Foreign policy

Peace is difficult
Munir AkramUpdated April 14, 2019Facebook Count
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THE recent military crisis with India was a baptism of fire for Prime Minister Imran Khan and
the PTI government. In the event, the Pakistani leader emerged as a responsible statesman
while Modi exposed himself as a rash warmonger.

The Pakistani prime minister has expressed the hope that after his anticipated re-election,
Prime Minister Modi will be strong enough to politically to engage in a dialogue for peace
with Pakistan. He has similarly expressed hope for peace in Afghanistan through the US-
Afghan Taliban talks which Pakistan has facilitated.

Unfortunately, peace is difficult to achieve in the present global environment. A new Cold
War is under way between the US and China. The Washington ‘establishment’ views India as
an essential ally in its global competition with China. After the Pulwama suicide attack, US
National Security Adviser John Bolton immediately proclaimed India’s “right to self-
defence”, providing New Delhi a virtual “carte blanche” to proceed with its threatened
military action, irrespective of the inherent risk of a wider Pakistan-India war. Responsibility
to avoid a conflict — by acting against Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) — was placed on Pakistan.

US mediation to prevent a wider war was activated only after Pakistan retaliated against
India’s incursion, downed two Indian aircraft, captured an Indian pilot and, reportedly,
‘locked’ its missiles on to several Indian targets in response to similar Indian action.
Pakistan’s foreign minister was gracious in acknowledging US mediation. Yet, the lesson
from the episode is clear: strength is the only sure way to deter an aggressive adversary and
secure even-handed outcomes.

India is unlikely to offer any meaningful compromises to resolve the Kashmir dispute.

It remains to be seen if after their anticipated re-election, Modi and the BJP agree to resume
a dialogue with Pakistan. But, even if talks resume, India is unlikely to offer any meaningful
compromises to resolve the Kashmir dispute or move away from the aim of imposing an
India-dominated ‘order’ in South Asia and beyond.

This presumption is reinforced by the BJP’s electoral manifesto, which promises to

transform India into a ‘Hindu rashtra’ (state), build a Hindu temple on the site of the
destroyed Babri Masjid and strip Kashmir’s special and autonomous status under the Indian
constitution.

What India desires is that Pakistan accept India’s rule in India-occupied Kashmir, much as
Israel’s Arab neighbours are being asked to accept the ‘reality’ of Israel’s occupation of
Jerusalem, the Golan and most of the West Bank. But, unlike Israel’s neighbours, Pakistan
has not been militarily defeated by India. Even if Pakistan were to set aside its strategic
stakes in Kashmir (territory, affiliated people, water, China access), it will continue to be
drawn into supporting the resilient 70-year struggle of the Kashmiri people for self-
determination and freedom (azadi) from India.

Peace with India will have to be promoted the hard way, through possession of the
capability to deter and defeat Indian aggression or ‘diktat’ and insistence on equitable
negotiated solutions to outstanding disputes.

Likewise, building peace in Afghanistan remains an imposing challenge.

Pakistan’s facilitation of the US-Taliban talks appears to have been quietly ‘pocketed’ by
Washington without offering anything tangible in return. The IMF has insisted on onerous
conditions for financial support. The threat of the FATF ‘black list’ has not been lifted.
Pakistan’s blocked CSF funds have not been released. No concern has been voiced by the US
regarding India’s UN-documented human rights violations in occupied Kashmir. Far from
censuring India’s military aggression of Feb 26, the US, together with the UK and France, has
moved a resolution in the Security Council to place JeM’s Maulana Azhar on the terrorism
‘list’.

The unfortunate reality is that Pakistan has been categorised as an adversary by the US
‘establishment’, due to: America’s ‘strategic partnership’ with India against China and
‘radical Islamic terrorism’; the blame assigned to Pakistan for the US military failure in
Afghanistan; Pakistan’s nuclear weapons capability, and the considerable influence in
Washington of the Indian-American expatriate community, the Israeli lobby and Christian
‘fundamentalists’.
At present, this hostility towards Pakistan is tempered by Washington’s need for Pakistan’s
support to US-Taliban dialogue. Yet, here too, Islamabad’s help is perhaps being taken for
granted. Not only have no concessions been extended to Pakistan, but US special
representative Zalmay Khalilzad and the US ambassador in Kabul have felt free to publicly
criticise the Pakistani prime minister’s reference to the anticipated future interim
government in Afghanistan. Pakistan needs to retain continuing leverage in the Afghan
peace process and secure concrete US concessions to reciprocate its help in this process.

Khalilzad has played his cards well so far, outlining the US withdrawal structure and the
Taliban’s anti-terrorism commitments before turning to an intra-Afghan dialogue in which
representatives of the Ashraf Ghani government can be incorporated.

Yet, despite his diplomatic skills, there is no assurance that Khalilzad’s process will yield
peace in Afghanistan. Afghan warlords, such as Dostum, are unlikely to reconcile with the
Taliban. Sooner or later, Iran is likely to retaliate in Afghanistan and elsewhere against US
sanctions, especially after the designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards as a
“terrorist” organisation. This could disrupt the Afghan peace process. Moreover, time may
run out on Khalilzad. The Taliban’s gains in the coming ‘fighting season’ may settle
Afghanistan’s future on the battlefield.

Khalilzad recently briefed the envoys of China, Russia and the EU to build wider support for
his process. China can help by investing generously in Afghanistan and building its regional
connectivity. Russia’s role may be critical in defeating the Islamic State-Khorasan. Both
powers can help to build a consensus for peace within Afghanistan and among its
neighbours.

China and Russia may also hold the key to peace in South Asia. Presidents Vladimir Putin and
Xi Jinping have sought to halt India’s rush into America’s strategic embrace, emphasising the
enormous benefits of trans-Asian cooperation and the high costs of confrontation.

Peace could come to the entire region if India decides to become a part of the Asian ‘order’
being created under the Belt and Road Initiative and the Shanghai Cooperation
Organisation. Unfortunately, Modi and the BJP’s obsessive ambition to emerge as China’s
‘equal’ has propelled them towards an alliance with America and may consign South Asia to
remain a ‘zone of crisis’ in the New Cold War.
Executions in Saudi Arabia
EditorialApril 14, 2019Facebook Count
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IN a travesty of justice, Saudi Arabia on Thursday executed a Pakistani woman. According to
Justice Project Pakistan, Fatima Ijaz was the first Pakistani woman to be executed in that
country since 2014. She had been incarcerated in the Dhaban prison of Jeddah, facing
charges related to drug trafficking. Two other Pakistanis — her husband Mohammad
Mustafa, and Abdul Maalik — were also executed the same day as the sentence on Fatima
Ijaz was carried out — this, even though Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have friendly ties and are
apparently working on a prisoner transfer agreement. “These executions are particularly
worrying in the face of the announcement by the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin
Salman made in February this year to release 2,107 Pakistanis imprisoned in the kingdom.
The promise, however, has yet to be fulfilled,” the JPP statement said. Only 250 nationals
have returned so far — those whose cases for repatriation had already been under
consideration. By way of comparison, since the announcement of the crown prince, there
has been a spike in the number of executions of Pakistani nationals in the kingdom.

Prime Minister Imran Khan had made a personal request to Mohammad bin Salman for the
release of prisoners to which the crown prince had readily agreed. However, the matter
continues to be delayed — perilous for those on death row. One of the top executioners in
the world, Saudi Arabia has been routinely criticised for its poor human rights record. Trials
conducted there have been called unfair and opaque, with foreign prisoners unable to
understand the proceedings or to gain access to proper translators and lawyers, and often
lacking consular aid. While it is for Saudi Arabia to put its justice system in order, Pakistan
must make a more determined effort to convince the Saudi authorities to provide its
incarcerated citizens better access to justice, while strengthening consular assistance itself.
Other countries have done so and Pakistan could learn from them.

Israel’s destiny
Mahir Ali Updated April 17, 2019Facebook Count
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IT probably wasn’t necessary for Benjamin Netanyahu, on the eve of the April 9 election, to
declare that it was his intention to annex large chunks of the West Bank. He evidently did
not wish to take any chances, though, despite the last-minute assistance from Donald
Trump and Vladimir Putin.

Was it bluster? Probably not, especially if the far-right allies he needs to form his fifth
coalition insist on that as the price for granting him immunity against pending corruption
charges.

It is often said that the ability to indict a sitting prime minister elevates Israel above other
semi-democracies in the Middle East, such as Egypt or Turkey. At the same time, there are
not many democracies of any shade that would have re-elected a leader facing accusations
of criminal misconduct.

On the other hand, the status quo would hardly have been upended had the new Blue and
White coalition led by former military chief Benny Gantz been elevated to a position where
it could have had the first go at forming the next government.

The two-state solution has been dead for years.

Ultimately, Blue and White fell just one seat short of Netanyahu’s Likud. Even with fewer
seats, though, Likud may still have had a better chance of leading a fourth successive
administration, given its willingness to form alliances with even the most retrograde
elements on the political spectrum, including Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power), representing
the overtly racist heirs of assassinated rabbi Meir Kahane. His Kach party was outlawed by
Israel in 1994 after a supporter killed 29 worshippers in a Hebron mosque; it was
subsequently declared a terrorist outfit by the US.

Even the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) felt obliged to distance itself from
Netanyahu on this count, but more broadly remains a devout admirer, devoting its energies
to denigrating American critics of Israel such as Rep. Ilhan Omar and Senator Bernie
Sanders. It is quite amusing how AIPAC, shortly after Omar called it out for devoting its
resources to encouraging blind faith in Israel and was slammed as anti-Semitic for doing so,
the lobby group began funding advertisements against Sanders, who happens to be Jewish
and leads the preliminary tussle among Democrats for next year’s presidential nomination.

That, generally, is how most lobbying organisations operate, but it’s apparently anti-Semitic
to associate Jews with money, even though some of them — such as Sheldon Adelson, a
leading far-right fundraiser, who didn’t blanch or blink when Trump recently referred, at a
gathering of Republican Jews, to Netanyahu as “your prime minister”, implying dual loyalty,
a suggestion that would immediately have been slammed as anti-Semitic had it been made
by a critic of Israel or Likud.

Having earlier technically shifted the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, on the eve of
the Israeli election Trump recognised Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, taken over
from Syria in 1967, and furthermore declared Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to be a terrorist
organisation. Netanyahu was quick to thank him, and promptly announced his intention to
annex the West Bank, or at least substantial parts thereof.

The US president has for two years trumpeted some kind of a peace plan for the Middle
East, masterminded by his son-in-law Jared Kushner and, to boot, the US ambassador to
Israel, David Friedman, who is inclined to go even further than Netanyahu in his support of
the settlements — illegal under international law, but mostly not under Israeli rules.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has previously expressed the opinion that God
possibly made Trump president to save the Jews (never mind that some of the most
deplorable components of Trump’s ‘base’ are unabashedly anti-Semitic, even if they are
rather impressed by Netanyahu in particular and Zionism in general), recently noted that the
annexation plans would not interfere with the White House-sponsored plan.

Small wonder, then, that the Palestinians have preemptively rejected it, and that rejection
may well be used as an excuse for annexing Palestinian territories.

Netanyahu’s declaration on this front prompted a great deal of commentary along the lines
that he was effectively killing any hope for a two-state solution. But that is nonsense. The
two-state solution has been dead for years, even if it has not received a decent burial. The
Israeli prime minister could certainly be accused of hammering the last nails into its coffin,
but the gesture does not realistically mean much.

The question is, what is the alternative? Logic points to a one-state solution leading to a
binational democracy. But even that suggestion is deemed anti-Semitic because it would
erode the possibility of an exclusively Jewish state. The likeliest prospect is an indefinite
extension of the status quo alongside a slow but steady diminution of the occupied
territories. The vague flicker of hope at the end of the tunnel has dimmed further since last
week. But who will rage against the dying of the light?

Scrap of paper
F.S. AijazuddinApril 18, 2019Facebook Count
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WITH certain chairs of state, it is the seat that swivels the head. Take any foreign
ministership. For Sir Anthony Eden, it was the birth canal to the British prime ministership. A
more recent aspirant, Boris Johnson, hoped it would be. Here in Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
used his foreign ministership during Ayub Khan’s presidency as the springboard for his own
advancement to the top post.

They parted in an unhappy divorce. Following the 1965 Indo-Pak war, which Ayub Khan
suspected Bhutto had instigated, Bhutto at the subsequent peace talks in Tashkent
distanced himself from Ayub Khan. The Russian prime minister Kosygin, who brokered the
talks between Ayub Khan and Indian PM Lal B. Shastri, noticed Bhutto’s censorious silence.
Ayub Khan battled forward regardless, showing more determination there than he had done
during the hostilities.

The ink was still moist on the Tashkent Declaration when Ayub Khan and Bhutto returned to
their riven country: its public uneasy with the outcome, its leaders unhappy with each other.
Ayub Khan’s annoyance overflowed after Bhutto asked to meet him. Ayub Khan told his
information secretary Altaf Gauhar: ‘Well, I have an appointment with my barber, but I
suppose the foreign minister takes precedence.’

Some analysts see a parallel between Mr Bhutto’s duplicitous departure from Ayub Khan’s
government then and the provocative press conference given on April 1 by the present
foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi. In an open session, held in Governor House,
Lahore, he criticised his PTI colleague Jahangir Tareen. It was an unusually public salvo in a
hitherto private war. FM Qureshi must have known that PM Imran Khan would defend his
billionaire-acolyte. And he did.

An emboldened Modi will do exactly what he wants.

Ironically, a few days later, FM Qureshi had to rescue his prime minister from a gaffe which
spawned serious repercussions. PM Imran Khan, addressing a select group of foreign
journalists, opined that ‘perhaps if the BJP — a right-wing party — wins, some kind of
settlement in Kashmir could be reached’. His remark was similar to President Nixon’s reply
to Chairman Mao Zedong in February 1972: ‘Those on the right can do what those on the
left talk about’.

The day after PM Khan’s interview, Qureshi had to tell the Senate Standing Committee on
Foreign Affairs that the PM’s remarks had been quoted ‘out of context’. Qureshi knows how
deep the issues of Jammu and Kashmir actually lie — too deep for tears or for any such
Mary Poppins ‘spit-spot’ resolution.

PM Khan’s remarks were heard across India. The Congress leadership interpreted it as an
endorsement of Modi, parallel to President Putin’s ‘interference’ in the 2016 US presidential
election. India has no equivalent of US Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Therefore, Putin
could defiantly, after polling had begun in India, announce Russia’s highest civilian award to
PM Modi. (Incidentally, its previous recipients include Mikhail Kalashnikov who gave his
name and to modern carnage his infamous gun.)

President Putin’s announcement could not have come at a better time for PM Modi, or at a
worse time for us. It is a studied encouragement to Modi after re-election in May to upgrade
his forces with modern Russian hardware (anything but a MiG-21, please). It is equally a
warning to PM Imran Khan not to take Putin’s supply in 2017 of four Mi-35M helicopters to
Pakistan as a dependable precedent.

Many see the formation of an international Gang of Four: US President Trump, Israeli PM
Netanyahu, Russian President Putin and a second-term Indian PM Modi. None of them is a
friend of Pakistan.

Mr Modi, pursuing the principle that possession is nine-tenths of the law, intends after May
23 (should the BJP win) to suborn the law. Changing the special status granted under Article
370 of the Indian constitution or to tinker with Article 35A regarding property rights would
require a two-thirds majority in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha. Mr Modi has no
patience any more with such constitutional niceties. He has not kept almost 600,000 Indian
troops deployed in IOK simply to return it to its state citizens, or hand it to Pakistan, or leave
Aksai Chin with China. An emboldened Modi will do exactly what he wants to do and leave
his neighbours to complain about it. After all, haven’t Trump, Netanyahu and Putin done just
that to Mexico, Gaza and the Crimea?

Occupied Jammu and Kashmir is to Modi what Sudetenland was to the elected German
chancellor Adolf Hitler. He claimed it for his country. In September 1938, Neville
Chamberlain negotiated its ownership with Hitler and brought home a peace agreement
signed by him. Hitler construed Chamberlain’s flaccid overtures as a sign of weakness,
dismissed the agreement as a ‘scrap of paper’, and opted for war. The rest is history, which
our leaders should read before May 23.

A new strategy
Sikander ShahApril 20, 2019Facebook Count
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THE BJP government has unequivocally stated that it will repeal Articles 35-A and 370 of the
Indian constitution if it is voted back into power. Article 370 provides an autonomous status
to Jammu and Kashmir and Article 35-A prevents settlements or the acquisition of
immovable property by non-Kashmiris in the occupied territory. These articles solely
authorise the [occupied Kashmir] legislature to define “the classes of persons who are, or
shall be, permanent residents of … Jammu and Kashmir”.

India’s constitutional absorption of occupied Jammu and Kashmir in the 1950s remains
illegal under international law because the princely state (that includes Azad Kashmir and
Gilgit-Baltistan) was to decide its own fate through a plebiscite carried out, as outlined
under UN Security Council Resolution 47, under the auspices of the United Nations
Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP) formed under UN Security Council Resolution 39.
Nevertheless, today, any protections taken away from the Kashmiri people or attempts to
change the demographics of occupied Kashmir by India would seriously compromise the
right to self-determination and human rights of the Kashmiri people; it would also alter the
status quo over Kashmir, violating Pakistan’s due process and international legal rights as a
recognised state party to the Kashmir dispute.

Through these measures, such as its endeavour to define (or redefine) the permanent
residency of India-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, India is openly violating numerous UN
resolutions on Kashmir. Under UNCIP’s resolution of Jan 5, 1949, “all persons (other than
citizens of the State) … shall be required to leave the State” and “[a]ll citizens of the State
who have left … will be invited and be free to return”. It is clear from this language that
pending a plebiscite, any attempts to change the demographics of Kashmir or effect a
transfer of its population would be illegal.

Permanently altering the ethnic-makeup of occupied Kashmir would be a violation of

international law.
Apart from the relevant UN resolutions, Pakistan can also rely on the Shimla Agreement, a
bilateral treaty between Pakistan and India, to highlight the latter’s violations of
international law. This treaty was entered into in 1972, after the promulgation of Article 370
and 35-A, and prohibits all changes to the status quo over Kashmir effected by either nation
without mutual resolution. The treaty states that “pending the final settlement of any of the
problems between the two countries, neither side shall unilaterally alter the situation and
both shall prevent the organisation, assistance or encouragement of any acts detrimental to
the maintenance of peaceful and harmonious relations”. By repealing Articles 35-A and 370,
India would be violating the Shimla Agreement both in spirit and practice.

Furthermore, India’s attempt to change the demographics of India-occupied Kashmir is a

grave violation of international humanitarian law and can amount to serious war crimes,
crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. Under Article 49 of the Geneva Convention IV
(1949), “the occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population
into the territory it occupies.”

The same principle is reaffirmed in the more recent 1977 Additional Protocol I to the
Geneva Conventions, which largely reflects customary international law, and which terms
such acts a grave breach of the protocol. Moreover, under Article 20(c)(i) of the 1996
International Law Commission Draft Code of Crimes against the Peace and Security of
Mankind, such transfers are considered war crimes; while under Article 8(2)(b)(viii) of the
International Criminal Court statute (1998) such transfers, directly or indirectly, constitute
war crimes in international armed conflicts.

That the Kashmir dispute could trigger an international armed conflict has been indubitably
confirmed via the recent military conflagration between India and Pakistan, when Indian
warplanes crossed over Azad Kashmir and unsuccessfully conducted air strikes around
Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Altering demographics through state policy and repression can result in forcible transfers of
the indigenous population, qualifying as crimes against humanity when they are part of a
widespread or systematic attack (which need not be armed) directed against any civilian
population, as determined by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The
government of India, by attempting to repeal Articles 35-A and 370, is signalling its
intentions to realise this repression.
Permanently altering the ethnic-makeup of India-occupied Kashmir, which could eventually
result in ethnic cleansing, would also be a serious violation of international law and the
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, a UN
treaty which India ratified in 1968 without any reservations. Such violations were confirmed
by the ICERD Committee in its 1995 decision on Bosnia-Herzegovina.

In the last few years, the BJP government has attempted to change the demographics of the
occupied territory using targeting measures such as through the setting up of Israeli-style
settlements or townships for Kashmiri Pandits or via the establishment of Sainik colonies to
permanently settle Indian soldiers displacing local Kashmiri residents. Repealing Articles 35-
A and 370 is, however, a more serious and insidious attempt to destroy the culture and
identity of the Kashmiri people, and Pakistan must actively raise India’s violation at all
international levels, legally and diplomatically, including with the International Committee of
the Red Cross and the ICERD treaty body and at the UN Security Council, the General
Assembly and the Human Rights Council.

The BJP is, in the run-up to the elections, going to extreme measures in order to stir up
nationalist and racial tensions within the country in an attempt to mobilise its right-wing
power base. Tinkering with the Indian constitution in this way, however, not only dilutes the
sanctity of the constitutional document itself, but would have grave consequences for the
people of Kashmir. With the two articles omitted from the constitution, there would be little
to stop an Israeli-style settlement programme being instituted in the valley of Kashmir,
leaving the Kashmiri — much like the Palestinians — foreigners in their ancestral lands.

Unexpected agony
Mahir AliApril 24, 2019Facebook Count
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A RELATIVELY light-hearted column was on the agenda this week, focused mainly on
Ukraine, whose voters decided by a landslide on Sunday to elevate an actor best known for
playing the president in a TV comedy to the actual post. But then, on the same day, there
was breaking news from Sri Lanka.

The initial reports of large-scale coordinated carnage inevitably raised questions about who
could possibly be motivated to perpetrate such atrocities. Sure, Sri Lanka has an extended
history of violence, mainly of the ethnic variety, and places of worship have not been
immune to this tendency.
The nation’s long civil war featured occasional attacks on Buddhist and Muslim
congregations. Since that conflict ended 10 years ago, there have been instances of brutal
actions by Sinhala Buddhist extremists against the Christian and Muslim minorities, which
together make up about 17pc of Sri Lanka’s population. But nothing on this scale.

Why Sri Lanka was targeted is unclear.

There is anyhow a vast difference between localised transgressions by mobs incited by

misguided monks and determined mass-casualty suicide bombings. The LTTE were infamous
for nurturing suicide bombers, but why would any remnants of their ilk seek to target
Catholic churches and Colombo hotels favoured by tourists, choosing one of Christianity’s
holiest days?

Then the National Thowheed Jamath began popping up in news reports. The hitherto
relatively obscure and, by most accounts, minuscule group had previously appeared on the
radar as the perpetrator of occasional attempts to disfigure Buddhist statues, but nuisance
value of that variety hardly marked it out as a potential terrorist outfit.

However, it was specifically mentioned in intelligence that Sri Lankan authorities received
from India on April 4, which apparently included a list of names. The warning appears not to
have been taken seriously, and it evidently did not percolate down to Prime Minister, Ranil
Wickremesinghe who has been excluded from national security briefings since he foiled an
attempt by President Maithripala Sirisena to replace him with ex-president Mahinda
Rajapaksa last year.

Donald Trump was confused about which of the two he spoke to in the aftermath of the
attacks, but that’s hardly surprising. In another tweet, the US president lamented the loss of
138 million lives, which is around six times Sri Lanka’s population. But 300 plus fatalities is
horrendous enough, with another 500 people injured. Casualties on this scale were
unknown in Sri Lanka even at the height of the LTTE insurgency.

There is at least one thing on which the seemingly parallel administrations of

Wickremesinghe and Sirisena agree: that the Thowheed Jamath is unlikely to have
perpetrated coordinated terrorist attacks on this scale without overseas assistance. That is
undoubtedly a plausible line of inquiry.
The despicable attacks were primarily directed against Christians, with three Easter Sunday
congregations bombed, and more generally against Westerners — although targeting hotels
favoured by foreign tourists inevitably entailed taking many Sri Lankan lives. It would appear
that further attacks were also planned. The Indian intelligence mentioned India’s high
commission as a possible target, and there is some evidence that the terrorists also had
Colombo’s international airport in their sights. Two of the eight explosions occurred during
the police hunt for the terrorists, suggesting there was ammunition available for further
atrocities.

There have been suggestions of links between the Sri Lankan Jamath and the militant Islamic
State group, Al Qaeda or one of their offshoots, possibly in the subcontinent. The Thowheed
Jamath apparently also exists in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, with branches among the
Tamil diaspora. Such avenues are worth investigating. Two days after the carnage, the IS
yesterday claimed responsibility.

Why Sri Lanka was selected is also unclear, though it’s possible it was identified as a
relatively soft target. Reports suggest that in internet chat rooms associated with IS
supporters, there has been talk of avenging the Christchurch massacre and, more generally,
the destruction of the so-called caliphate. Sri Lanka had nothing to do with this, but looking
for logic in the motivations of fanatics, Islamist or otherwise, can be futile.

Sri Lanka has requested, and been offered, international help in investigating the atrocities.
If the Jamath had or has any links in Pakistan, Islamabad should feel obliged to cooperate —
the Easter massacre in Lahore, after all, occurred just three years ago. Above all, it must be
hoped that the two factions of the dysfunctional Sri Lankan government can rise to the
occasion in this national emergency, when their country needs a healing touch and at least a
semblance of national unity.

Trump’s Middle East plan

Najmuddin A. ShaikhUpdated April 26, 2019Facebook Count
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ON April 22 it was announced that the Significant Reduction Exception President Trump had
granted to eight countries would not be extended and that purchases of Iranian oil by these
countries would be subject to sanctions after May 2. This was another step to isolate Iran,
deprive it of revenue and make it more amenable to fulfilling the 12 conditions Secretary
Pompeo had laid out for resumption of US-Iran dialogue.
A lot of material was made available regarding America’s increased production and export
capacity and of the Gulf countries’ commitment to increase production and ensure there
was no shortage on account of the withdrawal of Iranian oil from the international market.

(Essentially, the fact sheet the State Department put out said that the US crude oil
production was 12 million barrels a day and would increase by 1.4m within the next year;
Iran oil production had been reduced by 1.5m barrels; other countries including Saudi
Arabia and the UAE had promised to increase their production; the inventory of crude oil
globally was seasonally strong.)

This followed the unprecedented and perhaps legally dubious step of designating Iran’s elite
Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps a foreign terrorist organisation. Iran retaliated by
naming all US armed forces as terrorist organisations.

What will be the costs as America continues to tighten the noose around Iran’s neck?

If one looks at other actions the Trump administration has or is taking or is likely to take
around the world, it appears that apart from the ‘America first’ mantra, securing a victory
against Iran is the driving force.

Support for Israel has been part of Trump’s creed. This could explain the abandonment of
the long-settled US policy on Palestine and Syria, formal recognition of Israel’s annexation of
the Golan Heights and formal endorsement of Israel’s intent of annexing illegal Israeli
settlements on the West Bank. However, there is in my mind the vision that partnering with
Israel in confronting Iran would help create conditions in which the Arabs would join Israel
formally in the Middle East Security Alliance that seems to be part of the plan that Trump’s
point man for the Middle East, Jared Kushner, would present for a regional settlement.

In Libya, Gen Haftar, a commander from Qadhafi’s days, has a base in the east and is
receiving weapons from Russia, political support from France and political and material
support from Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The latter two are reportedly supporting Haftar
because they think that Libya has become a centre for the Muslim Brotherhood that these
countries and Egypt want eliminated.
In Libya, it had been long-standing US policy to recognise the Government of National
Accord and support the efforts of the UN special representative to help negotiate a power-
sharing agreement between various Libyan factions to maintain essential Libyan unity.

When Haftar started his assault on the GNA, the State Department asked him to stop.
Trump, however, after a conversation with the Abu Dhabi crown prince, spoke to Haftar, in
which he “recognised Field Marshal Haftar’s significant role in fighting terrorism and
securing Libya’s oil resources, and the two discussed a shared vision for Libya’s transition to
a stable, democratic political system”. The GNA saw this as a betrayal. One could assume
that Trump’s reversal of State Department policy owed to his willingness to defer to the
views of his allies and thus strengthen their support for his Iran policy.

The Sudan uprising, the overthrow of president Omar Al-Bashir’s regime or more accurately
his ouster after 30 years or rule owed to demonstrations mounted by the Sudanese
Professional Association. The uprising was successful because the armed forces, that have
participated in the Yemen war as part of the Saudi/UAE effort and thus have strong
connections there, saw their own soldiers joining the rebels. The air force chief’s son joined
the protesters. The Military Council said it would hold elections in two years because it
would take that long to ensure security and make other arrangements. This is being resisted
but this is what Sisi’s Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE would want because Omar al-Bashir
had provided shelter to Muslim Brotherhood followers.

To cement ties with the Military Council, Saudi Arabia and UAE said they would provide $3
billion in assistance to Sudan with $500m being deposited for balance-of-payment support
and the rest for humanitarian aid for Sudan’s people.

Sudan is under US sanctions which can be lifted only if a civilian government comes to
power. The Military Council has announced it will send a delegation to Washington to
discuss the situation. It is my conjecture that helping them find their way in Washington will
be a task undertaken not just by the Sudanese embassy but by the other friends I have
identified.

It is again my conjecture that they will receive a sympathetic hearing. Their promise to hold
elections within two years may not be accepted and a shorter time frame proposed, but
sanctions will be lifted as a favour by Trump for his supporters in the anti-Iran campaign.

Iran’s economy is suffering as a result of the sanctions; the ill effects have been
compounded by floods and earthquakes. There is no sign the regime is collapsing.
For Pakistan, it is important that what Prime Minister Imran Khan and President Hassan
Rouhani agreed upon is implemented. Trade that was agreed upon is all food and
humanitarian relief related and will not be affected. Border security is important to both,
not only because of Iran’s need but also because those who trouble this border are likely
working with those across the border who want a Balochistan independent of both Iran and
Pakistan.
BRI: a historic opportunity
Munir AkramApril 28, 2019Facebook Count
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CHINA’S President Xi Jinping hosted the Second Belt and Road Forum in Beijing on April
26/27 — 125 countries and 40 international organisations have joined the Belt and Road
Initiative. The BRI is an enormously ambitious project which envisages the linkage of the
entire Eurasian mega-continent, and its near and far periphery in Southeast, South and West
Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America, through interconnected land and sea infrastructure,
trade and investment.

Thirty-seven heads of state and government, scores of ministers and 5,000 delegates
participated in the Forum, reflecting the growing endorsement of the BRI. This acceptance
reflects a desire among developing countries to emulate the successful ‘model’ of China’s
economic development and a recognition that it can provide an invaluable path towards
global economic growth, greater prosperity and peace and stability in developing countries.

Reportedly, 175 agreements have been signed under the rubric of the BRI. Projects
amounting to $90 billion have been implemented. The planned outlay on infrastructure
projects is $1 trillion. This figure is likely to increase as non-Chinese sources of official
finance and private sector finance join in funding BRI projects. The scope of the concept
now envisages incorporation of various forms of cooperation such as the digital economy, e-
commerce and creation of a BR Studies Network linking think tanks.

Not one of America’s Asian allies has the stomach to confront China, their largest trading
partner.
The US has declared its opposition to the BRI and sponsored a political and media campaign
to discourage developing countries and its allies from joining it. The US and Western refrain
of China’s so-called debt-trap diplomacy, stories of corruption and failed projects have been
repeated as nauseam although the basis for such reports has been credibly refuted by the
parties concerned.

The admonitions regarding the debt owed to China are particularly galling given that over 90
per cent of developing country debt is owed to Western countries and institutions. Servicing
this debt consumes around 30pc of annual hard currency outflows from these developing
countries. This debt is due to flawed Western development ‘aid’ which has contributed only
marginally to the development of recipient countries.

The US opposition has a strategic rationale. The initiative trumps the US aim of creating a
ring of alliances around China’s periphery and maintaining its domination of the ‘India-
Pacific’. The US has yet to acknowledge this is a losing battle.

Not one of America’s Asian allies has the stomach to confront China, their largest trading
partner. India has declared it values economic cooperation with China. Japan and Australia
have stopped joining the US Navy in ‘freedom of navigation’ operations in the South China
Sea. Miffed by US tariffs, Japan has joined the BRI as a ‘third party’. A Japan-China Fund has
been set up to co-invest in BRI projects.

Seventeen Central European countries have formed a group with China to promote
economic cooperation including connectivity projects. Italy was the first G7 country to
officially join the BRI. Even others, like the UK, France and Germany, who feel compelled by
their alliance with the US to critique the BRI, are availing of every commercial opportunity
emanating from China’s economic expansion and the BRI.

America’s own companies are unwilling to heed the official boycott. Over 150,000 US
companies are operating within the Chinese economy. Only a handful are likely to move out.
China’s further ‘opening up’ is likely to further reinforce the interdependence of the world’s
two largest economies.

