Bilateral Cloak and Dagger on the Periphery
(Daily Times
| November 12, 2004)
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz recently visited Nepal and said something that may have jolted a lot of people. The news item stated: "Pakistan has offered to sell defence equipment to Nepal, whose government is currently combating a Maoist insurgency". Newspapers then quoted him as saying, "We have offered to sell defence equipment to Nepal and are ready to provide financial assistance in this regard, if desired by the Nepalese leadership". When a Nepalese journalist asked if he would assist Kathmandu in subduing the Maoist uprising in the country, he stated, "We have offered defence and security cooperation. We have also talked about training their military personnel in Pakistan. We need to help and complement each other's efforts but certainly, not to interfere in the affairs of others".
Everyone knows that India has a kind of Monroe Doctrine on Nepal and feels jittery every time Nepal decides to involve itself in external contacts without a go-ahead from New Delhi. Any Pakistani effort to raise the level of bilateral relations with the mountain kingdom, and especially any effort to sell arms there and train its personnel, may be seen by India as violating its "asymmetric relationship" with Nepal. The basis of this equation is the 1950 Treaty of Peace and Friendship and accompanying letters defining security relations between the two countries. The treaty and letters state that "neither government shall tolerate any threat to the security of the other by a foreign aggressor" and obligate both sides "to inform each other of any serious friction or misunderstanding with any neighbouring state likely to cause any breach in the friendly relations subsisting between the two governments".
The 1950 treaty cemented a "special relationship" between India and Nepal that granted Nepal preferential economic treatment and provided Nepalese in India the same economic and educational opportunities as Indian citizens. India has similar “Soviet style” treaties with Bhutan and Bangladesh. Nepal has sought to alter the contents of the treaty to gain more sovereignty for itself but has not succeeded because of its "landlocked state" dependency on India. Nepal tried to break out of this disability by initiating a road link with China which India thought was dangerous to its security and to which it objected vigorously. But a more serious crisis ensued when in 1988 Nepal acquired Chinese weaponry and India perceived its arms purchase as an indication of Kathmandu’s intent to build a military relationship with Beijing, in violation of the 1950 treaty and letters exchanged in 1959 and 1965, which included Nepal in India’s security zone and precluded arms purchases without India’s approval. India linked security with economic relations and insisted on reviewing India-Nepal relations as a whole. In the event, Nepal had to back down after worsening economic conditions (owing to a blockade of transit trade by India) led to a change in Nepal's political system, in which the king was forced to institute a parliamentary democracy. In 1995 Nepal once again tried to modify the 1950 treaty, but to no avail. This clearly means that the treaty still bites and Nepal will think twice before buying arms from Pakistan, unless the deal is okayed by India.
In India, most men of opinion are agreed that an asymmetry of relations between the two countries is inevitable. In 1990, India’s external affairs minister, IK Gujral, stated that "the size and level of economic growth of Nepal and India were such that reciprocity in the strict sense of the word was neither feasible nor possible" in their relationship. Pakistan and India don't have a good record of relations in Nepal and Bangladesh, fighting proxy secret-service wars on their soil. Pakistan could be retaliating for what India is perceived in Islamabad to be doing in Afghanistan, another landlocked country having an "asymmetric" relationship with Pakistan. But these "chessboard moves" are threadbare and promise nothing to the two contending states. If Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz wants to advance his "mutual dependencies" thesis with India, he would be advised not to stray into this bilateral cloak-and-dagger stuff on the periphery.
From http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_8-11-2004_pg3_1
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