There’s always a plan in Washington

A Pakistan plan, especially

A retired US air force officer working out of Dubai – intelligence work, if you believe his broker – once gave the Abu Dhabi crown prince a laughing fit by explaining the American fondness for public holidays. “We would gladly have a public holiday on Edhi Amin’s birth anniversary”. Nawaz knows this pretty well. Bill Clinton made sure he did, when he invited N over to talk out the Kargil issue on Jul4, America’s independence day. And if he remembers that part of the conversation – the rest was not very pleasant – he will read very carefully into Gen Raheel’s recent visit to the US. John Kerry met him, after all, after the general’s visit was extended, that too on Thanksgiving holiday.

And then the secretary of state called the Pakistani army “a binding force”. Now, here’s N, still hounded by the dharna momentum, facing PTI’s shutdown call, there is talk of mid-term election, and there’s the general, given a better outing in the US than N himself, and the White House effectively saying it’s the army holding things together, which means it’s definitely not the government. Interestingly, Sartaj Aziz tried to muddy the waters with the Haqqani controversy, but Gen Sharif was quick to shoot it down – all the way from Washington. And going by the diplomatic body language, Washington seems satisfied enough for the moment.

It shouldn’t take a prime minister to understand why the Americans might be happier with the army than the prime minister. The government has lost credibility. N is isolated. There has been no legislation in his year-and-a-half in office. The economy is weak, despite the PM taking credit for lowering fuel prices and inflation. There is agitation across the country, and political parties are campaigning like elections are around the corner.

The army, on the other hand, has finally put its foot down on the terrorism issue. And finally, for all intents and purposes, it has decided to roll-back the strategic depth policy that turned Fata into the terrorist’s ideal habitat. Disrupting al Qaeda’s structure in the tribal area will benefit America’s larger war against terrorism to a large degree. Already, Washington’s focus on the Islamic State threat is redefining its Middle East policy of decades.

The fight against IS has contributed to an unprecedented thaw with Iran and there is a rollback of the Syria policy; both rubbing traditional allies Saudi Arabia and Israel the wrong way. Saudi has responded by an OPEC freeze on reducing supplies, keeping oil prices low, hitting Iran and Russia. Pakistan’s army is an essential part of this new global war against terrorism. All N has done is take credit for falling oil by reducing fuel prices at home.

And things don’t get any better in Islamabad. The Sharifs have a habit of making bad situations worse. The dharna would not even have taken off if he had only taken a few small steps – investigate the four constituencies, pay attention to the economy; text book stuff for a PM. Instead there was Model Town, Red Zone, Ch Nisar outbursts against supportive opposition at a critical time, etc.

And now there’s the Plan-C worry. How would it look from far away, where there’s always a plan for Pakistan? Imran’s going over the top with his tactics, but what if Nawaz is Nawaz when push comes to shove? What if there are more brutal crackdowns? More arrests and, god forbid, more deaths? There will definitely be more political chaos. All parties campaigning for nothing right now will suddenly have something. And, if things get too bad, will someone, or some institution, need to be a ‘”binding force”?

There’s simply too much at stake in Pakistan for America. There’s Zarb e Azb, which will have to go deep inside the country. Remember Obama’s comments alongside Modi? About the “terrorist infrastructure” inside Pakistan, names and all? And then there’s Afghanistan. The Americans are going, slowly, and Pakistan will play a role in the ‘arrangement’. So it must keep ‘functioning’, in the right way. So far Nawaz has done little to help his case. And whether or not he has finally learnt to read the writing on the wall will become apparent in a few days. Failure to deal with plan-C may well unravel a plan he can do nothing about.