Pakistan hosts BRI’s flagship component. Prime Minister Imran Khan was one of only seven
leaders requested to address the summit. He called the BRI a “model of collaboration,
partnership, connectivity and shared prosperity” and “a new and distinct phase — along the
path of globalisation”. CPEC is now the principal vehicle for intensification of bilateral ties.
Of the $1tr allocated by China to BRI projects, $72bn is envisaged for CPEC. Of the $90bn
invested so far, around $27bn was in Pakistan.

China values its ‘strategic partnership’ with Pakistan and recognises the imperative of
ensuring its security, stability and development. The level of mutual trust between them is
unparalleled. Its cooperation is essential to ensure Pakistan’s ability to maintain credible
deterrence against India and to stabilise Afghanistan after US withdrawal. If India is ever
amenable to normalising ties with Pakistan, China’s, and perhaps Russia’s, intermediation
may prove more advantageous than America’s.

The opportunity for Pakistan in China is more compelling. China is supporting Pakistan’s
infrastructure development and industrialisation. It can be a growing market for Pakistan’s
exports. Pakistan must aim not only to emulate the path of China’s growth but to improve
on it, by learning from its successes and failures. Pakistan’s aim should be not so much to
‘catch up’ as to ‘leapfrog’ into the 21st-century economy. In its cooperation, Pakistan should
not seek the technologies of the past or present but those of the future which China is now
introducing and applying: high speed rail (not old systems), AI, electric vehicles,
environment-friendly energy, e-commerce, etc.

Pakistan needs to be well organised. Islamabad must identify what it wants and needs from
China and formulate a strategy of how to achieve it. Such a strategy will need to be
coordinated with China at the policy, operational and execution levels. Pakistan must deploy
the best available technical and administrative expertise — from the private or public
sector, from within and outside Pakistan — in each area of cooperation. The creation of an
autonomous CPEC Authority would be useful to achieve the planned outcomes.

In an environment of great power rivalry, there must be strategic clarity in Islamabad.

India’s enmity is a constant; after elections, it may be reduced to hostility or, at best, rivalry.
The US South Asia strategy is predicated on India’s regional domination. There can be no
wishful thinking that this can be changed by expressions of goodwill or clever diplomacy.
The only way the US will treat Pakistan equitably is if it sees attractive economic
opportunities in Pakistan. For this, Pakistan needs China’s cooperation.

Pakistan’s best choice now is to “tie itself to China with hoops of steel”, as proposed by the
then foreign secretary S.K. Dehlavi in 1962. It would be tragic if we turn away from history’s
beckoning finger once again.
Kashmir’s example
EditorialApril 28, 2019Facebook Count
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THE scheme that India’s ruling BJP is working on is at variance with the basic tenets of
democracy. By all indications, the BJP believes that its best shot at securing a victory in the
general election in India is by driving a wedge between the majority Hindu community and
the minorities, which by no means constitute ‘small’ sections of the population. Armed with
Hindutva ideas that are blamed for pre-deciding the polls on the basis of religion, the
government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has gone about employing tactics that are
meant to intimidate and scare off opponents and force large-scale public surrender to the
BJP doctrine. In this search for models to communicate the Modi message to large sections
of the Indian people, the long-smouldering occupied territory of Kashmir is but a natural
hunting ground for the champions of Hindutva. Within India-held Kashmir, perhaps there is
no leader who draws greater wrath from the rulers in New Delhi than Yasin Malik. Now in
his 50s and accused of murder and abduction and much else, Mr Malik retains the old aura
that links him and yet sets him apart from the other big names in the Hurriyat, the umbrella
organisation of parties fighting to free IHK from Indian captivity.

There are a number of Kashmiri leaders who command respect from the people in their own
right. Frequently, political analysts come up with their own assessments about who among
them is more relevant or more active at a particular moment in time. The phased Indian
general election that will conclude next month provides fresh proof of just how wary those
who attempt to exercise their authoritarianism in IHK from Delhi can be of the Hurriyat
leaders, collectively and individually. Mr Malik’s arrest and the banning of his Jammu
Kashmir Liberation Front mark the continuation of a policy of division that had only recently
seen a harsh crackdown on other Hurriyat parties. The clampdown against the Jamaat-i-
Islami has been particularly severe. Sane analyses of the situation warn the BJP against the
serious repercussions that new measures of suppression can lead to. Even if there was no
such advice, a party that has been around for quite long would be expected to understand
that the seeds of discontent sown now can get it into dire trouble in the future — especially
in an already troubled territory. But then, a BJP which thrives on communal strife of its own
making, would be even less inclined to ponder over these ‘fine’ points at the time of an
election. This world is not short of evidence about how democracy is used and defamed by
the clever going overboard in their exuberance to win a vote. This is one such moment for
the democrats — not just in India but around the world — to contemplate and denounce.
Belt & Road Initiative
EditorialUpdated April 29, 2019Facebook Count
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THAT China has transformed itself from a socialist giant into an economic powerhouse of
the 21st century is not news.

However, what is noteworthy is the fact it now seeks to become a global player through its
Belt and Road Initiative — an economic superhighway linking continents and cultures with
China at the heart of the project.

And as interest from a growing number of countries has shown, the BRI could play a key role
in shaping the socioeconomic and sociopolitical future of Eurasia and beyond.

The fact that 37 heads of state and government — including Prime Minister Imran Khan —
attended the just concluded second Belt and Road Forum in Beijing proves that a growing
number of states are seeking to jump on the BRI bandwagon and grab a slice of the pie.

It is indeed a massive initiative, envisioning an integrated network stretching from the

shores of the Pacific to the heart of Europe, while extending to Southeast Asia and parts of
Africa.

And CPEC is one of the key nodes of this network, reflecting both on the positive Pakistan-
China relationship, as well as this country’s potential as a hub for regional trade and
commerce.

However, while the BRI may hold immense potential for the regional, and indeed the global,
economy, the projects under its umbrella must be transparent, and the benefits mutual to
both China and the partner countries.

There have been accusations of Beijing practising ‘debt-trap diplomacy’ by ‘drowning’

partner states in debt.

There is evidence of Sri Lanka having problems with Chinese debt in a port project, while
Malaysia under Mahathir Mohamed has renegotiated a rail project with Beijing on
reportedly better terms.
To allay fears such, China and partner governments in the BRI must ensure that the terms of
the projects involved are clearly understood and transparent.

In Pakistan’s case, there has also been criticism that the benefits of CPEC are not trickling
down to all parts of the country. For CPEC to be a success, its fruits must reach all provinces,
while Pakistan’s economy must benefit from the project in the long term.

Under the vision of functionalism and regional integration, the dynamics of international
relations have been transformed.

For example, from the ashes of old Europe rose the European Union, in which former foes
discarded their mutual animosity and worked for unprecedented integration.

However, while the EU project may be facing turbulence, regional cooperation under BRI
can — by interlocking economies — be the harbinger of better ties and prosperity for the
people of Eurasia and other regions falling under the project’s ambit.

South Asia, for example, can gain from mutually rewarding BRI initiatives. Indeed others,
especially the US and its allies, who are mostly critical of the BRI, must let this ambitious
vision become a reality and work to establish a complementary relationship.

Published in Dawn, April 29th, 2019

Iran & NPT

EditorialUpdated April 30, 2019Facebook Count
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WITH regard to Iran, the major aim of the Trump administration is to ramp up confrontation
with the Islamic Republic by cutting off its revenue streams, and isolating it internationally.

However, the risk this questionable policy runs is that brinksmanship can one day give way
to actual confrontation between Washington and Tehran.
Perhaps that is the goal of the hawks in the US capital.

However, Iran must act with caution and resist the temptation to answer in kind. But
considering the kind of pressure Tehran is facing after the US tightened the screws on the
Iranian economy by threatening to penalise anyone who does business with it, this is easier
said than done.

It is in this context that Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said that his country may quit
the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; Iran has also said it may pull out of the landmark 2015
nuclear deal unless European powers work out a mechanism to ensure economic activities
with Iran remain unaffected by US sanctions.

Iran would be advised to avoid falling into a trap by withdrawing from its commitments.

The IAEA has said that Tehran has been honouring its end of the JCPOA, as the nuclear deal
is known, so Tehran should not give its detractors a chance to exploit actions it may take in
the heat of the moment.

True, the pressure on its economy is great: the US decision not to renew waivers granted to
those states that buy Tehran’s oil are designed to choke Iran’s economy completely.

As Iran sees it, this is a declaration of war, hence its alarming pronouncements.

To prevent this situation from worsening, saner voices in Washington must prevail so that
the warmongers that advise President Trump do not succeed in their aims of aggravating
tensions.

Further, the European states must continue to do business with Iran and allow it some
economic breathing space. If Iran’s economy is made to crumble, hardliners within the
establishment will call for greater confrontation with America.

Of course, some of Tehran’s arch-enemies in the region — Israel and the Gulf Arabs — will
be rooting for war with Iran. But that is not in the interest of the Iranian people, or the
greater population of the Middle East.
That is why the West, including America, must work for a modus vivendi with Iran, not a
new war.

Kushner’s bribe
Mahir AliJuly 03, 2019Facebook Count
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EVEN before it opened in the Bahraini capital last week, the Manama conference intended
to showcase half of Jared Kushner’s much ballyhooed peace initiative for the Middle East
had been downgraded to a workshop.

This was partly because an inkling of the fantasy on offer persuaded most participants to
downgrade their representation.

The US president’s senior adviser cum son-in-law may have been proud of his initiative to
placate the Palestinians with an unfunded $50 billion bribe, possibly in the expectation that
their rejection of it would provide yet another occasion for regurgitating the old lie about
the Palestinians never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity. It turned out,
however, that even the US administration’s usually uncritical allies in the Gulf showed little
interest in a financial plan contingent on a political proposal that is yet to be outlined.

Israel too, generally revelling in the most manipulable and eager-to-please US

administration the Likudites have ever come across, kept its distance from Manama,
offering only to keep an open mind. There is hardly any chance that an open mind would
extend to Kushner’s proposed $5bn transport corridor between the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip, but the Israelis are well aware it will never come to that.

Few showed interest in the ‘financial plan’ for the Palestinians.

Palestinian officials pre-emptively rejected the Bahrain conclave, but that is hardly surprising
in view of the Trump administration’s undisguised hostility, reflected in its decisions to shift
the US embassy to Jerusalem, endorsement of the annexation of the occupied Golan
Heights, and the withdrawal of American funds from organisations that sustain Palestinian
existence under occupation, including the refugee agency UNRWA. Ironically, images from
some of these defunded initiatives appeared in the glossy brochure distributed at the
gathering in Manama.

The credibility of Kushner’s proposal was further undermined by the fact that its co-
architect is David Friedman, the US ambassador to Israel, whose statements often go
beyond even what Benjamin Netanyahu himself would dare to publicly propose.

Kushner was quoted as saying on the eve of the get-together in Bahrain that the two-state
solution was a busted flush, necessitating fresh thinking. He’s not mistaken on that score;
recent polls suggest that more than 50 per cent of Palestinians have lost hope in the
prospect of an independent state 25 years after the promise of the Oslo accords. The
obvious alternative would be a single, binational, democratic state. But that very idea is
anathema to the proponents of the Zionist project, whose ideal of an exclusively Jewish
state is incompatible with a large Palestinian population in a country where all citizens have
equal rights.

Yet all but the most delusional adherents of apartheid must realise that it is unsustainable in
the long run. The idea of injecting large amounts of money into the occupied territories as a
means of indefinitely prolonging the occupation will find few takers among the Palestinian
population, large sections of which see the Palestinian Authority as not only corrupt but also
a collaborator with the Israeli security apparatus.

In an opinion column to The New York Times last week, Israel’s ambassador to the UN,
Danny Dalon, did not dispute Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat’s contention that
participating in Manama would be akin to surrender, instead asking: “What’s wrong with
Palestinian surrender?” Inevitably, he reheats the myth about the Palestinian refusal to
recognise Israel’s existence — which in fact was part of the Oslo deal — and suggests that
“surrendering will create the opportunity to transform Palestinian society” and lead to its
‘liberation’.

That sounds much like an official in apartheid South Africa addressing the black majority. It
even has echoes of the slogan the Nazis put up at the entrance to Auschwitz, ‘Arbeit macht
frei’. Towards the end of a scholarly article in the Israeli daily Haaretz last month, Yoav
Rinon, an associate professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, writes: “In the light of
the essential similarities between German identity and Jewish-Israeli identity along their
various stages of construction, we may conclude that we are sliding down the same slope,
which leads, for precisely the same reasons, to the same abyss of racism and fascism.”
Such an opinion would, had it appeared in a British or American paper, inevitably been
decried as an instance of anti-Semitism. There cannot be much doubt, though, that
Kushner’s efforts, on behalf of his father-in-law’s administration, are broadly geared
towards preserving Israeli hegemony over the occupied territories. As things stand, Israel’s
likely aim is to annex all it wants of the West Bank, and eventually throw the scraps to
Jordan (and Egypt in the case of the Gaza Strip). That may be a bridge too far even for those
Arab states that have been complicit in the subjugation of the Palestinians. But alternative
‘solutions’ also remain elusive.

Ties with Russia

Muhammad Ali SiddiqiJuly 07, 2019Facebook Count
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REMEMBER Gary Powers? He was the American pilot whose U-2 plane was shot down as he
flew on his spying mission to the Soviet Union in May 1960. More important for us: Powers
had flown from Badaber, an American airbase in Pakistan.

The downing was a technological shock for America, because the Pentagon believed U-2s
flew at a height that was beyond the reach of Soviet air defences. The shooting rocked the
polarised world of the time as Moscow fumed. At a national day reception, Soviet prime
minister and Communist Party secretary general Nikita Khrushchev sauntered towards
where the Pakistan ambassador was sitting and told him he had drawn a red circle round
Peshawar. The Pakistan envoy showed a wooden face.

The incident is just one of the many episodes that have bedevilled Pakistan-Soviet relations
(replace ‘Russia’ with ‘Soviet’ when the march of history so demands). The Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan on a date that is now part of Pakistan’s DNA — Christmas Eve 1979 — was just
a continuation of this history of bad blood that has over the decades defied every attempt at
a normalisation — much less a warming — of ties between Moscow and Islamabad.

Nearly a decade earlier, Pakistan and an America that had a normal and better president
than Donald Trump joined hands to stage a tour de force to which the Soviet Union perhaps
overreacted, even though a normalisation of relations between Beijing and Washington had
in any case been long overdue. Jamshed Market’s Cover Point gives a fascinating account of
what happened between a tipsy president Yahya Khan and an apoplectic Soviet chief,
Leonid Brezhnev. The latter complained bitterly: if Henry Kissinger had to fly to China he
could have done so from Hong Kong or some such destination, why from Pakistan?

Somehow the relationship with Russia seems star-crossed.

From the benefit of the hindsight we can safely ask Brezhnev’s successors: did it really
matter where Kissinger flew from? If he had flown from Hong Kong or Beirut would that
have lessened the significance of the diplomatic coup that paved the way for president
Richard Nixon’s visit to the People’s Republic and transformed the relationship between the
two Pacific powers?

On Tuesday, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan’s army chief Gen Qamar Bajwa and Gen Oleg Salyukov,
the commander-in-chief of Russian ground forces, met at GHQ, emphasised the non-military
part of their future relationship and called for developing ties that had economic
dimensions.

Already, the two sides have a limited degree of military collaboration, for the two countries
have carried out anti-terror drills, and in 2014 the then army chief Raheel Sharif went to
Moscow to pave the way for the sale of Russian helicopters to Pakistan. Beyond that, a
deeper degree of military interaction looks difficult if not impossible. Hasn’t Turkey, a Nato
member, managed to have the S-400 missile deal with Russia? But, Pakistan is not Turkey.

Besides, the India factor also counts, for Moscow and New Delhi have been traditional
friends, and it would be the height of naivety if we thought India would not behave like
India and would let Pakistan pocket a major economic or military package with Russia.
When India cannot tolerate even CPEC, what else do we expect from New Delhi when it
comes to Russia?

Let us note that the symbol of economic collaboration between Pakistan and Russia is
Pakistan Steel, whose moribund status is a story unto itself. But when such a landmark
agreement could be signed at the height of the Cold War, there is no reason why they
cannot agree on an economic project of that magnitude in the present non-communist era.
Somehow the relationship seems star-crossed.

President Vladimir Putin postponed his visit to Pakistan in 2016 — annoyed over Pakistan’s
pusillanimous response to the Iran gas pipeline project, even though India too backed out
under American pressure. Again, at the One Belt, One Road conference in Beijing last April
Prime Minister Imran Khan couldn’t have a meeting with President Putin because of their
tight schedules.

Certain awkward realities must be accepted. Diplomatic rhetoric apart, Pakistan doesn’t
have much to offer to Russia, nor for that matter does India in the post-Cold War scenario,
except that its larger size is an advantage. South Asia still interests Russia, as it does every
country, but not to the degree it did during the Cold War. Besides, Moscow is content with
watching rather than involving itself in the trilateral drama among three key players —
China, India and America.

The Kremlin would not like to burn its fingers. The practical option for Islamabad is not to
annoy Moscow and keep it humoured. As for economic cooperation, every country has this
option with every other country in the world. There is no limit to it, the limit being a
country’s own elements of national power.
‘

Meeting POTUS
Ashraf Jehangir QaziUpdated July 08, 2019
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THE prime minister will meet the president of the US on July 22. The Foreign Office will
prepare essential briefing materials. Leaders ignore them at their peril. Pakistan-US relations
are not good. American arrogance of power and Pakistan’s punching above its weight are to
blame. The prime minister will need to convince Trump not to blame Pakistan for US failures
in Afghanistan and to assure him that he will do his best to enable the US to exit Afghanistan
without loss of credibility. This will require actions more than words.

Pakistan’s relations with the US are important. But their scope is limited. The benefits of a
better relationship with the US, while important, are circumscribed by the priority it gives
India as the fulcrum of its Indo-Pacific strategy. This will not change.

US concerns about Pakistan relate to Afghanistan, ‘terrorism’ and alleged nuclear

unreliability. The US regards Pakistan’s Kashmir policy and nuclear doctrine as destabilising
and specifically aimed at its strategic partner, India.
Pakistan’s concerns are essentially that the US has not extended it the respect and
sympathy due a sovereign country that has extended it much-needed cooperation. Pakistan
is chastised or incentivised to the extent it complies with US dictates. Pakistan cannot agree
with the US on everything.

Pakistan’s relations with the US are important. But their scope is limited.

The US sees Afghanistan as a test case. The Afghan peace-facilitating effectiveness of

Pakistan will determine the balance of reward and punishment. To transcend this absurd
situation, Pakistan must address Afghan suspicions that its Afghanistan policy is India-
focused. Afghans see this focus as incompatible with a genuine respect for their
independence and sovereignty. Ironically, Afghans accuse Pakistan of the same arrogance
Pakistanis attribute to Indians and Americans. Investing in Afghan goodwill is plain
commonsense. The blame game is a mug’s game.

The US views Kashmir as an irrelevance in a power-driven world. It sees Kashmiri freedom

fighters as ‘terrorists’ similar to Baloch militants. It holds Pakistan responsible for the costs it
has incurred and for the sufferings of the people of Kashmir. It regards neither UN
resolutions nor nuclear weapons as relevant to a solution. The US also notes China does not
support Pakistan on Kashmir. Tibet and Xinjiang ensure that. The US explicitly and China
implicitly suggest Pakistan learn to live with the status quo in Kashmir so that the human
rights situation there can improve, and the prospects of nuclear conflict recede.

Indian excesses in occupied Kashmir are regularly reported in US and UN human rights
reports. But as long as India remains a strategic partner, its relentless repression of the
people in Kashmir will not have strategic relevance for the US.

The US knows its policies on a whole range of international issues are legally, morally and
strategically untenable. But its only concern is leverage. It uses FATF and the IMF against
Pakistan. FATF and its India-led APG are making demands that are impossible to satisfy
within the given timelines, and IMF is laying down conditions that are designed not to be
met.

The IMF bailout package merely aggravates the debtor and supplicant status of Pakistan.
Celebrating the prospect of another $40 billion of foreign debt is the measure of our
political and intellectual bankruptcy. Over several regimes and an unchanging power
structure Pakistan has followed derelict political, economic, security and diplomatic policies.
Policy disasters, however, are never considered reason enough to change them. This
syndrome is fatal.

The prime minister will meet an egotistical, insensitive, ignorant, and morally challenged
showman POTUS. Interlocutors in Congress, NSA, State, Pentagon, CIA, academia and
media, and maybe leading Democratic candidates will be more formidable. They will
articulate US and Pakistani criticisms of the prime minister’s policies. The prime minister will
need to come across as open to constructive criticism and willing to listen to helpful and
sympathetic advice. He does not have any lack of confidence. While his criticisms of errant
predecessors are in order, after a year in office, the buck stops with him.

He must candidly state his policy context which comprises Pakistan’s survival and welfare
imperatives. He will not compromise them under any circumstances. The US must respect
this commitment if it is to contribute to peace and stability in South Asia. The prime minister
should caution that a US or Israeli assault on Iran will destroy Pakistan’s security
environment including any prospect for peace in Afghanistan. It will unleash a scale of
terrorism in the Middle East that will eventually topple every pro-US regime in the region. It
will completely destabilise Pakistan-India relations despite glimmers of possible forward
movement.

The prime minister may convey the following:

(i) There should be no militant and military activity from either side of the LoC;

(ii) Pakistan cannot accept the status quo in India-held Kashmir. The cause of a problem
cannot be its solution;

(iii) Pakistan will reach out to India to develop a comprehensively improved relationship in
which a principled Kashmir settlement acceptable to Kashmiri, Pakistani and Indian opinion
can be achieved;

(iv) The US must realise that if Indian atrocities in IHK continue and measures to forcibly
alter the composition of the Valley population are taken, no Pakistani government can just
bear witness to such a crime;
(v) The US, as global leader, has a global humanitarian, political and security obligation to
ensure against such dangerous developments;

(vi) Pakistan knows its responsibilities as a nuclear weapons power and the US should deal
with it on a non-discriminatory basis, which it has not;

(vii) Supporting India against Pakistan is no recipe for peace;

(viii) Pakistan places the highest priority on developing broad-based cooperation and mutual
understanding with the US;

(ix) Pakistan’s strategic relations with China will never be aimed at US interests;

(x) The US should avoid using the IMF, FATF, sanctions, etc as leverage against Pakistan;

(xi) Trump deserves congratulations for his initiatives towards North Korea; and

(xii) An invitation to Trump to visit Pakistan at an early date, and play a critical peace-
building role in South Asia in the interests of over a billion and a half people.

UN Kashmir report
EditorialJuly 10, 2019
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WHILE this country has for decades been telling the world about Indian atrocities in held
Kashmir, Pakistan’s narrative is now being confirmed by numerous independent observers.
A new report released recently, compiled by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for
Human Rights, offers a sobering reminder of the brutal tactics the self-declared ‘world’s
largest democracy’ is applying in the held territory. The report says that accountability of
Indian troops in the region is “non-existent”, pointing out that no security personnel in the
held region accused of torture and other abuses have been prosecuted in civilian courts
“since ... the early 1990s”. The report has also slammed Delhi’s abhorrent use of pellet guns,
offering the gruesome statistic that over 1,200 people have been blinded by these weapons
“from mid-2016 to the end of 2018”. While India keeps trying to falsely paint the Kashmiri
struggle for rights and self-determination in the colours of terrorism, it will be difficult for it
to dismiss the serious evidence of human rights abuses highlighted by a forum as august as
the UN. Last month, Amnesty International had also launched a report about rights abuses
in the held territory.

While the Indian military machine’s brutality in held Kashmir stands exposed before the
world, the key question is: will the right-wing government in Delhi change tack and try to
deal with this political issue with sagacity? Or will it continue on the destructive path it has
adopted? Unfortunately, it appears that the BJP-led combine will opt for the latter course.
Just on Monday — the death anniversary of young fighter Burhan Wani — India-held
Kashmir was under virtual lockdown, indicating that Delhi was extremely jittery that the
occupied region’s people would take to the streets to mark the event. It is a fact that, due to
India’s clumsy handling of the issue, more and more Kashmiris are losing faith in the political
process and choosing to opt for armed struggle to secure their rights. This is, of course, the
consequence of India’s own deeds — as when it locks up moderate Kashmiri political leaders
and treats the region like a colony, the citizens of held Kashmir will only rise up in revolt.
There is still time to salvage the situation if India chooses to do so, by opening a meaningful
dialogue with the Kashmiris and Pakistan to resolve this issue peacefully. But is anyone in
Delhi willing to adopt the path of reason?

Unlikely phoenix
F.S. AijazuddinJuly 11, 2019
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IF there is any country in the world that is entitled to adopt the phoenix as its national
symbol, it is Afghanistan.

Consider. It has suffered a history of gratuitous devastation, ever since the ill-fated foray by
the British Army of the Indus in 1839. Despite the ravages caused by the British during the
19th century, by 1900 its amir retained enough authority to treat the British Agent at Kabul
with humiliating condescension. My ancestor Fakir Iftikharuddin served as British Agent at
Kabul from 1907-1910. He complained to his government that his life was “very unpleasant
and uncomfortable ... no one is allowed to meet him or to talk to him”. “In fact,” he
concluded, “the life of a British Agent is no better than a political prisoner.”

By the late 20th century, the tables had turned. Afghanistan became a war zone for powers
like Russia and later the United States and its coalition of compliant states. They needed a
proving ground for their over-equipped, underemployed armed forces.

The Russians spent over nine years in Afghanistan, and quit after learning the costly lesson
that Muscovite might is not always right. In the vacuum left by Russia’s departure in 1989,
the United States decided that it should rush in where the Russians had bled to death.
Under the banner of Operation Enduring Freedom, it commandeered contingents from over
20 coerced accomplices — Nato, EU countries, New Zealand, even Montenegro and
Lithuania. After 13 years of inconclusive fighting, in 2014, the US decided to change its
banner to read Operation Freedom’s Sentinel. To the Afghans, this renaming did not render
US weaponry less lethal.

How did the Afghans achieve such competence?

Over almost 18 years, the US-led forces (2001-19) have remained mired in Afghanistan; the
casualties of the US-led coalition forces are about 3,500. In contrast, more than 1,405,000
Afghans (some estimates say 2,084,500) have died, though no one is sure exactly of the
tally. It is ironical that three stabbings in London streets can release a violent remonstrance
from President Donald Trump against the mayor of London, but the death of one million
Afghans either way does not ruffle his blond quiff.

And yet, it is from the ashes of this apocalyptic devastation that an unlikely phoenix has
emerged — a team of Afghan cricketers. In the World Cup 2019, this 11 made a mockery of
the very countries whose soldiers were slaughtering their kinsmen in Afghanistan. It is to the
credit of the Afghan team that they did not allow politics to blemish their sportsmanship.
They could with justification have worn black armbands when playing teams from countries
which had or still have troops in Afghanistan. They chose not to. They challenged England
anditsformer colonies at their own game — cricket.

Afghanistan joined the International Cricket Council two years ago. In that brief period of
time, it has developed such expertise, self-confidence, and competitive bravado that out of
the nine matches it played against seasoned world class teams, it never scored less than
three digits. Against England, 247 runs; against India 213 runs; against New Zealand, 172
runs; against West Indies a creditable 288 runs, and against Pakistan, 227 runs, losing by
only three wickets.

Its new-found excellence blossomed in a young 18-year-old Ikram Ali Khalil. He had played
one Test match before, during which he managed only seven runs. At Headingley, playing
against the West Indies, he scored the fastest 80-plus runs, superseding Sachin Tendulkar’s
record that had held since 1992.

How does a team of Afghan winnows achieve such fierce competence within such a short
space of time? Where in Afghanistan are the camouflaged cricket facilities, the hidden
stadiums, pitches un-pitted by US missiles where these Afghan players practised? It is said
that Pakistan’s hero Inzamam-ul-Haq had once coached the Afghans. He must rue the day
he taught them tricks they have learned all too well.

Both the Afghan and the Pakistan cricket teams shall be returning home — each though to a
different sort of welcome. The Afghan team should be lauded as the heroes they are. No
laurels are green enough for them. The Pakistan team may need a police escort to protect it
from its former admirers. Inzamam-ul-Haq might consider rerouting his ticket to join his
former pupils in Kabul.

If we as a nation had maturity, courage and decency, we would express regret together to
the Afghan people for the years of interference in their affairs. We should mourn jointly
with them for the countless Pakistani and Afghan innocents who have been killed without
reason, without proper graves, and without the dignity of remembrance.

It is said that the US and its coalition forces will soon withdraw from Kabul. And after years
of carnage, what will they leave behind? A ravaged fifth-world country — and a world-class
cricket team.

Afghan peace
EditorialJuly 14, 2019
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SLOWLY, and indeed very carefully, the Afghan peace process seems to be moving forward,
though incidents of violence also continue to occur in the country. There are multiple global
actors — including this country — urging the Afghan Taliban to make peace with the rulers
in Kabul, and while the militia continues to posture and indulge in violence, there are also
signs that there is some sort of flexibility within Taliban ranks where dialogue is concerned.
A few days ago, in Doha, members of the militia met Afghan politicians and civil society
activists, with the latter two appearing in a ‘personal’ capacity, and discussed numerous
issues. While the Taliban maintain their rigid stance of not talking to the Ashraf Ghani-led
government, there have been some positive outcomes of the latest conclave in Doha. Most
notably, all participants agreed to bring down civilian casualties in the country to “zero” and
to ensure the security of schools, hospitals and markets. Considering the fact that
Afghanistan continues to suffer from violent attacks, and civilians continue to get caught in
the crossfire between the Taliban and the government, the pledge to end bloodshed
targeting non-combatants needs to be welcomed.

Elsewhere on the Afghan front, the US, Russia and China have recognised this country’s role
in facilitating the Afghan peace process. In a statement issued by the US State Department,
it was said that “Pakistan can play an important role in facilitating peace in Afghanistan”.
Indeed, considering the long border this country shares with Afghanistan, and the fact that
instability in the latter country directly affects Pakistan, Islamabad has a key role in helping
bring this protracted conflict to an end. Moreover, while the US, China and Russia, along
with other regional states, are playing important roles in trying to end the conflict,
Afghanistan’s other neighbours — especially Iran, Uzbekistan and the Central Asian states —
must also be involved in the peace process. Due to geographical and ethnolinguistic links
with the parties within Afghanistan, it is essential that these neighbours are on board, as
just like Pakistan they too are affected by Afghan instability. Though this may be anathema
to the US, particularly when it comes to involving Iran, Tehran cannot be ignored in the
effort to iron out an Afghan peace deal.

However, it should be reiterated that despite the best intentions of all of Afghanistan’s
neighbours and world powers, the peace process must be Afghan-led and Afghan-owned. It
is important that the Taliban shed their rigidity and talk directly to Kabul to ensure a
workable peace. But as a presidential election is due in Afghanistan in September, the militia
may be waiting to see where the chips fall before declaring their strategy. The next few
months will be crucial for Afghanistan, and it is hoped a lasting peace is reached to help this
battered land get back on its feet.
Afghan quagmire
Touqir HussainOctober 03, 2019Facebook Count
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EIGHTEEN years ago, the United States invaded Afghanistan to drive out the Afghan Taliban,
but is now seeking their help to get out of the country itself.

The US-Taliban talks may have been suspended but are bound to resume as there is no
alternative to a negotiated end to the war. Nevertheless, the end of the war will do little to
bring peace to Afghanistan. It will solve America’s problem; but Afghanistan and Pakistan
will have to solve theirs.

Afghanistan and Pakistan have had a tortuous shared history that has left a complicated
legacy of divided ethnicity across a disputed border. Each has responded by becoming
friendly with the other’s enemies. They will face much greater challenges as intra-Afghan
talks start, which they must sooner or later. The Taliban and Kabul will not only be talking
but also fighting, hence presenting a challenge to both countries that cannot be resolved
through strategies defining their past interaction.

We have made mistakes in Afghanistan and paid for them. I hope we are not going to make
another one by persisting with our traditional support for the Taliban in this new conflict
that will be so different. On the one hand, the US and Afghanistan will be more dependent
on Pakistan to manage the Taliban threat. On the other, Pakistan will have less leverage
with the Taliban as the latter, with the US drawdown, would feel stronger and be less
amenable to Pakistan’s influence.

Pakistan’s biggest challenge will be to prevent the Taliban from calling upon their old and
new allies like the foreign and Pakistani jihadists to join the battle in a replay of the conflict
of the 1990s. This conflict will loom large over Pakistan’s tentative struggle against militant
organisations and its efforts to stabilise the economy and strengthen democracy amid
continued pressures from an assertive and dominant India.

