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Friday March 29, 2024

Policy and protocol

By Shahzad Chaudhry
September 17, 2016

Part - II

General Raheel’s remarks on the CPEC were uncontestable. The CPEC, if handled well and honestly, has the making of a game-changer for Pakistan. In an economy that is under deep stagnation, $46 billion is a bonanza. How we use it and how we value-add depends entirely on how our mind works. This is in the hands of those who are running the economy, which is not General Sharif and his army.

But it is easier to understand that just as everyone else in the region and the world thinks, sadly, that for any credibility the military of Pakistan carries better and more effective agency. The Chinese too have been asking of Pakistan government and its military to own the CPEC project; each in their respective areas of responsibility. The military is expected to provide the project security till its completion and after it operationalises. The army chief in his September 6 statement made it a point to publicly commit to the venture and emphasise its criticality to reassure the Chinese. It keeps the Chinese in good humour.

There are other obvious perceptions on the CPEC that he addressed. It is assumed, perhaps rightly, that some forces in the yonder may not like the Chinese finding alternate means through such projects to enlarge their area of influence. They may therefore like to interfere, scuttle or at the least slow the project through the same groups that enact terror on the soil of Pakistan. General Raheel committed through these statements to fight such attempts and defeat them comprehensively.

Modi’s inordinate emphasis on Balochistan in recent weeks is one such instance of foreign motivations against the project. The US would also be none too pleased about it. The Afghans unfortunately become the unwitting facilitators of such subversion through their inability to check the use of their soil by others who rule the roost there.

That brings us to the more contentious part of General Sharif’s statements – the bit about relations with regional countries, especially Afghanistan and India. And he did make a very clear reference to both. But questions on whether the army is an enabler or a spoiler in this regional cat and mouse game of shifting credibility were answered in no uncertain terms – that there are conditions to these relationships. That leaves the question of whether he was stating something different from what the government believes in. We will get there soon.

Afghanistan is more complex. But to India the message was loud and clear. The Pakistani military articulated through its chief that it had no objections to a friendlier and cordial neighbourhood. Except that the terms will have to be equal and honourable; as equal as are between China and Pakistan. In the global hierarchy India is placed far, far below China and were it to only emulate the Chinese example of how relationships are founded on equality and mutual respect Pakistan and India could have moved far along on the road to normalisation.

Unfortunately for all of Pakistan’s attempts at normalisation, which to many in Pakistan have seemed undue submission to the Indian agenda, India has only shifted the goalpost. Perhaps too driven by its own over-assessment of its image, it lost rationality in developing a working relationship that could have delivered to them incremental gains.

Held back by none so laudable perceptions from the past on how Pakistan had carried the animosity to the Indians they too found an opportunity for some serious psycho-social gains that may to them imprint forever on the Pakistani mind the superiority of India. They played above their weight and stretched their capacity, losing the moment once again. The two remain stuck in a groove of their own making.

When General Sharif reminded to all the importance of Kashmir and the ongoing atrocities by the Indian state against the Kashmiri people’s right to self-determination, he gave voice to how every Pakistani felt and what has emerged as the consensus political sentiment echoed by every political party of Pakistan. The PM too has made repeated statements of support to the Kashmiris in their freedom struggle. In such a backdrop which party or entity has the gall to initiate another attempt at appeasing the Indian arrogance for normalisation?

The statement was clear: for any change in the bilateral equation, India will have to stop its ruthless terror against the Kashmiri people, and deal with Pakistan as an equal partner. This was not overstepping; this was simple reiteration of the national sentiment from a credible source with agency (remember: the wider perception in the world).

What did he tell Afghanistan? That “we know how to carry friendships, but we also know how to repay our debts of enmity”. The choice is clear, and it lies with the Afghans. The allegations of duality on Pakistan are not new. Karzai used to effuse them and so does Ghani. What the over 150,000 Nato soldiers and the pervasive presence of drones could not deliver, they want the Pakistanis to do it for them. And for what? Abuse, venom, open hostility, opening their soil to inimical forces to attack Pakistan?

For what, one may ask. To open a front against Afghan tribes that reside in neighbouring provinces along Pakistani borders? To convert them into eternal enemies? We may appear to be paid lackeys, but we are not stupid lackeys. Are we not already fully occupied even if we were to provide this service gratis on brotherly grounds? Even that has now been refuted by Ghani. It is not that the Indians have found more favours with the Afghans and we feel jaded – I have always said the Afghans bed two rivals; with us they have conjugal obligations, with the Indians it is a matter of choice.

I think the dominating question that still irks is: could this all not have been said by the PM in a speech of his own? Surely. But what if he doesn’t, perhaps for being too occupied elsewhere? Who better than a voice of credibility and agency? That is the reality of Pakistan. A bitter one indeed. But General Raheel has been a good man; and let us face it, we ‘are’ in a diarchy. That is what the need of the time is and that is what we must live with.

So, not to worry. Democracy is not threatened and will go on, and hopefully get better with time. In the meanwhile, it takes all hands to mind the fort.

Concluded

Email: shhzdchdhry@yahoo.com