Pak-Indian, especially
No prizes if anybody guessed the Pakistani response to the Indian spy allegation. These rules – of foreign missions housing spies, diplomatic cover/immunity, even defections – are set in stone, more or less, since the days of the Cold War. Of late, as the international theatre of war has become predominantly grizzly, these stories have become few and far between. And they have cropped up in the Pak-India drama at a time of awkward anxiety. This means that diplomacy, which was on a near fatal downward spiral anyway, has now completely collapsed. With embassies suspect, nobody talks; another rule of the game.
And since India started this game, just like Modi upped the diplomatic offensive – not to mention the spy infiltration offensive – it can only be taken to mean that New Delhi is not quite done with its bid to ‘isolate Pakistan’, etc. The Pakistani response, in this case at least, is natural and understandable. Bending over backwards to make peace when the other is bending over backwards to stick knives in your front and back makes you look weak and silly. The more important point, though, is where things go from here.
Fortunately, some measure of hope is found in what now seems a confrontation of another era. Pakistan and India had been at loggerheads back in the Musharraf-Manmohan time as well. But then two years of back-door diplomacy, headed on our side by then Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri, eventually brought the two sides to “within a signature of settling Sir Creek” (Kasuri). That should provide some hope, and a blueprint if anybody is interested. But since the ’07 ‘judicial revolution’, and the subsequent breakdown in Pakistan, threw that initiative right off the rail, the naysayers will have their point too. The only certainty, sadly, is that hawks on both sides will brag ‘I told you so’ for a while longer.