We should not persist in our traditional support for the Taliban.

Finding a sound strategy to deal with this conflict should be at the centre of Pakistan’s
priorities. How to view post-drawdown Afghanistan and treat the Taliban accordingly has to
be at the heart of this strategy. Will we see Afghanistan as a threat or an opportunity? If we
see it as a threat we will keep treating the Taliban as an asset and risk becoming an
accessory to their ambitions for power.

If the Taliban return to power they will have reverse strategic depth in Pakistan, inciting
radicalisation of sections of our society. A disempowered Taliban on the other hand might
tear away at Pakistan’s tribal areas amid the chaos of an unfinished war that will cause a
spillover of refugees, drugs and extremism into Pakistan. Treating Afghanistan as a threat is
thus not a policy option. If the Taliban win, that is bad; if they lose that is worse.

The Afghan Taliban are not the national resistance movement that some of us believe. They
just happen to be a major player in one of the eternal struggles for power in Afghanistan.
There are conflicts within the conflict in that country, and Pakistan should not be a party to
them.

We need to treat Afghanistan as an opportunity, in that its stabilisation would enhance our
own stability, and look upon the Taliban as a challenge not an asset.

In that case, Pakistan would have no option but to work with the elected government in
Kabul to strengthen its negotiating hand and force the Taliban into a power-sharing
arrangement. Kabul too should realise that if it wants Pakistan’s help it must seek friendly
relations with Islamabad. Pakistan cannot bring peace to Afghanistan but it can certainly
block it.

Pakistan is strategically vital because of its location at the crossroads of Afghanistan, Russia,
China, India and Iran. It could benefit from its location by serving as a corridor for trade and
energy. But that would not happen without Afghanistan’s stabilisation and improved
Pakistan-India relations. Afghanistan’s stabilisation may well be the only leverage Pakistan
will have with India; given the prospects of transit rights to Central Asia and access to
pipelines, Pakistan’s value as an economic partner will rise inducing India to seek
Islamabad’s friendship. Hopefully, the possibility of friendly ties with Pakistan would provide
India with an incentive to solve the Kashmir dispute.

Pakistan’s foreign policy will have to find a balance between addressing the country’s
external security challenges and meeting its development needs at home. No issue impacts
Pakistan’s internal and external challenges as much as peace and the stability of
Afghanistan; and there is no greater obstacle to Afghanistan’s stabilisation than the Taliban.
No country has as much leverage with them as Pakistan, which must play its cards well.
‘
Afghan peace
Moeed YusufMay 07, 2019Facebook Count
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I HAVE maintained for some time now that the peace effort in Afghanistan will produce a
workable outcome.

My optimism flows from the fact that the US is serious about getting to one. For years, the
US system was divided on the wisdom of a negotiated settlement. No more. President
Donald Trump jolted his establishment into pursuing an end to the war in earnest by
signalling his intent to pull out and proving his propensity to disregard his establishment’s
preferences. The message for the US bureaucracy was clear: a deal that protected US
interests in Afghanistan had to be concluded soonest, or the president could pull the rug
from under their feet.

The US machinery remains in overdrive to make something happen through the ongoing
talks. But I wonder now if we are overstating the keenness among other key actors in
achieving the same. Indeed, the way the deck is laid out, we require irrational behaviour
from brutally self-interested actors to get to a solid deal. At least as the theory of
negotiations goes, this is not a good place to be in.

There is increasing chatter about Afghan President Ashraf Ghani playing spoiler. He is not
interested in relinquishing power and has been coalescing political forces in Afghanistan to
raise the costs for the US and others to isolate him. He has constantly signalled that any deal
his government hasn’t directly negotiated can’t be accepted.

Do the Taliban think that Trump will tweet his way to an abrupt pullout?

Troubling, but rational. He is not doing well politically and, by all accounts, will likely lose a
fair election unless there is some major development in his favour. The only one conceivable
is a peace deal that Ghani can truly own. Otherwise, even a settlement that manages to
silence the guns in Afghanistan but doesn’t give him complete ownership may not benefit
him. In fact, a workable power-sharing arrangement involving the Afghan Taliban could
arguably jeopardise his political future.
Pakistan’s calculus isn’t devoid of perverse incentives either. Even as the US and Pakistan
seem to be collaborating closely on the peace process, I pick up sceptical voices reminding
decision-makers that Pakistan’s objective in partnering with the US on Afghanistan isn’t only
peace on its western border. It is also to revive the presently broken US-Pakistan bilateral
ties.

There hasn’t been any progress on this count. The US has been clear that ties can only
improve once Pakistan is deemed to have delivered adequately in Afghanistan. The sceptics,
however, have a different view: with Pakistan’s utility in Afghanistan reduced in a post-
settlement Afghanistan, the US will be even less willing to engage Pakistan positively.

While those calling the shots are still convinced that peace in Afghanistan is important
enough in and of itself, it is easy to see how one can extend the sceptics’ logic and argue
that Pakistan should condition its support in Afghanistan on tangible concessions from the
US on bilateral ties. Absent an appreciable thaw on bilateral issues, this view will keep
gaining ground.

Next, Iran. Not much to unpack here beyond stating the obvious. Iran’s global isolation has
never aligned with the benefits of a positive Iranian role in Afghanistan (from the US
perspective). With the formal designation of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist entity,
the die is cast. Iran’s resolve to raise US costs in Afghanistan will grow further.

Equally little needs to be said about India’s dislike for the shape of the current peace bid in
Afghanistan. Any viable peace deal will legitimise the Taliban’s role in Afghanistan. To add to
India’s worries, if the sun begins to set on US troop presence as part of the deal, India would
lose the hard security umbrella that enabled it to successfully expand its development
footprint in Afghanistan post-9/11. It makes little sense for India to support either.

Finally, the Taliban. For the most part, their desperation for political legitimacy and the keen
recognition of the impossibility of a military victory makes them a genuinely pro-peace deal
player. And yet, one is hard-pressed to point to any meaningful concessions from their side
since the Doha talks began.

Among the various theories explaining the Taliban’s intransigence, the one that worries me
most is that they have a lingering sense the US president will sooner or later tweet his way
to an abrupt pullout. On the other hand, no matter what deal they strike, they must go
through a complicated process of convincing their fighters that they haven’t sold out to the
US. If so, would they prefer playing the delaying game rather than sincerely negotiating a
compromise deal? Is this what is happening in Doha?

If the world is to see a viable negotiated settlement in Afghanistan, these perverse

incentives need to be addressed immediately. Else, we may fall short, with detrimental
consequences for Afghanistan, its neighbours, and US national security.

Modi’s threat
Huma YusufUpdated May 06, 2019Facebook Count
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INDIA’S election continues to move apace — sadly, to the beat of war drums. In recent
weeks, Prime Minister — or should it be ‘Chowkidar’ — Narendra Modi has transformed his
campaign into an explicitly anti-Pakistan and implicitly anti-Muslim diatribe.

The speed with which Modi has gone from the economic promises of ‘acche din’ to the fear
campaign of ‘qatal ki raat’ should disappoint Indians. But this shift must not be divorced
from its political context. As I wrote recently, the fallback on national security by a Hindu
nationalist leader should not be taken at face value. It is merely an attempt to distract from
Modi’s poor economic governance and other broken promises from his last campaign.

One aspect of his aggressive rhetoric does, however, deserve attention: the nuclear threats.
In several recent rallies, Modi has threatened to call Pakistan’s nuclear ‘bluff’ and indicated
he would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons if provoked again — most notably in the
Rajasthani town of Barmer, where he quipped the nuclear button was not reserved for use
on Diwali.

These comments raise questions about whether India’s no-first-use policy may be shifting.
They also suggest that India may feel more emboldened after the Pulwama strikes to
respond aggressively to any future militant attacks that it perceives to have originated in
Pakistan, complacent that Pakistan will not deploy its nuclear arsenal. The focus on
countering Pakistan also raises broader questions about India’s security priorities, and casts
doubt on its position that it can accept a status quo with Pakistan or that it is more
concerned about Chinese threats.
When it comes to nuclear warfare, words matter.

Indian defence analysts are already discounting the statements as nothing more than
campaign bluster, and do not believe a substantive security policy shift has occurred. But
when it comes to nuclear warfare, words matter.

It is important for the tentative Pakistan-India equation that both countries can spin the
same events in ways that make them seem like victories to a domestic audience, thereby
saving face. So it is that the UN designation of Masood Azhar as a global terrorist is both a
triumph for India — which has got what it has lobbied for after a decade-long effort — and
for Pakistan, which has celebrated the fact that the proposal was moved by the US, UK and
France (and not India), and does not mention ‘terrorism’ in Kashmir.

Similar doublespeak played out after Pulwama. Both sides sold wing commander
Abhinandan Varthaman’s release as a diplomatic win. Imran Khan pitched it as a moment of
statesmanship, restraint and graciousness. The BJP sold it as a sign of strength that Modi has
managed to secure the pilot’s release.

But nuclear threats do not fit well with this carefully managed pattern of rhetorical
dissonance. A threat must be matched by a threat. A threat must be backed by actual
planning and resources to give it credibility.

The fact that threats of going to nuclear war are a potential vote winner in the world’s
largest democracy is also extremely alarming. It is a reminder that nuclear policies lack
transparency and are only discussed among elite circles that use euphemistic language
about penetration, deterrence and escalation to talk about what would be horrifying,
apocalyptic scenarios in which millions of people would be killed. That stark reality of
nuclear warfare has been glossed over in both Pakistan and India (and arguably, globally)
through the nationalist tenor of the debate on nukes and the chest thumping it entails.
People march along when they hear the nuclear war drums, but they do not truly
comprehend what they are advocating.

Modi’s nuclear threats are also being issued in a changing global political climate. Gone are
Barack Obama’s optimistic visions of complete disarmament. Instead, all countries that
possess nuclear weapons are in an arms race, vying for bigger, better, faster, more tactical,
or more effective weapons. In this environment, it is unlikely that any international power
would seek to clarify or constrain Modi’s aggression.

Within this broader context, Modi’s comments are desensitising the Indian public to the
brutal reality and horrendous implications of a nuclear attack, no matter how targeted or
tactical. And the run-up to this election, including the Pulwama aftermath, have shown how
quickly and recklessly political parties will kowtow to appease domestic political
constituencies for short-term gains at the ballot box. Political promises to a public primed
for action make for a deadly cocktail.

Pakistan’s government and military have been right to forcefully criticise Modi’s comments
and label them irresponsible. One hopes they exercise similar good judgement when it
comes to planning our arsenal and appeasing our own increasingly right-wing, trigger-happy
domestic constituencies.
US sabre-rattling
EditorialMay 13, 2019Facebook Count
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IT seems like déjà-vu. Once again the US is preparing a casus belli for war with a Middle
Eastern country based on flimsy grounds. We have seen the same rhetoric in the run-up to
the wars in Iraq, Syria and Libya (with all three countries shattered). Now it seems that the
powers that be in Washington want a head-on collision with Iran. Over the past few days,
disturbing reports have been emerging of a US military build-up in the Gulf. The Americans
have sent two warships, including a strike group, to the Gulf, along with a missile defence
system. Moreover, American bombers have reportedly been stationed at a US base in Qatar.
The Americans say the mobilisation is in response to an unidentified Iranian “threat”;
Tehran has said the moves are merely “psychological warfare”. The spark, it seems, for the
latest confrontation between Iran and the US is the nuclear deal. However, a deeply held
desire amongst hawks within the Trump administration for regime change in Iran is perhaps
the real driver of hostility. The US has found ways to criticise Iran on other fronts, even
though the IAEA and the European co-signatories of the nuclear deal all confirmed that
Tehran was abiding by it. This indicates that the deal is not the problem; the warmongers in
Washington want to depose the ayatollahs.

While saner elements in Washington, as well as the Iranian establishment, may want to
avoid war, any miscalculation in the current charged atmosphere can result in hostilities.
The US may be a superior military power, but if war does break out, the theatre will stretch
from the Gulf to the Levant, with Iran deploying its allied militias against the Americans.
Moreover, those American allies keenly gunning for war — eg Israel, the Gulf Arabs — could
find themselves in the direct range of the Iranians. Therefore, to prevent a conflagration of
regional proportions, the Americans need to pull back from the brink.
Loya Jirga 2019
A. Rauf K. KhattakMay 13, 2019Facebook Count
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LOYA JIRGA is an Afghan Pakhtun institution predating the modern era. It signifies the
democratic base of Pakhtun society. ‘Loya’ means ‘big’ because delegates are invited from
all over Pakhtun lands in Afghanistan. The delegates are important tribal leaders, ulema,
teachers and men with influence in their communities.

The jirga is called when Afghanistan is faced with a bigger issue of national importance such
as endorsing a new head of state in case of sudden death, adopting a new constitution, war
and peace, and national or regional issues. It is essentially a Pakhtun gathering. There is no
limit on the number of attendees. There is no time limit for the duration of the jirga. It
continues for as long as the issues at hand are fully debated and a verdict arrived at. Other
nationalities of Afghanistan now participate as observers.

It is not easy to manipulate the outcome of the Loya Jirga. That is why the verdict of the
jirga has sanctity among Pakhtuns.

Loya Jirgas do not cut ice if the Afghan nation is divided in the middle.

There have been as many as 20 such jirgas since 1707 when Mir Wais Hotak called a jirga to
be endorsed as the king of Pakhtuns after overthrowing the Safavid ruler. Ahmad Shah
Durrani was endorsed as Pakhtun leader and king by the grand jirga in October 1747.
Another such important jirga was called by King Amanullah in September 1928 to endorse
his reforms. After the establishment of Pakistan, relations between Pakistan and
Afghanistan deteriorated rapidly. The Loya Jirga in July 1949 declared the Durand Line
between the two countries would not be recognised as the international boundary. It is still
the position of the Afghan government.
Of the 20 or so grand jirgas held since 1700, eight were called in a short period between
2001 and 2019. This is because the Pakhtuns themselves are divided between the Taliban
and the rest as to what sort of polity Afghanistan should be. The frequent convening of the
Loya Jirga for partisan purposes has eroded the sanctity of this great institution.

There is no tradition of a Loya Jirga among the Pakistani Pakhtuns. However, a Loya Jirga
was convened by Bacha Khan on June 21, 1947, in Bannu to deliberate over Pakistani
Pakhtuns in the wake of Independence. The jirga demanded that the Pakhtun lands of
British India should form an independent country. The British rejected the demand. The Red
Shirts boycotted the referendum held to determine the future status of the then NWFP after
Partition.

With mounting financial and human cost over 17 long years of war, President Donald Trump
is calling it a day. The mood to withdraw from the global scene has been set by him. His
concentration is on an ‘America First’ policy. The withdrawal from the world stage has been
a recurring theme in American history. Trump wants to ‘get the hell out’ of Afghanistan, and
called it a folly for a world power to keep fighting unwinnable wars. The decision to
withdraw is as good as made. The rest is just manoeuvring around to get the best out of a
bad bargain.

Direct talks between the US and the Afghan Taliban started in 2005 in Doha, Qatar. A retired
US ambassador called it ‘divorce proceedings’. The proceedings are stretched because the
engagement was long. What has made the peace process so complicated is that the Taliban
do not recognise the third party to the conflict: the government of Afghanistan.

President Ashraf Ghani could not sit idle when the present round of talks in Doha started on
May 1. He called a Loya Jirga of 3,200 delegates, one third of which are women. The
exercise is to shore up his position against the Taliban, the US decision to withdraw, and the
upcoming presidential election. This is the best he could do and nothing else if America
declares victory and quits. Loya Jirgas do not cut ice if the Afghan nation is divided in the
middle. When the fighting Taliban ignore its decisions the exercise is as good as having gone
to waste.

The Taliban sustained their long struggle against a foreign aggressor in the name of Islam.
Their struggle was valiant and firm as exhorted by their faith. But the resort is to pick and
choose when it come to religious injunctions, including those contained in the verses of the
Quran.
The Taliban should make peace now both with the US and the government when they are so
inclined. The government in Kabul is a compelling reality. The Taliban denial cannot make it
disappear. Their sacrifices were given in order to win back Afghanistan from the US and not
to steal a march on Kabul once the American troops left the country. Further intransigence
will cause more Afghan blood to be spilled, adding to the long casualty list of 75,000 already
killed, and that blood would be on the hands of the Taliban.
Future of Pak-US relations
Munir AkramMay 12, 2019Facebook Count
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PAKISTAN’s long, close and turbulent relationship with the US has had a pervasive impact on
this country’s history. The last phase of that relationship, the ‘war on terror’ alliance, ended
in August 2017, when Donald Trump announced a punitive policy towards Pakistan,
suspending high-level contacts, freezing Coalition Support Funds repayments and
demanding Pakistan’s cooperation on Afghanistan.

Read: America suspends entire security aid to Pakistan

Over the next 18 months, America’s initially coercive demands on Afghanistan became
progressively realistic, eventually asking Islamabad to help start direct talks between the US
and the Afghan Taliban.

Pakistan has delivered on this request. Several rounds of US-Taliban talks, held mostly in
Doha, have reportedly led to draft agreements for withdrawal of US troops from
Afghanistan and to prevent Afghanistan’s territory from being used as a base for global
terrorism in future. However, the Taliban have refused to talk to what they call the ‘puppet’
government in Kabul or to accept a ceasefire until US troop withdrawal is under way.

The US has not offered Pakistan any tangible concessions in exchange for its assistance.
Contrary to earlier assurances that Islamabad would have no responsibility for the talks’
outcome, it is now asking that Pakistan play an important role in achieving a successful
conclusion of the ‘peace process’.

US demands have been extended to the eastern front. During and after the Pulwama mini-
crisis, US pressure was ratcheted up — directly and through the UN and the FATF — to
demand actions against the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad and the inclusion of
JeM’s Maulana Azhar on the UN Security Council’s ‘terrorism’ list.

America’s new hostility towards Pakistan is due mostly to its emerging global rivalry with
China.

Islamabad has seen it in its own interest to comply with the demands to proscribe the
activities of the LeT and JeM. It has also continued its cooperation on Afghanistan. However,
this may not prove sufficient to restore friendly ties with the US.

America’s new hostility towards Pakistan is due mostly to its emerging global rivalry with
China, in which India has been chosen as Washington’s strategic partner whereas Pakistan is
listed on China’s side of the power equation. The recently announced US South Asia Policy is
predicated on India’s regional domination.

Read: Pakistan wants ‘proper ties’ with US like its relations with China

If Pakistan is to establish an equitable relationship with the US, it will have to build the
capability to resist India-US military, financial and domestic pressure. To do so, it needs
strong and nationally-oriented governance and China’s unreserved cooperation.

Pakistan is well placed to resist military pressure. The Pulwama mini-crisis demonstrated
two things: one, that Pakistan can defend itself by conventional means; two, that nuclear
deterrence worked once again to moderate military behaviour on both sides. Yet, India is
embarked on a major arms acquisition and modernisation process which Pakistan will have
to continue to neutralise if not match. Most importantly, Pakistan must disabuse India of
any presumption that, under a US umbrella, it could ‘test’ Pakistan’s nuclear deterrence or
resort to a pre-emptive strike against Pakistan’s strategic assets. A Pakistani ‘second strike’
capability will eliminate this danger.

Pakistan’s financial defences are vulnerable. The nation needs to come together to
implement the politically difficult yet vital tax and other measures required to ensure a
sustained balance in the country’s fiscal and external accounts. For the longer term,
Pakistan should join the nascent efforts of China, Russia and some other countries to
construct alternate or supplementary arrangements to the US-dominated financial system.
Likewise, Pakistan is not fully equipped to fight the ‘hybrid’ war being waged by India and
others in Balochistan, ex-Fata, sections of the media and politics to destabilise the country
domestically. Using all the tools of modern technology, Pakistan must develop a
sophisticated intelligence, counter-insurgency and political action capability for defence.

‘Defensive’ measures do not imply systemic hostility with the US. There are vast areas for
mutually beneficial cooperation which can be promoted as long as the US does not threaten
Pakistan’s core interests and positions, especially its rejection of Indian domination and
support for Kashmiri self-determination.

Counterterrorism, regional arms control and global non-proliferation are identified issues
for continued cooperation.

Trade and investment are the most promising areas to build a future Pakistan-US
relationship. The US is Pakistan’s prime export market. Pakistani exports are held back due
to lack of competitive capacity. Pakistan’s current industrialization drive should target
production for exports to the huge US as well as Chinese and Asian markets.

Similarly, even though US official assistance to Pakistan will be minimal and conditional,
Pakistan should make a concerted effort to invite US private investment into the vast and
untapped economic opportunities that exist in almost every sector of the Pakistan economy,
including the SEZs and the privatisation programme. Apart from finance, such investment
will bring advanced management techniques and production technologies to Pakistan.

Pakistan and the US also agree that there are vast opportunities for regional economic
cooperation and integration, although their respective regional priorities are not yet fully
convergent.

Despite the new Cold War, the US may find it expedient to cooperate with China and
Pakistan to stabilise the Afghan economy in a post-settlement scenario, including through
Afghanistan’s integration into CPEC, and collaborative execution of several agreed
transnational projects, such as the TAPI and CASA-1000 ventures.

Pakistan’s revived relationship with Saudi Arabia and the UAE offers another avenue for
indirect economic Pakistan-US cooperation. Significantly, Saudi and UAE investments in the
energy and petrochemicals sectors, besides potentially building Pakistan’s bridges with US
corporates, will also link them, via oil and gas exports, to China and Central Asia through
Pakistan.

Hope resides in the possibility that the US will perceive the economic momentum in Asia,
unleashed by the Belt and Road Initiative and Asian economic integration, as a strategic
opportunity rather than a challenge. US participation could transform the Belt and Road
endeavour into a globally beneficial enterprise.

Indeed, faced by global threats of climate change, poverty and nuclear annihilation, and
offered the alternative of a cooperative, knowledge-driven future of growth and prosperity,
the US, China, Russia and other powers, including India, ultimately would be wise to opt for
‘win-win’ cooperation rather than ‘lose-lose’ confrontation.

Here we go again
Irfan HusainMay 18, 2019Facebook Count
145
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62
THE sanctions, the threats, the arms build-up, the shrill accusations and the allegations
against Iran are all from a B-movie we have seen before.

They are all part of the march to war that preceded the invasion of Iraq 16 years ago.
Thousands of lives and six trillion dollars later, the region and the world are in a far worse
place.

But empires never learn from their

What is in its DNA that has put the US on such a violent path?

mistakes. Before Iraq, there was the Vietnam quagmire that cost nearly 60,000 American
and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese lives.
In fact, in its 239 years as an independent country, the US has seen only 17 years of peace.
The rest of the time has been spent on fighting major and minor wars around the world.
From its string of wars against a defenceless indigenous population to heroic actions like the
invasion of Panama, the US has used its overwhelming military muscle to impose its will on
those too weak to defend themselves.

But every now and then, it has encountered foes that had the tenacity and the courage to
give it a bloody nose. The North Vietnamese taught the Americans that there were limits to
their power, a lesson reinforced by Iraqi militias.

And now, the hopelessly outgunned Afghan Taliban are forcing the Americans to eat humble
pie in the grinding war of attrition that has been going on for 18 years in Afghanistan. The
current negotiations between the Taliban and the Americans are an indication of the latter’s
desperation to exit the arena.

Given this track record, why do people like John Bolton, the national security adviser to
Trump, and Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, think they’ll do better against Iran?
Granted that they are ideological hawks, and are itching to attack Iran at Israel’s and Saudi
Arabia’s behest, but an armed conflict will be no walk in the park.

The Iranian armed forces showed they were no pushovers when Saddam Hussein attacked
their country back in 1980. After eight years of bloody fighting against a foe that had the
support of the West, including help in acquiring chemical weapons technology, the war
ended in a stalemate.

Since then, the Iranians have developed a sophisticated arms industry, and a formidable
standing army. Their naval assets include hundreds of small, fast boats that carry anti-ship
missiles, and can also be used in suicide attacks. They have thousands of missiles that can be
launched from caves that honeycomb the coast.

So while an American first strike will do considerable damage, the Iranian response will be
ferocious. And American bases in the region will be hostage to Iranian attacks.

Should Israel join the US in its attack, expect Hezbollah to launch a major offensive from its
bases in Lebanon. If there is one force in the Middle East the Israelis would prefer not to
fight, it is Hezbollah. Battle-hardened, well-armed, highly motivated and trained, it is
capable of doing major damage to Israeli targets.
Given all these factors, why do the Americans seem hell-bent on starting a war against Iran?
Obviously, Israel, with its massive clout in Trump’s White House, has been urging the
Americans to attack, using the Iranian nuclear programme as a pretext. Never mind that
uranium enrichment has been put on hold since the signing of the deal in 2015. Netanyahu
has persuaded the gullible Trump that Iran’s nuclear programme had to be completely
dismantled, failing which air strikes were the only other option.

Saudi Arabia has long been singing the same tune. The Saudis know full well that despite
billions of dollars of arms purchases, their armed forces are no match for Iran. They have
thus been calling on America to attack its hated regional rival.

Despite their string of military setbacks in the recent past, why are so many Americans still
so gung-ho about yet another war? What is in the American DNA that has put the country
on such a violent path? Why don’t American warriors give diplomats a chance to resolve
differences rather than shoot from the hip?

I have long admired the creative ferment that has led to so many American triumphs in the
arts and sciences. But I have been appalled by the daily acts of violence we witness with
such sickening regularity. The killing of (usually) black suspects by cops, and the random
shootings by armed psychotics in bars, schools and other public places have come to define
America.

Although American forces have not exactly shone on the battlefield, they are still revered by
the public. Despite the horrors they have visited on prisoners, politicians fear to criticise
them. American generals, eyeing promotions and medals, have repeatedly assured
politicians that victory is around the corner, given a few more years and a few thousand
more soldiers.

Gulf tensions
EditorialMay 16, 2019Facebook Count
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70
TENSIONS between the US and Iran, particularly in the Gulf, are rising and the situation has
sent alarm bells ringing throughout the region.
It is in this context that Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said on Tuesday that
Pakistan was “closely following the situation” and would take a stand “that best served the
national interest”.

Pakistan is, of course, in a sensitive position as it has decades-old, deep relations with the
US, while it shares a long border with Iran.

Moreover, this country’s ties with the Gulf Arabs — particularly the Saudis — who are firmly
in the American camp, are also cordial and have a strategic and defence dimension.

In case of any hostilities, this country will rightly be concerned about its security and the
stability of the region at large.

But perhaps the initial question is: what is the forecast of war? Though crystal-ball gazing
can paint a deceptive picture, there is no denying that a war of words and a war of wills are
raging in the Gulf between Iran and the US (and its allies).

While leading figures from both sides — Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran and Secretary Pompeo
in the US — have said their respective sides are not interested in conflict, actions,
particularly on the American end, tend to belie words.

For example, the US military build-up in the Gulf, harsh rhetoric from President Trump, as
well as accusations from the US that Iran was responsible for ‘sabotaging’ several oil tankers
off the UAE port of Fujairah recently (without presenting any solid evidence) all serve to
prove that Washington may indeed be building a case for war against Iran.

Further indications of heightened tensions came on Wednesday, when reports emerged

that the US was pulling “non-emergency” employees from Iraq, which borders Iran.

It is welcome that all sides say they do not want war.

But these intentions need to be strengthened through confidence-building measures and a

genuine effort to lower tensions.
The US must shed its combative rhetoric and end its economic blockade and engage Iran
with respect if it genuinely seeks a modus vivendi.

Tehran, on the other hand, should respond and give negotiations a chance.

As stated above, Pakistan is placed in a unique position.

Perhaps it can use its good offices to mediate between Washington and Tehran, and ward
off a potentially catastrophic conflict that has the potential of setting the whole region
alight.

Here we go again
Irfan HusainMay 18, 2019Facebook Count
145
Twitter Share
62
THE sanctions, the threats, the arms build-up, the shrill accusations and the allegations
against Iran are all from a B-movie we have seen before.

They are all part of the march to war that preceded the invasion of Iraq 16 years ago.
Thousands of lives and six trillion dollars later, the region and the world are in a far worse
place.

But empires never learn from their

What is in its DNA that has put the US on such a violent path?

mistakes. Before Iraq, there was the Vietnam quagmire that cost nearly 60,000 American
and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese lives.
In fact, in its 239 years as an independent country, the US has seen only 17 years of peace.
The rest of the time has been spent on fighting major and minor wars around the world.
From its string of wars against a defenceless indigenous population to heroic actions like the
invasion of Panama, the US has used its overwhelming military muscle to impose its will on
those too weak to defend themselves.

But every now and then, it has encountered foes that had the tenacity and the courage to
give it a bloody nose. The North Vietnamese taught the Americans that there were limits to
their power, a lesson reinforced by Iraqi militias.

And now, the hopelessly outgunned Afghan Taliban are forcing the Americans to eat humble
pie in the grinding war of attrition that has been going on for 18 years in Afghanistan. The
current negotiations between the Taliban and the Americans are an indication of the latter’s
desperation to exit the arena.

Given this track record, why do people like John Bolton, the national security adviser to
Trump, and Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, think they’ll do better against Iran?
Granted that they are ideological hawks, and are itching to attack Iran at Israel’s and Saudi
Arabia’s behest, but an armed conflict will be no walk in the park.

The Iranian armed forces showed they were no pushovers when Saddam Hussein attacked
their country back in 1980. After eight years of bloody fighting against a foe that had the
support of the West, including help in acquiring chemical weapons technology, the war
ended in a stalemate.

Since then, the Iranians have developed a sophisticated arms industry, and a formidable
standing army. Their naval assets include hundreds of small, fast boats that carry anti-ship
missiles, and can also be used in suicide attacks. They have thousands of missiles that can be
launched from caves that honeycomb the coast.

So while an American first strike will do considerable damage, the Iranian response will be
ferocious. And American bases in the region will be hostage to Iranian attacks.

Should Israel join the US in its attack, expect Hezbollah to launch a major offensive from its
bases in Lebanon. If there is one force in the Middle East the Israelis would prefer not to
fight, it is Hezbollah. Battle-hardened, well-armed, highly motivated and trained, it is
capable of doing major damage to Israeli targets.
Given all these factors, why do the Americans seem hell-bent on starting a war against Iran?
Obviously, Israel, with its massive clout in Trump’s White House, has been urging the
Americans to attack, using the Iranian nuclear programme as a pretext. Never mind that
uranium enrichment has been put on hold since the signing of the deal in 2015. Netanyahu
has persuaded the gullible Trump that Iran’s nuclear programme had to be completely
dismantled, failing which air strikes were the only other option.

Saudi Arabia has long been singing the same tune. The Saudis know full well that despite
billions of dollars of arms purchases, their armed forces are no match for Iran. They have
thus been calling on America to attack its hated regional rival.

Despite their string of military setbacks in the recent past, why are so many Americans still
so gung-ho about yet another war? What is in the American DNA that has put the country
on such a violent path? Why don’t American warriors give diplomats a chance to resolve
differences rather than shoot from the hip?

I have long admired the creative ferment that has led to so many American triumphs in the
arts and sciences. But I have been appalled by the daily acts of violence we witness with
such sickening regularity. The killing of (usually) black suspects by cops, and the random
shootings by armed psychotics in bars, schools and other public places have come to define
America.

Although American forces have not exactly shone on the battlefield, they are still revered by
the public. Despite the horrors they have visited on prisoners, politicians fear to criticise
them. American generals, eyeing promotions and medals, have repeatedly assured
politicians that victory is around the corner, given a few more years and a few thousand
more soldiers.

A neutral posture
Huma YusufUpdated May 20, 2019Facebook Count
232
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66
BREWING tensions in the Persian Gulf should be a cause for alarm in Pakistan. The US
deployment of an aircraft carrier and bombers, alleged proxy attacks, Saudi Arabia’s calls for
surgical strikes against Iran, and Iranian threats about resuming its nuclear programme are
setting the stage for conflict.

But US and Iranian officials are simultaneously softening their stances, calling for talks and
downplaying prospects of direct conflict. Tweeting on Friday, US President Donald Trump
summed up the situation quite well: “With all the Fake and Made Up News out there, Iran
can have no idea what is actually going on!”

And neither can anyone else. What is clear, however, is that the Trump administration’s
ham-fisted efforts to instal a better nuclear deal with Iran will increase the precariousness of
regional dynamics, with uncertain outcomes, and implications for Pakistan’s stability.

Pakistan has already stated that it will not take sides in the current confrontation, and called
for US restraint. These are the right noises to make. The need for Pakistan to remain neutral
in any stand-off between the US and Saudi Arabia on one side and Iran on the other is clear.

