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C O M M E N T A R Y
Durable relations
India must commence a US-like E-IMET programme to build on such political capital as it has in the neighbourhood, says N.V.Subramanian.
27 January 2010: Whilst to the good, it is not clear how long the Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina government's decision to outlaw religion from politics will survive. Bangladesh's Islamic parties, including those that form the main opposition grouping lead by Khalida Zia, have provoked hostile relations with India, sheltered North East and especially ULFA terrorists, and been benign towards the Al-Qaeda and anti-India Pakistani terrorist groups.
Nepal is also in the grip of conflicting pro- and anti-India sentiments, with the Maoist former prime minister, Prachanda, raising anti-India rhetoric to new, unacceptable levels. Besides the centrist parties, the Nepalese army has decisively maintained the pro-India tilt, with its chief, an IMA graduate, General Chhatraman Singh Gurung, taking Indian advice and preventing Maoist infiltration into higher officer levels of the military, to uncontained Maoist anger.
Maldives' democracy has also been sustained by India's friendly military projection, which in 1988 prevented a Tamil mercenary takeover of the island nation. On the other hand, India's intervention in Sri Lanka with the IPKF failed in the absence of clear political objectives, but its role in the destruction of the LTTE (although controversial) and its warnings to the civilian leadership of possibilities of a military coup immediately afterwards have purchased some measure of goodwill. But threats of growing Chinese influence in Sri Lanka remain, and the just-concluded presidential election may not deliver political stability for some time.
Besides employing political-diplomatic and economic levers, can India try something else proactively with these troubled neighbours, for example, politicized defence cooperation, on the lines of the United States' Expanded International Military Education and Training (E-IMET) programme? Roughly on the pattern of the forerunner IMET programme, India offers military training to friendly foreign countries under the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) scheme which is funded, like in the original American model, by the foreign ministry. Elite military institutions like the National Defence College in New Delhi and the National Defence Services Staff College in Wellington, Tamil Nadu, are open to foreign military officers under ITEC. The former Bangladesh president and military ruler, Lieutenant-General H.M.Ershad, studied here on one such friendly course, while the Nepal army chief, General Gurung (mentioned above), was beneficiary of IMA training and higher courses.
ITEC has so far produced limited and mixed results because of very limited investments in it, and since military training forms a small and sometimes neglected component of it. For every General Gurung and his predecessor, General Rookmangud Katawal (also a product of Indian military institutions), who successively took Indian military hints to end Gyanendra's royalist coup and to keep Maoists out of Nepal's military, among other things, there is probably an Ershad, who Islamized Bangladesh, permitted Saudi and Wahhabi influence to grow, and enabled anti-India terrorists to flourish in latter regimes lead by Khalida Zia, which process the present PM, Sheikh Hasina, is keen and anxious to reverse to secure and save Bangladesh.
It is undeniable that India's political leadership has played a role in this, as it has in the past, but the moderation (or secularization) of Bangladesh is terrifyingly reversible, as is the case, in greater or lesser degree, and in different other ways, with the remaining of India's neighbours. (Pakistan is not considered in this piece because it needs separate redress.) In addition to political-diplomatic pressure, as mentioned earlier, political-military influence must also be exerted, in the form of, say, a redesigned ITEC programme, where military training is flagged as a special separate component like the US IMET, and part of it is tailored to meet pivotal Indian objectives in South Asia like America has done with its E-IMET initiative.
E-IMET was brilliantly conceived to suit US geo-strategic objectives after the end of the Cold War and its key aims serve Indian goals as well. The US E-IMET was established to educate "friends and allies in the proper management of their defence resources, improving their systems of military justice in accordance with internationally recognized principles of human rights and fostering a greater respect for, and understanding of, the principle of civilian control of the military". E-IMET was based upon the premise that "active promotion of democratic values is one of the most effective means available for achieving...national security and foreign policy objectives and fostering peaceful relations among the nations of the world".
In bilateral relations where democratic values need to be promoted above all else (which could be true with Bangladesh or Sri Lanka and Nepal to an extent in respect of ties with India), the US solely offers E-IMET. Sometimes, it is a mix of both E-IMET and IMET, but the stress always remains on democracy building and strengthening, which should also be India's purposive thrust in the sub-continent, because true democracy kills or inhibits extremism of all hues, not least terrorism and religious fundamentalism.
The Indian political leadership which baulks at giving the military any role in decision-making may be suspicious of this variant of defence diplomacy, but as this writer sees it, there is no escaping it, and its time has arrived. Obviously, the whole programme, a Made-in-India E-IMET, so to speak, has to be organically conceived and executed, but the process has to commence. As much as India needs friendly and understanding political principals in neighbouring countries, it must invest in and cultivate the more permanent institutional leaderships like that of the military. They will provide an additional and more durable basis for friendships and alliances.
N.V.Subramanian is Editor, www.NewsInsight.net, and writes internationally on strategic affairs. He has authored two novels, University of Love (Writers Workshop, Calcutta) and Courtesan of Storms (Har-Anand, Delhi).
Please visit N.V.Subramanian's blog http://courtesanofstorms.blog.com/ and write to him at envysub@gmail.com
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