CHOMSKY ON INDIA-PAKISTAN RELATIONS
Michael Shank
Editor: John Feffer
Foreign Policy In Focus
May 22 2007
Noam Chomsky is a noted linguist, author, and foreign policy expert.
On April 26, Michael Shank interviewed him about relations between
India and Pakistan. This is the second part of a two-part interview.
The first part, on the Iraq War, the World Bank, and debt, can be
found here.
Michael Shank: Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri
cites a sea change in India-Pakistan relations, agreements have been
forged requiring a pre-notification of missile testing, and both
countries will soon engage in a fourth round of composite dialogues.
What else needs to happen to provide a positive tipping point in
Indo-Pak relations?
Noam Chomsky: There are a couple of major problems that need to be
dealt with. One of them, of course, is Kashmir. The question is,
can they figure out a joint solution to the Kashmir conflict?
There are other questions: about energy integration, for example,
pipelines going from Iran to India. India and Pakistan are now joint
observers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which, if it works,
will tend to bring about closer integration of the Asian countries
altogether. So is Iran, and the Central Asian states, China of course,
and Russia too. So it’s basically the whole region except for South
Korea has joined. And Japan probably won’t join.
It’s an emerging structure of relationships. Meanwhile India-China
relations are certainly improving. They’re better than they were 20
or 30 years ago. There are now some joint energy projects.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization was China-initiated but there’s
also an India-initiated program by the former [Petroleum and Natural
Gas] minister Mani Shankar Aiyar. He had been initiating similar
plans for Asian integration; he had arranged conferences in India,
joint projects with China and so on. And China and Pakistan have
pretty close relations so through that connection India and Pakistan
may overcome some of their conflicts.
In general the conflicts in the region, the internal conflicts, most of
them have been softened, so they’re less sharp than they were in the
recent past. This is partly because of economic integration, partly
because of the danger of confrontation, partly because of outside
enemies. All of them want to become integrated with the west Asian
energy producing system. That brings them together as well through
joint projects.
So I don’t know if there’s an actual tipping point. But I think
there is a gradual improvement of relations and a willingness to put
aside what could be major tensions, like a terrorist operation in
Mumbai or something attributed to Pakistanis. There are attempts at
reconciliation, which is a healthy development.
Now Kashmir is going to be a difficult one.
Shank: Do you think Kashmir is a territorial issue or an issue related
to secular or religious identity? Pakistan sees Kashmir as their Muslim
brotherhood up north. For India, it’s emblematic of their secular
identity. Is it an identity issue or a territorial boundary issue?
Chomsky: Yes, obliviously that’s a factor in it. The Muslim population
and the Hindu population do separate on those lines. Does that mean
they have to be broken up? Not necessarily. There are 160 million
Muslims living in India. There has been tension and some serious
atrocities but it has been over the centuries a reasonably integrated
society. There are real dangers. The Hindu nationalist danger is
certainly serious.
Shank: Should the UN step in to do for Kashmir what they’re now doing
for Kosovo?
Chomsky: I think what’s needed is some kind of federal arrangement.
Kosovo could have been a model. As it’s now developing Kosovo will
just be independent. The counterpart would be for Kashmir to be
independent. And that doesn’t seem to be in the cards. India and
Pakistan both have interests. But some sort of federal arrangement,
keeping the line of control, with semi-autonomous regions loosely
federated with each other and with a broader South Asian federation,
could be a direction in which things could move.
Shank: Do you think the Pakistan and Indian diaspora in the United
States or the UK are doing anything to escalate tensions?
Chomsky: For some reason, which I don’t entirely understand, that’s a
very general fact about diaspora communities. In fact, almost every one
I know of. For example the Jewish community in the US, its organized
part, is much more rabid and extreme than Israel. The Irish community
in south Boston was much more extreme than Northern Ireland.
Take, say, the Armenian genocide. All Armenians want to have it
recognized but the pressures for having national declarations is
mostly coming from the diaspora. Within Armenia itself, people have
other concerns. For example they would like friendly relations with
Turkey. The diaspora doesn’t care that much; they just want the
recognition of this genocide.
Shank: Is it because the diaspora often leaves during a traumatic
period and that’s what fresh in their minds?
Chomsky: I don’t think so. It varies. The Irish immigration has been
coming since the 19th century. Take the Jewish immigration. They really
became extremists – again, I’m not talking about the population,
only the organized articulate part of it, which is a small part but
it’s the part you hear about — they really became extremists since
1967 but that’s not when they left Eastern Europe.