Our parliament’s decision in 2015 not to send troops to support the Saudi-led intervention
in Yemen set an excellent precedent for this neutrality. However, that position could be
tested under the latest circumstances. Following the Yemen snub to the kingdom, Pakistan
showered Saudi Arabia with assurances that it would defend Saudi Arabia’s interests.

Pakistan must entrench its ties with Iran.

Recent developments, such as the Houthi drone strikes against Saudi oil infrastructure, for
which Riyadh has blamed Tehran, could lead to renewed pressure on Pakistan to provide
support to the kingdom.

Given Saudi Arabia’s recent largesse towards Pakistan — last year’s $6 billion emergency
loan, promises of up to $20bn in investments, and even offers of LNG — Riyadh may be
tempted to test the strength of Islamabad’s allegiance and, given its indebtedness, our
government would struggle to push back.

Some analysts have argued that given Saudi Arabia’s growing engagement with India, it can
hardly object to Pakistan balancing ties and continuing to engage with Iran. But we should
have no delusions that this is an equal partnership. Riyadh would expect to count on
Pakistan if the regional situation deteriorated significantly; for example, if it came to direct
conflict, or if the resumption of Iran’s nuclear weapons programme sparked an arms race in
which Saudi Arabia would rely on Pakistani cooperation.

The timing of the US-Iran flare-up could not be worse in terms of Pakistan-Iran relations,
following Imran Khan’s overdue and productive trip to Iran — including his symbolically
important visit to Mashhad — last month. Given recent, audacious attacks by Baloch
militant groups within Pakistan, the need to secure Iranian cooperation to stamp out
militant sanctuaries across the western border is essential. Indeed, the key outcome from
Khan’s visit was the rapid reaction force to combat militancy along the border, which must
be sustained.

The reasons for Pakistan to maintain good ties with Iran persist: the 950-kilometre border;
the need for counterterrorism cooperation and a coordinated approach towards ending the
Afghan conflict; to prevent entanglement in a Middle Eastern arms race; and most
importantly, to stave off threats of renewed proxy sectarian conflict within Pakistan.

The recent tensions are another reminder that Pakistan must entrench its ties with Iran, so
that each regional conflagration does not throw bilateral ties into question.

Beyond counterterrorism cooperation, there are many ways for Pakistan to do this. One is
to build awareness among the public that the Pakistan-Iran relationship is a long,
substantive one. How many know that Iran was the first nation to recognise Pakistan?

Pakistan should also develop strategies to increase bilateral trade to the agreed target of
$5bn. Plans to improve connectivity between Gwadar and Chabahar ports, and between the
two countries more generally, should be fast-tracked. Pakistan should also import electricity
from Iran and initiate diplomatic efforts to increase the feasibility of completing the Iran-
Pakistan pipeline.

Arts and culture remain underdeveloped areas for bilateral engagement. The recent revival
of Pakistani cinema has led our artists to turn to Bollywood for inspiration, lessons, and new
opportunities. But budding Pakistani filmmakers could learn as much from the cinematic
genius of Iranians.

Similarly, Pakistan’s vibrant poetic tradition overlaps with that of Iran’s and more high-
profile mushairas could be a way to connect the people of the two countries. A diplomatic
balancing act as complex as the one Pakistan must pull off between Iran, Saudi Arabia and
the US will no doubt require the deployment of both hard and soft power. Let’s hope our
foreign ministry is up to the task.

Unrealistic hopes
A.G. NooraniJune 01, 2019
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54

The writer is an author and a lawyer based in Mumbai.

THERE was something pathetically unreal in the sustained press speculation
about a resumption of talks between India and Pakistan after the Indian
elections. Even a cursory study of the record of the Modi government’s policy
on the talks would have injected some realism in the minds of the hopefuls.

It is, of course, very true that India and Pakistan had established a tradition in the
past of offering congratulations after their respective general elections, coupled
with an offer of talks which the other side gladly accepted. Neither country wanted
a stand-off or confrontation. However, it should have been obvious by 2016, if not
earlier, that Narendra Modi was out to break tradition in domestic as well as
foreign policies.

Foreign secretary talks were cancelled in 2014 on the pretext that Pakistan’s high
commissioner had invited a Hurriyat leader for talks. This was but par for the
course. Former president Pervez Musharraf met Hurriyat leaders at the Pakistan
high commissioner’s residence in New Delhi on the eve of the Agra summit in July
2001. This was not a rare event. He is known to have scolded the hard-line Syed
Ali Shah Geelani earlier more than once when he gratuitously raised the North
Waziristan issue. He was brusquely told to mind his own business. On another
occasion, he was urged to moderate his hard-line stance and cooperate with other
Kashmiri leaders. Modi’s abrupt cancellation of the talks was not a bit affected by
his flamboyant trip to Lahore on former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s birthday.
Pathankot provided yet another excuse for not talking.

Given Modi’s policy, what would talks even achieve?

But one must ask, given the Modi government’s basic approach towards Pakistan
and Kashmir, what talks will achieve. A glimpse of that stand is evident in recent
moves. India had invited several heads of government for Modi’s swearing-in
ceremony on May 30, including leaders of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-
Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (Bimstec) — Bangladesh, Bhutan,
Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Leaders of Kyrgyzstan (the current chair
of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) and Mauritius were also invited.

“This is in line with the government’s focus on its ‘neighbourhood first’ policy,”
the external aAffairs ministry said, tongue in cheek. India has systematically
undermined Saarc and vigorously promoted Bimstec though it is not a member;
but, then, neither is Pakistan.

This is part of India’s proclaimed policy of ‘isolating’ Pakistan. It surely cannot

parley with Pakistan while urging the world to keep it out at bay. The policy is
certain to fail. So did Sukomo’s policy of ‘confrontation’ with Malaysia and
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s vis-à-vis India, to name but two. West Germany was able to
sustain the Hallstein Doctrine for long because of the power of the deutsche mark,
refusing to have relations with any country that had links with East Germany.

India enjoys no such clout. Besides, Pakistan has won new friends like Russia. It
has a standing in the Middle East, Europe and elsewhere. Donald Trump
notwithstanding, the US needs it badly, if it is to stage a dignified retreat from
Afghanistan. India’s massive efforts in Afghanistan will not alter the facts of
geography, history and the compulsions of politics. And there is the rising
superpower China, whom India courts.

If the policy of isolation is doomed to failure, expectation of a dialogue is unreal.

What will India and Pakistan talk about? There is no common ground on the core
issue of Kashmir. It was finally established in 2005-2007 by Musharraf and former
prime minister Manmohan Singh in the realistic innovative four-point formula —
but wrecked by a rabble of vicious, small minds. In Kashmir, Geelani led a vicious
bunch, but one that did not point out any defects or suggest improvements.

It was the same story in Pakistan sung by critics of Musharraf’s domestic policies
and by the BJP in India. At a great moment, small minds operated viciously to
destroy a historic achievement. Imagine the scene in South Asia today if it had
succeeded.

However, Kashmir is not the sole issue between the two countries. There are the
joint statements of 1987 and 2001 which list them. Alas, there is no prospect of a
dialogue on these either, although common ground was achieved on Sir Creek,
Wullar barrage and Siachen. Other matters are also very susceptible to settlement.
That is what Modi and his adviser do not want. ‘All or nothing’ is their policy.
Their demands are: Pakistan must wash its hands of Kashmir and those fighting
there must surrender. On this diplomatic graveyard India will build peace —
settling these issues with Pakistan and imposing on Kashmir a constitutional order
which accomplishes the BJP’s goal of erasure of Article 370 and ensures
Kashmiri’s ‘integration’ with India — the peace of the graveyard.

‘Harrowing memory
Mahir AliJune 05, 2019
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THIRTY years ago, a slim young man clutching a pair of shopping bags stood
all by himself in front of an advancing column of tanks in the heart of Beijing,
providing an iconic image that continues to symbolise the carnage of the
previous 36 or so hours.

Nobody seems to know who he was or what became of him, but as a figure of
resistance he has few parallels. On June 3 and 4, 1989, the People’s Liberation
Army (PLA) mowed down thousands of young protesters in Tiananmen Square.
Tank Man came too late to halt the carnage, but he nonetheless stands out as a
symbol of the resistance to the authoritarian brutality that manifested itself a couple
of months after students, initially many of them from the elite Peking University,
had begun voicing their dissent.

The protests followed the unexpected demise of Hu Yaobang, a Communist Party

leader who assumed reform would not be restricted to the economic sphere. He had
been booted out two years earlier by Deng Xiaoping. His successor, Zhao Ziyang,
was similarly inclined. He sought compromise with the students, pleaded with
them to suspend their hunger strike in May, and was dismissed on the eve of the
military crackdown.
The students in Tiananmen Square were joined by many other Beijing residents,
and it is estimated that their numbers swelled to a million. Up to 200,000 PLA
troops were deployed to bring them down. Senior military officers had deplored
the idea of martial law, but their battalions nonetheless ploughed into the crowds
protesting against corruption and the lack of democracy. 

Chinese authorities do not wish to remember Tiananmen.

Numerous harrowing accounts of what happened on the night of June 3-4 have
surfaced in the interim, but the death toll remains a matter of conjecture. Official
statements at the time mention 200; foreign correspondent accounts speak of at
least 2,000-3,000 dead. British diplomatic documents released in 2017 suggest it
was closer to 10,000.

That may be an exaggeration, but eyewitness accounts point to a shocking level of

lethal fire, and the victims were not just protesters but those seeking to rescue
them. “I saw the People’s Liberation Army in Beijing’s vast Tiananmen Square
mow down doctors and nurses from the Peking Union Hospital medical school. In
their white smocks and caps they had climbed out of an ambulance to aid the
mothers and fathers of students shot in the square a few hours before,” recalls The
Observer correspondent Jonathan Mirsky.

The Chinese authorities do not wish to remember Tiananmen, but sometimes just
cannot help it. Questioned by a member of the audience at a forum in Singapore,
Defence Minister Wie Fenghe declared: “That incident was a political turbulence
and the central government took measures to stop the turbulence, which is a correct
policy. The past 30 years have proven that China has undergone major changes”
and “China has enjoyed stability and development”.

The Global Times, a mouthpiece for the ruling party, noted on Monday: “The
Communist Party of China and the Chinese government have determined the
nature of the incident... Dropping the incident thereafter has been aimed at helping
the country leave the shadow behind, avoid disputes, and help all Chinese people
face the future.“

It added: “We consider such practice a political success … Merely afflicting China
once, the incident has not become a long-term nightmare for the country. Neither
has the incident’s anniversary ever been placed in the teeth of the storm. It has
become a faded historical event, rather than an actual entanglement.”

The “teeth of the storm” have since then been blunted by the Communist Party’s
determination to neutralise all dissent. The advent of Xi Jinping has silenced most
criticism. Lately, the party has had no qualms about incarcerating or ‘disappearing’
Marxist activists from Peking University who fret over the trajectory of China’s
undoubted economic development over recent decades, whereby millions may
have been lifted out of abject poverty, but the process has been accompanied by
glaringly capitalist disparities in the accumulation of wealth.

China has also incarcerated upward of a million Uighurs in its drive to smother all
dissent, quite possibly sowing the seeds of a future rebellion. The notion that its
economic advances would be accompanied by political relaxation has been
thwarted at every juncture, and Beijing’s determination to establish an international
presence reeks of neo-imperialism.

The events of Tiananmen Square do not form a part of Chinese history lessons. But
all too many people remember what happened in 1989, and some are not oblivious
to what’s happening today, even as China challenges the US and is expected to
overtake it in due course as the world’s largest economy.

As the Belgian sinologist Simon Leys noted, “When operating on the scale of
China, history adopts another rhythm.” There’s still scope for hoping, though, that
one day Tiananmen Square will host a monument to the martyrs of 1989.

Pakistan & Sino-US cold war

Munir AkramUpdated June 09, 2019
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The writer is a former Pakistan ambassador to the UN.

AFTER the secretive Bilderberg meetings in Switzerland last week, Martin
Wolf, the respected Financial Times economic columnist, wrote an op-ed
entitled: ‘The 100 year fight facing the US and China’. Wolf’s conclusions are
significant:

“...[R]ivalry with China is becoming an organising principle of US economic,

foreign and security policies”; “The aim is US domination. This means control
over China, or separation from China”. This effort is bound to fail. “This is the
most important geopolitical development of our era. ...[I]t will increasingly force
everybody else to take sides or fight hard for neutrality”; “ Anybody who believes
that a rules-based multilateral order, our globalised economy, or even harmonious
international relations, are likely to survive this conflict is deluded”.

Pakistan is near if not in the eye of the brewing Sino-US storm. Neutrality is not an
option for Pakistan. The US has already chosen India as its strategic partner to
counter China across the ‘Indo-Pacific’ and South Asia. The announced US South
Asia policy is based on Indian domination of the subcontinent. Notwithstanding
India’s trade squabbles with Donald Trump, the US establishment is committed to
building up India militarily to counter China.

On the other hand, strategic partnership with China is the bedrock of Pakistan’s
security and foreign policy. The Indo-US alliance will compel further
intensification of the Pakistan-China partnership. Pakistan is the biggest
impediment to Indian hegemony over South Asia and the success of the Indo-US
grand strategy. Ergo, they will try to remove or neutralise this ‘impediment’.

The US is arming India with the latest weapons and technologies whose immediate
and greatest impact will be on Pakistan. India’s military buildup is further
exacerbating the arms imbalance against Pakistan, encouraging Indian aggression
and lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons in a Pakistan-India
conflict. Washington has joined India in depicting the legitimate Kashmiri freedom
struggle as ‘Islamist terrorism’.

The China-US confrontation is likely to escalate further in the

foreseeable future.
A hybrid war is being waged against Pakistan. Apart from the arms buildup,
ceasefire violations across the LoC and opposition to Kashmiri freedom, ethnic
agitation in ex-Fata and TTP and BLA terrorism has been openly sponsored by
India, along with a hostile media campaign with Western characteristics. FATF’s
threats to put Pakistan on its black list and the opposition to CPEC are being
orchestrated by the US and India. The US has also delayed the IMF package for
Pakistan by objecting to repayment of Chinese loans from the bailout.

Although the US has moderated its public antipathy towards Pakistan while it
extracts Pakistan’s cooperation to persuade the Taliban to be ‘reasonable’, it is
likely to revert to its coercive stance once a settlement is reached in Afghanistan,
or if the negotiations with the Taliban break down.

The Sino-US confrontation is likely to escalate further in the foreseeable future.

US pressure on smaller states to fall in line will become more intense under the
direction of US hawks. Under Xi Jinping, China will not “hide its strength or bide
its time”. Beijing has retaliated against Washington’s trade restrictions. It will
“defend every inch” of Chinese territory.

Likewise Narendra Modi in his second term is unlikely to become more pliant
towards Pakistan. He has been elected on a plank of extreme Hindu nationalism
and hostility towards Muslims, Kashmiris and particularly Pakistan. Modi will not
shift from this posture since he needs to keep his people’s attention away from the
BJP’s failure to create jobs and improve living conditions for anyone apart from
India’s elite. India’s economy is facing headwinds and growth has slowed. There
are multiple insurgencies across the country, apart from the popular and sustained
revolt in disputed Kashmir against India’s brutal occupation.

The Pulwama crisis has confirmed the imminent danger posed by the Kashmir

dispute. In their resistance to Indian occupation, Kashmiris groups will at times
respond violently to India’s gross and systematic violations of human rights. India
will blame Pakistan for such violence and its failure to put down the Kashmiri
resistance. The next Pakistan-India confrontation could lead to general hostilities.
These could escalate rapidly to the nuclear level.

The most dangerous scenario for Pakistan would be an Indian conventional attack
under a US nuclear ‘umbrella’. Pakistan’s second strike capability is the only
certain counter to this catastrophic scenario.

Some in Pakistan may be sufficiently disheartened by its imposing challenges to

advocate peace with India at any cost. But, for Pakistan, “surrender is not an
option” (to quote the title of John Bolton’s book about the UN).

Accepting Indian domination over South Asia will compromise the very raison
d’être for the creation of Pakistan. The current plight of India’s trapped Muslims
should be an object lesson to those who believe that displays of goodwill will buy
India’s friendship. A thousand years of history refutes that thesis.

In any event, irrespective of what Pakistan does, the Kashmiris will persist in their
struggle. They have survived periods of Pakistani indifference. If Modi’s
government attempts to fulfil its campaign pledge to abrogate Jammu & Kashmir’s
special, autonomous status, the Kashmiri resistance will further intensify.
Islamabad will then face a choice of supporting the just Kashmiri struggle or
cooperating with the Indians to suppress it (just as the Arab states are being
pressed to do to the Palestinian struggle for statehood.)

Even as it seeks to stabilise the economy and revive growth, Pakistan’s civil and
military leadership must remain focused on preserving Pakistan’s security and
strategic independence. The alternative is to become an Indo-American satrap.

A better future is possible. But it is not visible on the horizon.

Against all odds, presidents Trump and Xi may resolve their differences over trade
and technology at the forthcoming G20 Summit or thereafter. Or, Trump may be
defeated in 2020 by a reasonable Democrat who renounces the cold war with
China. Alternately, Modi may be persuaded by Putin, Xi and national pride not to
play America’s cat’s-paw and join a cooperative Asian order, including the
normalisation of ties with Pakistan. Yet, Pakistan cannot base its security and
survival on such optimistic future scenarios. It must plan for the worst while
hoping for the best.
‘Bangladesh accord
Zeenat HisamJune 11, 2019
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The writer is a researcher in the development sector.

THE textile industry the world over poses many hazards to workers, such as
musculoskeletal disorders and exposure to chemicals, dust, fibres, noise,
vibration, and dangerous machinery. In addition to mechanical and chemical
hazards, fires pose the greatest risk, particularly in developing economies with
substandard building structures. It is the state’s responsibility to ensure
workplace safety through national safety regulations, along with inspection
and compliance mechanisms. South Asian states, however, tend to abdicate
this crucial responsibility — which may result in workers losing their lives
and limbs.

After the deadly Baldia factory fire in 2012, the Sindh government, Employers
Federation of Pakistan, and Pakistan Workers’ Federation devised a joint action
Plan for Promoting Workplace Safety and Health in Sindh (2013-2016) with the
ILO’s support. There has been no outcome of the plan. A 2019 Human Rights
Watch report on the textile sector concedes that the government did not learn any
lesson from the tragedy. Workplace governance remains weak, and the
implementation machinery incapable of making industrial and commercial
establishments comply with safety regulations.

In Bangladesh — the world’s second-biggest exporter of ready-made garments —

workers have suffered from numerous industrial accidents. The Rana Plaza
building collapse in 2013 led local and global trade unions, as well as over 220
international brands, to sign the five-year Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building
Safety. The brands put in money and governance structure, unions facilitated the
process, the ILO acted as an observer, and local factory owners cooperated and
pitched in financially. Five years later, 1,600 factories employing 2.26 million
workers were made safe with fire-rated doors, enclosed stairwells and fire alarm
systems. A Transition Accord was signed to take effect from May 2018, extending
the activities for another three years.

The accord became controversial. Factory owners had to spend money to improve
workplace safety. International brands stopped orders to about 500 factories that
failed to take remedial measures. In early 2018, the accord was embroiled in
litigation and the Bangladesh High Court imposed a restraining order on it. After a
few brief extensions by the appellate court to allow for negotiations between the
accord’s brands, trade unions and the government, the court recently gave its final
verdict: it will be phased out in February 2020 and its operations handed over to
the RMG Sustainability Council, an independent national compliance monitoring
system being set up by the Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers and Exporters
Association.

Who is ultimately responsible for workplace safety?

The accord, a monitoring and inspection agency put up by mostly Europe-based
brands and retailers, has generated debate in the industry, labour circles and
academia. While improvements in workplace safety and workers’ empowerment
related to health and safety are acknowledged by all, many raise questions of its
focus on physical infrastructure and sidelining of pertinent labour rights issues
such as wages and unionisation. After a wage raise in the aftermath of the Rana
Plaza disaster, the government revised minimum wages in September 2018, which
were rejected by workers. In January this year, the government clashed with the
protesting workers.

According to analysts, Bangladeshi garment workers get below poverty level

wages. A researcher notes that the brands are “paying less for garments today than
they did before Rana Plaza.” The sourcing practices of international brands are
instrumental in keeping wages down, it was stated in the report. Though a higher
number of unions were registered after the disaster, the trend has slowed down due
to a cumbersome registration process. The accord did not benefit workers at the
lowest end of the supply chain, but did help the Bangladeshi garments industry to
clean up its image and receive more orders. Simultaneously, inside the workplace,
it gave more power to brands compared to factory owners and local unions.

So, whose responsibility is it to ensure workplace safety — national governments

and local stakeholders, or multinational enterprises? Indeed, MNEs cannot be
absolved of responsibility for labour compliance in the global supply chain. The
MNEs, however, get away without paying a fair price at the source. The MNEs are
out to minimise investments and maximise profits. According to an estimate, up to
94 per cent of the global supply chain’s workforce remains ‘hidden’. The MNEs
are not concerned with this ‘hidden’ workforce at all. But the workforce is very
much visible: alive, kicking and sweating it out in the factories, and they belong to
countries, to nation states. In the final analysis, it is incumbent on the state to care
for its workforce and put its own house in order.

Back in the dock

Zahid HussainJune 12, 2019
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The writer is an author and a journalist.

ASIF Ali Zardari is back in prison that he has called his ‘second home’. The
noose had been tightening around him for long and it was just a matter of
time before he would be nabbed. He has been there before but the
circumstances of his latest ordeal are markedly different. The spectacle of an
old man walking with support was in sharp contrast to the bravado he had
exhibited during detention in the past.

For a man who spent 11 years of his political life in prison it would not be like
‘home’ this time around; both politics and age are against him. It is not that the
charges Zardari faced in the past were less serious, but the time and situation
appear less favourable for the crafty politician.

Although Zardari had never been convicted in the past, it seems harder for him to
come out unscathed from the multiple graft cases against him this time. He is in
hot water yet again with a damning charge against him in a money-laundering
case. There are several other cases of corruption under investigation against him
and his family.

He has been accused of running dubious financial and business networks worth
billions of rupees through front men. Zardari’s alleged corruption has been under
discussion for years, but now, given the incriminating evidence produced against
him by investigators, it will not be easy to fight conviction, especially with the axe
falling on other political leaders too.

Asif Ali Zardari epitomises the perpetual ironies of Pakistani

politics.
Perhaps most troubling for the PPP is the fact that it is not only the fate of its co-
chairman that hangs in the balance but of its other leaders as well, including one of
Zardari’s sisters who faces similar charges. Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, who is
preparing to take over command of the party, has also been under investigation.

Indeed, some allegations against Zardari for accumulating wealth through dubious
means seem hard to defend. But the credibility of the ongoing accountability
process itself is questionable and exposes the National Accountability Bureau to
criticism that it is carrying out a witch-hunt as well as an exercise in selective
accountability. The prime minister’s threat to put the opposition leaders behind
bars has reinforced this perception.

Zardari epitomises the perpetual ironies of Pakistani politics. For the past three
decades, he alternated between prison and power. Arguably the most maligned
politician in Pakistan, he even managed to reach the highest pedestal of power.

He spent three years in prison facing trial on a litany of corruption charges after the
overthrow of Benazir Bhutto’s first government in what is described as a ‘military-
backed constitutional coup’ in 1990. He was elected as a member of the National
Assembly from prison.

It was an unforgettable moment in Pakistan’s political history when Zardari was

released from prison and sworn in as a federal minister in the interim government
formed after the ouster of Nawaz Sharif’s government in 1993 by the then
president Ghulam Ishaq Khan who was also responsible for his imprisonment.

Zardari was a prominent member of his wife’s second government. But, after the
fall of the PPP government, he was back in prison in 1996 on similar corruption
charges. This time he spent almost eight years in prison before being released in
2004 as the Musharraf government sought reconciliation with the PPP.
Interestingly, all the graft cases against Zardari were filed under Nawaz Sharif’s
two governments in the 1990s.

Senior military officials remained in contact with him in prison trying to make a
deal that could have paved the way for the PPP to join the government. But the
negotiations went nowhere. The cases against him dragged on without him getting
convicted. All the cases against Zardari were later withdrawn under an agreement,
also known as the NRO, between the Musharraf government and the PPP in 2007.
The Supreme Court, however, later annulled the ordinance and restored all cases.

In the years following his release in 2004, he got himself elected as the country’s
president. An accidental leader as a result of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, not
only did Zardari become the first democratically elected president in the country to
have completed his full term, he also left office with a guard of honour. He is also
rightly credited for the enactment of the 18th Constitutional Amendment that
granted greater autonomy to the provinces.

But that may not be the reason alone for which Zardari will be remembered. There
is indeed a ring of truth to the widespread perception of his government being one
of the most incompetent and corrupt in Pakistan’s recent history. As a result, the
PPP was dealt a humiliating defeat in the 2013 elections, limiting to Sindh the writ
of the once most powerful political force in the country.

Will history repeat itself yet again for the country’s most controversial leader? The
charges against Zardari are indeed serious; yet, given the unpredictability of
Pakistani politics nothing is impossible. But whether or not Zardari is convicted,
the possibility of his return to the political centre stage remains limited. He had
already taken a back seat in the party leadership, allowing Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari
to take charge.

Slowly but surely, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari is making his presence felt on the
national political scene. He has infused new life into the PPP that many thought
was on the ventilator. He has certainly inherited the charisma and the mass appeal
of the Bhuttos that had been missing from the party since the assassination of his
mother.

But there is still a long way to go before he can take the party out of his father’s
shadow and away from past baggage. He remains trapped between two conflicting
legacies — one inherited from his grandfather and mother, the other from his wily
father. It will require much more than mere rhetoric for the party to reclaim its lost
position. The current crisis that the party is going through also provides an
opportunity for the leadership to clear some unpleasant baggage.

Uneasy lies...
F.S. AijazuddinJune 13, 2019
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The writer is an author.

WHEN William Shakespeare put the words ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a
crown’ in the mouth of King Henry IV, he was reflecting a time when kings
were more insecure than their ministers were.

Had Shakespeare been writing today, he would have to adapt that phrase.
Ironically, it is the British monarchy that is a symbol of stability and continuity
while the UK prime ministership has become a carnival carousel.

During her 67-year reign, Queen Elizabeth II has seen 13 prime ministers occupy
10 Downing Street, from Sir Winston Churchill to Mrs Theresa May. She has had
wars fought in her name — the Suez conflict, the Falklands War, the Gulf War,
and the war in Afghanistan. She has witnessed Britain’s isolationism, typified by
the headline that appeared once in an English paper which announced: ‘Continent
cut off by fog’. She has seen her realm apply for membership of the European
Economic Union in 1961 and be rejected by Gaullist France. She saw it reapply
and be admitted in 1973.

The Queen was brought up to speak French as a second language, a tacit

acknowledgement that the Continent mattered. Only her diaries will reveal her
personal views on Brexit, but even her sang-froid cannot disguise her inner
concern at the turmoil caused by Mrs Theresa May’s handling of Brexit.

Churchill is buried too deep to feel the pain that comes from
an empire revenging itself.
As a minister in David Cameron’s cabinet, Mrs May had voted against Brexit. The
lure of the prime ministership on his departure, though, was irresistible. She turned
her coat inside out and became a Brexiteer. On assuming office, Mrs May
famously declared ‘Brexit is Brexit’, except that even she was not sure what that
meant exactly. She has spent the past three and a half years finding out, and lost
her job as a result.

Political pundits might have advised her before she began her negotiations with
Brussels to have had a cross-party caucus on the consequences of Brexit. Instead,
she took the line that she would present the product of her negotiations with the EU
to parliament as a ‘done deal’. She discovered to her dismay that hell hath no fury
as a parliament scorned. Thrice she presented her final plan to the House of
Commons and thrice they rejected it. She resigned not because she failed to deliver
Brexit (after all, she had other national polices to implement), but because she lost
the support of her own supporters.

The change in leadership within the Conservative Party is a secretive process. The
1922 Committee has the last word, and that is usually: ‘Go’. In Mrs Margaret
Thatcher’s case, the pithy advice of her husband Denis — “Give it up, luv” —
made up her mind. In Mrs May’s case, her decision to resign went through many
amber lights of hesitation before she finally agreed to give up.

Her decision could not have come at a worse time for her personally. She had to
receive President Donald Trump not as an equal partner in ‘a special relationship’
but as a lame-duck prime minister miming on borrowed time.

President Trump’s state visit was the golden invitation he had hoped for but denied
him some years ago. He used it as a diplomatic bulldozer. Even before landing,
Trump took a jibe at Sadiq Khan, mayor of London. He called Khan a ‘stone cold
loser’. Khan retorted by comparing Trump to “a 20th-century fascist”.

Ignoring the recent Mueller report, President Trump has interfered overtly in the
identification of Mrs May’s successor. He held secret meetings with contenders.
Publicly, he announced that in his opinion Boris Johnson should succeed Mrs May
and that Johnson should appoint Nigel Farage to revive the stalled negotiations
with the EU. It is as if 27 countries in the EU did not exist. Trump’s pettifogginess
cut off the Continent.

After Trump’s departure, the war of succession has begun in earnest. Boris
Johnson — a self-declared forerunner — was temporarily derailed by an untenable
lawsuit. Other contenders are keeping their knives close to their chests.
Interestingly, a name heard more loudly is that of Sajid Javid. Born of Pakistani
immigrants, Javid was a managing director of Deutsche Bank before joining the
Conservative Party. Mrs May personally chose him to become her home secretary
in April 2018. He has been in the cabinet 14 months and is already regarded as
prime minister material.
So Britain has a choice between inter alia Boris Johnson with former Sikh in-laws
and Sajid Javid, of Pakistani origin. Churchill is buried too deep in Bladon
graveyard to feel the pain that comes from an empire revenging itself.

Some Britons ask whether the Queen has been on the throne too long. Others hope
that she will live as long as she is needed, for hasn’t she demonstrated since 1952
that she is the “Grace that rides within the waves”?

In a changing world
Muhammad Amir RanaJune 16, 2019
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The writer is a security analyst.

THIS week, India and Pakistan lost yet another opportunity to break the ice
and initiate dialogue when the prime ministers of both countries attended the
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Bishkek.

The incumbent Pakistani government has offered India an olive branch on many
occasions, only to add to Indian intransigence. This further strengthens the
perception that India’s only present strategy is to isolate Pakistan diplomatically. In
a changing world, India is determined to make it difficult for Pakistan to play a
major role in emerging global and regional alliances. However, the deepening
China-US trade battle and the threat of protectionism, among other factors, are
influencing the political order in Asia too, where India is itself struggling to
strategise its roles and alliances.

Pakistan’s current dilemma is that, due to worsening economic and political crises,
it finds itself constrained to play a proactive role in emerging regional geopolitics.
The political capital it invested in Afghanistan has only earned it the role of
influencing the Afghan Taliban to engage in peace talks. Past policies of
supporting non-state actors proved counterproductive.

Pakistan is facing three immediate challenges on the foreign policy front. First, the
growing US-Iran confrontation will not only drag Pakistan into the geopolitical turf
of the region and Middle East but also test its ability to balance its ties with Saudi
Arabia and Iran. Second, in the ongoing China-US trade war, Pakistan will also
find it difficult to maintain a balance in its ties with these countries, even sustain a
minimum level of engagement with the US. Third, and perhaps the biggest
challenge, is that India appears set to add to Pakistan’s difficulties, including
through the use of the ‘terrorism’ pretext, to try to push it out of South Asia. Add
the Afghanistan-India equation to this mix and the challenge is further
complicated.

India is determined to undermine Pakistan’s role in emerging

global and regional alliances.
With India topping the list, the US has apparently already excluded Pakistan from
its list of allies in South Asia. Recently, the media quoted a report released by the
US Department of Defence that considered Pakistan an ally of China. Therefore,
the report said, the US is ready to partner with all other South Asian nations except
Pakistan to counter Chinese and Russian influences. With the exception of India,
these do not have any significant political and strategic ambitions to connect
strategically to the US; their need for economic engagement with the US also does
not come with strings attached. Pakistan and the US have had a complicated
relationship for decades, which are unique in many contexts, but it has currently
been put to a huge test.

US actions in South Asia are certain to be led by its strategic alliance with India,
which wants to isolate Pakistan at any cost. The so-called Bay of Bengal Initiative
for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation, which is projected as an
alternative to Saarc, is India’s attempt to push Pakistan out of South Asian geo-
economics and geopolitics. However, it remains to be seen how India can make it
effective as it is already facing problems. Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Nepal have
recalibrated their relationships with China in order to diversify their geo-economic
options.

Pakistan’s three key challenges are not linear, but manifold and complex. Besides
having implications for Pakistan’s internal security and economy, these challenges
also make it difficult for the country to navigate the turbulent regional geo-
economics and effectively set its future political and strategic direction.

