An Indian drone violates Pakistan’s borders and the plot thickens
Peace talks between India and Pakistan had been suspended after the LoC firing and the violent clashes at the de facto border. The Nawaz-Modi meeting was seen as a positive step even though it was just ritualistic in nature. Following the Nawaz-Modi meeting, the US Vice President Joe Biden welcomed the resumption of talks between the two countries, and suddenly an Indian drone transgresses Pakistani territory at the same time. “The US strongly encourages both sides to build on this strategic avenue for peace,” Biden said during an address in Washington.
The nature of the ties between these two countries has always been troublesome ever since the inception of this ideological nation-state called Pakistan, and has always been a source of concern for topographical neighbours as well as global powers. Both states are extremely important for the successful execution of global strategy in Asia and the Middle East.
The current situation reminisces of the usual chain of events, which keeps lingering between covert volatile defence strategies and the overt global camouflage of diplomacy. The diplomatic endeavours have always had a ‘ceremonial nature’ and the lack of commitment to bring peace has always aggravated the already hostile situation within the region. The cause of conflict between the two countries revolves around the Kashmir issue, terrorist sanctuaries, proxy wars, and the perpetrators of the Mumbai Attacks in 2008.
Concurrently, there is the issue of US withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan and the lingering volatility on the borders of all these geographically bound countries. This brings us to the terrorist problem, which is common to the region and has embedded itself in the soil of all these countries. Despite their diplomatic efforts, terrorism continues to consume the general population. Recently, the military establishment of both the countries has overtly blamed the other for involvement in cross-border terrorism but the political diplomacy seems to portray its obliviousness to this military strategy.
Prime ministers of both the countries have won the elections in their respective countries with the support of the business community and came into power with magnanimous slogans of economic growth. The promise of invigorating trade and commerce was made by both of them, which binds them to expand the economic reach of their countries, and geographical neighbours cannot be ignored in such a pursuit. Fiscal policies have been manoeuvered to include each other in their economic endeavours but there has been no growth on the ground in concrete terms. The business class might be benefitting on both sides from trade relaxations but the magnitude of progress on a country level is still indeterminate. Meanwhile, CPEC and the India-China trade corridor are two projects going on simultaneously, which brings another dimension to the bilateral ties of Pakistan and India, because of geographical proximity of the trade corridors.
Moving on, let us revisit the structural limitations of Pakistan because the problem begins at home. Pakistan has an utter lack of coordination in matters of national security and foreign affairs between the organs of the state. Pakistan does not have a permanent foreign minister and the same goes for the position of the defence minister. This sounds so absurd but Nawaz Sharif has reserved these functional capacities for himself, aided and abetted by Sartaj Aziz and Tariq Fatemi. On top of that, the civil-military relations have always been problematic and the tussle of power continues to this day. Such a dysfunctional foreign policy could largely be attributed to the PM’s hunger for power even though he miserably fails at protecting his own turf, let alone protecting the country. For starters, Nawaz Sharif needs to appoint a foreign minister and let the appointed personnel do their job instead of unnecessarily usurping power in the quest for greatness.
To sum it up, the verbal battle has to end and a concrete foreign strategy has to be devised; otherwise, the military establishment of both the countries will continue to sabotage the security of the region. Both countries cannot go to war because it is unrealistic and is against the strategic plans of the global powers. These nations will continue to mislead their people by false hopes which they need to stop. A foreign intervention can never help them unless they want to help themselves. Thus, diplomacy is the only solution and covert border violations need to be immediately stopped. Otherwise, instability in the region would create further problems.
