The Poet And The Soldier

By Johanna McGeary

When the leaders of two snarling nations are personally committed to better ties, why is that so hard to accomplish? On the surface, a long list of differences separate Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. One is devoted to Hindu nationalism, the other to a strong Muslim nation. One governs the world's most populous democracy, the other rules by diktat. India's leader is 20 years older and the frail veteran of 47 years in politics; Pakistan's is a fit career soldier whose political life began just two years ago in a military coup. Vajpayee is a master orator given to flights of poetry; Musharraf is a plainspoken man with a blunt, forthright style. The first has succeeded by adroitly sidestepping conflict and finessing confrontation, the second by cutting straight to the core of a problem.

Yet Vajpayee and Musharraf ought to be able to do business together. Both are the moderate face of their hard-line constituencies and liberals in their private lives. Together, they control two of the world's seven declared nuclear arsenals. And each came to power proclaiming the same grand ambition: to bring peace to a subcontinent torn by futile hostility since it was partitioned into a mainly Hindu country and a mainly Muslim one in 1947.

They have tried before. Last July, at a summit in the northern Indian city of Agra, the two leaders looked ready to achieve a historic meeting of minds. The determined general and the affable poet-politician practically embraced as they showered each other with compliments. Vajpayee called Musharraf a "distinguished son of Delhi" (where he was born), and the Pakistani leader dubbed his counterpart India's "graceful elder." They parleyed in private for hours while aides anxiously waited outside the door. But the bonhomie ran aground on Kashmir when they could not agree even on whether to call it a "dispute," as Musharraf demanded, or an "issue," as Vajpayee insisted. The summit collapsed. When Musharraf baldly spilled his position to the Indian press before departing, he scored a propaganda victory that left the upstaged Vajpayee with a bitter aftertaste.

The general was, of course, the same man who had spoiled Vajpayee's previous peace initiative toward Pakistan. In early 1999, while Vajpayee and democratically elected President Nawaz Sharif were initialing a new chapter in bilateral relations in Lahore, Musharraf, then chief of the Pakistani armed forces, was orchestrating a daring incursion into Kashmir, into the Indian-held Kargil Heights. That provoked six weeks of bloody combat, cutting dead Vajpayee's cherished Lahore process.

Sept. 11 cast another shadow over the relationship. Vajpayee had been enjoying the glow of a growing friendship with the U.S. Washington liked the way he reined in his party's hotheads and diluted its hard-line agenda, and admired his skill at holding together his fractious coalition for an unprecedented three years. He had almost persuaded the U.S. to blacklist Pakistan as a terrorist state for supporting the Kashmir jihadis, while practicing admirable restraint by not retaliating directly against Pakistan.

Then Musharraf emerged as Washington's prized ally, earning global praise for his tough conversion to fighting terrorism. Secretary of State Colin Powell visited Islamabad in October and came away struck by how different Musharraf seemed from typical Pakistani strongmen obsessed with domestic order and India. Powell saw in Musharraf a military man of unusually creative intelligence who could focus on an objective, then determine the steps needed to get there. Powell reported back to Bush that Musharraf "quite distinctly intended over the long term to eliminate the sources of extremism" in his country.

Vajpayee doesn't much believe it, though. He suspects the crackdown Musharraf has begun on the terrorists will prove merely cosmetic. So he too has made a sharp shift, throwing off his almost avuncular detachment to launch a scary game of military brinkmanship. Pride and domestic politics lie behind that stroke; his party is facing an important state election, and the hard line he has adopted may help at the polls. But Vajpayee also owns a taste for boldness that he has demonstrated before. In 1998 he was the Prime Minister who ordered the atom-bomb tests that made India (and subsequently Pakistan, which responded in kind) an official member of the nuclear club.

Though Musharraf and Vajpayee managed a handshake at a South Asian summit last weekend in Nepal, they are hardly speaking, even by long distance. So far, the historic dynamics of the India-Pakistan relationship have trumped the peaceful ambitions of these two, not the other way round. But as they work to avert a new war on the subcontinent, both the poet and the general might usefully recall how each has publicly aspired to the higher title of statesman.

--Reported by Hannah Bloch/Islamabad, Meenakshi Ganguly and Sankarshan Thakur/New Delhi and Douglas Waller/Washington

With reporting by Hannah Bloch/Islamabad, Meenakshi Ganguly and Sankarshan Thakur/New Delhi and Douglas Waller/Washington