If the Indian hunt and the US pressure continue, Pakistan will be forced to navigate
its geopolitical direction towards countries in its west and north, which are rife
with conflicts. The geo-economic prospects of these countries — from Iran and
Afghanistan to Central Asian nations — are not enviable due to a variety of
security and politico-economic reasons. The entire region’s political stability is
linked with the realisation of transnational energy projects like Tapi and IP, which
can create interdependencies among them at a level where misadventures become
costlier. Pakistan’s strengths in such projects are linked to its being an end-user
and transit country for energy projects, as well as a source of security through
facilitating peace negotiations with the Afghan Taliban.

On a certain level, many in Pakistan have desired a northwest drift in the country’s
foreign relations on the grounds of identity and ideological roots. With a deepening
engagement with China and some Middle Eastern nations, a new segment of the
power elites is growing in strength which is not as pro-West as traditional power
elites have been. There are also voices within important institutions that support a
broader engagement with the free world, call for resolving problems with
neighbouring countries peacefully, and that want an enhanced focus on the
country’s economic, social and scientific strengths.

Objectively speaking, Pakistan has enormous opportunities to form geo-economic

blocs in its northwest. For one, the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation
has the potential to be converted into an effective geo-economic partnership. The
Carec programme is a partnership of 11 countries (Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China,
Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, Pakistan, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan), whose long-term vision is: ‘Good Neighbours,
Good Partners, Good Prospects’.

Notwithstanding developments in its northwest, Pakistan should not allow itself to

be forced out of South Asia, which not only has enormous trade and connectivity
potential but also extreme strategic significance for the country. China also sees
more potential in connecting CPEC to South Asia because it believes that CPEC’s
growth potential would be much higher if connected with this region than with
Pakistan’s conflict-ridden northwest. China also thinks that economic and trade
connectivity in South Asia will reduce regional tensions.

But China will have to invest more in reducing tensions in South Asia if it wants to
maximise the advantages of the BRI and CPEC initiatives. China’s proactive
diplomatic role to reduce tension between India and Pakistan will benefit it most.
Geo-economic advantages cannot be maximised without investing in geopolitics.

Target: Iran?
Mahir AliJune 19, 2019
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IRAN raised the stakes in its game of chicken with the United States this week
by announcing its intention for uranium enhancement beyond what is
permitted under the nuclear deal concluded in 2015.

At the same time, it suggested that it would change its mind about violating the
agreement if the European signatories were willing to circumvent the sanctions
imposed by Washington after it unilaterally withdrew from the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

American hypocrisy was on brazen display when it threatened dire punishment

against Iran for failing to abide by the terms of the JCPOA after the US
administration itself had pulled out from what Donald Trump considered “a very
bad deal”. It did so only after Rex Tillerson was replaced by Mike Pompeo as
secretary of state, and the national security establishment was weaponised with the
return of the old warhorse John Bolton, who has long held the view that the only
way of dealing with Tehran is to bomb Iran.

Washington has predictably blamed Tehran for last week’s attacks on shipping in
the Gulf of Oman, as it did in the context of similar incidents last month. The
“evidence” it has offered thus far has, however, failed to convince even some of its
closest allies. This includes a fuzzy video of a purportedly Iranian boat removing
an unexploded limpet mine from one of the vessels, even though the ship’s
Japanese owner says his crew witnessed missiles whizzing through the air.

The Iranian leaders won’t be penning any love letters to

Trump.
The fact that the Japanese oil-carrier came under attack while Japan’s prime
minister, Shinzo Abe, was holding talks in Tehran with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
the supreme leader of Iran’s clerical establishment, led some observers to conclude
that it was highly unlikely any wing of Iran’s military would attempt such a
discourteous gesture.

Besides, one can hardly overlook the fact that Bolton’s innate hostility towards
Iran is shared by America’s leading allies in the Middle East, namely Saudi Arabia,
Israel and the UAE. In fact, for the decade or so preceding the JCPOA, the
possibility of an Israeli-led strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities remained on the
radar, and both Israel and the Saudis were equally miffed about the agreement. It is
certainly not inconceivable that one of the three would seek to manufacture a
provocation with the intention of providing Washington with a casus belli.

What’s more, the justifiable scepticism of most Western allies is based not merely
on the Trump administration’s habitual duplicity but also on a verifiable trajectory
of the US tendency to mislead the world in making the case for military assaults
that stretches well within living memory from the Gulf of Tonkin ‘incident’ in
1964, which facilitated the Lyndon Johnson administration’s aggression against
North Vietnam, to the plethora of false ‘evidence’ cited in pursuit of the 2003 Iraq
war.

It must, however, be acknowledged that the JCPOA has never been popular with
Iranian hardliners, and the domestic success of President Hassan Rouhani’s
diplomatic engagement was always contingent on a steady flow of economic
benefits. These never came up to Iranian expectations. The trend has lately been
reversed, with US sanctions crippling Iran’s economy, not least because European
and various other forums have been intimidated into ceasing to do business with
Iran. The curbs on oil exports are particularly devastating — and it should come as
no surprise that the Saudis have increased production in order to profit from Iran’s
discomfiture.

It would then hardly be illogical for an economically ostracised Iran to demonstrate

its ability to disrupt international shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. But would
it do so? The command structure of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps
presumably does not rely too much on authorisation from the elected government,
and the force is believed to exercise control over regional militias in Lebanon, Iraq,
Yemen and Syria. The Houthis have lately been particularly audacious in seeking
to extend the war in Yemen into Saudi territory.

Although most of the major parties in the brewing confrontation have said they do
not want war (with the notable exception of Bolton and Benjamin Netanyahu), the
Middle East is poised at another dangerous juncture. The obvious alternative to
war is peace, but that requires talks, and although both Trump and Pompeo have
raised the prospect of unconditional negotiations, Iran will be disinclined to
publicly take up the offer without at least some token concessions from the world’s
biggest bully. Neither Rouhani nor Khamenei bears any resemblance to Kim Jong-
un — the Iranian leaders won’t be penning any love letters to Trump.

Abe’s mediation mission was ostensibly an abject failure, and although there’s
always a vague possibility of behind-the-scenes talk, even that seems unlikely for
now. As things stand, it’s anybody’s guess whether better sense will prevail. One
can only hope the situation won’t seem equally dire next week.
v

War with Iran

Munir AkramJune 23, 2019
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The writer is a former Pakistan ambassador to the UN.

THE drumbeat of war in the Persian/Arab Gulf has become incessant in the
past few weeks. Oil tankers have been mysteriously damaged. A US
surveillance drone has been shot down by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard
(IRGC). Missiles have struck Saudi installations and Basra sites. The US has
sent a naval armada and 2,500 additional troops to the Gulf, intensified
economic pressure and built the legal grounds for military operations against
Iran.

The world is waking up to the potentially devastating consequences for the region
and the world of this professedly unwanted yet inexorable march towards a US-
Iran war.
The conflict may be ‘limited’ at the outset but could escalate rapidly, eg further
attacks on oil tankers in the Hormuz, US ‘retaliation’ against IRGC gunboats and
other naval vessels, Iranian missile strikes against US and GCC targets
accompanied by attacks by Iranian or Shia militias against US personnel and
installations in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere, and missile and rocket
attacks against Israel and Israeli-occupied territories by Hezbollah and other Iran-
allied groups. To avoid such anticipated attacks, the US, and possibly Israel, could
resort to major pre-emptive aerial strikes to eliminate Iran’s missile and naval
capabilities.

However, even if such strikes are successful, Iran is unlikely to capitulate (if its
resilience during the Iran-Iraq war is any indication). Under external attack, there
will be no popular movement in Iran to oust the regime (although President
Rouhani and the ‘moderates’ may be replaced by the hardliners and the IRGC). To
remove it, the US and its allies would need to launch a full-fledged invasion of
Iran. Given the experience of Iraq and Afghanistan, neither Washington nor any
regional power, has the stomach for it.

War is a ‘lose-lose’ option for all those who would be

involved in this conflict and even those who are not.
Even if Russia and China, which America has designated as its ‘rivals’, do not
intervene, directly or indirectly, on Tehran’s behalf, the end-state of a war with
Iran will be: one, chaos within Iran, with the possible eruption of ethnic
insurgencies in its peripheral provinces; two, a war of attrition led by the remnants
Iranian regular forces and Shia militias against US and allied forces and
installations across the region; three, Tehran-inspired intensification of the
conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan; four, an Iranian denunciation of
the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and eventual development of nuclear weapons;
five, a major and extended interruption in oil exports from the Gulf, pushing prices
to unprecedented heights, and six, a global economic recession.

War is thus a ‘lose-lose’ option for all those who would be involved in this conflict
and even those who are not. Regardless of the culpability of those responsible for
the reckless actions that have brought the region to the brink of war, common
sense, and a sense of self-preservation dictate that the principal parties walk back
from the precipice.

Any endeavour towards de-escalation will need to address the major causes of the
crisis and respond to the concerns of all parties. Each of the elements of the current
confrontation — nuclear proliferation, regional conflicts, economic sanctions,
tanker and missile attacks — have been addressed, if at all, in piecemeal fashion so
far. They are all interlinked and must be resolved comprehensively and
concomitantly.
A first step away from the brink could be acceptance of the UN secretary general’s
proposal to hold an independent inquiry into the tanker attacks of May and June.
All parties should pledge not to resort to the use of force while this investigation is
under way.

Simultaneously, the UN Security Council should demand: one, a halt to the Houthi
missile attacks against Saudi and Emirati targets, two, a general ceasefire in
Yemen; three, the opening of all avenues for the supply of humanitarian help to the
Yemeni population; and four, the initiation of a summit-level dialogue between the
main parties to evolve a political solution to the conflict.

Most importantly, the EU, the three European parties to the Iran nuclear deal, and
Russia and China, with the support of the UN secretary general and General
Assembly, should undertake a high-level diplomatic initiative to: 1) convince
Tehran not to breach the limitations, especially on nuclear enrichment levels and
stocks, contained in the deal; 2) set up an international mechanism (an Instex plus)
to enable Iran to conduct trade as per the terms of the deal; 3) press the US to lift
the unilateral sanctions it has imposed on Iran, at least progressively in response to
reciprocal confidence-building measures undertaken by Iran; 4) secure Iran’s
agreement to discuss and address the widespread concern regarding its policies
across the region, including in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan; and
5) establish a mechanism to discuss a missile-and-arms-control regime in the
region.

Despite Ayatollah Khamanei’s public rejection of talks with the US during the
Japanese prime minister’s recent mediatory visit to Tehran, Iran is unlikely to have
closed all doors to dialogue. Some of Foreign Minister Javad Zarif’s recent
statements have mentioned openness to discuss all issues. (He once told me that
Iran had proposed a ‘grand bargain’ to the US in 2001-2; the response they
received was Iran’s inclusion in the ‘axis of evil’ in president George W. Bush’s
September 2002 speech at the UN General Assembly).

The Trump administration appears to be internally conflicted on its Iran policy.

There is a general perception that hardliners — National Security Adviser John
Bolton, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — are pushing President Trump
towards a war with Iran. But Trump may be using them,

wittingly or otherwise, as part of his ‘art of the deal’ negotiating strategy. His main
objective is to secure re-election in 2020. ‘Success’ in dealing with Iran would
enhance his electoral prospects. But a war with an uncertain outcome is a risky
strategy. He has notably responded cautiously to the drone downing. A major
diplomatic success would be a preferable option for Trump.

Although Iran is not always an easy neighbour, Pakistan has multiple reasons to
prevent a war against it. Over the past 40 years, several ‘independent’ Muslim
states have been progressively attacked, subverted and neutralised: Egypt, Iraq,
Syria, Libya, Sudan. If Iran is militarily and economically destroyed, who is next?

Trump’s war games

Zahid HussainUpdated June 26, 2019
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The writer is an author and a journalist.

THE world was apparently 10 minutes away from witnessing a war launched
on Iran when President Donald Trump reportedly decided to heed the advice
of his favourite Fox News television host among others to stop the strike.
There may have been some other reasons too for the maverick leader to pull
back, though it was certainly not out of a humanitarian concern for the
potential loss of lives as he claims.

Trump’s threat of obliterating Iran may be exaggerated but the danger of tensions

spiralling out of control cannot be minimised. A war cloud still hangs over the
Gulf. The massive US show of military strength in the region and a new round of
sanctions against Iran are ominous signs. The conflagration will not be limited and
could sweep across an extremely volatile region.

Trump’s war cry has thrown geopolitics into a tizzy. A new American war in the
Middle East would be much more disastrous than even the Iraq invasion. It would
certainly pull other major powers into the fray. And it would be a huge, costly
gamble for the Trump administration. Trump may have pulled back from attacking
Iran at the last moment. But no one knows what happens next giving his
unpredictable behaviour. There has not been any softening of tone.

Any military adventure against Iran would further alienate Washington from its
Western allies who are already upset with the Trump administration over its
position on the Iranian nuclear agreement. The Europeans blame Trump for
pushing Iran towards jettisoning an agreement that was working, as do China and
Russia.

Getting involved in the Iran-US conflict in any way will be

disastrous for Pakistan.
The conflict will also cause the ongoing proxy war to intensify between Saudi
Arabia and Iran. That may lead to a new civil war in the Middle East. With Saudi
Arabia and other Gulf countries aligning themselves with the United States against
Iran, the situation has become extremely intricate. The Saudi push in Trump’s anti-
Iran campaign is all too obvious.
Saudis officials never mince their words where it comes to Iran, labelling the
country as ‘the most dangerous adversary’. Their anti-Iran campaign has brought
Saudi Arabia and Israel much closer. Both countries had welcomed Trump’s
decision to unilaterally annul the nuclear deal with Iran. In Trump, they have found
a perfect ally.

The situation has serious implications for Pakistan. Notwithstanding our delicate
balancing act, it will be hard for us to escape the fire next door. It is never easy to
navigate the labyrinth of the Middle East’s ever-changing politics and alignments
but it is becoming even more challenging for Pakistan with the prospect of a
chronic Saudi-Iran proxy war heating up.

A major challenge for Pakistan will be to take a firm position against any
American aggression targeting Iran while maintaining its neutrality in the Saudi-
Iran power struggle in the Middle East. It will certainly be a tightrope walk. We
have been in a similar situation in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war, and more
recently, in the Yemen civil war.

Yet the situation this time round is more complex, given Pakistan’s increasing
reliance on Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries for financial support. Besides,
Pakistan is also a part of the Saudi-led so-called Islamic alliance force. Although it
is supposed to be a counterterrorism force, it is largely perceived as a Sunni
alliance against Iran. Getting involved in the conflict in any way will be disastrous
for Pakistan.

While the conflict has been building up for long, particularly after Trump’s pulling
out of the Iran nuclear deal, the attacks on oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and
the downing of an American drone by Iranian security forces has brought the
stand-off to a head.

In an attempt to bring the Iranians under pressure, the Trump administration earlier
this year reimposed some of the sanctions that had been withdrawn after the 2015
nuclear deal. In an unprecedented move, Washington has also declared the Iranian
elite forces known as Pasdaran a terrorist group.

It is perhaps for the first time that the security force of any country has been so
sanctioned. The latest travel sanction against top Iranian leaders and military
commanders may not affect them much, but the move is meant to further tighten
the screws. All those punitive actions have failed to force Tehran to come to the
negotiating table and agree to Trump’s conditions. A defiant Iranian government
has announced it will revisit its commitments under the nuclear deal to put on hold
its uranium-enrichment process.

Meanwhile, recent rocket attacks by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi forces against

Saudi Arabia have added to the tension. The Saudis are already deeply involved in
the destructive civil war that has taken a massive human toll. The Yemen crisis has
provided Saudi Arabia an opportunity to consolidate an anti-Iran coalition. The
overreaction of the Arab countries to the Yemen crisis seems to have been
triggered by that perceived Iranian threat.

It is not that the Iranians are not disconnected from the Houthi revolt, but Tehran is
certainly not the instigator. The cause of the Yemen crisis is rooted in its internal
political and tribal divides and history. However, some statements emanating from
Tehran have reinforced concerns about Iran’s own power game in the region. The
Saudis are militarily involved in the Yemen civil war.

Interestingly, Israel has tacitly supported the Saudi-led military intervention in

Yemen. Both countries seem unified in their view of Iran’s involvement in the
Yemen unrest as ‘a strategic move to dominate the region’.

The US escalation against Iran may also have implications for the ongoing Afghan
peace negotiations. Iran has a huge stake in Afghanistan and its support is
extremely important for any peace agreement to succeed. American officials have
long been accusing Tehran of providing logistic support to the insurgents.

Trying to understand this multitude of paradoxes is like attempting to find one’s

way out of a maze where most turns lead to a dead end. This new battle in the
Middle East is likely to be an ugly and violent one.

Modi & states

A.G. NooraniUpdated June 29, 2019
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The writer is an author and a lawyer based in Mumbai.

NO sooner had Narendra Modi become prime minister than he began
launching some pet programmes. One gives him away completely. It is
significant that the opposition parties are so demoralised that none has a clear
purpose. ‘One nation, one election’ is an assault on India’s federalism.

It means that the states must hold elections to their assemblies at the same time as
that of the Lok Sabha which depends on the prime minister’s discretion. He can, at
any time, go and ask the president for the Lok Sabha’s dissolution. Under Modi’s
plan, the states will have to follow suit. The chief ministers will lose their
discretion, as will the governors, to dissolve the states’ assemblies and pave the
way for fresh elections and a new popular mandate.

The architect of India’s constitution, Dr B.R. Ambedkar, told the constituent

assembly in 1918, “Under a parliamentary system of government, there are only
two prerogatives which the king or the head of the state may exercise.
‘One nation, one election’ is an assault on India’s federalism.
One is the appointment of the prime minister and the other is the dissolution of
parliament. ... The position of the governor is exactly the same as the position of
the president.” In 1949, he elaborated, “The states under our constitution are in no
way dependent on the centre for their legislative or executive authority. The centre
and the states are co-equal in this matter.” So are they in regard to the right and
power to ask the head of state to dissolve the legislature.

It is little realised that this is an indispensable part of the parliamentary system. In

the last century, Britain had two dissolutions within a year. Three powerful reasons
lie behind this. A situation arises in which the government has to ‘go to the
country’, to use a familiar phrase. Another is that the head of government uses the
power to keep party colleagues in the back. No one wants another poll before time.
Lastly, the chief minister can ask for a mid-term poll to secure a popular mandate
with which to confront an overbearing centre.

Modi’s plan keeps his own powers intact. He can ask the president to dissolve the
Lok Sabha at any time. When he does, the states will be bound to follow suit.
There will be no fixed term for either the Lok Sabha or state assemblies. These
assemblies will be tied to the apron strings of the Lok Sabha, and will hold polls
whenever it does. And that will depend on the discretion of one man.

So much for the constitutional distortion; now for the political consequences. It
will convert a federal system into a unitary one, and a parliamentary system into a
presidential one. It is precisely to secure both ends that Modi proposed and pressed
for this idea. He had proposed it first in his previous term. Having secured a huge
majority, he revived it less than a month after he took the oath of office as prime
minister. Why? He hopes to crush the opposition in the country.

In state elections in a federal set-up, the grievances and issues of the state’s people
are voiced. Diversity adds to the richness and strength of the federation. All that
will be smothered by a sweeping national poll in which the star performer will be a
highly popular prime minister.

This reminds one of Indira Gandhi. She went to the polls in 1971 as a riposte to the
supreme court, which she attacked for striking down her ill-conceived measure to
strip the erstwhile princes of their privileges and privy purses.

After the Bangladesh war, she got the states to hold assembly elections in 1972,
and won handsomely. That is when ‘Delhi-made’ chief ministers were sent down
to the states from the centre. Simultaneous polls at the centre and states will
facilitate such tactics.

The reason Modi keeps giving exposes his game. It will “promote development
and public welfare” — the very reason autocrats give for not holding polls. He
convened a meeting of all parties in Delhi on June 19. Twenty-one turned up; 11
major ones, including the Congress, skipped it. What this revealed was the lack of
national consensus so indispensable for a proposal of this kind. The law
commission prepared a working paper listing a host of constitutional provisions
that would have to be amended.

Not a single political party gave the idea unqualified support at the conference.
Modi had no qualms in claiming that it was not his but “the nation’s idea”. The
upshot of the farcical conference was, predictably, a committee. But the
conference’s participants had no voice in either its composition or its terms of
reference. It would be Modi’s baby entirely.

Not the prime minister but Rajnath Singh as Man Thursday (Man Friday is Amit
Shah) summed up the result (He happens to be defence minister). He said, “The
prime minister will form the committee to look into possibilities of simultaneous
polls. The exact nature of the committee will be made public.” Wait for that
announcement with bated breath. But watch carefully the capers that the Modi
regime cuts hereafter.

Report on torture in IHK

EditorialMay 22, 2019
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A DAMNING report detailing the Indian army’s alleged torture of Kashmiri
protesters has been made public this week, underscoring the sheer scale of the
methods employed by the state to quell dissent in India-held Kashmir. Titled
Torture: Indian State’s Instrument of Control, the 560-page report, compiled
by the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons and the Jammu
Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, records human rights abuses over the past
decade in the disputed region. The report is the first of its kind, documenting
432 case studies against the backdrop of what it describes as the systematic
and indiscriminate torture perpetuated by security forces in occupied
Kashmir. The cases mentioned in the report are records of torture, with a
focus on “patterns, targets, perpetrators, contexts and impact of torture in
Kashmir”.

The accounts are chilling: “Forms of torture include stripping the detainees naked,
beatings with wooden sticks, iron rods or leather belts, roller treatment whereby a
heavy wooden log or an iron rod is rolled over the legs of the detainee, with extra
weight applied to it by forces personnel who sit on the opposite sides of this rod,
water-boarding, electrocution, hanging from the ceiling, dunking detainees’ head in
water, burning of the body with iron rods, heaters or cigarette butts, solitary
confinement, sleep deprivation, sexualised torture including rape and sodomy,
among others.” Grimly, the report notes that not a single case has been prosecuted.
It also says that a lack of faith in institutions prevents victims from seeking justice
or redressal for the torture. At the end, it calls on the United Nations to establish a
commission of inquiry to investigate what it says is the endemic use of torture by
government forces.

It is evident from this report that an immediate investigation must be launched by

the UN to determine the extent to which the Indian army in occupied Kashmir is
using torture on Kashmiri youths to suppress their struggle for self-determination.
It is not enough that the Indian government is “looking into it”, as they have said in
response to the report’s publication. Last year, the UN had called for an
independent probe into the violation of Kashmiris’ rights in a report — a call
rejected by India. This fresh report, which has been hailed as “landmark” by a
former UN special rapporteur on torture, demonstrates the need for finding a
solution that will end this reign of normalised torture that India has inflicted on the
Kashmiri people. Although the report is the first documentation on this scale, it is
not the first time India has been accused of rights’ violations in Kashmir. The
Indian government simply cannot ignore calls by human rights groups — both
local and international — which draw attention to these inhuman practices. It will
risk further alienating an already crushed section of the population if it continues
with its abhorrent practices.

If Modi returns
Zahid HussainUpdated May 22, 2019
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The writer is an author and a journalist.

IF the exit polls are to be believed, Narendra Modi appears headed to return
to power for another five-year term. Defying the pre-poll forecast, the right-
wing BJP-lead coalition is expected to win a comfortable majority, riding on
the wave of Hindu nationalism and aggressive national security slogans.

Described as the most divisive and most powerful Indian leader in decades, Modi’s
re-election is likely to have significant implications for regional geopolitics given
his jingoistic rhetoric. His election campaign largely revolved around projecting
himself as India’s ‘chowkidar’, and bashing Pakistan.

India is much more politically polarised with Modi trying to turn the country into a
Hindu rashtriya. Secularism, which kept the multi-ethnic and multifaith country
united, has weakened — that is likely to have a direct bearing on India’s regional
policy under Modi 2.0. Depending on the scale of his electoral mandate, it may
lead to a significant societal change in the country.
Not surprisingly, the prospect of Modi’s return to power is most distressing for
India’s minorities. The BJP’s politics, rooted in Hindu supremacist groups, has
polarised this heterogeneous country, raising fear and tensions. Mob violence
against Muslims, who make up about 14 per cent of India’s population, and lower-
caste Hindus has risen alarmingly. In many cases, the right-wing communal groups
that form the nucleus of Modi’s support base have perpetrated the violence. And
the bloodshed often goes unpunished. A divided and rudderless opposition will
hardly be able to stop the BJP’s communal roller-coaster.

Unsurprisingly, the prospect of Modi’s return is most

distressing for India’s minorities.
Unlike the 2014 elections when Modi swept into power on the basis of his
economic agenda that got him the support of corporate India, this time, he garnered
support on the basis of national security. India’s incursion into Pakistani territory,
the first since the 1971 war, just weeks before the polls, was used by Modi to whip
up nationalist fervour — even though the attack on alleged militant camps proved
baseless, and Pakistan downed Indian Air Force jets.

Modi’s claim of destroying terrorist camps and killing hundreds of militants in the
strike may be preposterous, but the incursion itself has huge symbolic significance
and propaganda value for the Modi government. With that burst of jingoism,
Modi’s approval ratings went up instantly. The portrait of Wing Commander
Abhinandan Varthaman, the Indian pilot who was briefly made prisoner by
Pakistan, adorned BJP rallies.

Modi’s recklessness may have won him votes in the Hindu heartland, but it
brought the region close to a conflagration. The underlying calculation of Modi’s
escalation was that India could afford this brinkmanship given the country’s
growing diplomatic clout.

The Modi government has tried to redefine its nuclear threshold. He pursued a
strategy of what is described as ‘vertical and horizontal’ escalation. He sought to
test Pakistan’s capability to respond without crossing the threshold. Modi believed
his government could manage the diplomatic fallout of an escalation because India
is today much better placed in the world. Surely, as one of the fastest-growing
economies, India’s standing has significantly improved. But Pakistan’s retaliation
to the Balakot attack foiled Modi’s attempt to set a new norm. That, however,
hasn’t affected India’s nationalist frenzy.

Modi in a second term would be facing multiple challenges, particularly on the

economic front. Although the Indian prime minister seems to have emerged from
the polls relatively unscathed by slower-than-expected economic growth, rising
joblessness and the worsening plight of farmers, it will be a tough job for him to
put the economy back on track in an increasingly polarised atmosphere and with
India’s growing militarisation.

Modi’s re-election would certainly not be good news for Kashmiris fighting for
their right to self-determination. The brutal use of force by the Indian military and
the latter’s gross human rights violations have failed to crush the Kashmiris’
struggle. The situation in the disputed territory is worse than at any time in the
past. One of the reasons behind Modi’s escalation was to divert the world’s
attention from the popular uprising against Indian atrocities in India-held Kashmir.

The BJP has promised to abolish Article 370 of the Indian constitution that
provides the disputed territory a special status. There is no indication of Modi 2.0
changing his policy on Kashmir. That may lead to a rise in violence in the
occupied territory. Such a situation will have a direct bearing on relations between
New Delhi and Islamabad. But blaming Pakistan will not help New Delhi deal with
the Kashmiri struggle. What the Indian government refuses to accept is that it is
India’s problem rather than an external challenge — and one that it needs to deal
with. Confrontation with Pakistan will only aggravate the situation.

There is no indication of the easing of tensions with Pakistan under Modi 2.0.
Modi’s re-election will be projected as a vindication of his belligerent policy
towards Pakistan. Prime Minister Imran Khan’s hope that it would be easier for his
government to deal with a right-wing Indian government under Modi has rightly
drawn huge scepticism. There is big question mark over whether, in his second
term, Modi would change his policy of (what his national security adviser
described as) “offensive defence”.

Modi is not Vajpayee, and it would be a grave mistake to equate the two. Modi
seeks to use force rather than dialogue to resolve outstanding problems between the
two countries. Surely, it is in the interest of Pakistan to bring regional tensions
down and take a more prudent approach. Will Modi respond positively to Imran
Khan’s peace gesture? It remains to be seen whether Modi 2.0 will be different
than he was in his previous term.

Some Indian analysts do believe that a more confident Modi would resuscitate the
currently stalled diplomatic dialogue with Pakistan at some point. But will the
resumption of dialogue produce lasting peace in the subcontinent?

Pak-India trajectory
Touqir HussainMay 25, 2019
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The writer, a former ambassador, is adjunct faculty Georgetown and Syracuse
University.
PRIME Minister Narendra Modi has been re-elected. So what next for
Pakistan-India relations? Will the neighbours start talking again? Certainly.
But will their dialogue amount to anything? I am afraid not. The irony is that
whether or not India and Pakistan are talking their relationship changes little,
as if it has been inoculated against friendship since infancy.

The shadow of history has darkened the two countries’ view of each other. The
burden of the past continues to oppress the present making the relationship
resistant to change. What makes change still harder are their foreign policies,
resting on conflicting identities and national purposes and moving in colliding
orbits. Each has remained an indelible fixture of the other’s domestic politics,
compromising the will to change.

Modi’s hard line on Pakistan is not exceptional. This has been the default position
of most Indian leaders. The difference is Modi’s perceptions are beating to the
rhythm of global sentiments towards Pakistan especially in the West that have
turned negative. Modi’s negativity towards Pakistan is an asset in his relations with
the US on which his foreign policy pivots. And at home he has played up the
militancy issue to harden the existing public attitudes towards Pakistan, from
which he derives political mileage and support for his brutal repression in India-
held Kashmir.

History’s shadow has darkened the two states’ view of each

other.
Relationships change when countries have a compulsion and incentive to seek
change. Between India and Pakistan, one or the other stimulus has always been
missing. When either sought better ties the other was not ready. That is how the
1999 bus diplomacy and 2001 Agra summit failed, and the Manmohan Singh-
Pervez Musharraf back channel lost its way. On rare occasions when both sides
were inclined to look for change, like Modi and Nawaz Sharif, non-state actors
struck.

Given its economic challenges, Pakistan has stronger compulsions to seek better
relations but like India wants the normalisation to be free of cost. Neither is ready
to give the critical concessions the other demands. They have not only magnified
each other as a threat but also exaggerated their own capability to deal with it.
India feels that by virtue of its size and military and economic power it is
intrinsically qualified to seek hegemony in the region. Pakistan rejects such a
normalisation — particularly a normalisation minus Kashmir. That is why the
relationship cannot improve as it lacks consensus on the terms of engagement.
Meanwhile, Modi feels the benefits of alienating Pakistan exceed those of
conciliation. But the policy has run its course. Frustrated that despite its power and
influence, India cannot manage Pakistan, he decided on military action after
Pulwama. But it did not quite work because of Pakistan’s successful response. The
military option has the risk of escalation or becoming a regular pattern thus losing
its effectiveness.

That leaves dialogue as the only option. But the problem is, it is one thing to have a
dialogue and quite another to institute a dialogue process that would require an
understanding on fundamental issues. And understanding is hard to come by,
especially as the relationship is no longer just about Pakistan and India. India’s
Pakistan policy is an adjunct to its China policy and a footnote in its relationship
with Washington. And India is a subset of Washington’s China policy and relations
with Pakistan.

No meaningful change is expected from India unless some or all of the following
happen: there is progress in Pakistan’s fight against militant organisations; Modi’s
repression in Kashmir fails; Afghanistan stabilises along with visible improvement
in Pakistan’s economy; and US-China relations head for a dangerous escalation
forcing India to reassess its ties with Washington. These are big ifs for the future.

Meanwhile normalisation of Pakistan-India ties will remain subordinate to Modi’s

global and regional ambitions, his Kashmir policy, and domestic politics. A
resumed dialogue may achieve little more than some improvement in
atmospherics, and a partial resumption of people-to-people contact, and progress
on Kartarpur, all vulnerable to the next incident.

Ultimately, for durable peace and prosperity to come to South Asia what is
required is the emergence of strong leaders in Pakistan and India and a paradigm
shift in domestic politics, national policies and the mindset of the people, possibly
led by the next generation. Only a different Pakistan and India can be friends one
day.

Steve Cohen in Shooting for a Century fears India Pakistan rivalry could possibly
last for a ‘century’, in cricket terminology. A forbidding thought indeed.

Modi won. Has India?

Ashraf Jehangir QaziUpdated May 26, 2019
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The writer is a former ambassador to the US, India and China and head of UN
missions in Iraq and Sudan.
MODI’S repeat landslide victory has taken India by storm and the world by
surprise. It is not a good omen for India and its neighbourhood, unless Modi
demonstrates an ability to rise above himself and beyond the Hindutva vision
of the RSS. Vajpayee displayed an inclination in this regard. But Modi is more
limited. He may now be inclined to see himself as the embodiment and
validation of Hindutva. Arguably, this might provide him the space to
reinterpret the Hindutva ideology, narrative and vision in a more inclusive
and rational politics. As of now, this appears less likely than ever.

