Our intransigent policies

Pakistan’s deteriorating relations with the US present a security conundrum for our policy makers: what if all our choices are bad ones?

A sizeable section of domestic opinion presents only simplistic solutions to our present predicament. The most popular line of thinking is to draw a red line with Washington and to hitch our wagon with China as a strategic counterweight.

The rub is that the China which our policymakers so nostalgically look up to and frequently love to visit, has transformed itself from an ideologically hermetic state to a pragmatic economic workhorse. It advises its friends not to confuse ideology with economic policies and pragmatism.

Prime Minister Gilani visited Beijing in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of Osama bin Laden. He proudly repeated to his hosts that friendship with China was ‘as deep as the ocean and high as the mountains,’ adding it was also ‘as sweet as honey’ – words that the Chinese have so often heard from successive Pakistani leaders visiting Beijing that they have lost all their meaning.

China, while maintaining its strategic rivalry with the US, considers Pakistan as a close ally in the region. But at the same time, it cautions Islamabad to resolve its disputes peacefully with New Delhi and against harbouring jihadist groups which pose a problem in its own regions.

In the increasingly globalised world divorcing economic policies from bilateral disputes, India has become China’s biggest trading partner in South Asia. We only cherry-pick from our Chinese hosts wanting more economic assistance and defence cooperation but at the same time ignoring their advice that does not conform to our outdated and obsolete policy paradigms on various matters.

The US has put Islamabad on notice to review its decision to send back scores of American military trainers working with the Pakistani military if it wants resumption of the recently suspended military assistance. The government has also reportedly asked the US embassy in Islamabad to phase out over 200 American officials out of the country.

There is no doubt that relations between Washington and Islamabad have been on the skids for sometime now. The breakdown between the premier intelligence agencies of the two countries, the ISI and the CIA, came to surface in the aftermath of the Raymond Davis case early this year. The US contractor was held by Islamabad under a self-serving interpretation of diplomatic immunity and released on a dubious interpretation of an Islamic law after the damage was done.

The watershed moment in the fast deteriorating relations between Washington and Islamabad came with the assassination of Osama bin Laden in a covert operation by the US Navy Seals. The Pakistani military and its intelligence apparatus, by being kept completely in the dark about the operation, were deliberately humiliated by the US.

It amply demonstrated that the US not only would put its boots on the ground if and when it chose, it had no faith in the ISI and its mentors. As a result of the incident, the COAS General Kayani who took pride in his close relations with the then Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen felt personally let down.

Since then, it is obvious to all and sundry that relations are at an all time low not only between the intelligence apparatus of the two countries but between the Pentagon and the GHQ as well. The US media, thanks to deliberate leaks, has had a field day at the expense of General Kayani and the ISI chief General Shuja Pasha. The New York Times has editorially asked for Pasha’s removal while predicting a “colonels’ coup” against Kayani in one of its dispatches from Islamabad.

The question frequently being asked is whether the cat and mouse game is mere posturing to extract the best deal from Washington or a real shift in policy? And if there is real shift, is it sustainable?

The perception in the past had been that tough talking to Washington as a policy was being solely pursued by the Pakistani military establishment, the civilian government not being on the same page. Liberal issuing of visas to US personnel by our embassy in Washington was one manifestation of that policy.

But with the appointment of young, inexperienced and relatively apolitical Hina Rabbani Khar as foreign minister, it seems that the government has formally abdicated foreign policy to the military. It is all very well that Ms Khar radiates a soft image of Pakistan and reads well from her brief. But does she bring any substance to the conduct of our foreign policy is too early to tell.

As far as optics go, her recent sojourn in India was a success. Pakistan got good press in India, which favourably compared the novice foreign minister to their octogenarian minister for external affairs S M Krishna.

Relations with New Delhi are one area where some kind of a thaw seems to be in the offing. There is a marked change in the approach of the Indian leadership towards Pakistan, which was quite visible in the recent foreign ministers’ parleys. Skeptics in Pakistan interpret this conversion as merely tactical, cynically asserting that why should India be bothered if Pakistan is imploding from within.

Notwithstanding the historic rivalry, a stable Pakistan is in the long-term interest of India; perhaps the vice versa situation could be true as well. The PML(N) president Nawaz Sharif has been severely criticised by a section of the media for stating just that.

Enlightened national self interest demands out-of-the-box thinking shorn of outmoded and reactionary ideas being policed by self-styled protectors of our so-called ideological frontiers. Former foreign secretary, Riaz Mohammad Khan, in his recently authored excellent work, Afghanistan and Pakistan: Conflict, Extremism and Resistance to Modernity, has comprehensively driven this point home.

While lamenting the failure of leadership and our political institutions, he states that the leadership’s shortcomings have reinforced intellectual confusion in the society. He rightly concludes that many in Pakistani ruling elite, including the elected representatives, the bureaucracy, and the army show a low grasp of global trends and modernising influences in other societies and demonstrate an increasingly introverted attitude, reinforced by the society’s traditional outlook.

He thinks that intellectual equivocation and the absence of a scientific orientation are also weaknesses of the Pakistani ruling elite. A large section of our media and a not too insignificant swath of our populace are afflicted by the same malaise.

Few Muslim countries have been able to assimilate modern trends and change from within. Shining exceptions include Turkey and Malaysia, and to a lesser extent Bangladesh. The Pakistani elite – military, feudal and religious – is stubbornly resistant to change. However, if we refuse to change from within, then neither our domestic situation nor our external environment can qualitatively change in the foreseeable future. But do we have time?

The writer is Editor, Pakistan Today