Interview: Hussain Haqqani ‘We prefer to live in denial’

Pakistan needs a realist foreign policy

Times like the present – hostility, nationalism, war-mongering, etc – tend to make ardent patriots out of most of us. Yet, and we know it, most such patriotism is mere chauvinism and xenophobia. Instinctively – though, again, knowingly – we tend to keep the narrative fixated upon one idea.

Self-checking, or even caution, is not generally a good idea. It is not just frowned upon, but dubbed outright treason. You won’t find many people trying to address the deeper reasons behind that confrontation that Uri has once again ignited, for example. Pretty much the same is true for India; though there you will still find one or two voice urging restraint every day or so, even if their prime time media is more belligerent.

No better time, then, to talk to Hussain Haqqani. He knows what it’s like to be shunned when you jump off the bandwagon. He knows what it takes to lobby your case in the power corridors of the world’s hyper power. And he understands just why Pakistan finds itself increasingly isolated on the world stage.

Once again, he was generous enough to make time for DNA.

Question: It seemed for a while that the Modi government was taking extreme positions (vis a vis Pakistan) early in the administration to eventually start inevitable talks from a maximalist position. Clearly that is not the case. Are the Indians really preparing for a long-term confrontation?

Hussain Haqqani: Both Prime Ministers Modi and Sharif, when they came to power, tried to improve ties between India and Pakistan. Mr Sharif attended Mr Modi’s inauguration in May 2014 and in December 2015 when Mr Modi stopped by in Lahore Mr Sharif welcomed him. However, for things to change between the two countries there needs to be a paradigm shift which has not yet occurred. Pakistan’s security establishment needs to move away from using jihadis as an instrument of foreign policy with respect to India and India needs to find ways to reassure Pakistan about its concerns. None of this can happen when there are repeated attacks by jihadi groups like Pathankot and Uri in India. India too is unfortunately moving in the direction of unbridled angry rhetoric about Pakistan but their frustration about terrorist attacks is real.

Q: Is Delhi, in your opinion, really serious about undoing the Indus Water Treaty? What contingencies should Pakistan have prepared by now?

HH: I do not believe India is serious about undoing the Indus Water Treaty. The two countries have fought four wars and yet neither has broken the treaty. It will also not be that easy to break the treaty as it is not just a bilateral treaty but an international one with the World Bank. In any case, India and Pakistan must work on improving the spirit of the Indus Waters Treaty instead of hyping up prospects of undoing it.

As for what Pakistan should do about its water security, there is a lot Pakistan should have done over the years. We should have built more dams, reservoirs and canals to ensure better water management with inter-provincial consensus. We have managed our water resources poorly and we are ill-prepared for a future of water scarcity.

Q: Isn’t India too diverse a polity to put up with BJP’s extremist diplomatic onslaught against Pakistan, especially its behaviour in Kashmir? Do you expect the Modi government to feel the heat, internally, sooner rather than later?

HH: India, like Pakistan, is a diverse country and as in every democracy there will be no one view on any subject. It has the advantage of offering a bigger market to international investors and has managed to retain a better reputation than us by not being seen as allowing terrorists to operate freely. Most of the world does not see India the way Pakistanis do. Even in Muslim majority countries India has managed to keep a better image. The way India and its international supporters see it, India has faced terrorism for many decades now. Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad and many others have been declared terrorist by the UN, not just India.

There are growing voices within India that it should no longer exercise restraint when it comes to Pakistan. This rising jingoism within the younger generation is aided by the growing presence of social media. Mr Modi came to power promising that he would take a tougher stand against Pakistan and what he has done is something he had to do for his domestic constituency. I do not think India will go further than what it calls ‘surgical strikes’ but we will have to wait and see. The greater threat for Pakistan is international isolation.

Q: The Pakistani embassy in Washington no doubt plays a crucial role in such times. They must have their own advice for the prime minister, especially when he went for the UN speech. How do you think they guided the PM this particular time? Would you have done any different if you were still there?

HH: I am not in touch with the Pakistan embassy in Washington DC and doubt that anyone in the Pakistani establishment seeks my advice these days. I do know that it is the role of the embassy to inform the home government about the opinions and views that are prevailing in the host country. As ambassador, I candidly told Islamabad what my American interlocutors and many personal friends said even at the risk of annoying people who only like hearing positive things. I am sure that even now the embassy in Washington must be providing feedback.