Accordingly, one is tempted to say the RSS has won but India has lost. Hindutva as
a fascist, communal, irrational and vengeful ideology can never provide India a
basis on which to emerge as a credible great power in the 21st century. As a lunatic
fringe movement it was a phenomenon common to all political societies. But as a
lunatic mainstream ideology it will degrade India’s future and threaten regional
and possibly global stability.

The Chinese revolution was impelled by a passion never to allow another ‘century
of humiliation’ that lasted from the opium wars to liberation. Maoism and post-
Maoism provided the vehicles for the success of this historic undertaking, despite
many policy errors, upheavals and setbacks. India, under the RSS, runs the risk of
exhausting itself in a highly organised but morbid obsession with a ‘millennium of
humiliation’ under Muslim rule. This obsession today provides a convenient
political cover for a corrupt, corporate and violent elitist state.

As a lunatic mainstream ideology Hindutva will degrade

India’s future.
It has led to the tragic defeat of a progressive and secular dream — which may
have been more aspiration or even pretence than reality — by an atavistic and
obscurantist nightmare. This throwback is mindlessly supported by a deliberately
deprived and exploited population whose frustrations are manipulated and
channelled in directions against their own interests. The RSS, the Sangh Pariwar,
the BJP and Modi embody this political malignancy.

Just as the US is dangerously degenerating under the malignant presidency of

Trump, similarly under a hidebound and inevitably dysfunctional Hindutva, India
will degenerate unless it finds a way out of its current ideological morass.
Unsurprisingly, the major flaw in Modi’s massive victory was the BJP’s inability
to win a seat in the Kashmir Valley.

Indian pollsters embarrassed themselves again. In 2004 they overestimated the

electoral appeal of ‘Shining India’. Now they underestimated the impact of a
military misadventure, presented as a glorious military triumph by a pathetically
hysterical and manipulated Indian media, on the electoral outcome.
According to Indian author and analyst, Siddhartha Deb, “Five years of Modi at the
helm have not delivered in any way. India is a shambles in every possible way.
And yet the Indian majority has voted for Modi again, and clearly not based on
growth or economic development, but on majoritarianism and the promise of more
violence.”

How come? Modi exploited the several fault lines in Indian society and managed
to electorally present major issues confronting India into an emotional Hindu
versus Muslim and India versus Pakistan issue. He cleverly exploited Pulwama and
Balakot. Moreover, 21st-century social media and fake news technologies have
enormously enhanced establishment capacities to manufacture and mould public
opinion against the public interest. Deb notes that Modi’s control over India’s
middle classes enormously helped in this regard. In addition, Indian corporations
“contributed as much as 12 times more money to the BJP than to those of the other
six national parties combined, amounting to 93 per cent of all corporate
donations.”

Similar criticisms can apply to Pakistan, the US and other ‘democratic’ countries.
Like India, they are not really democracies; they are corporate, praetorian, or
plutocratic systems in which elected representatives and cabinets represent
establishment and elite institutional interests that facilitate and finance their
electoral campaigns. Parliamentarians no longer represent constituency or voter
interests. Such systems are not just imperfect developing democracies; they are
authoritarian and ‘extractive’ systems in democratic disguise.

Where do India-Pakistan relations go from here? There are broadly two views
about a triumphant Modi’s likely attitude towards Pakistan. One sees him as seeing
Pakistan as illegitimately torn from the womb of Bharat Mata and which now, in
recalcitrant fashion, stands in the way of India realising its destiny as the regional
hegemon in South Asia. Accordingly, he will seek to teach Pakistan a lesson in
strategic decorum. He will, therefore, avail of a whole array of bilateral and
international options to exert escalating and unrelenting pressure on Pakistan, short
of all-out war, to conform to India’s will.

Alternately, a supremely confident Modi, faced with a Pakistan already on the

ropes, may choose a number of subtler options to ‘influence’ Pakistan in the ‘right
direction’. These may include resuming informal, and later, structured dialogue
and progressively allowing a range of movement in the bilateral relationship. In
return, Modi would expect Pakistan to ‘behave’ with regard to Kashmir (including
a possible resumption of back-channel negotiations and permanently ending cross-
LoC militant activities;) terrorism (including meeting FATF requirements and
dismantling alleged terrorist structures, safe havens and services;) and ‘deference’
towards Indian strategic interests in Afghanistan and the region. Modi will
eventually expect Pakistan to maintain a ‘balance’ in its relations with China and
India, which should ‘contextualise’ its participation in CPEC.
There is broad consensus that the prime minister has handled relations with India
with aplomb, especially during the recent conflict. At the June SCO Summit he is
likely to meet Modi. This will be a crucial opportunity to set course for a
principled and realistic relationship that will inevitably be defined by differences
and challenges, but hopefully also opportunities. Such a meeting, even if informal
and brief, will require political consultations at home and meticulous preparations
including detailed consultations with New Delhi.

If Modi’s diplomacy remains obdurate and uncompromising, Pakistan’s diplomacy

should present a study in principled contrast. If Modi is more accommodating,
Pakistan should not shy away from probing possibilities for a principled longer-
term relationship.

Ditched by the ummah

Pervez HoodbhoySeptember 07, 2019
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The writer teaches physics in Lahore and Islamabad.

FOR five weeks, day after day, Pakistanis have been tearing their hearts out
complaining that the world has turned a deaf ear to India’s forcible
annexation of held Kashmir. They were shocked when some of Pakistan’s
closest allies — including the United Arab Emirates and Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia — appeared to either side with India or stay silent. When PM Khan
invited the foreign ministers of KSA and UAE to “explain Pakistan’s
position”, many hoped that things would be reversed. So what happened?

Not much, it seems. The foreign ministers met with PM Khan and COAS Bajwa in
Islamabad on Wednesday. Thereafter FM Qureshi is reported to have said, “We are
hopeful that [both countries] will not disappoint us. The ministers of both countries
have listened to our stance”.

There could not have been a blander statement. No one expected much, but for all
three countries it was a good photo-op: Pakistan could claim it had succeeded in
engaging KSA and UAE in its promised diplomatic offensive. In turn, without
offending India, these two Arab states could be seen as relevant to the region. But
this visit will not calm the storm of indignation in Pakistan’s media — unless the
media’s minders put the brakes on.

What explains the KSA/UAE tilt towards India? In TV talk shows and from
columnists one hears that ours is a dog-eat-dog world where countries care only
about markets and trade, not moral imperatives. No one cares about the poor. This
explanation is partly, but not wholly, true.
From the KSA/UAE perspective, Pakistan is indeed a supplicant for periodic
bailouts. Last year it received over $6 billion from each. Saudis lump Pakistanis
with other ‘miskeen’ (needy) people from countries like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka,
Philippines, etc. The term ‘rafiq’ (dear friend), says columnist Khaled Ahmad, is
reserved by Saudis only for white expats from Europe and America. Indians
presently do not qualify as rafiqs, but KSA might someday consider a relook.

KSA and UAE cannot call for self-determination in Kashmir

for fear of consequences at home.
India’s growing economic clout, the sophistication of its workforce, and KSA-
India cooperation in counterterrorism and military matters resulted in Pakistan’s
de-hyphenation from India more than a decade ago. In 2016, the Saudi king
personally conferred upon Narendra Modi the King Abdulaziz Sash (KSA’s
highest civilian award). Earlier recipients include Shinzo Abe, David Cameron,
Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. The list does not have
any Pakistani leader.

Most recently, just after India-held Kashmir went into lockdown, Crown Prince
MBS vowed to invest $100bn in India by 2021. Earlier this year he had promised
to invest $20bn in Pakistan. The differential recognises the different sizes of the
two economies. The latest available figures show Pak-Saudi trade in 2017-2018 at
$7.5bn while India-Saudi trade in the same year was $27.5bn. Remittances from
Pakistani workers in 2018 from KSA were $4.9bn; that from Indian workers were
$12.2bn.

UAE showed even less concern than KSA by rubbing salt into Pakistan’s wounds.
UAE’s ambassador to India, Ahmad Al Banna, defended India’s action as an
internal administrative matter and a “step towards further stability and peace”.
Then, on Aug 24, UAE awarded Narendra Modi its highest civilian honour, the
Order of Zayed. This made Senate Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani cancel his scheduled
visit to UAE.

It’s not just because of India; here’s why it is unlikely that KSA and UAE would
ever support Pakistan on Kashmir. KSA is a monarchy run by the House of Saud
while UAE is an autocracy run by sheikhs from different Emirati tribes. One
becomes a ruler in KSA/UAE because of rank at birth, not by election or
competence or any other virtue. Therefore, people cannot be allowed to express
their will, advocating democracy is a punishable crime, and dissent is quashed well
before it can reach the streets.

Can you imagine the consequences if KSA and UAE were to advocate the
democratic rights of Kashmiris? The very next question would be: what about
elections and democracy at home? KSA’s foreign minister was therefore as likely
to demand democracy or plebiscite in Kashmir as he was to revealing the
whereabouts of Jamal Khashoggi’s remnants.

The ill-fated Arab Spring briefly threatened regional monarchies and dictatorships
but withered away long ago. As noted above, the man who helped to crush it in
Egypt, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, is also a recipient of the Saudi Sash —
alongside Modi. All Gulf countries remain fearful of street demonstrations in any
shape or form. Protests for Kashmir in Bahrain after Eid prayers led to several
arrests.

We must not conclude from this that KSA is uninterested in Kashmir. There
appears to be a new kind of religious proxy war in the making. KSA and Iran wish
to foist their respective brands of Islam onto Kashmiris; funds for mosques and
madressahs and preachers from these countries are going there.

In supporting Kashmiris, national interests everywhere take primacy over all else.
The recent strong rebuke to India from Iran’s Supreme Leader was presumably to
bolster Iran’s standing with Kashmiri Shias — roughly 15 per cent of the
population — although it could also have been an expression of displeasure at
India’s de facto acquiescence to US-led sanctions on Iran.

Lest we be unjustly harsh on countries hesitating to denounce India’s actions, let us

admit that Pakistan too compromises frequently on essential principles. Look at the
facts: to preserve CPEC it cannot speak about the forced dispatch of Uighur
Muslims to re-education camps; for fear of angering Saudis and Emiratis it dare
not speak of the death and destruction taking place in Yemen; and out of greed for
military and civil aid it has served America’s interests for many decades.

Will more energetic diplomacy bring dividends to Pakistan? So far nothing

supports this. Of course, things could change if violence explodes in Kashmir after
the withdrawal of extra Indian troops, or if war seems to be around the corner.
Even then, no one expects much from Muslim countries. “The bubble of an Islamic
ummah has burst,” said former Senate chairman Raza Rabbani during a discussion
on Kashmir in the Senate last week. True enough, but why did it take Pakistan so
long to figure that out?

A wide gulf
Huma YusufSeptember 09, 2019
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The writer is a freelance journalist.

NO country can take Pakistan’s position. That was the message reportedly
delivered by the Emirati and Saudi foreign ministers in a visit with our prime
minister last week. Our government framed the visit as a symbolic show of
unity, replete with photographs of three-way handshakes between the visiting
dignitaries and our foreign minister. Why was this necessary?

Pakistan has struggled to mask its disappointment at the GCC’s muted reaction to
the Kashmir crisis. Days after India’s shocking gambit, Saudi Aramco announced
plans to invest $15 billion in India’s Reliance Industries. And on Aug 24, India’s
prime minister received the Order of Zayed, the UAE’s highest civilian award.

In the matter of India’s actions in occupied Kashmir, however, GCC countries

have remained largely silent. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar refrained
from issuing statements expressing either support for the Kashmiris or
condemnation of Delhi’s transgressions. Meanwhile, in an interview with Gulf
News, the UAE’s ambassador to India seemingly sided with India when he
described the Kashmir situation as an ‘internal matter’, echoing New Delhi’s
preferred position to prevent external (including UN) intervention in the dispute.

The OIC provides a convenient platform for doublespeak.

Pakistan has historically counted on the GCC’s support on the Kashmir issue and
in tensions with India more broadly. But we are a far cry from the early ’90s when
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia co-sponsored a Kashmir resolution at the UN
Commission on Human Rights. The years since have seen a major diplomatic push
by India in the Gulf, shifts in regional geopolitics, and Pakistan’s declining value
to the GCC as a strategic partner.

The GCC’s relative silence is a reminder that many countries over the past two
decades have worked hard to de-hyphenate their South Asian foreign policy, so
that relations with Pakistan and India are not perceived as a zero-sum game. The
approach typically involves deepening economic and socio-cultural ties with India
while keeping relations with Pakistan aloft through cooperation on specific
security issues and occasional aid handouts. Indeed, recent years have seen foreign
ministries increasingly handle both countries from separate desks, with the former
primarily viewed through an Afghanistan or terrorism prism, and the latter
considered in the broader context of global trade and Asia-Pacific relations,
particularly the need to temper China’s rise.

The OIC presents our Gulf allies with a convenient platform to perform this
balancing act, allowing them to engage in doublespeak with minimal challenge.
For example, at the OIC, Saudi Arabia took a pro-Pakistan stance on Kashmir. It
backed the OIC’s description of India’s actions as an “affront to Muslims” and is
supporting (along with the UAE) Pakistan’s plan to summon a special OIC session
to focus on Kashmir. Meanwhile, as part of its regional approach, the kingdom
maintains that the dispute is a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan.

Shah Mehmood Qureshi summed up Pakistan’s resignation to this reality when he

conceded, in response to Modi’s award, that the UAE was entitled to its ties with
India, and that international relations transcended religious identity. What else can
we expect? The GCC’s annual trade with India hovers at the $100bn mark (while
trade with Pakistan declines); Emirati ports are the global gateway for Indian
exports; highly skilled Indian labour meets the Gulf’s human capital demands in a
way that Pakistani construction workers are no longer able to; and India
increasingly presents itself as a champion for regional stability.

Pakistan must now leverage the opportunities that these new dynamics present.
There is value in the Gulf’s princes having the ear of both Pakistan’s and India’s
leaders as they can help defuse tensions, which are likely to mount over the coming
years. For example, the UAE crown prince reportedly engaged both Imran Khan
and Modi following India’s air strikes in Balakot and called for restraint. It’s
unlikely that the Gulf states would explicitly mediate between Islamabad and New
Delhi, but the availability of voices of reason who can compel the attention of
nuclear-armed rivals is no bad thing.

Moreover, the GCC states’ pragmatic approach to engaging both Pakistan and
India should be an inspiration to us. We can enjoy greater autonomy in pursuing a
balanced Middle East policy, strengthening ties with both Saudi Arabia and Iran,
and continuing to avoid embroilment in messy regional conflicts (as we did to a
large extent with Yemen in 2015, though Pakistani troops are reportedly deployed
at the Saudi border with Yemen).

We should also focus on constructive, forward-looking ways to re-engage the Gulf;

for example, by upskilling our expatriate labour force. Who knows, perhaps some
day a pan-South Asian trade and migrant labour approach to the Gulf could
improve rather than exacerbate Pakistan-India relations.

Pakistan’s Kashmir strategy

Munir AkramSeptember 01, 2019
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The writer is a former Pakistan ambassador to the UN.

MODI’S abrupt and illegal move to annexe occupied Jammu & Kashmir was
a moment of truth for Pakistan, the Kashmiri people, India’s ‘secularists” and
the world community.
In Pakistan, those who believed that a compromise on Jammu & Kashmir would
end Indian hostility and promote cooperation have had their eyes opened. It is now
evident that for Modi and his BJP-RSS cohort, a ‘final solution’ for Kashmir
(through demographic transformation) and hostility towards Pakistan are not
merely electoral artifices; they are part of their supremacist vision of a Hindu India
that is to be ruthlessly realised.

Pakistan has had to adjust quickly to this ugly reality. Prime Minister Imran Khan
believes his earlier offers of a dialogue, and Pakistan’s self-restraint in last
February’s military exchanges, were seen by Modi as signs of weakness and
appeasement. He is now committed to advocating the Kashmir cause globally as
the Kashmiris’ “ambassador”.

Pakistan’s early diplomatic response was standard: recall of

ambassadors, termination of trade and approaches to the UN and human rights
organisations.

The initiative to raise Kashmir in the UN Security Council was bold.

The UNSC’s “informal consultations” on Jammu & Kashmir, after an interregnum

of 50 years, agreed by all 15 members, represent a clear diplomatic victory for
Pakistan. This affirmed that Jammu & Kashmir is disputed territory and not India’s
internal matter. The council, now actively seized of the issue, will take cognisance
of the ongoing developments in India-held Kashmir.

The legitimacy of the Kashmiris’ struggle must be propagated

on the basis of international law.
Strong expressions of concern have also emanated from the UN and the global
human rights organisations (except, strangely, from Pakistani organisations)
regarding India’s round-the-clock curfew, communications and news blackout,
arbitrary arrests and violent and lethal suppression of protests.

Islamabad has announced that Pakistan’s foreign minister will raise India’s human
rights violations in the Human Rights Council that convenes in Geneva in early
September.

Prime Minister Imran Khan has declared that he will strongly propound Kashmir’s
cause in his address to the UN General Assembly (reportedly on Sept 27) and in
his meetings with other heads of state and government.

Sadly, while India’s so-called free press has rallied around Modi’s illegal move to
integrate occupied Kashmir, and covered up the massive repression underway
there, sections of the Pakistani media have already begun to carp about the PTI
government’s alleged failure to craft a Kashmir policy and secure external support,
ignoring what has been achieved and the deleterious impact of their critique on the
morale of the oppressed Kashmiris.

There is no doubt that the Arab and Islamic world is weak and divided. The OIC’s
voice has been muted, not only on Kashmir, but even on Palestine, the raison d’être
for its creation. Its unity and influence cannot be revived instantly by Pakistan.

Read: OIC reaffirms internationally recognised status of Kashmir dispute, its

resolution through plebiscite

Yet, Kuwait was supportive in the UNSC; Saudi Arabia has issued a statement of
concern; as has the OIC Secretariat and the Islamic Human Rights Council.
Hopefully, the OIC will eventually come together to defend the fundamental rights
of the Kashmiris.

More important will be the positions of the major powers, especially the five
permanent members of the UNSC. Geopolitics will play an important part in
determining their positions.

So far, China has declared its support for Pakistan’s position. Pakistan’s strategy

will have to build on this critical support. Russia will walk a fine line between its
traditional relationship with India and its new strategic partnership with China and,
by extension, with Pakistan. The US will use India’s self-created vulnerability on
Kashmir to keep it in line, as it flirts with Pakistan to get the Afghan deal done
with the Taliban. (Trump’s mediation offer was a non-starter and should not divert
Pakistan’s attention.) France is desperate to replace Russia as India’s main arms
supplier and will continue to act as India’s surrogate in the UNSC. The UK may be
sympathetic on human rights issues but, like many others, will take refuge in the
impotent advocacy of ‘bilateral’ Pakistan-India talks on the Kashmir dispute.

While building its strategy with China’s support, Pakistan would also need to
secure US acquiescence for its Kashmir objectives. For this purpose, Islamabad
can use the leverage provided by its facilitation of the US-Taliban negotiations.
France will need to be neutralised by stronger diplomatic and other measures.

The compulsion for the Security Council and the international community to
intervene in the dispute and promote a solution will depend on Pakistan’s
persistence in propagating the Kashmir cause in the face of Indian threats and
coercion and, even more importantly, on the resilience and strength of the
Kashmiri people’s freedom struggle. The world will intervene if ethnic cleansing
and genocide occurs in Kashmir or if there is a real danger of another Pakistan-
India war.

Confronted by Modi’s attempt to eliminate Kashmir’s identity and autonomy, the

people of occupied Jammu & Kashmir have no choice but to resist. This will now
be a universal sentiment among Kashmiris. There will be few fence sitters or
Indian collaborators. There is also likely to be greater support among the
Kashmiris for armed resistance. Militant organisations, especially indigenous
groups like Hizbul Mujahideen, rather than the Hurriyet’s political leadership, will
lead the new struggle.

Pakistan will need to adopt a clear and politically defensible position on the
Kashmiri freedom struggle. On the one hand, it must propagate the legitimacy of
the struggle on the basis of international law and the numerous UN resolutions. On
the other hand, Islamabad will need to distance itself from proscribed terrorist
organisations that may enter the anticipated fray in occupied Jammu & Kashmir.

Ultimately, if India confronts a Kashmiri insurgency, a resilient Pakistan,

international pressure and an impaired economy, it may agree to negotiate a
mutually acceptable settlement with Pakistan and the Kashmiris. But the Hindu
fascists may choose not to compromise. Bleeding in occupied Kashmir, they are
likely provoke another war with Pakistan, bringing Armageddon to South Asia and
much of the world.

The international community must thus act now to stop them.

Kashmir & the ICJ

Parvez HassanSeptember 02, 2019
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The writer is senior advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

NATIONAL attention is today focused on Pakistan’s possible responses to the
revocation by India on Aug 5, 2019, of occupied Kashmir’s special status in
the Indian constitution. Much of the public debate includes calls for agitating
against this violation of UN Security Council resolutions and international law
before the UN’s principal judicial organ, the International Court of Justice
(ICJ).

Read: Pakistan to take Kashmir dispute with India to International Court of

Justice

Under Article 93 of the UN Charter, all member states are parties to the “Statute of
the ICJ”. Article 36(1) of the ICJ Statute provides: “The jurisdiction of the court
comprises all cases which the parties refer to it and all matters specially provided
for in the Charter of the United Nations or in treaties and conventions in force.”

It is clear that the ICJ does not have automatic or compulsory jurisdiction in any
matter. The statute clarifies that the ICJ can assume jurisdiction in the following
cases: (i) when the parties refer a matter to it [Article 36(1)]; (ii) where it is
specially provided for in the UN Charter [Article 36(1)]; (iii) where two or more
states are parties to a treaty or convention in force and such treaty provides for
disputes thereunder to be referred to and resolved by the ICJ [Article 36(1)]; (iv)
where a pre-UN treaty provides for reference of a matter to a tribunal instituted by
the League of Nations or to the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ) —
the ICJ’s ‘predecessor’ court — the reference will lie, as between the parties to the
present statute, to the ICJ (Article 37); (v) it can give an advisory opinion on any
legal question at the request of a body authorised in accordance with the UN
Charter (Article 65); (vi) where the states have accepted as compulsory ipso facto
and without special agreement the ICJ’s jurisdiction [Article 36(2)].

The International Court of Justice does not have automatic or

compulsory jurisdiction in any matter.
The last category requires further elaboration. Article 36(2) of the statute enables
states to declare that they accept the ICJ’s compulsory and automatic (ipso facto)
jurisdiction in legal disputes involving treaties and questions of international law:
“The states parties to the present statute may at any time declare that they
recognise as compulsory ipso facto and without special agreement, in relation to
any other state accepting the same obligation, the jurisdiction of the court in all
legal disputes concerning: (a) the interpretation of a treaty; (b) any question of
international law; (c) the existence of any fact which, if established, would
constitute a breach of an international obligation; (d) the nature or extent of the
reparation to be made for the breach of an international obligation.”

The declarations under Article 36(2) were anticipated to be the basis of much of
the ICJ’s work. Such declarations are required to be deposited with the UN
secretary general who “shall transmit copies thereof to the parties to the statute and
to the registrar of the court” [Article 36(4)].

Article 36(5) enables the continuation of declarations made under the earlier
Article 36 of the PCIJ Statute that are still in force for the ICJ’s compulsory
jurisdiction.

And, Article 36(6) addresses the ICJ’s competence to decide disputes of

jurisdiction: “In the event of a dispute as to whether the court has jurisdiction, the
matter shall be settled by the decision of the court.”

As many as 73 UN member states have accepted the ICJ’s compulsory jurisdiction

under Article 36(2) of the statute. India and Pakistan have both filed declarations
under Article 36 accepting the ICJ’s compulsory ipso facto jurisdiction. The Indian
declaration dated Sept 15, 1974 substituted its earlier declaration of Sept 14, 1959.
Pakistan’s declaration dated March 29, 2017 substituted its earlier declaration of
Sept 12, 1960. Left at that, it would seem possible for either Pakistan or India to
take the Kashmir dispute to the ICJ. But India filed its declarations, in 1974 and
earlier, with the condition that its acceptance of the ICJ’s jurisdiction excludes
“disputes with government of any state which is or has been a member of the
Commonwealth of Nations”. This exclusion is enabled by Article 36(3) of the ICJ
Statute: “The declarations referred to above may be made unconditionally or on
condition of reciprocity on the part of several or certain states, or for a certain
time.”

India, in its declaration, has thus excluded the competence of the ICJ to hear
disputes involving India with another member of the Commonwealth. To preclude
any action by Pakistan to confer jurisdiction on the ICJ in the Kashmir dispute by
leaving the Commonwealth, India added in its conditions of acceptance of the
ICJ’s compulsory jurisdiction that such acceptance excludes disputes with another
member “which is or has been a member” of the Commonwealth. This completely
ousts the ICJ’s jurisdiction under India’s declaration.

The restrictive and almost self-serving declaration of India under Article 36 is by

no means unique or unusual. Many declarations by states exclude the ICJ’s
jurisdiction in ways that the declarations are generally ineffective against the
declarant state. Pakistan’s declaration has many conditions for the acceptance of
the ICJ’s jurisdiction, including the ouster of disputes that relate to the “national
security of Pakistan” or that fall essentially within Pakistan’s domestic jurisdiction.
However, the most notorious example is the US declaration by its then president
Harry S. Truman on Aug 14, 1946, which, among others, in a self-judging
provision excludes the ICJ’s jurisdiction in matters which are essentially “within
the domestic jurisdiction of the United States of America as determined by the
United States of America”. The Trump administration recently, in 2018,
announced plans to re-evaluate (read further restrict) the US role before the ICJ.

The above analysis shows that Pakistan may not be able to invoke the ICJ’s
jurisdiction in the Kashmir dispute in view of the conditions imposed by India as
enabled by Article 36(3) of the ICJ Statute. An imperfect world. An imperfect
international legal system.

A wide gulf
Huma YusufSeptember 09, 2019
Facebook Count 405
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The writer is a freelance journalist.

NO country can take Pakistan’s position. That was the message reportedly
delivered by the Emirati and Saudi foreign ministers in a visit with our prime
minister last week. Our government framed the visit as a symbolic show of
unity, replete with photographs of three-way handshakes between the visiting
dignitaries and our foreign minister. Why was this necessary?

Pakistan has struggled to mask its disappointment at the GCC’s muted reaction to
the Kashmir crisis. Days after India’s shocking gambit, Saudi Aramco announced
plans to invest $15 billion in India’s Reliance Industries. And on Aug 24, India’s
prime minister received the Order of Zayed, the UAE’s highest civilian award.

In the matter of India’s actions in occupied Kashmir, however, GCC countries

have remained largely silent. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar refrained
from issuing statements expressing either support for the Kashmiris or
condemnation of Delhi’s transgressions. Meanwhile, in an interview with Gulf
News, the UAE’s ambassador to India seemingly sided with India when he
described the Kashmir situation as an ‘internal matter’, echoing New Delhi’s
preferred position to prevent external (including UN) intervention in the dispute.

The OIC provides a convenient platform for doublespeak.

Pakistan has historically counted on the GCC’s support on the Kashmir issue and
in tensions with India more broadly. But we are a far cry from the early ’90s when
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia co-sponsored a Kashmir resolution at the UN
Commission on Human Rights. The years since have seen a major diplomatic push
by India in the Gulf, shifts in regional geopolitics, and Pakistan’s declining value
to the GCC as a strategic partner.

The GCC’s relative silence is a reminder that many countries over the past two
decades have worked hard to de-hyphenate their South Asian foreign policy, so
that relations with Pakistan and India are not perceived as a zero-sum game. The
approach typically involves deepening economic and socio-cultural ties with India
while keeping relations with Pakistan aloft through cooperation on specific
security issues and occasional aid handouts. Indeed, recent years have seen foreign
ministries increasingly handle both countries from separate desks, with the former
primarily viewed through an Afghanistan or terrorism prism, and the latter
considered in the broader context of global trade and Asia-Pacific relations,
particularly the need to temper China’s rise.

The OIC presents our Gulf allies with a convenient platform to perform this
balancing act, allowing them to engage in doublespeak with minimal challenge.
For example, at the OIC, Saudi Arabia took a pro-Pakistan stance on Kashmir. It
backed the OIC’s description of India’s actions as an “affront to Muslims” and is
supporting (along with the UAE) Pakistan’s plan to summon a special OIC session
to focus on Kashmir. Meanwhile, as part of its regional approach, the kingdom
maintains that the dispute is a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan.

Shah Mehmood Qureshi summed up Pakistan’s resignation to this reality when he

conceded, in response to Modi’s award, that the UAE was entitled to its ties with
India, and that international relations transcended religious identity. What else can
we expect? The GCC’s annual trade with India hovers at the $100bn mark (while
trade with Pakistan declines); Emirati ports are the global gateway for Indian
exports; highly skilled Indian labour meets the Gulf’s human capital demands in a
way that Pakistani construction workers are no longer able to; and India
increasingly presents itself as a champion for regional stability.

Pakistan must now leverage the opportunities that these new dynamics present.
There is value in the Gulf’s princes having the ear of both Pakistan’s and India’s
leaders as they can help defuse tensions, which are likely to mount over the coming
years. For example, the UAE crown prince reportedly engaged both Imran Khan
and Modi following India’s air strikes in Balakot and called for restraint. It’s
unlikely that the Gulf states would explicitly mediate between Islamabad and New
Delhi, but the availability of voices of reason who can compel the attention of
nuclear-armed rivals is no bad thing.

Moreover, the GCC states’ pragmatic approach to engaging both Pakistan and
India should be an inspiration to us. We can enjoy greater autonomy in pursuing a
balanced Middle East policy, strengthening ties with both Saudi Arabia and Iran,
and continuing to avoid embroilment in messy regional conflicts (as we did to a
large extent with Yemen in 2015, though Pakistani troops are reportedly deployed
at the Saudi border with Yemen).

We should also focus on constructive, forward-looking ways to re-engage the Gulf;

for example, by upskilling our expatriate labour force. Who knows, perhaps some
day a pan-South Asian trade and migrant labour approach to the Gulf could
improve rather than exacerbate Pakistan-India relations.

Binding resolutions
Ahmer Bilal SoofiSeptember 14, 2019
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The writer is an ex-caretaker federal law minister, and president of the Research
Society of International Law.
IN a recent seminar in Islamabad on the Kashmir dispute, a senior official
remarked that the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions on
Kashmir were passed under Chapter VI of the UN Charter and not under
Chapter VII, and are therefore not binding but only recommendatory. This
view needs to be corrected.

The resolutions passed on Kashmir from 1947 to 1957 cannot be termed as

recommendatory only. What we need to be clear about is that, in its initial years,
the practice of the UNSC was not to mention the title of the chapter under which it
was passing the resolution. During this time, it was the content and the substance
of the resolution that would determine the nature of implementation. If one looks at
the UNSC’s practice in its first decade of existence, only a handful of resolutions
mention the title of the chapter, whereas the majority of resolutions that were acted
upon by the member states did not mention any reference to a chapter of the UN
Charter. The states’ practice seemed to be that the nature of recommendations and
measures suggested or decided by the UNSC would be determinative of the
chapter or chapters under which the resolution was passed.

The resolutions of UNSC passed in respect of the Kashmir dispute belong to this
era of UNSC practice. Hence one finds that, in the 17 resolutions passed by the
UNSC during 1947 to 1957 on the Kashmir dispute, none makes a specific
reference to the chapter under which it was passed. With this background, to
assume that all resolutions relating to the Kashmir dispute were passed under
Chapter VI would be an incorrect conclusion to draw. After all, there is no
reference to either Chapter VI or Chapter VII in any of the 17 resolutions.

The UN resolutions on Kashmir of 1947 to 1957 cannot be

termed as merely recommendatory.
Most of the resolutions passed on the subject of the Kashmir dispute provide for
very specific steps to be taken by both India and Pakistan. For example, UNSC
Resolution 47 (adopted on April 21, 1948) spans over four pages. It refers to the
earlier Resolution 39 (adopted on Jan 20, 1948) whereby the UN Commission for
India and Pakistan (UNCIP) was established and authorised to investigate the
dispute of the facts submitted for resolution to the UNSC.

