them for its own ends. As the Sikhs realised in 1947 when Lahore, the capital of Ranjit Singh's empire and a city that had a Sikh-Hindu majority, was arbitrarily given to Pakistan by that crazy cartographer Radcliffe and the Sikhs had to flee murderous Pakistanis.

But I did read about some 'Khalistanis' including one Jasjit Singh who claimed that the Indian intelligence agency RAW was behind this murder of Sikhs. That seems far-fetched. What exactly would the motive be? If RAW wanted to create such a scene, wouldn't it have been much easier to massacre some Kashmiri Muslims (many more of them) or Kashmiri Hindus (nobody cares about them anyway)?

It is reported that the five terrorists responsible for this outrage have been killed in an encounter with Indian security forces. It occurred to me that there seems to be a pattern. I have been hearing quite a lot lately about militants being killed in encounters; hardly any militants are being captured alive.

I have a theory -- that the successful hijacking of the Indian Airlines flight in December (and the increasingly bold attacks on the armed forces since the military dictator Musharraf took over in Pakistan) might turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory for the terrorists. Although Indian politicians managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory inthat episode, I wonder if the security forces have made a sea-change to their approach.

The release of Pakistani fundamentalist Masood Azhar after the hijacking was possible only because he had been captured and lodged comfortably in an Indian jail, as per the 'velvet glove' strategy. At great risk to life and limb, the Rashtriya Rifles and the Border Security Force have tried to capture such militants alive. However, it appears the intelligence agencies are not making much use of the terrorists when they should be interrogating them or having them tearfully confess or recant or name their paymasters on camera.

Therefore, I suspect the soldiers' reasoning is, why not just shoot the blighters in the first place instead of having them go scot-free later? Maybe a 'zero-tolerance' regime is in place tacitly. The 'iron fist' helped liquidate terrorism in the Punjab. Maybe they will try that in Jammu and Kashmir now.

One of the ironies of life in the Indian subcontinent is that Indians by and large and perhaps Bangladeshis too, view Americans quite benignly despite the baggage of history and US hostility in 1971. It is the Pakistanis, the beneficiaries of considerable US largesse, who view the US as their bitter enemy. I worried whether they might launch a spectacular and suicidal attempt to attack Clinton while he was in India. Their theory would have been to make India look bad.

Clearly, the Americans were also worried about terrorist attacks on Clinton in Pakistan or in Pakistani airspace -- they went to some trouble to use elaborate decoys and ruses. They shipped Clinton not aboard Air Force One or a C-17 Galaxy but in an unmarked Gulfstream executive jet which itself was mirrored by another Gulfstream with American markings! Yes, those Stinger surface-to-air missiles they lavished on the Pakistanis are coming back to haunt them.

According to the media, the reception in Islamabad was a little on the frosty side, given that Clinton mostly lectured to the Pakistanis. He said, "Attacks on civilians across the Line of Control must stop. There is no military solution to Kashmir," and he warned them that they would be even more isolated if they persisted. He offered to do whatever was in his power to help resolve the Kashmir issue, but he ruled out his role as a mediator.

Rather satisfying from the Indian point of view, but there is no need to gloat. For after all, Clinton did go to Islamabad, the Indian foreign ministry's frantic lobbying notwithstanding. (Although this did turn out to be another Pyrrhic victory for the Pakistanis -- they got not support, but a tongue-lashing from Clinton for all their pains. And the deserted roads and sullen people of Islamabad on television were a nice contrast to Clinton dancing with Indian villagers. It suggested subliminally to the West that Indians may be poor, but they are "people like us", not terrorists out to "get us".)

It is true that the Indian foreign ministry (see my previous column "Wanted: a foreign policy with backbone") has no concept of the good fight. They have no idea which fights to fight and which to walk away from. They should either have walked away from the Clinton visit to Islamabad or laid down an ultimatum, instead of looking sheepish about it. But the strategic issue is still the tacit equating of India with Pakistan -- whereas India must insist on parity with China. This is India's fault for being obsessed with Pakistan instead of the real enemy, China.

There are complexities, of course. There was a remarkably candid report from UPI's National Security Editor Martin Sieff (thanks to my perspicacious friend Bapa Rao who forwarded it to me) which suggested that Clinton, with all his faults, is a bit of a visionary who sees the long-term benefits of an alliance with India, but his team really couldn't care less about India.

Says Sieff: "Clinton has brought virtually all his top foreign policymakers and other top government leaders and strategists with him to India. But few of them appear to share his enthusiasm and his vision. Secretary of State Madeleine K Albright is only in India because the President is here. She has never shown the slightest interest in either India's potential or in its dilemmas."

As for the famous Strobe Talbott, here is what Sieff says: "But Talbott does not see India as an economic opportunity or strategic partner for America, too. Along with his close friend and colleague, State Department Director of Policy Planning Morton Halperin, he sees it as a problem because of its determination to retain its own nuclear deterrent."

I am not surprised at all, as Talbott has had a single-point mantra -- India must cap and rollback its nuclear program. So much for all the 'kitchen-diplomacy' between Talbott and that nice man, Jaswant Singh.

Never mind that India has been a responsible, non-proliferating power, much unlike the lovely Chinese, who have proliferated nuclear and missile technology all over the place.

It is good to give the obnoxious Albright a taste of her own medicine

Rajeev Srinivasan