What the world will notice

Three attributes that universally define a leader include ‘nigah bulund’ (vision), ‘sukhan dilnawaz’ (a capability to touch the hearts through his words), and ‘jaan pursoz’ (empathy and sympathy). Hardly anyone on the political scene in Pakistan matches up. And though these are universally applicable, yet matching India’s Narendra Modi to these seems a travesty.
Modi was heralded as the newfound miracle that India needed by many, including this writer who ended up attributing a lot more to this man than was his due. Modi has failed miserably to live up to the expectations except those of his mentors in the RSS, and the hate-lobby that is thriving under his administration.
Modi instead has proven to be a ruffian in the mould of Amit Shah, his chosen deputy in the BJP hierarchy and the author of the 2002 Gujarat genocide – only a league higher. Especially at the international level where every word you speak has implications and manifestations. Instead, he is cavalier with his foreign policy enunciations, playing the RSS ultra-right ideologue, spewing venom, never conscious of the larger manifestations that his or his ministers’ words will effect. Rather than a statesman who could be seen to be bringing the region together, healing wounds, he chose to inflict some more in his most recent visit to Bangladesh by trashing Pakistan and going back to India’s 1971 exploits when Pakistan was dismembered. In that he and Hasina Wajid – Bangladesh’s prime minister of equal ineptitude – share the same mantle.
When a prime minister, or a senior minister in the cabinet of an intended regional heavy, chooses to threaten a neighbour with further fragmentation, you know you are dealing with an unusual set of international goons. When they identify using terror as a means to their intended policy of inducing instability as an open threat, you know they only prove what has always been known in Pakistan as a policy in vogue that has aimed at keeping both Fata and Balochistan on the boil using terror groups located in Afghanistan.
A lot more has gone in through proven evidence of Indian hand when Latifullah Mehsud, the TTP’s number two at one time, was caught red-handed by Isaf forces in Afghanistan carrying a huge stash of funds provided by his Indian handlers. Some Baloch renegades ply their wares against the state of Pakistan by moving around the world on Indian passports, and openly profess to Indian support in both money and weapons.
Perhaps a similar case could have been made against Pakistan in India – especially in the early 90s – except that Pakistan never broke that country up. But someone in India needs to pause, take a deep breath, and view some significant changes that have come about in Pakistan. The Pakistani military’s year-long application against terror, groups in Fata in particular, has not only dissembled the terror nexus but eliminated their presence from all of the tribal agencies and so reestablished the writ of the government in the badlands. Recent times – in a relative sense – have been far more peaceful, enabling the return of the IDPs back to their homes in North Waziristan – a major indicator of how the situation has improved.
China has moved to make a major investment in Pakistan in the fields of energy and infrastructure; and China never invests unless it is sure of a decent return on its money. That it also is a major indicator of international confidence is established. More will come. Zimbabwe recently visited for a cricket series, resuming the long halted process of international cricket in Pakistan. The Pakistani people, its government and its military are resolved to turn the country around and have forged a combined commitment to bring this nation back to its rightful place. It will be a long haul but the journey has begun – with promising results.
Seemingly someone in India doesn’t like ‘achay din’ in Pakistan. That is regressive and antiquated thinking. If this is the combined expose of the Indian leadership’s mindset it is only a matter of time that the world too will recognise the malice in the Indian facade. That can only lower India’s stock in the world.
Pakistan has a choice: stay the course, or respond to India tit for tat. India is descending down the ladder of rationality pretty fast but reality too will catch up soon. The days of wars, as we have known them, are long gone. That only leaves the senseless avenues of cheap ratcheting of rhetoric and the dirty play that intelligence outfits will resort to in investing in instability through manipulating those that will do their dirty job.
When India declares its resort to such defeatist recourse it is an expression of imperious anger. A frustrated India engenders terror as a policy in a relatively small, struggling, fighting-for-its-soul Pakistan. Those who complained about terror as policy are themselves using terror as a policy.
Should we too then play the same game? Regardless of how the intelligence outfits continue to play their shadow wars, it does not behove a representative government and its leadership to lend its support to their shady agendas. Alternatively, as has been done in Pakistan, the intelligence agencies need to be brought on board to identify their role in consonance with government policy. Pakistan’s policy for the last few years has been to engage India; that of India to shun Pakistan.
It has been Pakistan’s desire to forge a minimum common agenda for the region and move towards greater integration. India under its current government has rejected any such notion by defying all opportunities for talks under one or another ruse. Pakistan has placed its entire effort in eliminating the menace of the non-state actor. India has openly professed employing non-state actors to pursue its policy. Pakistan is progressive in its thinking; India is regressive. And that is what the world will notice.
If Pakistan too engages in such shallow undertakings what India does will be somehow sanctified. Those who apprehend that a non-response to India’s belligerence may be seen as Pakistan’s nervy acquiescence need to understand the defining role of a nuclear deterrence that practically proscribes an aggressive translation. The rhetoric then is only hot air.
What India did in Myanmar is what India can only do in Myanmar. It cannot repeat the act even in Nepal where the Indian army units – ostensibly for earthquake support – were hounded out by the Nepali civilians who refused to stand India’s condescending treatment of its small neighbour. Even Bangladesh, despite Hasina’s love-affair with India, will give a befitting response to any such overture.
That Arnab Goswami of Times Now loves to trumpet such overblown farce is no reason for Pakistan to add credibility to it by taking note. Pakistan should simply ignore the nonsense he spews. There is no reason to hold India-Pakistan ‘takras’ making reasonable men look like animated juveniles.
The die of a strategic balance is cast and that alone will govern the limit of the shallows that India will touch. Beyond that Modi will have to rise above the league of ruffians and goons to be the statesman that the rational world expects.
The writer is a retired air-vice marshal, former ambassador and a security and political analyst.
Email: shhzdchdhry@yahoo.com