Is another ‘Quad’ emerging?

By M.R. Josse

KATHMANDU: The politico-diplomatic-military gambits in our region often constitute a mega jig-saw puzzle. The faint contours of an emergent ‘Quad’ are now discernible therein – a nascent one grouping China, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh.

I use the word ‘Quad’ advisedly – to remind readers of the much-hyped, anti-China club of the United States, Japan, India and Australia formed in 2007-08 to coordinate an innocuously named ‘Quadrilateral Security Dialogue’ strategy which, at its core, aims at containing a rising, puissant China.

Incidentally, New Delhi is reportedly hosting an ‘in-person’ ‘Quad’ foreign ministers’ meeting next month.

JIG-SAW PUZZLE

A huge chunk of the jig-saw puzzle concerns the ever-fluid Sino-Indian relations saga, dominated by the continuing tensions between China and India, where a swirling fog of propaganda and obfuscation makes it difficult to distinguish myth from reality.

Even so, lately, the Indian army has been claiming – after its chief, Gen. M.M. Naravane’s visit to Ladakh, 4 September – that it has “taken measures to strengthen our positions and thwart Chinese intentions” to change the status quo on the south bank of the Pangong Tso. (Indian Express).

Moreover, while the Indian Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Bipin Rawat, (Economic  Times, e-paper) has, once again, raised the phantom of a “two-war scenario” – meaning India at war with China and Pakistan, simultaneously – sternly warning Pakistan of “heavy losses” if any misadventure is attempted.

Interestingly, Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Wei Fenghe, held talks in Moscow the same day – on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Defence Ministers’ conclave.

One is now informed that Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar will soon be in Moscow, for a SCO foreign ministers’ conference where he is expected to meet with Chinese Foreign Minister Wan Yi.  While in New Delhi, Jaishankar was insisting that despite the tense situation along the LAC between India and China, the border problem would be resolved through diplomatic means.

Meanwhile, on the Chinese side, the mood seemed far less cheery. Indeed, as per Reuters, the state-owned Global Times warned (1 September) that China can make India suffer more “severe military losses” than in the past, if it wanted to engage in competition.

Contradicting Indian claims of some recent gains, Global Times declared that India faced a “powerful China” and that New Delhi should not have any “illusions” of support from Washington over the issue. “But if India wants to engage in competition, China has more tools and capability than India. If India would like a military showdown, the PLA is bound to make the Indian Army suffer much more severe military losses than it did in 1962.”

THE ‘TIBET CARD’

A new Tibetan factor has now entered the Sino-Indian relations equation. It concerns the injection of the so-called ‘Special Frontier Force’ (SFF) into the China-India border dispute, on the Indian side.

China’s Global Times, 3 September, drew attention to that in a strongly worded commentary entitled, ‘Playing Tibet Card will incur damage to New Delhi’.

Claiming that SFF is composed of recruits from Tibetan refugees in India, Li Qingping, observes therein: “These exiled Tibetans only act as cannon fodder in India’s attempt to nibble into Chinese interests on the border issue. The exiled Tibetans’ status is very low in the Indian army. They can only use the opportunity in venting their dissatisfaction against the Chinese government.”

Li quotes Qia Feng of Tsinghua University as disclosing: “After India once again unilaterally provoked the border issue, a video has been circulating on social media depicting Indian soldiers dancing with flags adopted by the so-called ‘Tibetan government-in-exile’.

“Does India dare to openly recognize ‘Tibetan secession’ and deny that Tibet is an inalienable part of China? If New Delhi is bold enough to openly oppose this fact, it is clearly aware of the consequences and shooting itself in the foot. If India openly supports ‘Tibetan secession’ on border issues does it mean that China can support insurgencies in Northeastern India?”

Li refers to India banning another 118 Chinese mobile apps (2 September) and questions whether New Delhi has lost its rationality. He claims that India’s actual strength does not allow it to start an all-out war against China, nor does it allow India to play the ‘Tibet card’ on the border issue.

According to Pradeep Thakur (Times of India, 3 September), SFF was raised towards the end of 1962 with commandos drawn from the large pool of Tibetan refugees in India. The SFF was formed by the Intelligence Bureau, RAW and the CIA for covert operations behind enemy lines, he says.

At this point, one must truly wonder what has emboldened India to so recklessly deploy the ‘Tibet card’.   Indeed, only quite recently, Chinese President Xi Jinping in a two-day, high-level symposium on Tibet-related work – the seventh since 1980 – set out detailed plans for a new era in Tibet, one is which guarding its frontiers and quashing anti-separatist moves occupied a front and central position. (China Daily, 2 September).

Hence, I would submit that, during the Singh-Wei palavers in Moscow, Beijing must have made it abundantly clear that using the ‘Tibet card’ would invite most dire consequences, despite possible assurances to India from the United States of its support.

It is difficult to grasp how blithely Jaishankar expounds on resolving tangled, emotive Sino-Indian border problems though diplomacy! Will the use of the ‘Tibet card’ figure in the next ‘Quad’ foreign ministers’ meet in New Delhi? Is perhaps even a visit to Leh envisaged for those bigwigs?

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS

Given the new centrality that the ‘Tibet card’ question has assumed, even a dotard can envisage its strategic implications for Nepal which lies smack along Tibet’s southern flank.

Without making a song and dance about it, this clearly implies (a) Nepal’s need to focus greater and urgent attention to curbing a possible spurt of ‘free Tibet’ activities in the country, both from the Tibetan refugee community, as well as from external forces with a propensity to aid such endeavours; and (b) to reassure Beijing that it can rely on Kathmandu’s full cooperation in thwarting such plans.