I am not privy to what they have been saying but from outside it appears that officials in Islamabad have a rosier picture of US attitudes than exists in reality. As a nation, we like only good news and sometimes tailor the news so that it sounds good to us. For example, everyone applauded when our PM spoke of Kashmir at the UN General Assembly both last year and this year but almost no one pointed out that no other country said a word about Kashmir in the same UN General Assembly session. It is also patently absurd to believe that sending 20 special envoys will change how countries around the world look at Kashmir or Pakistan. The exercise will generate headlines at home, nothing else.

Q: As a person who has seen the worlds of politics and academia, how do you think Kashmir, and subsequently Pak-India, will play out in the long run?

HH: I have always argued, in my speeches and writings, that India and Pakistan should become friends even if they retain certain disputes, including the one on Kashmir. We share 5,000 years of history and only 70 years of bitterness and animosity. In my latest book ‘India v Pakistan’ I argue that the baggage of partition, the development of rival national identities and the challenges of terrorism, nuclear weapons and radicalising societies in each country have led us to where we are today.

Right now India and Pakistan are mired in a hyper-nationalist frenzy and only see what the other side is doing wrong or has done wrong in the past. For things to really change the establishment on each side needs to change its views about the other. The Pakistani establishment needs to move beyond focusing on India as the existential enemy and move towards viewing it as a neighbour with whom Pakistan shares ties and needs to build trade, economic and cultural relations while at the same time ensuring its defense. The Indian establishment needs to view Pakistan as its largest South Asia neighbour, and instead of treating it with disdain treat it with respect and discuss all those issues including Kashmir that can help resolve the differences. Most prosperous nations trade most with their neighbours. Half of US trade is with Canada and Mexico.

Quaid e Azam Jinnah often expressed the fond hope that India and Pakistan would be like the United States and Canada. In history there have been cases of countries that fought for decades, like Germany and France, and yet today they are the backbone of the European Union. There is the case of China and Taiwan where China doesn’t recognise Taiwan as an independent country and yet the two have good trade relations. If all these countries can get along fine why then should the India-Pakistan relationship be hostage to any single dispute, however important?

Q: Pakistan is fast losing friends internationally. Why do you think that is? Now we are left with just the China card to play. Is this a good sign?

HH: For years Pakistan’s government and media have created an artificial bubble that does not allow Pakistanis to realise our low international standing. For decades we depended on the US and now it is China which is presented as our saviour. Few countries have a favourable opinion of Pakistan and even in China only 30pc of people have a positive view of Pakistan, according to global opinion surveys conducted by the Pew Foundation. Our passport is ranked as the second worst passport for international travel as it requires a visa for more countries than even a Somali passport. We are isolated and are perceived as a terrorist incubator but we prefer to live in denial. Our media cites joint military exercises with Russia as a sign that we have new global options, ignoring that Russia has similar exercises with India and even China now has joint exercises with India and Pakistan both.

Our default response to international criticism is to blame India or Afghanistan for our problems and abuse those who point out our shortcomings and difficulties. We are an aid dependent nation that acts as if others do themselves a favour by giving us aid.

Turning to China, we have always had this mythical notion that a superpower ally will come from outside, solve all our problems, improve our economy and build our military so we can stand up to India. First we looked to the US but they did not do what we expected them to do. Then we turned to China and we have consistently believed China will solve all our problems. China, when it invests money in a country, does it not for the sake of altruism or in the name of development (like the US or EU) but solely for the purpose of investments that should benefit Chinese companies. We overplay the China card. I saw no media report that China did not bring up Kashmir in the UNGA even if its PM told our PM that China understands our stand.

Pakistan needs to have a realist foreign policy, based on expectations commensurate to our size and economic capacity. We must recognise that the advantages we had of being the west’s allies during the cold war, when India was non-aligned, are over. At that time, western nations, especially the United States, helped us advance our arguments at the UN and elsewhere in return for our assistance in anti-communist intelligence gathering or even the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan.

We now need to be realistic in how much, and in what ways, we can compete with India. We need to fend for our security but we should not make opposing India the end all and be all of our existence. We need to prioritise better, have fewer feuds with other nations, end terrorism and our association with it and build our economy and society to make ourselves attractive as friends and allies. It is not hard to do but it requires realism and analysis that goes beyond patting ourselves on our back and adopting ideological rhetoric as a substitute for policy.