The setting up of an independent body by the UNSC is a specific step that was
acted upon, and it is not possible to imagine a resolution that establishes a
standalone body be viewed as being only recommendatory in character. In
Resolution 47, the mandate of UNCIP was extended and additional powers were
conferred on it. A clear and elaborate programme was laid down for the activities
of the commission. The resolution also addresses the governments of India and
Pakistan, and directed progressive demilitarisation. It also called for the
establishment of a provisional government. The resolution is very minute in its
details and passed with a clear intention of leaving no specifics out. The nature,
intendment and impeccability of the resolution lead ineluctably to the conclusion
that it was meant to be implemented by both states.

It will be defying logic to assume that the UNSC resolution establishing UNCIP
(which, further exercising delegated powers, passed a resolution on Nov 9, 1948,
having three parts dealing with the ceasefire line) is merely recommendatory —
when the same has been acted upon! This resolution led to the Cease-Fire Line
Agreement (Karachi Agreement 1949). These later developments confirm that the
resolutions were binding in nature and were operationalised in a manner that could
only be imputed to binding resolutions.

Another way of confirming their mandatory nature is to view these resolutions as

decisions of the UNSC. The relevant portions of the said resolutions were binding
on India and Pakistan under Article 25 of the UN Charter which provides as
follows, “The members of the United Nations agree to accept and carry out the
decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter”. The ICJ
in its Namibian Advisory Opinion also supported the position that a UNSC
resolution would be binding where the language, discussion preceding the passage
of the resolution, and the provisions of the UN Charter referred to in the resolution
indicated that it was binding. Based on the ICJ’s opinion, to view resolutions on
Kashmir as being merely recommendatory places an unnecessarily restrictive
interpretation that is belied by the specific nature of measures which have been
decided in these various resolutions on Kashmir.

It may be highlighted that the UNSC has now changed its practice and specifically
mentions the chapter pursuant to which it is passing or adopting the resolution. For
example, UNSC Resolution 1373 of 2001 relating to terrorism mentions Chapter
VII just before the operative paragraphs. Likewise, Resolution 1267 of 1999
relating to Al Qaeda and the Taliban mentions in its preamble a similar reference.
Further, Resolution 1540 of 2004 addressing the issue of non-proliferation makes it
a point to state that it is acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. But this is a
more recent trend, which was not the case in the practice of the UNSC while
passing resolutions during the first few years after 1945.

Based on the above, the resolutions passed in the case of Kashmir have a binding
character and cannot be referred to as exclusively recommendatory in nature.
Pakistan should approach the UN with absolute confidence that it remains the
responsibility of the UNSC to implement its binding resolutions. Whether Pakistan
has the political clout to have the resolutions enforced remains another matter, but
from a legal point of view Pakistan’s policymakers should be clear among
themselves that the UNSC resolutions on the Kashmir dispute should not be de-
emphasised on the grounds that they are simply recommendatory.

China strikes back

Munir AkramSeptember 15, 2019
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The writer is a former Pakistan ambassador to the UN.

THE Petroleum Economist of Sept 3 reported that China has agreed to invest
up to $290 billion in the development of Iran’s oil, gas and petroleum sectors,
and another $120bn in its transport and manufacturing infrastructure. This is
a calculated kick aimed at America’s strategic objectives.

According to the report, China will have the first right of refusal on all projects in
Iran and a 12 per cent guaranteed discount on energy imports from there. China
will provide the “technology, systems, process ingredients and personnel required
to complete such projects” including “up to 5,000 Chinese security personnel on
the ground to protect Chinese projects….”

China’s agreement to so massively finance Iran’s development is an extension of

its Belt and Road Initiative. It is also an ‘in your face’ response to America’s
aggressive trade, technology and military moves against China over the last year. It
will prick the balloon of the US strategy of ‘maximum pressure’ against Iran
designed to bring the latter to its knees economically and oblige it to accept
additional constraints on its nuclear and missile programs (beyond the JCPOA) and
curb its politico-military ambitions in the Middle East. In entering this agreement,
China has announced that it is not intimidated by the “secondary sanctions” which
the US has threatened to impose on companies and countries which continue
economic relations with Iran in defiance of America’s unilateral sanctions against
Iran.

China can import virtually all of Iran’s oil and gas production. This could increase
Iran’s oil exports manifold from 200,000 barrels per day at present to its full
capacity over 4-5 million bpd. China’s energy giants — CNPC, CNOC, Sinopec —
can rapidly expand Iran’s oil and gas production from existing and new fields. Iran
will not need other markets, such as India which has halted oil imports from Iran in
compliance with US sanctions.

China’s agreement to massively finance Iran’s development is

an extension of its Belt and Road Initiative.
A considerable part of Iran’s gas could be exported via the existing Turkmenistan-
China gas pipeline and new oil pipelines can be constructed on the same route.
This will significantly diminish the threat of a US/Western maritime energy
blockade against China or Iran. Further, China’s reliance on US-friendly energy
suppliers in the Gulf (Saudi Arabia, UAE) and East Asia (Indonesia, Brunei) will
be dramatically reduced since it could meet all or most of its requirements from
Iran and Russia.

The transport infrastructure which China plans to build in Iran, including high-
speed rail on several routes, will provide Beijing with additional avenues for its
trade — overland trade through Iran and Turkey to and from Europe and maritime
trade through Iranian ports (including, ironically, the hitherto Indian-sponsored
port of Chahbahar) to the Middle East, Africa and beyond.
Iran’s economic partnership with China will supplement its current close security
ties with Russia and alter Middle East power equations. China will acquire
considerable influence over Tehran’s nuclear and security policies, adding to its
leverage with the West including the US. On the other hand, Iran’s reinforced
‘strategic’ partnership with China will considerably enhance its capacity to
promote its policy objectives in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Afghanistan. Iran
may also feel sufficiently emboldened to retaliate robustly to Israel’s frequent
strikes on its military assets and militia affiliates in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.

In Yemen, Iran is now playing a more open role to promote a political settlement
which accommodates the Houthis. The Arab coalition has been weakened by an
unsuccessful military campaign, internal differences and US and Western criticism
of the human cost of the conflict.

In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad has clearly won the civil war against the
Western Gulf coalition with the support of Russia and Iran. Once its economy is
stabilised, Iran could play an even more robust role not only in Syria but also Iraq
and Lebanon.

Iran and China may also enhance their influence in Afghanistan. Donald Trump
has declared that the agreement with the Taliban is ‘dead’ — at least for now. The
most significant provision of this agreement was not the withdrawal of 5,000
American soldiers but the Taliban’s acceptance of the continued presence of 8,600
US ‘counterterrorism’ forces. These troops would prolong US capacity for force
projection within and across Afghanistan’s borders. Now, it is possible that the
Afghan Taliban, perhaps at Iran’s instance, may no longer accept the rump US
presence in a revived deal.

China’s Iran partnership would supplement and reinforce its long-standing

strategic participation with Pakistan. Obviously, Beijing wants strategic
relationships with both. However, the Iranian partnership offers China another
strategic ‘window’ besides CPEC and insurance against possible US or Indian
disruption of the China-Pakistan corridor. Moreover, over time, the Sino-Iran
economic partnership could add a security and military dimension.Western pundits
often speak of a Chinese naval base in Gwadar. In fact, it could well appear in
Chahbahar.

Time is running out for India to make a strategic choice between an ‘Asian Order’,
combining China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey and Central Asia under the SCO
and the BRI, or an alliance with the US and participation in its ‘Indo-Pacific’
strategy. So far, India has had the best of both worlds. It is building an alliance
with the US to emerge as China’s Asian ‘equal’ and establish its domination over
South Asia and the Indian ocean. Yet, India pleads for US ‘strategic altruism’ to
enable it to preserve its traditional arms supply relationship with Russia and its
growing trade and investment cooperation with China. As the Sino-US global
confrontation intensifies, the strategic space for India, and others, to manoeuvre
between the two global powers will become progressively narrow. China’s
forthright support to Pakistan on occupied Kashmir is an early indication of the
emerging alignments.

So far, despite Trump’s hostile trade tariffs, technology restrictions and military
pugnacity, China has kept open the option of reverting to a ‘win-win’ cooperative
relationship with the US. But, a firm consensus seems to have emerged in
Washington that China is America’s primary rival and threat to its century of
global dominance and that China’s further rise can and must be stopped by a
‘whole-of-government’ strategy of comprehensive containment and confrontation.
China appears to have picked up the gauntlet. A titanic clash is in the offing across
the world.

Oil and blood

Mahir AliSeptember 18, 2019
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Mahir Ali
IT’S unclear whether last Saturday’s devastating attacks on key Saudi
Aramco facilities will serve as a sobering reminder to the kingdom’s ruling
family of the price it must pay for its appallingly misguided military mission
in Yemen.

The latter nation’s Houthi militia immediately claimed responsibility, but Mike
Pompeo, the US secretary of state, was equally quick to lay the blame squarely on
Iran. The following day, Donald Trump tweeted that American forces were
“locked and loaded”, awaiting “verification” from Riyadh.

The implication was that the House of Saud just had to give the word for its
saviour-in-chief to launch retaliatory strikes, presumably against Iran. Were that
threat to be carried out, there’s a reasonable chance it would unleash the worst war
the Middle East has witnessed in recent decades, in a region already convulsed in
seemingly intractable conflicts.

The sites of the Saudi conflagrations are considerably closer to Iraq and Iran than
to Yemen, but Pompeo is reported to have informed Iraq’s prime minister that the
attacks did not emanate from Iraqi territory. And even if Iran was behind the
drones and/or missiles that struck the Aramco sites, what are the chances it would
launch them from its own terrain?

All bets would be off, were a war to be unleashed.

Meanwhile, Riyadh is being circumspect in its allegations, claiming that the
weapons were of Iranian origin without directly blaming Tehran.

It’s hard to believe that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman (MBS),
who was instrumental in unleashing fire and fury against Yemen, would personally
be averse to an American attack on Iran, regardless of the consequences. It is
possible, though, that he holds less sway than he did when recalcitrant journalist
Jamal Khashoggi was literally butchered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul almost a
year ago.

In a related sphere, the current state of relations between MBS and his one-time
mentor, Abu Dhabi crown prince Mohammed bin Zayed, is also unclear. Saudi and
Emirati proxies in Yemen have lately been combating each other, adding a layer of
complexity to the already convoluted conflicts in that benighted country.

The Saudis and Emiratis collaborated in the utterly misguided assault on Yemen,
but the UAE has in recent months signalled a semi-disengagement; it refused to
directly blame Iran for attacks on shipping off its Gulf shores, and has even
engaged in a spot of diplomacy with Tehran. Perhaps it recognised its
vulnerabilities earlier than the Saudis, thereby persuading the Houthis to lay off
Emirati targets.

Meanwhile, although the blow to Saudi production facilities, which threatened to

halve its daily output, inevitably led to a spike this week in oil prices, the Saudis
and the Americans both declared their willingness to use their substantial reserves
to make up for any shortfalls in the global market. All bets would be off, however,
were a war to be unleashed.

Perhaps there’s some consolation to be gained from the impression that Trump,
regardless of his sporadically belligerent rhetoric, is broadly averse to fresh
hostilities in the run-up to an election year. Yet nothing can prevent him from
being consistently erratic. He was apparently willing to host representatives of the
Afghan Taliban at Camp David in the week marking the 18th anniversary of 9/11
to sign off on a peace deal alongside Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, but called off
the talks after a fairly routine Taliban attack in Kabul in which the fatalities
included a single US soldier.

Shortly afterwards, Trump dismissed his belligerent national security adviser, John
Bolton, on the basis that they rarely saw eye to eye. Bolton is an unrepentant
neoconservative notorious for abhorring all peace treaties and adoring most wars.
He has been advocating the invasion of Iran since he was in the George W. Bush
administration, and favoured a similar approach towards Venezuela, Cuba and
North Korea.

His hostility against dealing with the Taliban found some echoes in Afghanistan,
where the overwhelming desire for peace after 40 years of conflict is tempered by
fear of a return to the obscurantist brutality of the 1990s, given America’s virtual
acknowledgment that its longest war has been an abysmal failure. Yet talks are
impossible to avoid on any path to a lasting peace.

Bolton’s visceral opposition to the remote possibility of direct talks between

Trump and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani on the sidelines of this month’s
annual UN gathering, now rendered inconceivable, was perhaps matched only by
the feelings of Benjamin Netanyahu, alongside Saudi alarm. The intensified verbal
vitriol was propitiously — or suspiciously — well-timed for the Israeli prime
minister as he went into yesterday’s fraught election, although he had already put
into effect his contingency plan by vowing to annex a large part of the West Bank.

Whatever the immediate future may entail, it can almost be guaranteed that the
Middle East will remain on the boil for a long time to come.

To die for, or from

F.S. AijazuddinUpdated September 19, 2019
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The writer is an author.

IT was the sort of over-rich chocolate cake to die for, or from. Made from
imported Belgian chocolate, each layer invited gluttony. Its outer casing
glistened with gold leaf. The Karachi patisserie had priced it at Rs25,000.
“Does anyone buy such a cake?” one asked. “Many,” came the reply, “even at
Rs3,500 a slice.”

Such a lavish confection in the city of flies brought into focus the disparity
between the increasingly rich and the increasingly poor in Pakistan. It is a void that
government legislation cannot fill. It is met by the law of insatiable demand and
inventive supply.

An incongruous analogy sprang to mind — of overpriced arms obtained over the

years by Saudi Arabia from the United States and other arms-exporting countries.
What can be the justification for such an extravagant outlay of petrodollars except
an insatiable demand by a chequebook-happy kingdom and a supply of the latest
inventive toys by the world’s armaments industry?

No one is quite sure how much Saudi Arabia and now the United Arab Emirates
spend to intimidate their neighbours. Arms supply is a secretive business, and the
Gulf Arabs can be more reticent about their business than most. Actual figures are
hidden behind a smokescreen of intent. For example, President Donald Trump
announced that his son-in-law Jared Kushner had brokered an arms deal with Saudi
Arabia worth $110 billion. The original Saudi demand for $15bn was not enough
for Kushner. He remonstrated in the National Security Council that the US needed
“to sell them as much as possible”.

The Iranians have made a timely shift towards China.

While a fool and his money are soon parted, Kushner found it difficult to winkle
such a large sum out of the Saudis. The final purchases in 2018 were closer to the
Saudis’ original demand. In 2019, Trump expressed his determination to push
through an arms deal worth $8.5bn to Saudi Arabia.

With Saudi Arabia awash with so much lethal hardware including sophisticated
surveillance systems and attack aircraft, it came as a surprise that, on Sept 14, a
number of unmanned drones and missiles were able to penetrate Saudi defences
with impunity and attack its Abqaiq plant and the Khurais oilfield. The Saudi oil
company Aramco admitted that, as a result, it had “suspended production of 5.7
million barrels of crude oil”. This represented 60 per cent of the kingdom’s total oil
output. The Saudis and the US blame the Houthi rebels and Yemen (and by
association, Iran). The Iranians deny any complicity.

Read: Attacks on Saudi oil facilities knock out half the kingdom's supply

Regardless of who pressed the button, there was a parallel absurdity of this episode
with the solo flight made by the young German Mathias Rust who, in May 1987,
flew a single-engine Cessna from Helsinki to Moscow. Rust managed to dodge the
Soviet Union’s radars en route and to land unchallenged in Moscow’s Red Square.
He became famous not only for the audacity of his feat but for having exposed
(single-handedly) the uselessness of the Soviets’ expensive defence systems.

The casualties of Rust’s escapade were the Soviet Minister of Defence Sergei
Sokolov and the Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Air Defences Chief Marshal
Alexander Koldunov, They were dismissed by Mikhail Gorbachev (then general
secretary, CPSU). One wonders who in Saudi Arabia would dare dismiss the
current Saudi minister of defence? (It happens to be Crown Prince Mohammad bin
Salman.)

The Saudis continue to be Iran’s adversaries but the Iranians have insured
themselves against the US-Saudi-UAE threat by a timely shift towards China.
Following a visit to Beijing by Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to his Chinese
counterpart Wang Yi, both countries have agreed to revive an earlier understanding
of cooperation. The fresh arrangement, described as “a strategic partnership”,
envisages loans by China of $10bn for infrastructure projects, overdue
improvements to Iran’s Arak IR-40 heavy water reactor, and disbursements of US
$280bn, spread over 25 years, to develop Iran’s oil and gas fields.

Read: On battleground Iran, a crude China versus US standoff

In reciprocation, Iran has conceded to China first refusal “to bid on any new,
stalled or uncompleted oil and gas field developments”. To protect its interests,
China will depute 5,000 military personnel in Iran. In addition, bilateral trade is
planned to expand to $600bn over the next decade. Iran is set to become China’s
western ‘hong’.

Someone once said that his arms were too short to fight with God. After 40 tiring
years of shadow-boxing, Iran has decided that its arms are too short to fight with
the US. It would prefer to use them to embrace a more amenable neighbour.

With Iran as an additional dimension of China’s One Belt, One Road initiative, the
dynamics of the region have changed irreversibly. Allies of the US will discover
that overpriced arms, like that overpriced chocolate cake, may be nice on display
but are better left un-bought.

Kashmir mediation
Ahmer Bilal SoofiSeptember 22, 2019
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The writer is former federal, caretaker minister for law & justice, parliamentary
affairs & human rights.
IN 1998, the world witnessed a great upsurge in tensions between Pakistan
and India as both tested nuclear devices. The UN Security Council was
obliged to take immediate notice. On June 6, 1998, it adopted resolution 1172,
calling upon both to resort to dialogue on all outstanding issues, in order to
remove tensions. A couple of days earlier, in view of the urgency of the
situation, ministers from the five permanent UNSC members had met in
Geneva to consider ways to reduce tensions between the two. In a joint
communiqué issued after the meeting, they affirmed their “readiness to assist
India and Pakistan, in a manner acceptable to both sides, in promoting
reconciliation and cooperation. The Ministers pledged that they will actively
encourage India and Pakistan to find mutually acceptable solutions, through
direct dialogue, that address the root causes of the tension, including
Kashmir, and to try to build confidence rather than seek confrontation”
[italics added]. They also “undertook to do all they could to facilitate a
reduction of tensions between those States [italics added], and to provide
assistance, at the request of both parties, in the development and
implementation of confidence and security-building measures”.

The UN’s efforts in 1998 towards reducing tensions by encouraging and

facilitating Pakistan and India to adopt pacific modes of conflict resolution were
fast-paced. In his letter of July 8, 1998, the UN secretary general intimated the
UNSC president that the Indian prime minister at that time, Atal Behari Vajpayee,
had written to the secretary general on June 30, 1998, expressing his willingness to
enter into a dialogue with Pakistan. Similarly, he had also stated in his letter that
the Pakistani government was desirous of initiating a dialogue with India to
address and resolve all issues between them including the core issue of Kashmir.

Today, after India’s unlawful attempt at annexation of occupied Kashmir, New

Delhi is facing an unprecedented backlash. It is widely believed that India’s unjust
action will lead to prolonged armed resistance and movement on the style of the
Palestinian intifada, which may draw foreign forces to the maelstrom. There is also
the view that worldwide terrorism and jihadi efforts will increase exponentially as
the sole effective remedy for the oppressive treatment of the Kashmiris that is
perhaps a permanent feature of BJP’s government policy.

South Asia is again witnessing the same tensions as in May 1998 and the situation
calls for similar treatment.

The P-5’s pledge is an old one but it is without a time limit.

It is therefore useful to assess the continued validity of the June 4, 1998, offer
made by the P-5 in which it was categorically undertaken by the P-5 to do all they
could to reduce tensions and provide assistance for developing and implementing
confidence-building measures. Given the similar intensity of both situations and
the resulting danger to international peace and security, that no hesitation should be
entertained by the P-5 to initiate sincere efforts so as to honour their pledge of
1998 to take all steps for the maintenance of international peace and security as are
in their power.

The 1998 pledge is an old one yet it was made solemnly and without any indication
of a time limit. The manner in which it was made, ie by issuing a joint
communiqué, speaks of P-5’s concern over the security situation in South Asia. It
was the seriousness of the situation, which obliged the P-5 to undertake and
reiterate their willingness and responsibility under the UN Charter (and
independently of it as responsible stakeholders), to make their good offices
available.

Pursuant to this request by the UNSC, the secretary general wrote a letter dated
July 8, 1998, to the president of the UNSC in which the latter was apprised of the
former’s labours to achieve a peaceful, conciliatory environment for the parties so
that they could sort out their differences. Special mention was made of a letter
dated June 30, 1998, addressed by the Indian prime minister to the secretary
general in which the former acknowledged India’s willingness to start a dialogue
with Pakistan; this amounts to an undertaking by the state of India to resolve all
disputes through negotiation.
Mention was also made of the willingness of the Pakistani state to enter into
bilateral talks; considered formally, the joint willingness of both states to enter into
negotiations constitutes a binding agreement on the part of both parties to resolve
all issues through bilateral talks.

Time is running out and the situation is fast deteriorating to a state where the
stakeholders will lose their confidence in international powers and take matters
into their own hands, for better or for worse. It is time for the P-5 to honour their
undertaking and facilitate both parties in reaching a peaceful resolution of the
Kashmir issue.

Trump’s smile
Khurram HusainUpdated August 01, 2019
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The writer is a member of staff.

HERE’S a decent rule of thumb when dealing with the Americans: the
sweeter their words, the steeper their ask. All relations between nation states
are transactional; the only thing to wonder is what exactly is being transacted
between them.

Since Imran Khan’s recent visit to Washington, D.C. saw warm and pleasant vibes,
it is worthwhile to ask about the substance of what was discussed during the visit.
The first and foremost thing on the mind of the Trump administration is the desire
to see a withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo said, weeks before the visit, that they want to see an agreement with the
Afghan Taliban that would enable such a withdrawal by September of this year.

The agreement that the Trump administration seeks is a ceasefire, followed by

some sort of power-sharing arrangement between the Taliban and the Afghan
government. This is important to achieve in the immediate term, before the end of
the year 2019, since Donald Trump wants to campaign on having delivered on this
pledge to effect a withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan. Campaign season
begins in earnest in February of 2020 when the caucuses get under way, and builds
up till July of that year when the Democratic party convention takes place and the
party announces its candidate.

Trump will want to show a tangible and visible withdrawal of US forces from
Afghanistan through these months, perhaps even heaping some ceremony onto the
process, and claim success in the 18-year-old war as his signature accomplishment.
Pakistan holds the key to whether or not he will be able to do this. Hence his sweet
words during the visit.
 For Pakistan, the biggest fear is that there might be a repeat
of 1990 all over again.
The power-sharing arrangement will be a little trickier to manage, especially since
powerful parties in Afghanistan, most notably India, would like to see such a deal
scuttled. At the moment the Taliban have rejected any idea of including
representatives from the government in Kabul into the peace talks. But an intra-
Afghan dialogue has been kick-started, and one of the big asks that the Trump
administration placed on the Pakistani delegation in D.C. was to play a more
vigorous role in helping both sides in that dialogue to make progress in arriving at
some sort of understanding among themselves.

This is why we saw a flurry of headlines about an ‘intra-Afghan dialogue’ coming

out in the Pakistani press in the run-up to the visit. “Islamabad hopeful Taliban will
agree to intra-Afghan dialogue” ran a headline in this paper, for example. “The
Afghan peace process has reached a promising but delicate stage. Pakistan will
continue to play a role in helping the peace efforts with the expectation that this
can soon transition to the next critical stage: an intra-Afghan dialogue. The
international consensus is firmly in favour of this”, the story quoted Pakistan’s
permanent representative to the United Nations, Dr Maleeha Lodhi.

The dialogue did take place, supported by track two efforts. In mid-July, days
before the D.C. visit, representatives of the Taliban and the Afghan government sat
down with each other in Doha and agreed to reduce violence and to refrain from
attacks on and around certain targets such as schools and hospitals, bazaars and
places of worship, among others. The idea is now to build on this understanding,
and pave the way towards a ceasefire followed by an agreement on power sharing.

This is a steep ask for Pakistan to entertain, especially given the timelines. What
makes the job trickier still is the role of the ‘spoilers’, but more than that, to ensure
that the post withdrawal order is built to last. Moeed Yusuf of the United States
Institute for Peace has had a chance to observe the entire process from a very close
vantage point. He has written in this paper that Trump’s ambition is not shared by
the bureaucracy of the US federal government, particularly the diplomatic corps
and the military, where suspicion of Pakistan runs deep. “The view within the
system remains that Pakistan needs to be pressured to force greater cooperation on
Afghanistan” he wrote in these pages a few days ago.

Some might argue that it is precisely such pressure that has persuaded Pakistan to
do its part to help bring the Afghan Taliban to the negotiating table in the first
place. They might remind us of Trump’s new year tweet, of the South Asia policy
of August 2017 (that announcement was what set the ball rolling down the current
path in the first place), as well as pressure mounted through international bodies
like the Financial Action Task Force and the International Monetary Fund. If
progress along the timeline laid down by the Trump administration continues
apace, it is possible that pressure through both these bodies could fizzle out.

The biggest challenge for the United States — whether the administration or the
wider system driving the process — is to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a
haven for terrorist groups all over again following the withdrawal. For this reason,
there is talk of a continuing counterterrorism presence after combat troops are
withdrawn. Pakistan has already given its nod to such a continuing presence, and
even hinted its willingness to host certain elements of such a force.

For Pakistan, the biggest fear is that there might be a repeat of 1990 all over again.
The fear is that once they are gone, the Americans will forget all about this region
(their foreign policy already lays limited stakes in South Asia beyond
Afghanistan), and Pakistan will once again be left to face the consequences all on
its own. The other side of this fear is what happens if the Americans are not able to
get all that they want out of the process currently under way. Trump’s smile has
saddled Pakistan with a steep ask, and nobody here wants to know what his frown
might look like if things don’t work out as expected.

How not to fight

A. Rauf K. KhattakAugust 02, 2019
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The writer is a former civil servant and former minister.

THE longest war in US history began in October 2001 and is still raging. This
asymmetric war will remain a subject of study for analysts and in military
academies across the world for years to come. The US was one of 59 countries
(or more than a quarter of the world’s nations) to deploy troops to
Afghanistan or provide other aids to conduct the war or stabilise the country
after the fall of the Afghan Taliban. By the end of 2010, American troops in
Afghanistan surged to 100,000.

The 9/11 attacks sent the US government and the American public into a rage.
Nobody attempted to contemplate the consequences of military action in a far
corner of the world.

Steve Coll, journalist and author of Ghost Wars, has revealed some interesting
facts about the Afghan war in his new book, Directorate S.

When war was declared, one of the generals involved claimed that all the forces’
chiefs began asking where Afghanistan was. Then defence secretary Donald
Rumsfeld admitted, “In some cases our analysts were working with decades-old
British maps.”

Did the US ever have a plan for Afghanistan?

The CIA-led and Northern Alliance-assisted invasion was a big boost to American
morale. The Taliban made a strategic decision to withdraw to the Pakhtun
heartland without a fight. Operation Enduring Freedom suffered 12 military deaths
and one CIA officer’s death. The war was declared won. Beyond that, there was no
institutional view of what should be done after the Taliban were ousted.

Then president George W. Bush’s attention soon shifted to Iraq, and it remained
his primary concern. Troops and funds were hurled into that theatre; little remained
to be invested in Afghanistan. Contrary to their earlier justification for occupying
Afghanistan, Rumsfeld wrote in his 2011 memoir, “We did not go there to try to
bring prosperity to every corner of Afghanistan.”

Even as early as 2002, a laughable amount was assigned for assistance to

Afghanistan. Bush said that they were not fielding a nation-building army. Thirteen
thousand troops were considered the right number at the time. Coll states that in
2003, the US National Security Council met to discuss Afghanistan only twice —
thus squandering the opportunity to manage a post-conflict Afghanistan.

In 2003, the Taliban started appearing in the same places as they had in 1996. It
was akin to watching a rerun of an old movie. By 2006, the Taliban were on the
march. By 2009-10, an unpleasant truth had dawned on American analysts — they
had lost the war.

“Initially the American investment in post-Taliban Afghanistan was deliberate

minimalism, followed by tentative engagement, followed by massive investment
only when it was very late to make a difference,” according to Coll. By 2007, Bush
changed tack saying that they wanted to establish a stable and democratic
Afghanistan. CIA directives, however, still focused on Al Qaeda. They had no
orders from the White House to help defeat the Taliban. The situation was further
complicated by policy conflicts among the CIA, Pentagon, State Department, Drug
Enforcement Administration, Defence Intelligence Agency, and Central
Command, writes Coll. The rivalry between the CIA and the army was particularly
serious. Stanley A. McChrystal quipped, “They [the CIA] weren’t as good as they
thought they were and we [the army] weren’t as bad as they thought we were.”

Overwhelmed by the Iraq invasion and occupation, the Pentagon planners seemed
to manage Afghanistan from pieces of scrap paper. “There was not a campaign
plan,” indeed, “not a plan, period,” a retired lieutenant general commented. About
eight different commands were counted at one point of time reporting to different
bosses. The problem of fractured command was a serious one. The Marines, who
were deployed before Gen McChrystal’s arrival, Coll mentions, did not report to
him. They reported to their leadership in Central Command, in Florida.

Former president Hamid Karzai may be called a quisling, but deep down he was a
nationalist and paranoid about Pakistan’s role in the conflict. He wasted no
opportunity to say that to stabilise his country, the American fight lay in
(erstwhile) Fata and Quetta. He was also livid about US forces’ night raids and
killing of civilians. Once, having dinner with vice president Joe Biden and two
other senators, he started “popping off” saying that the US did not care about
Afghanistan. “Your country has done nothing to help Afghanistan.” This annoyed
everyone. Biden slammed his fist on the table and said, “This conversation, this
dinner is over,” then stormed out of the room.

At the end of his second presidential term in September 2014, Karzai delivered a
bitter farewell speech, “America did not want peace in Afghanistan because it has
its own agenda and goals here.”

It remains to be seen whether the unpredictable President Trump is able to deliver

on this war.
WHY INDIA AND PAKISTAN MUST MAKE PEACE NOT WAR
Illustration by Marium Ali

On a dark night when clouds enveloped the sky and rain and lightning forced people
indoors, the residents of a village heard a roar and a thud louder than the loudest of cloud
thunder. Many of them rushed out and saw a fighter plane crashed in the nearby fields.

Some of them thought its pilot must have died during the crash. Others surmised that he
could be hiding somewhere and might try to attack them. As this chatter was going on, a
boy and his sister heard a weak knock at their door. Someone was crying outside in pain.
They opened the door and found a man in military uniform standing outside. He was the
pilot whose plane had crashed.

For a moment, they hesitated. He was, after all, a combatant from the other side. He could
also be armed and might hurt them. But he was also badly injured and bleeding. They called
their father and all three helped him get in. They offered him food and water, cleaned and
dressed his wounds. Next morning, they quietly went to a nearby military post and handed
him over to the soldiers there.

This story was told in a Pakistani textbook back in the 1970s.

Abhinandan Varthaman, the Indian pilot whose fighter plane crashed on Pakistani soil late
last month, could say that this is not the way villagers in Azad Kashmir treated him. After
they saw him descend from the sky with a parachute, they rushed and found him by a
stream. Some of them immediately started beating him up and continued doing so until a
contingent of the Pakistan Army arrived and rescued him.

The earliest images of the captured Indian pilot showed his face bloodied by the beating he
got. A black eye and a swollen cheek were still visible in the images of him being handed
over to India on March 1.

What has changed between the 1970s and now? What has made real life Pakistanis behave
differently from their storybook version? Context. Mindset.

The context for the textbook story was a government effort to pacify the Pakistani public’s
opinion towards India in the aftermath of a lost war in 1971. People were hurt. They were
angry. They did not want to accept the creation of Bangladesh even though it was already a
reality. They felt deceived and stabbed in the back by India.

The government needed to revive their essential humanity in order for them to see that
blind hatred towards their big neighbour to the east was neither helpful nor desirable in
making them good human beings — both individually and collectively. A mindset needed to
be changed and a new mindset required to be inculcated so that the hurt and anger could
be replaced with kindness and care.

Since those distant years, the context has changed drastically. Beginning with the early
2000s, the situation has only gotten worse. A strategically strident, politically powerful and
economically confident India has spared no opportunity to browbeat Pakistan in almost
every field — from diplomacy to sports and from competition in the international arena to
bilateral cultural exchanges. Except for a brief period around the Agra Summit between
General Pervez Musharraf and Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2001 and some helpful behind the
scenes diplomacy over the thorny issue of Kashmir more than a decade ago, the two
countries have moved apart with a mutual ferocity they previously displayed only during
and around wars.

Pakistani attitudes towards India have gone through multiple war, peace and then war again
sequences during these years. This could be because Pakistanis have received an overtly
aggressive education vis-à-vis India in recent times — one that emphasises their difference
from the people on the Indian side of the border. They have been made to see the political
and geographical divide between India and Pakistan as a war between good and evil, as a
battle between an Atal-Bihari-Vajpayee-neighbourhood bully and its smaller, but virtuous,
nemesis, and as a conflict between two religions.