Shifting gears, let us turn our gaze towards Pakistan-Bangladesh relations, focusing on recent ‘quiet diplomacy’ to ease decades of acrimony between the two countries.

As reported by Arab News (2 August), a number of recent diplomatic developments have clearly hinted at a thaw in the long-troubled Pakistan-Bangladesh equation. Thus, in early August, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan in a rare telephone call to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed invited her to pay an official visit to Islamabad. That, one is informed, came after a ‘quiet’ meeting between the Pakistan High Commissioner in Dhaka, Imran Ahmed, and Bangladesh Foreign Minister, A.K. Monem.

Following that consultation, Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Aisha Farooqui, told Arab News:  “We look forward to having a sustained dialogue with the government of Bangladesh on how best our bilateral relations can move on a positive trajectory. We hope to work and take forward our relations, whether it’s trade, culture and all other mutual areas.”

The Pakistan-Bangladesh embrace comes at a time when relations between India and many countries in the region are unravelling. That apparently is true of India-Bangladesh relations, as reflected in the sudden visit to Dhaka, 18-19 August, by Indian Foreign Secretary Harsha Vardhan Shringla.

As disclosed by Devadeep Purohit (Telegraph, India, 1 September), although Shringla did meet with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, he was not received or seen off at the Dhaka airport by any official, while Foreign Minister Monem was “conspicuously absent during Shringla’s stay in Dhaka.”

He did hold a meeting with his Bangladesh counterpart, Masud bin Monem, and “discussed the entire gamut of issues.” Yet, revealingly, press reporting of his mission was just matter-of-fact; however, social media commentary, Purohit says, was “flush with Bangladeshi national pride that, scared of advances by China and Pakistan, India was desperate to reach out to Dhaka.”

Revealingly, there was no official briefing about what transpired during Shringla’s meeting with the prime minister, nor was the moment even captured by an official photographer. Interestingly, the Indian correspondent felt that India needed to correct deficiencies in her Bangladesh policy “so that Bangladesh does not become another Nepal”!

No less attention-grabbing is a commentary in The Diplomat, 2 September, by Sudha Ramachandran, entitled, “Why Bangladesh reaches out to China”. To summarize the fulsome account, Ramchandran believes: “Weary of looking to India to redress water-sharing problems, it seems Bangladesh has decided to improve and manage Teesta waters within its boundaries. Importantly, it is looking to China for help. Beijing, it is said, is keen to support it.

“China-Bangladesh relations have improved remarkably in recent decades. They have become strategic partners since 2016. China is Bangladesh’s main arms supplier, investor and trade partner. China has already invested U.S. $ 10 billion in a string of power and infrastructure projects under its Belt and Road Initiative.

“The Modi government’s majoritarian rhetoric and stance on immigration, in general, has upset Bangladesh immensely. The Citizenship Act, as well as the National Register of Citizens, has serious implications for Bangladesh but the Modi government pressed on ahead without consulting the Bangladesh government, or heeding its concerns.”

Before finally moving on to Nepal-Bangladesh ties, allow me to briefly recap some observations I made in this weekly on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Dhaka in 2016. I had concluded my write-up entitled, Has India ‘lost’ Bangladesh to China? thus (M.R. Josse, ‘Nepal’s Quest for Survival’, NEFAS, 2020, p. 496):

“What is striking, from a Nepali perspective, is that while Bangladesh has moved, or is moving away, from India’s suffocating embrace, while rapidly expanding ties with China – with which she shares no common border and with whom her relations are not of historical vintage – Prachanda’s Nepal is lurching forward in the opposite direction. Though it remains to be seen if Hasina’s Chinese gamble pays off, for the present, one can usefully mull over whether India has indeed ‘lost’ Bangladesh to China!”  

EMERGENT ‘QUAD’?

Although Nepal’s ties with Bangladesh do not – as yet – have a strategic component, they do share many commonalities, including excellent relations with China and cordial relations and increasing understanding with Pakistan.

In the past, they played a leading role in the establishment of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), now rendered virtually moribund by India’s near pathological hostility towards Pakistan.

Both are also avid supporters of President Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative, opposed by India. Bangladesh has often demonstrated, by deed, a sympathetic understanding of Nepal’s geopolitical constraints, stemming from her land-locked character. Furthermore, their relationships with India, while being extensive, have all too often – as in recent times – been fraught, usually blighted by the incubus of political interference and even disputes over territory and water.

The relationship was in the public domain following Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli’s  1 September phone call to his Bangldeshi counterpart when, as per official Nepali media reports, the former made an urgent request for the supply of urea, which received a positive response.

That aside, as per the Foreign Ministry, subjects discussed included the promotion of barrier-free and balanced trade relations between Nepal and Bangladesh, improved transit facilities for Nepal through Bangladesh, increased connectivity and promotion of tourism.

While thanking Prime Minister Hasina for providing a new rail route through Rohanpur, Oli also expressed appreciation for the supply of 5,000 vials of Remdesivir injections and other essential medications. In a word, the bilateral relationship is in ship-shape condition.

Given the frequent reference to India’s ability to successfully tackle a two-front war; the clear indications of a growing strategic relationship between Bangladesh and China; the fact of rock-firm, multi-faceted China-Pakistan relationship; the fast-improving relations between Islamabad and Dhaka;  and the near certainty that use of a ‘Tibet card’ by India will inject a strong strategic impulse to Nepal-China ties, I hold that it is quite legitimate to raise the possibility of a ‘Quad’ comprising China, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh.

Though that, of course, has not yet jelled into a formal arrangement, there is the possibility that it could eventually surface in concrete shape in the not too distant future – depending on how events pan out in our region and beyond.

The writer can be reached at: manajosse@gmail.vom

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