It had to do with internal developments.
I suspect that the tendency towards a kind of extremism in diaspora
communities may have something to do with keeping them unified.
Otherwise they would tend to assimilate. In the home country they’re
not going to assimilate, you don’t have to prove you’re an Armenian or
Israeli or Irish. But if you’re in the United States and you want to
maintain some kind of cultural identity as a group it’s going to have
some relation to the home country. And often more extreme positions
are taken than in the home country because of the need to maintain
identity. The one that I know best is the Jewish community but,
as far as I know, others are much like it.
In the Jewish community there’s a lot of concern over the disappearance
of the community, through inter-marriage, assimilation, and so
on. Those who want to make sure that the community stays together tend
to be very Israel-oriented, much more so than the general population
is. And then they tend to become extreme. So you have to defend Israel
against every charge. Israelis don’t feel that need, they can raise
the charges themselves.
If you were an American abroad, let’s say, forced to defend America
against the French, you might take a more extreme position than you
would here. I think that kind of dynamic works, in some fashion,
with diaspora communities. There is a notable tendency for them to
be more fervent, nationalist, extremist, and defensive than the home
country is.
So yes, going back to your question, what I’ve seen of the Indian
diaspora — I don’t know much about the Pakistani diaspora — is that
it tends to be more extreme, more pro-BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party]
than the native population would. At least that’s what I’ve seen.
Shank: India is attempting to renegotiate their nuclear agreement with
the United States, specifically to remove a U.S. legal requirement
that it halt nuclear cooperation if India tests another nuclear
weapon. If India is successful in renegotiating that agreement,
what are the implications for Indo-Pak relations?
Chomsky: As soon as the United States made the agreement with India,
that had immediate and predictable implications. The agreement with
India was in serious violation of U.S. law, the export law from the
early 1970s that was passed after the Indian test ["Smiling Buddha"
in 1974]. It was also in violation of the rules of the two major
international organizations, one that controls, or tries to control,
nuclear material exports, the other that tries to control missile
technology exports.
There are two nuclear missile control regimes, and they both require
notification before anybody’s going to do anything that would be
inconsistent with their rules. And the United States did neither,
didn’t even notify them.
It’s a sharp blow against two of the elements of the international
system that’s trying to prevent proliferation of nuclear technology,
weapons technology, and missile technology. It was predictable that
as soon as the United States broke it someone else would break it
too. And shortly after, China approached Pakistan with sort of a
similar agreement. I don’t know exactly where it stands now but it’s
clear that’s what they would do.
Russia will probably do the same and others will do the same. Once
you open the door others are going to follow. And that is a serious
blow to the whole non-proliferation system. So anything that India
does, Pakistan is going to try and balance. I guess that’s the way
to disaster.
That’s why there’s a very serious critique of the U.S. agreement with
India within the disarmament community. People like Gary Milhollin,
for example, very sharply criticized it. Michael Krepon who’s the
founder of the Stimson Center and a major specialist, has an article in
a recent issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warning that
this could very well lead to the breakdown of all nonproliferation
systems. I think he ends up his article by saying that Bush wants this
agreement to be his legacy and Krepon says, "Yeah, maybe it will be
his legacy, but it may mean the end of the species when you think of
the way it could develop."
Milhollin was also very bitter. He said for the United States it
is being done partly just for commercial reasons. It opens exports
markets in India. In fact, Condoleezza Rice testified in Congress
to that effect: that it would have commercial value to the United
States, it would open Indian markets for exports. Milhollin suggests,
if I’m remembering correctly, that the main exports might be military
jets. That’s exactly what we don’t want because that’s going to again
be a trigger for escalation. India gets more advanced offensive
military forces, Pakistan will want the same, and China will want
the same.
Shank: And Japan will come to the United States asking for a stealth
fighter jet…
Chomsky: And then it spreads over East Asia and beyond and you’re
off and running. The world needs control of these exports, not
escalation. India is playing a complex game. It’s apparently trying
to maintain something of its traditional non-aligned role. So it’s
agreeing to closer relations with the United States, but it’s also
at the same time developing closer relations with China and insisting
on its own independence as in the effort to renegotiate this deal.
Shank: You mentioned the existence of extremism in the diaspora, but
looking internally within South Asia, how much has the U.S.-Pakistan
alliance in the so-called war on terror been responsible for the rise
of extremism in Pakistan? How is it fostering extremism, if it has
at all?
