Obama picks New Delhi’s bête noire to handle India portfolio

AZIZ HANIFFA
IN WASHINGTON, DC

The Obama administration has picked South Asia expert Christine Fair, who recently
raised hackles in New Delhi with her statement that India was meddling in Balochistan, to
handle the India portfolio as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central
Asian Affairs.

Fair, currently Assistant Professor in Security Studies at Georgetown University’s School

of Foreign Service, told India Abroad she was likely to decline, as she does not want to
give up her academic activities. Though Fair informed Robert Blake, Assistant Secretary
of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, that she is not interested in the position, the
administration has asked her to reconsider.

“I am much more of an academic, and for me to take this job, I was going to have to give
up a lot of academic collaborations and it just didn’t make sense to me,” Fair said. “First,
I was really not enthusiastic about the India portfolio because I am really burnt out on
Pakistan.”

Prior to her Rand Corporation stint, Fair had served as political officer to the United
Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan based in Kabul and as a senior research
associate in the US Institute of Peace’s Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention. She
has traveled extensively in Pakistan, Afghanistan and India, and has written or edited
books including Treading Softly on Sacred Ground: Counterinsurgency Operations on
Sacred Space, Fortifying Pakistan: The Role of US Internal Security Assistance, and more
recently, The Madrassah Challenge: Militancy and Religious Education in Pakistan.

Noting that in the policy space, no one else is doing the kind of work she does, Fair said
she understood the administration’s insistence that she give up her academic work, “but
these things are really important to me, and the stuff I am doing on Pakistan, no one else
is doing.”

Fair told India Abroad that she was on a tenure track at Georgetown University, which
was also a consideration in her deciding that a government job, which could at most last
3-4 years, may not be a wise decision. “Let me also be blunt with you -- I think the Indo-
US relationship is extremely important, but I know I am not the flavor of the day in India,
and I think that it actually would have undermined our moving the relationship forward if
I were in that job.”

Fair’s peers in the think tank circuit reacted to the news with mixed feelings. A member
of a prominent think tank, who did not want to be named, said “What was the
Administration thinking? There are a lot of people uncomfortable over her remarks that
India is involved in Balochistan, and for her to have been offered the India portfolio just
doesn’t make any sense.”

However, another prominent member of the think tank circuit said “I think she’ll be great
— she will certainly liven the place up, and there’s no one who’s done the kind of field
work she has in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India -- and she will always call it as she sees
it.”

Referring to New Delhi’s negative view of her, Fair said “I am a mixed bag for Indians –
but I am a pretty straight shooter and I say it like it is, unlike some who are like
advocates for countries. I am not an advocate for any country. I am an advocate for my
country.”

In an on-line discussion earlier this year convened by Foreign Affairs, Fair had said
Pakistan has legitimate concerns about India’s involvement in Afghanistan, and that
Islamabad’s paranoia that New Delhi was fanning unrest in Balochistan was not
unfounded.

‘I think it is unfair to dismiss the notion that Pakistan’s apprehensions about Afghanistan
stem in part from its ‘security competition with India,’ Fair said. ”Having visited the
Indian mission in Zahedan, Iran, I can assure you they are not issuing visas as the main
activity. Moreover, India has run operations from its mission in Mazar and is likely doing
so from the other consulates it has reopened in Jalalabad and Qandahar along the Pak-
Aghan border.

‘Indian officials have told me privately that they are pumping money into Balochistan.
Kabul has encouraged India to engage in provocative activities such as using the Border
Roads Organization to build sensitive parts of the Rind Road and use the Indo-Tibetan
police force for security.’

“I believe all that to be true,” Fair told India Abroad. “The problem with the Pakistanis is
that they lie too much and so, that when they tell the truth, no one believes them.”

Fair said she had merely been pointing out something, not assigning blame. “I am not
normative about it —India should be doing this, and they should be doing more of it, if I
may be so blunt. So I’ve never said, ‘Shame on the Indians’.”

The same ‘straight shooting’ that has made Fair disliked in New Delhi has, however, led
to the policy expert consistently criticizing Pakistan for accepting American aid while
continuing to fund and arm the Afghan Taliban. In recent testimony before the House
Armed Services Committee’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee she said,
‘Having received $13 billion, if not more, from the United States to participate in the war
on terrorism, Pakistan continues to support the Afghan Taliban. This means that Pakistan
is undermining the very war on terrorism that it has received a handsome reward
allegedly to support.’

She said it was this that lay behind the instability in South Asia. ‘Let’s remember that it
was a Pakistan-based and backed terrorist group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, that attacked the
Indian Parliament, which brought the largest mobilization of forces throughout the
country, both of them to a near-war crisis with the specter of nuclear escalation.

‘The Pakistan Taliban share overlapping membership with those very same groups that
target India, and obviously with the Afghan Taliban operating in Afghanistan. So it can’t
defeat its own internal security threats, which brings into question Pakistan’s national
integrity and obviously its strategic assets, until it is compelled to strategically abandon
militancy.’

Fair told the House committee that massive aid to Pakistan would not ‘fix Pakistan’s
chronically neuralgic sense of insecurity vis-à-vis India. I don’t think what India does or
does not do in Afghanistan is going to make Pakistan stop supporting the Taliban. I think
we need to think very hard about what is Pakistan’s genuine source of insecurity and put
some things on the table that might be out of the box.’

Referring to such publicly held views, Fair told India Abroad “What the Indians would
have gotten in me is someone who is realistic. I don’t believe in the (Special
Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard) Holbrooke crap about solving
Kashmir to make Pakistan sane. I believe it’s a necessary albeit terribly insufficient
condition to get Pakistanis to tell the Army to lay off (in its machinations against India) if
you resolve the Indo-Pakistani issue. Whether that can ever happen is irrelevant.”

The diplomatic and think tank communities, interestingly, reacted to news that she was
being offered the India portfolio with dismay, and some even compared her to Robin
Raphel, recently named First Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs, who is
equally detested by India.
“I am a fan of Robin Raphel and so I didn’t take it as an insult,” Fair told India Abroad. “I
think she’s a fabulous lady. The Indians would have gotten in me someone who is more
realistic about Pakistan.”