After Uri: four questions

The writer is an analyst and
commentator.

Over a month ago, I had used this space to plead with the prime minister to choose the ‘Misbah method’ over the ‘Shahid Afridi approach’ as he prepared to head to New York to attend the UN General Assembly session. Afridi’s innings can sometimes be spectacular, but rarely do they serve a purpose larger than the moment. Misbah’s innings are rarely spectacular, but almost always engineered for impact far beyond a given over, or even innings. That’s the difference between being a vacuous, hit-and-miss star, and being a leader that alters narratives, and creates a championship team.

At the UNGA, PM Sharif delivered a spectacular speech. It reminded the world of the issue of Kashmir in a powerful way – never mind the Sharifophobia of idiots circulating pictures of empty seats at the General Assembly Hall. Those whom it was meant to address heard the speech loud and clear – and we must not forget that oft-helpless Kashmiris in Srinagar watch these kinds of things closely. The valley will not soon forget this speech by PM Sharif. It was all the more important, given that it came so soon after the Uri attack, in which 18 Indian soldiers were killed.

One of the problems with the 24x7 news cycle, and the 140-character social media world that enshrouds it is what we might call the T20-isation of politics, domestic and international. Seen within the narrow spectrum of the last several weeks of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s helplessness in Jammu and Kashmir, and the immediate aftermath of the Uri attack, Pakistan’s UNGA speech was just great. If the life of a nation is a T20 match, Pakistan batted well. But so what? Beyond the gratification that the speech offered in the moment, what do we know?

Let’s take the obvious stuff first. We know that something about the Uri attack was different, not because we know anything about the attack, but about the reaction to the attack. Within less than a week after Uri, a number of things happened that one may have expected not to happen if Pakistan was being isolated as a state-sponsor of terrorism. Russia went ahead with war games in Pakistan. Iran endorsed Pakistan’s CPEC-centric plan for economic growth and development. Premier Li Keqiang reinforced the iron-clad strategic partnership between China and Pakistan. Secretary of State John Kerry implicitly underscored the centrality of the Kashmir situation to South Asian stability. And of course, at an OIC meeting on Kashmir in New York, several countries spoke in favour of a resolution to the long-standing Kashmir dispute.

In short, Pakistan is not isolated. But what lies at the heart of not being abandoned by world powers? None of these things were a product of the PM’s UNGA speech, and almost all are rooted in the long arcs of international politics, rather than sudden bursts of diplomatic or strategic Pakistani brilliance. Most of them are also a product of the tactical compulsions of other countries, rather than the allure of Pakistan – economically or politically.

In short, anyone that takes the absence of Pakistan’s isolation in the aftermath of Uri as a sign of Pakistani strength or its tactile diplomacy is making a grave analytical error. Winning the Westphalian corner plot lottery comes with many pains – the burdens of geostrategic relevance if you will – but it also comes with some benefits. Today, Pakistan’s resilience in the face of Indian machinations to isolate it have more to do with the geostrategic inevitability of the Pakistani land, air and seas than with the genius of Pakistan, its generals or its politicians.

This brings us to other things that we know, or that we must know (and if we don’t, we should be prosecuted for stupidity). We know that whilst there are mischievous and malign actors in India that have an innate hatred for the very idea of Pakistan, Indian reactions to attacks on Indian soil are not informed solely by hatred or by malignant views about Muslims or Pakistan. Indian reactions are informed by national pride, and many reactions should be perfectly understandable.

We also know that there is a history to violent extremism born and bred in Pakistan, finding its way into India and climaxing on Indian soil, taking Indian lives. India’s pointing of the finger at Pakistan after Uri can be adjudged as many things: hasty, ill-intentioned, half-baked. But it cannot be adjudged unreasonable or based on implausible assumptions.

We also know that no matter how petty and small-minded India may sometimes be with Pakistan, and how brutal and unjust it may be in Kashmir, neither of these two facets of India have a major audience outside Pakistan. India is the world’s fastest growing economy, boasts the world’s most influential diaspora, has among the world’s most compelling cultural narratives, and enjoys a coherence about itself that should be the envy of many countries. Most world powers may not ditch Pakistan to please Narendra Modi, but they will also never ditch India to win praise at the corps commanders conference meetings in Rawalpindi.

Indeed, while we in Pakistan were patting ourselves on the back, economically stagnant France was busy counting the dollar bills in an $8.8 billion deal that will provide India with the state-of-the-art Rafale plane. In short, Pakistan may not yet be isolated, but the long arc of India’s trajectory, when compared to Pakistan’s, is one in which India will keep getting stronger and Pakistan will need to keep getting lucky.

Therefore, if life as a country really is a T20, then though Pakistan has batted well in the last couple of weeks, this performance has been helped by poor bowling (India’s brutal repression in Kashmir), and by a small ground (geostrategic relevance). India’s bowling attack is deep, and has the ability to come back into the game quickly.

Even as T20s go, there is no reason for Pakistanis to feel puffy-chested, not after Burhan Wani, not after Modi’s August 15 speech, not after the Uri attack, and certainly not after the UN General Assembly. Of course, life is not a T20 spectacle, but rather a series of tests.

At home, Pakistan’s test is not whether it can disrupt, dismantle and defeat the TTP and its allies. That is the T20. We’ll win that one, InshaAllah, hands down. The test is whether Pakistan can establish sovereignty over its territory so that no gun-toting thug has the capacity to raise his weapon in defiance of the Pakistani state. That means no terrorists defiling Baloch identity, it means no sectarian cancers running around takfiring others, it means no waderas running dacoity and kidnapping rings, it means no bhattas in Karachi, it means no real estate mafiosos in Rawalpindi and Sheikhupura, and it means no LeT/JuD or Jaish – anywhere in Pakistan, ever.

Until we establish an environment that completely asphyxiates the violent and coercive non-state actor, we will be vulnerable to the evil and vile designs of enemies meant to weaken and undermine our national arc of stability, prosperity and security. India is a sideshow in this test – a spectator. No matter how loud spectators may be, they do not have agency in a match. The issue of non-state actors, notwithstanding who was or was not responsible for the Uri attack, is a matter of internal coherence, stability and sovereignty for Pakistan.

Abroad, Pakistan’s test is to convert its corner-plot advantage (and disadvantage) into a perpetual source of economic and political power. Instead of congratulating ourselves for the bold Kashmir-centric UNGA speech, Pakistanis must ask our prime minister and military leadership a series of questions, whose answers are self-evident.

Is taking out our frustration at the Afghan NDS’s misbehaviour on poor Afghan refugees the best way to weaken our enemies? Or do such moves strengthen our enemies?

Can pushing Ashraf Ghani into Narendra Modi’s arms by embarrassing him in front of the Americans and the Chinese help Pakistan get what it wants from Afghanistan?

Does failure to prevent groups like LeT-JuD and JeM to gather in large groups boost Pakistan’s international standing, or does it weaken the country’s case in front of US congressmen and senators?

Can Pakistan afford to be completely divorced from the US – the country that buys the largest share of our exports – as it slides gently into the Russia and China corner? Would Russia and China ever cease trade relations with India in favour of the right of Kashmiris’ self-determination?