Chomsky: I’m not sure it has. These are very complex problems internal
to Pakistan. For example, is the United States concerned about Baloochi
terror inside Iran, based in Pakistan? It’s probably fostering it. We
don’t have any direct evidence but there have been clearly terrorist
acts in Iran, which are based in the Baloochi areas in Pakistan. And
it’s very likely that it’s part of the general U.S. program to
disrupt Iran.
Shank: Actually the last time you and I talked, you speculated that
United States was in Iran fostering ethnic division…
Chomsky: I would assume so. One has to be a little cautious when
talking about terrorism. From the U.S. point of view, there’s good
terrorism and bad terrorism. And Pakistan has its own problems. The
Baloochi areas are very antagonistic to central rule for good
reasons. Pakistan also has complex relations with the Northwest
Territories and the tribal areas. It’s held together in a very fragile
fashion, Pakistan. The United States supports the central government
and is claiming that it’s not acting as militantly as the United
States would like to control its sub-populations. And if it tried to,
the country might blow up. Musharraf has to walk a very delicate line,
also with regard to allowing some democratic opening in the country,
which is not easy.
Shank: If extremism is on the rise in South Asia, which a lot of
people say it is, how does one go about undermining extremism, in
this case religious extremism?
Chomsky: In India and Pakistan there is a very dangerous development.
One of the roots of the BJP is a quasi-fascist Hindu extremist
movement. And for India that is extremely dangerous, as is Muslim
extremism, as is Christian extremism in the United States. These are
very dangerous movements. They are not inherently destructive. They
could take a constructive path but that’s not the way they usually
develop.
How do you combat them? The same way you combat any other dangerous
movement: education, organization, looking at the issues that make
them arise. Often they arise out of real or perceived oppression, as
a reaction to it. So, for example, take Islamic radicalism. A large
measure of it was a reaction to the fact that secular nationalism
was destroyed — partly because of its own internal corruption,
partly because of external force.
When you destroy the opportunities for secular alternatives to develop,
people aren’t going to give up. They may turn to religious movements
for identity. That’s one standard reaction to oppression and a loss
of opportunity.
You can see it happening very clearly in the Islamic world, the
Muslim world. In fact, the United States and Israel both fostered
religious extremist movements in an effort to undermine secular
nationalism. Hamas, for example, is an outgrowth of the Muslim
Brotherhood, which was supported by Israel as an attempt to undermine
the secular Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Hezbollah was
the direct result of the Israeli conquest of part of Lebanon, in an
effort to destroy the secular PLO — and ended up with Hezbollah on
their hands.
The United States has almost always tended to support the most extreme
religious fundamentalist group in the region. Take Saudi Arabia,
the oldest and most valued ally of the United States and also the
most extreme Islamic fundamentalist state. By comparison, Iran looks
like a flourishing democracy. And there are good reasons for it. I
don’t mean good in a moral sense. There are understandable reasons.
The United States supported Saudi Arabia against the threat of secular
nationalism, symbolized mainly by Nasser. They were very much concerned
that Nasser might move to direct the resources of the region to the
population of the region, for development and so on.
And that’s not how it’s supposed to work. The wealth of the region
is supposed to flow to the west with a kind of payoff to the local
managers. That didn’t seem to be Nasser’s program. He was a pretty
harsh tyrant himself but secular and possibly with the thread of a
populist aspect.
The same happened when the Qasim coup took place in Iraq in 1958.
U.S. and British intelligence assumed that it was Nasserite in
origin. They thought this might be the spread of a secular, nationalist
development that would try to appropriate and gain control of the
resources in the region and use them for internal development and
growth. It’s always been a danger.
One of the barriers to that has been religious fanaticism. Similarly,
inside Pakistan, the Zia-ul-Haq regime, which did drive the country
towards religious extremism, was very strongly supported by the United
States and its Saudi ally. During those years, the Reagan years, that’s
when Saudi Arabia was developing its network of Madrassas, religious
extremist schools. Zia-ul-Haq was introducing Islamic extremism in the
higher educational system, in social life, and so on, fully supported
by the United States because this was part of their global policies.
Michael Shank is a doctoral student at the Institute for Conflict
Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University and a frequent
contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (). The
interview was conducted on behalf of the Satyagraha Centenary, a
student-organized symposium held from April 20-30, 2007, at Middlebury
College, which celebrated the 100th anniversary of Mohandas Gandhi’s
Satyagraha "Non-Violence" Movement.
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