No doubt that Pakistan is passing through the most critical juncture of its decades’ long ties with the United States but the tension with Washington has also brought some advantages to the country’s foreign policy managers, which, if availed properly, can help Islamabad stands on its own feet and devise independent policies for safeguarding the country’s interests.
Much is being written and said these days about growing Pakistan-China relations and Islamabad’s getting closer to Beijing to counter the immense US pressure for a military operation in the restive tribal region of North Waziristan.
However, the recent positive overtures by Russia towards Pakistan seeking increased cooperation in economic and defense sectors have almost gone unnoticed despite the fact that Moscow is still a very important world player and it also has differences of opinion with Washington on a host of issues.
Pakistani foreign policy managers admit that Russian leadership has almost done away with the traditional antagonism towards Pakistan and they have left behind the cold war days’ animosity vis-à-vis Islamabad.
Nonetheless, they also acknowledge that the pace of efforts on part of Pakistani foreign ministry and other related departments in Islamabad is too slow to take timely benefit from Russia’s growing interest in Pakistan and especially when the nature of Pakistan’s relations with the US are being marred by a deep tension, this diplomatic lethargy is not understandable. Apart from some other factors of Russians’ friendly overtures towards Islamabad, perhaps one reason is the India’s increasing ties with Washington. A Pakistani diplomat here said the feelings in Moscow are that now things have gone the other way round and its New Delhi which is considering Moscow a ‘junior partner’.
“Now Russians are not only taking interest in enhancing economic cooperation with Pakistan but they have also showed willingness to open up its defense market for Islamabad, which was once a ‘prohibited sector’ for our country, mainly due to close friendly ties that Russians have been having with New Delhi for years,” the diplomat observed.
The foreign ministry officials have revealed that now there have been ongoing discussions between Islamabad and Moscow for the purchase of a modern Russian fighter jets by Pakistan. Apart from that, both the sides have been in talks for the supply of Russia’s multipurpose MI-17 helicopters to Pakistan.
Russia, on its part, is deeply interested in increasing cooperation with Pakistan in the energy sector as well. Pakistan is also far ahead of Russia in banking and information technology sectors and these are the fields that the Russians is interested in.
Another reason for improvement in Pakistan-Russia ties is the full counter terrorism cooperation extended to Moscow by Islamabad, which is highly acknowledged by the Russian authorities. The ‘sluggishness’ in Pakistani foreign ministry and also of some elements of Russian bureaucracy is, nonetheless, hampering the bilateral efforts to forge close friendly ties and this is causing frustration in top ruling circles in the two countries.
Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders have, however, issued fresh directives to all the relevant official quarters in Islamabad to accelerate the process of normalisation of Pakistan’s ties with Russia along with China and they have also showed a profound displeasure over the slow movement in this regard.
Hence, in the days to come, we will see more frequent high level interactions between the civilian and defense officials from Islamabad and Moscow along with the ongoing efforts to improve the strained Pakistan-United States relations.
“The crisis with the US is very serious and it has caused deep worries in the country’s ruling circles but at the same time it has provided us with an opportunity to look towards our own region and to lessen the dependence on Washington and it is in this context that we see gradual warmth in ties with Moscow,” said a senior foreign ministry official requesting anonymity.