Same has been the case on the Indian side — only more so because a shrill news media
there has come to believe that there is money to be made from selling war. The hostility
towards everything Pakistani has often manifested itself in rabidly anti-Pakistan rhetoric
coming out of India’s chatterati — including politicians, actors, former bureaucrats, ex-
soldiers and sometimes even intellectuals and writers.

In its most recent manifestation, this schooling in hate has led to multiple lynchings of
Kashmiris working and studying in different parts of India. They are increasingly seen as
Pakistani agents out to destroy India.

That the two sides need to change this context and their mutually hostile mindsets to one
that induces peace more than it breeds war, is something that cannot be over-emphasised.
There is so much to lose from war — money, men, our essential humanity. And there is so
much to gain from peace — human development, security, our long-lost kindness and care.

By F.S. Aijazuddin

We are at war, yet never really at war.

We are at peace, never truly at peace.
What is this land in which we live -
seeded by hate, by the sword tilled,
by Death scythe-harvested?
Since neither of us can win,
let our unequal gods meet,
bury arms instead of limbs,
and negotiate a mirror’d defeat.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has achieved the unthinkable: he has pulled his
country back from the precipice of peace.

Modi was not even born in April 1948 when India, after it lodged an appeal to the United
Nations for help in Jammu and Kashmir, was handed the toothless Security Council
Resolution No 47 which called for “a free and impartial plebiscite” to determine the wishes
of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. That plebiscite was never held. India’s action created a
precedent, though, for after that, whenever there was any tension or confrontation
between India and Pakistan, one or the other or both scurried to third parties for mediation.

It did not matter whether it was the United Nations Security Council, the United States, the
Soviet Union and latterly China. The two irascible neighbours have always expected
someone else to coax them into accepting what they doggedly denied each other. For
example, the World Bank acted as the broker for the Indus Waters Treaty in 1960 and the
Soviet Union midwifed the Tashkent Agreement in 1966. It was only in the aftermath of the
war over Bangladesh in 1971 that Pakistan and India conceded the unavoidable. They
agreed to talk to each other, not at each other.

The preamble to the Simla Agreement of July 1972 was piety incarnate. Both countries
admitted that they needed to “put an end to the conflict and confrontation that have
hitherto marred their relations and work for the promotion of a friendly and harmonious
relationship and the establishment of durable peace in the Subcontinent, so that both
countries may henceforth devote their resources and energies to the pressing task of
advancing the welfare of their peoples”.

Its first clause reiterated their acknowledgement of the supremacy of the United Nations
Charter (that is, non-interference in each other’s internal affairs and respect for each other’s
sovereignty).
The second clause expressed the resolve of both India and Pakistan “to settle their
differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations or by any other peaceful
means mutually agreed upon between them”. Both countries decided to let the Security
Council Resolution No 47 hang out to dry while they washed their dirty linen in private.

Before leaving for Simla in the last days of June 1972, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was all too aware
that he was hamstrung: over 5,000 square miles of his country’s territory was occupied by
India; over 73,900 prisoners of war and 16,400 civilians under protective custody (not
protected by the Geneva Convention) were held in concentration camps scattered across
India; and the United Nations had been palpably ineffective in getting India to hold the
promised plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir. To Bhutto, bringing India to the negotiating
table yielded parity to Pakistan with a larger, stronger and adversarial neighbour.

For Indira Gandhi, a concession to hold bilateral negotiations cost her nothing. She had
succeeded in removing the United Nations’ flailing fly off the table and she had decided in
her mind that she would delay all bilateral negotiations on Jammu and Kashmir by
postponing them. She knew that no one – neither the United States nor the Soviet Union –
could coerce her to sit at any negotiating table with Pakistan to settle the issue of Kashmir.

Children in Srinagar protest for peace and freedom | AP

By 1999, with Pakistan’s misadventure in Kargil and India’s swift retaliation, the dynamics in
the Subcontinent changed. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif hurried to Washington DC and, over
a July-fourth holiday weekend, implored President Bill Clinton to protect him from the
Indians in Kargil and from his own military in Rawalpindi.

This was an ironical replay of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s panic-ridden appeal during the 1962
India-China conflict. He had approached not the Non-Aligned Movement, of which he was a
founder, nor the communist Soviet Union, of which he was a close ideological ally, but
President John F Kennedy of the arch capitalist United States for “two squadrons of B-47
bombers” and “twelve squadrons of supersonic fighters manned by American crews”. This
plea went unfulfilled.

Even if had been fulfilled, conditions attached to arms supplies by the United States
remained clear — weapons sold to the nations in the Subcontinent were intended for use
only against communist states, not against each other. That is why during the current crisis,
India, which could not prevent the purchase of F-16 fighter jets by Pakistan from the United
States, is desperate to have the United States condemn Pakistan for violating the small print
of the supply contract.
Subtly, the United States has responded by telling India that F-16s in Pakistan’s possession
could not be used offensively. It reminded the Indians that they had been the aggressors in
the attack on Balakot. They had violated Pakistan’s territorial boundary, therefore,
technically, Pakistan was justified to use F-16s (if it had) in self-defence.

China – “Pakistan’s all-weather friend” – has no such qualms. It does not mind where its
arms are used or against whom. In its armaments supply policy, China follows the dictum of
its former president Deng Xiaoping: it does not matter if a cat is black or white so long as it
catches mice.

China, however, could not have been unconcerned when its JF-17 aircraft (manufactured by
Pakistan with Chinese assistance) engaged in actual combat against India’s Russian-designed
MiG-21s and Su-30s. It needed to know if the aircraft was any good. The JF-17 passed the
test and vindicated Pakistan’s decision to rely upon China rather than the United States,
which asks for its money in advance and then delays delivery.

The military cooperation and collaboration between Pakistan and China has come a long
way since the middle of the 1960s when China would give in to Pakistan’s petulant and
importuning demands for military hardware. Pakistan’s former ambassador to China, Sultan
M Khan, in his book, Memories & Reflections of a Pakistani Diplomat (published in 1997),
describes a visit to China in 1966 by a Pakistani delegation of senior military personnel. They
had come to seek replenishment of their country’s weapons stockpile, depleted by the 1965
war with India.

The ambassador recalled that, on the final day of its stay, the Pakistani delegation called on
Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai. He told them that “all the requirements on their list would be
met” and then remarked that he had seen the Pakistani list but was not sure on what basis
the quantity of ammunition had been calculated. One of the Pakistani generals replied that
the calculations were based on reserve supplies for 14 days.

This prompted Enlai to ask, “And what happens after fourteen days? How can a war be
fought in that short time?” The general explained that Pakistan hoped that, during that
time, the United Nations Security Council would meet and call upon both parties to cease
fire and withdraw their armed forces to their respective borders.
“Please forgive me,” Enlai said, “if I appear to be confused by your reply. But if the outcome
of a conflict has been predetermined to be a restoration of the status quo ante, then why
fight at all? Why unnecessarily waste human lives and economic resources? Wars cannot be
fought according to a time-table, and one has to be ready for a prolonged conflict.”

Pakistani soldiers stand near the remains of an Indian fighter jet shot down by Pakistan near
the Line of Control on February 27, 2019 | AFP
That conversation took place in the mid-1960s, before China became a nuclear superpower
and before Pakistan developed its own nuclear capability. It was a time when the threat of
nuclear attacks and retaliation could begin and end within 48 hours. Many people, even
pseudo-statesmen, talk glibly about nuclear war today, as if it is a Republic Day parade in
which nuclear-armed missiles will be ignited instead of fireworks.

They have perhaps forgotten that the last time a nuclear device was detonated, it was way
back in August 1945 when the United States President Harry S Truman authorised his forces
to drop atomic bombs on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In retrospect, Truman’s diary entry about his decision to drop the bombs seems almost
naive in its expectation: “This weapon is to be used against Japan between [July 1945] and
August 10th. I have told the [Secretary] of War, [Henry Lewis] Stimson, to use it so that
military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even
if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the
common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital [Kyoto] or the new
[Tokyo]. He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one.”

The bomb that detonated 1,900 feet above Hiroshima was nicknamed The Little Boy. It
contained about 64 kilogrammes of uranium-235 and took 44.4 seconds to fall from the
aircraft. Its descent was slowed by a parachute to allow the B-29 bomber aircraft, which
carried and dropped it, to fly clear. The bomb did not distinguish between military and non-
military victims nor was it gender sensitive. Everyone within a four-mile radius from where it
detonated either died or was unspeakably maimed. On the whole, the nuclear bombing of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki resulted in the deaths of 220,000 people.

Since that searing August, no nation has dropped a nuclear bomb on another. They have
tested them, certainly, to assess their efficacy but the world has yet to see a nuclear
conflagration. And with good reason. No one will live long enough after a nuclear attack and
retaliation anywhere in the world to find and read any diary entries, as we do with
Truman’s, about the approval for using those bombs.
Historians trying to make sense of these past few weeks need to understand this
background, if only to comprehend why the conflict began with Balakot and had to end with
a mirrored de-escalation, brokered by guess who? the United States. Both India and
Pakistan have decided that (to borrow Winston Churchill’s juvenile phrase) “it is better to
jaw-jaw than to war-war”.

The earliest cautious step in this direction was taken in the first week of March when
contact between the director generals of military operations (DGMOs) of the two countries
was restored. The second step – to ensure that their respective high commissioners return
to their posts in New Delhi and Islamabad – is already being undertaken by both sides. The
all-important third step would be a meeting between the two prime ministers in a neutral
venue.

Saigon last month proved to be unlucky for President Donald Trump and his North Korean
counterpart Kim Jong-un. Helsinki in 2018 might have succeeded had Trump not tried to
avoid any discussion with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Russia’s alleged interference
in the United States presidential elections in 2016. Tashkent and Simla are out — too many
ghosts.

A peace rally in Pakistan | White Star

For the time being, the venue of such a prime ministerial meeting is less important than the
outcome of the Indian general elections in May 2019. If Modi returns to power with a
working majority (albeit in coalition with some smaller parties), he might interpret that as
an endorsement of his belligerence. He could blunt that with an invitation to Prime Minister
Imran Khan to attend his swearing-in ceremony in New Delhi.

Will Imran Khan peck at the olive branch just as Sharif did in 2014? But, as Imran Khan has
demonstrated, he has stronger nerves than Sharif showed during Kargil. He has not run to
Washington and begged for protection from the Pakistan Army. He stayed put in Islamabad
and remained silent.

He may have begun his stewardship, as his detractors still claim, as a ‘selected’ prime
minister but they forget that no prime minister in our history has had to face a war within
the first seven months of assuming office. In 1939, Winston Churchill came over-prepared
for World War II; he had been the Lord of the Admiralty. In 1945, when Truman succeeded
Franklin D Roosevelt as president of the United States, he had already served as vice-
president, albeit for only a short time.
It is clear from his brief but pithy speeches that Khan does not intend to be swayed by
sentiment in his dealings with India. He can afford to wait until the May elections in India
and some years thereafter. If there is anyone who is feeling the heat, it is Modi. He is having
to watch ministers from his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) trip over each other’s lifeless lies.
He has had to listen to the Indian Air Force chief who, when asked about the number of
actual terrorists killed in Balakot, passed the buck to the government in New Delhi.

Modi’s ambition to violate Pakistan’s borders with a swift, surgical strike has festered into a
gangrenous failure. His hopes of uniting India under his singular unquestioned command
have disintegrated into a non-nuclear ash, incinerated not by Pakistan but by opposition
parties within India.

Had Modi read history instead of trying to make it, he would have learned that on October
22, 1971 just before the India-Pakistan conflict over Bangladesh, Dr Henry Kissinger (then
working as an assistant on national security affairs to president Richard Nixon) met Zhou
Enlai in Beijing. They discussed the fomenting crisis in the Subcontinent. Enlai had already
conveyed to Kissinger China’s principled stand on the sanctity of international borders and
on non-interference.

Kissinger’s reply has not lost its relevance even after 48 years: “[United States is] totally
opposed to Indian military action against Pakistan. I do not normally see ambassadors, but I
have warned the Indian ambassador [L K Jha] on behalf of the President that if there is an
attack by India we will cut off all economic aid to India. We have told the Russians of our
view, and they have told us they will try to restrain the situation, but I am not sure that I
believe them. We believe there is a good chance that India will either attack or provoke the
Pakistanis to attack by driving the Pakistanis into a desperate action in the next month or
two.”

A generation of Indians and Pakistanis lived through the subsequent Armageddon. Another
generation has these days seen a vision of the next Armageddon. They see no future dying
in it.
By Siddharth Varadarajan

Just when we thought India-Pakistan relations had hit rock bottom, a suicide blast on a
convoy of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) travelling from Srinagar to Jammu has
helped push the bilateral relationship several notches further down. The attack exacted the
highest death toll for a single incident over the 30 years of insurgency in Kashmir.

Its scale (more than 40 troopers were killed) and its timing (coming just weeks before what
is going to be a closely fought general election in India) were destined – and perhaps even
designed – to generate a military response from India. In September 2016, the Indian
government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi had responded to an attack on an army camp
in Uri and the threat of “infiltration by terrorists” from the Pakistani side with what it said
were “surgical strikes” on “launch” pads across the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir.

Pakistan denied the surgical strikes had taken place but these quickly became part of the
political narrative of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) inside India. In fact, barely weeks
before the Pulwama attack – which, ironically, the 2016 surgical strikes were meant to deter
– a Bollywood film, Uri, was released to tremendous public response. Two lines from the
film seemed tailor-made for the BJP’s electoral playbook.

“How’s the josh?” the commanding officer of one of the units, tasked with a surgical strike,
asks his men and they reply, “High, sir!” And in a pivotal scene, the Indian national security
adviser says of the war on terror, “This is a new India. We will enter their homes and kill
them there.”

With Modi and several of his ministers using “How’s the josh?” phrase, it became politically
impossible for the government not to react militarily to the Pulwama attack. This was
especially so given the scale of the attack and the fact that its victims came from virtually
every part of India. Within minutes of the news of the attack, hypernationalist television
anchors quickly upped the ante, demanding that the government take military action
against Pakistan.

A day later, Modi told a public gathering in Jhansi that he had authorised the military to give
a fitting reply to the Pulwama attack at the time and place of its own choosing. He also told
his audience that India needed a strong government and that they should strengthen his
hands once again in the election.

While the nature of the Indian response was more or less hard-coded into the
circumstances in which the attack occurred, Pakistan did not help matters by prevaricating
in its initial statements. The Foreign Office in Islamabad issued a mealy-mouthed statement
only to revise it quickly. Notwithstanding his offer to move on any actionable evidence India
provides against the Pulwama plotters, Prime Minister Imran Khan’s own statement on
February 19 was seen by the Indian side as lacking in sensitivity.

A crashed Indian Air Force helicopter in Indian-controlled Kashmir | AFP

He could have helped defuse the tension which was clearly building up by immediately
initiating a crackdown against the Jaish-e-Mohammad and its leaders. Muhammad Hassan,
the official spokesperson of the militant organisation, was, after all, quoted in all Srinagar-
based newspapers as claiming credit for the attack.

A video recording of a young man from the Indian side of Kashmir was also available in
which he had acknowledged the Jaish’s role in the Pulwama blast. The fact that the Pakistani
establishment was “in touch” with the Jaish has been admitted by no less a person than
Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, albeit indirectly, in an interview to the BBC.

Instead of acting against the Jaish and its leader, Masood Azhar – as it was obliged to do
given its international commitments and as it ought to have done given its own national
interest – the Pakistani establishment went into lockdown. At an official briefing, the
director general of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), Major General Asif Ghafoor,
not only failed to acknowledge the possibility of the Jaish’s involvement in the Pulwama
attack but he also went on to insinuate that the attack on the CRPF (and, indeed, a host of
other high-profile terrorist incidents) might actually be false flag operations.

He warned India against taking any military action and said Pakistan would “surprise” its
neighbour with its response and would “dominate the escalatory ladder”. For added
measure, and with an eye on the international community, Major General Ghafoor brought
in the nuclear factor by referring to the convening of a meeting of Pakistan’s National
Command Authority which supervises the country’s nuclear weapons.
By this point, it was clear the die was cast. Pakistan knew Indian military action was coming
and India knew the Pakistani military would strike back. Neither side had any sense of the
specifics but India was confident it could contain the danger of escalation.

Since the Jaish was seen as the public face of the Pulwama attack, the Indian side decided it
would use its military to send a message to the militant organisation and its support
infrastructure inside Pakistan. In the early hours of February 26, India launched an aerial
strike against what it said was a Jaish training facility near Balakot, a town in Pakistan’s
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, many kilometres inside the LoC.

Major General Ghafoor scooped the Indians by breaking the news of the airstrike to the
world’s media via Twitter at around 6:30 am. He also declared the attack to have been
unsuccessful. Later the same day, the Indian foreign secretary held a press conference to
say that a “large number” of terrorists and their trainers had been killed in an intelligence-
led “non-military pre-emptive strike” on a Jaish target.

Kashmiris carry the coffin of a civilian killed in firing across the LoC | AFP
The details of the airstrike are still not clear since neither India’s Ministry of External Affairs
nor its Ministry of Defence or the Indian Air Force have provided any details on record.
Going by the accounts of India’s reputed defence writers, it does appear as if the operation
involved the deployment of four Mirage 2000s of the Indian Air Force near but not across
the LoC. These planes fired precision-guided munitions in ‘stand-off’ mode on to a madrasa
complex that sits atop a hillock at Jabba village south of Balakot.

The fact that Pakistan has not allowed reporters access to the madrasa suggests the Indian
airstrikes did cause damage. The extent of the physical damage and the casualty rate,
however, remain, unclear and will likely be debated by image analysts and munitions
specialists for months if not years to come. Indian politicians have put out figures like “350
terrorists killed” for public consumption, ignoring the fact that the metric for measuring the
effectiveness of the airstrike is not necessarily a body count but the message that was sent
to a group like the Jaish: that it should not consider any part of Pakistan to be a safe haven.

The airstrikes were also designed to send a message to the Pakistani establishment and to
the world’s big powers. For the former, the Indian message was that its strategy of using
jihadi groups as a reserve army would henceforth involve military costs. For the latter, the
message was that New Delhi would no longer consider itself constrained by Western fears
of Indian kinetic operations triggering the dreaded ‘nuclear flashpoint’.
For the nuclear bluff to be called, it was essential that any Pakistani military response be
brushed aside and not responded to. That, in turn, required the Pakistani military response
to be calibrated in such a manner that it could tell India it had the ability to pay back in
similar coin while not actually striking in a way that wider hostilities get triggered.

In the event, Pakistani military chose the tactic of aerial ingress and the targeting of military
facilities. While the Pakistani military spokesperson said the Pakistan Air Force deliberately
detargeted at the last minute so as not to escalate, the Indian side simply says the Pakistan
Air Force “missed” its targets.

Indian Air Force officials show a part of the AIM-120C-5 missile allegedly used by a Pakistani
F-16 aircraft | White Star
Whatever the truth in these claims and counter-claims, the fact is that Pakistan was able to
‘respond’ militarily to India’s strike in Balakot in a manner that Indian military officials
described as “an act of war”. Yet, this tit-for-tat action drew the hostilities to a close without
either side contemplating the next step up the ladder of escalation.

The downing of an Indian MiG-21 and the capture of an Indian pilot, Abhinandan
Varthaman, certainly played its part in the de-escalation, especially since the Indian side also
claimed to have shot down a Pakistani F-16. Pakistan denies this but the truth will only be
known with certainty when the United States conducts its next round of end-use verification
— an exercise that will involve, at the very least, an inventory count.

From the Indian point of view, the first-order risk that the strike in Balakot entailed – of
gradual or even open-ended escalation – appears to have been contained. But there is a
wider risk involved here: of getting locked into a predictable military response each time a
terrorist group launches a major strike inside India. This means it is the terrorists and their
backers who keep the initiative on their side, drawing India out and escalating tension
whenever they wish to.

The swift return of the Indian pilot was a shrewd move on the part of Imran Khan. It was
more realpolitik than magnanimity because the longer he remained in Pakistan’s custody,
the greater were the chances of conflict escalation.

The fact that none of the world’s major powers and none of the countries in the wider
neighbourhood saw fit to condemn India’s military action in Balakot – which Pakistan had
officially described as an act of aggression – would also have weighed on the minds of Imran
Khan and Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa. Returning Wing Commander
Abhinandan Varthaman, at least, allowed Islamabad to shore up its diplomatic capital and
give itself leverage over the big powers to call on India to de-escalate.

Where do India and Pakistan go from here? The Imran Khan government has responded to
the aftermath of Balakot with a crackdown against the Jaish and other groups but just how
far these measures go is not clear. Judging by the past, Islamabad is likely to take only
reversible steps so long as it believes India remains vulnerable in Jammu and Kashmir.

Unlike the years of Pervez Musharraf’s rule in 2000s, when Pakistan seemed committed to
an end-game that involved ‘out of the box’ steps in Jammu and Kashmir short of any change
in the territorial status quo, Islamabad believes it holds better cards today.

If the desire of United States President Donald Trump’s administration to leave Afghanistan
has raised the salience of Pakistan and even made Russia get warm to it, Modi government’s
disastrous handling of the situation on the Indian side of Jammu and Kashmir has also dealt
Pakistan back into that game. Yet, the experience of the years before 2001 is proof that
Pakistani support – whether ‘moral’ or armed – for militancy in Kashmir is a strategic dead-
end that will yield no solution. Worse, Pakistan’s failure to take action against militant
organisations will, in the event of further terrorist attacks, only invite further military
responses with an uncertain outcome.

Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar (centre) | White Star

On India’s part, the recent crisis is a reminder of just how poorly conceived and untenable
its line of ‘talks and terror cannot go hand in hand’ actually is. Attacks in Pulwama, Nagrota,
Sunjuwan and other such incidents which happened earlier are all proof of the fact that the
absence of talks does not deter or disincentivise terror.

The Balakot airstrike has added one more element to the Indian menu of options but its
utility, if any, will be diminished if New Delhi steadfastly refuses to use diplomacy too.
Cessation of trade and travel between the two countries is hardly a lever that bothers the
jihadi groups. It is a fact that levels of terrorist violence have declined precisely at those
times when India and Pakistan were engaging with each other on all issues, including Jammu
and Kashmir.
Any decision on engagement before the Indian elections is perhaps too much to expect but
a meeting between the two sides to open Kartarpur Corridor for Sikh pilgrims has been
scheduled. This means progress is certainly possible.

After the election, whoever is prime minister in New Delhi will have to find ways to talk to
Pakistan. Balakot and its aftermath gave both India and Pakistan a glimpse of the abyss that
lies ahead if the only form of engagement left on the table is military.

Laws of occupation
Asad Rahim KhanAugust 06, 2019
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The writer is a barrister.

“WHEN I think of India, I think of many things,” Jawaharlal Nehru wrote
once. “Of … some mountain valley in Kashmir in the spring, covered with
new flowers, and with a brook bubbling and gurgling through it.” In words
that take on a new meaning today, Nehru concluded, “We make and preserve
the pictures of our choice.” It suited India’s first prime minister, a Kashmiri
Pandit, to preserve that picture, even if it meant occupation.

As Indian troops streamed into the Valley, Nehru feigned tears for his victims, and
called for a plebiscite under UN supervision. “The people of Kashmir would
decide the question of accession,” he telegrammed the Pakistani prime minister on
Oct 28, 1948. “It is open to them to accede to either Dominion then.”
In the 70 years since, the people of Kashmir were never given a choice. Today, the
vale is a killing field — a valley of mass graves and mass blindings, where
children are raped as a weapon of war, and troops that tie civilians to jeeps are
handed prizes for gallantry. But India’s brutality had long been carved in stone —
as the end rather than the means. It took Narendra Modi, a man never known to
flinch from the mass murder of Muslims, to take the next step.

At the core of this move lies Article 35-A, which was added to the Indian
constitution via a presidential order under Article 370. These articles ensure that
the suppression of millions of people warrants a ‘special status’: the prohibition of
non-Kashmiris settling in the area. It was Nehru that had clinched this agreement
with Sheikh Abdullah (the first of Srinagar’s puppet dynasts).

India has done away with the fig leaf of Kashmir’s sham
‘accession.’
As of yesterday, the BJP’s Amit Shah scrapped Article 370, and with it, the special
status that prevailed for Kashmiris for the better part of a century.

Which is why, in the run-up to this latest presidential order, Indian journalists did
their best to portray otherwise. It was Pakistan and Afghanistan and China and
Trump and all manner of invisible monsters who were causing the bursts of manic
Indian energy in the Valley: airlifting in thousands of troops, snapping phone lines,
imposing curfew, and arresting its leaders.

They missed out on how old the Hindutva project was. Going into the 2019 polls,
the BJP’s manifesto spelled it out in black and white: “We reiterate our position,
since the time of the Jana Sangh, to the abrogation of Article 370.” By invoking the
Jana Sangh, the cabal of saffron losers that took their cue from the proto-Nazi RSS,
the party deliberately drew on a long history that stretches back to Independence.

A fresh electoral mandate has meant that intention is becoming action. In the
immediate term, the impact of scrapping Article 370 will be earthshaking. In the
long run, it will destroy the idea of India as a federalist democracy. But what does
this change? On the ground, it opens the floodgates to Indian settlers, who can now
purchase land and acquire property in Kashmir. Call it the West Bank formula: the
Sangh Parivar has dreamed of altering Kashmir’s Muslim majority demographic
since forever. It will now bulldoze a Hindu majority into the Valley.

It has also done away with the fig leaf of Kashmir’s sham ‘accession’, which itself
was premised on the special status enshrined in Article 370. “The abrogation of
Article 370 hasn’t just made accession null and void but also reduces India to an
occupation force in Jammu and Kashmir,” says career quisling Mehbooba Mufti.

Ms Mufti is wrong: India has always occupied Kashmir. Scrapping Article 370
means Modi has advanced from occupation to annexation.
This also means ripping up the oldest card New Delhi has been playing since 1972:
the Shimla Agreement. For decades, India froze out third-party mediation on
Kashmir by invoking Shimla, which encourages bilateral cooperation, as an article
of faith. But the agreement also states, “Pending the final settlement of any of the
problems between the two countries, neither side shall unilaterally alter the
situation.” That clause is now in tatters. In any event, this dispute is rooted not in
Shimla, but in hard UN resolutions.

India has also upended its own constitution: the presidential order revoking Article
370 stresses taking the consent of the India-held territory of Jammu & Kashmir.
But that consent has been taken from the governor, a representative of the centre,
sans the elected legislature. This is entirely unlawful.

Finally, the lotus boys have shredded more international law than imaginable: the
UN Security Council Resolution of 1948 that mandates a plebiscite; the UNCIP
Resolution of 1949 that guarantees freedom to return; and the Geneva Conventions
that prohibit an occupation from transferring its own civilian population into held
territory.

It is high time Pakistan stands up, and the world takes notice. Modi seeks to deliver
a new generation of Kashmiris to an ancient agenda: the vale as a Hindutva colony.
He will set fire to the Valley on his way there.
‘

Elimination plan
Mahir AliAugust 07, 2019
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IN the wake of last weekend’s mass murders in the US, much attention has
been devoted to assessing the role of Trumpian rhetoric in motivating such
violence. 

While it remains unclear exactly what thought processes led a young man in
Dayton, Ohio, to shoot dead his sister and seven strangers, his counterpart in the
largely Hispanic border town of El Paso, Texas, helpfully uploaded his hateful
‘manifesto’ to the 8chan website before embarking on his shooting spree at a
Walmart store that killed 22 people.

The latter’s vitriolic screed bore such close resemblance to the themes Donald
Trump and his confederates have pursued that the perpetrator felt obliged to
append a disclaimer, noting that his racist thought-
processes predated Trump’s emergence as a presidential candidate.

Trump, meanwhile, after a weekend at one of his golf clubs, addressed the nation
on Monday, decrying racism, bigotry, hatred and white supremacism, while
blaming the gun violence on video games and mental illness. It might have made
more sense for him to look himself the mirror and plead the Fifth Amendment.

It was reported this week that immigration has been characterised as an ‘invasion’
in more than 2,000 Facebook advertisements posted this year by the Trump re-
election campaign. That kind of language feeds straight into the kind of
assumptions on which the ‘great replacement’ theory, which drives white
supremacism, is based. The great fear, in this context, is that browns and blacks
from Latin America, Africa and Asia will in due course replace the whites in North
America, Europe and outliers such as Australia and New Zealand.

Today’s proto-fascism thrives on racially divisive rhetoric.

This idea is all too often accompanied by the notion that it is part of a conspiracy to
dispossess and eventually eliminate the very race that has accounted for so much of
the displacement, dispossession and indeed genocide in recent centuries. In some
quarters, it continues to be seen as a Jewish conspiracy — notwithstanding the fact
that the propagators of such inane theories tend to look upon Benjamin Netanyahu
as a kindred spirit. (And, in turn, the Israeli prime minister appears to have no
qualms about cuddling up to fellow leaders who inspire, instigate or quietly
condone anti-Semitic ideas, from Trump to Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Brazil’s
Jair Bolsonaro.)

In recent days a number of American politicians have plucked up the courage to

invoke or at least imply the N-word by comparing some of the present political
discourse with what was par for the course in Germany in the 1930s. The
comparisons may be odious but they are not unwarranted.

Perhaps none of today’s leaders either subtly or blatantly feeding racist ideologies
could fairly be described as a 21st-century Adolf Hitler; quite a few reflect the least
amusing traits of Benito Mussolini. It would be wise, though, not to get too carried
away by parallels with the 1930s. The looming 2020s may not represent an
unprecedented period in history, but each age has its distinctive characteristics.
Today’s proto-fascism thrives on racially and ideologically divisive rhetoric that
perhaps percolates through to the suitably motivated as a renewed call to arms.
There can be little doubt, though, that the ideological underpinnings of such
ideologies precede Trump and his soulmates by several decades at least.

One factor that sets the US apart from most other nations is its citizens’
constitutionally sanctified right to bear arms, which in many states translates into
fairly easy access to military-grade weapons for anyone who chooses to acquire
them. By some accounts, there are more weapons than people in the nation. That
helps to explain why mass shootings are not the norm in other countries where
video games are as popular, and mental illness as widespread, as in the US.
Already this year, the latter has experienced over 250 such events — they barely
register on the international radar unless there are substantial casualties.

Trump has lately, as in the past, tweeted his support at least for background checks
on those who seek to purchase weapons, but congressional efforts by the
Democrats on this front have faltered in the face of Republican obduracy, which
invariably can be linked to generous political donations by the National Rifle
Association, a lobby group that deserves to be designated a terrorist organisation.

The El Paso massacre at least is being investigated as a potential act of domestic

terrorism, although it’s pertinent to point out that violent white supremacism is as
much an international phenomenon as Islamist militancy. The Texas killer
acknowledged the influence of the man who murdered Muslim worshipers in
Christchurch, who in turn was inspired by a Norwegian far-right maniac.

Back in 1963, Malcolm X was roundly condemned for describing the JFK
assassination as a case of chickens coming home to roost. But the rotten eggs in the
basket keep being replenished even as the White House rooster keeps trumpeting
his innocence.

Distorting Shimla
Javed JabbarUpdated August 07, 2019
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The writer is a former senator and federal minister, and member of the Neemrana
Initiative, the oldest Pakistan-India track II initiative.
INDIA’S blatant violations on Aug 5 of UN resolutions on Kashmir, its own
constitution and multiple pledges to hold a plebiscite are perverse outcomes of
a disrespect for the written word — and for unwritten yet binding codes of
conduct. Though the threat to abolish Kashmir’s special status was present in
the 2019 BJP election manifesto, the move was accelerated after Donald
Trump’s mediation offer introduced a new danger for India, ie that its deceit
could be exposed on a major scale.

The reaction in India to Trump’s offer was predictable, amusing and deceptive as

ever. Over the past 47 years since the signing of the Shimla Agreement with
Pakistan, India misrepresented the accord to the effect that the two countries had
agreed to use only bilateral means to resolve disputes. This falsehood is all the
more ironic because Pakistan has failed to consistently challenge this wrong claim.
The concept of multilateralism is fundamental to the Shimla Agreement.

Article 1 (i) states: “... the principles and purposes of the Charter of the United
Nations shall govern the relations between the two countries”. The Charter
enshrines, as written earlier, “the concept and application of multilateralism for
conflict prevention, management and resolution”.

In Kashmir’s context, bilateralism masks an attempted

bullyism.
Most significantly, Article 1 (ii) of the Shimla accord reads: “... the two countries
are resolved to settle their differences by peaceful means through bilateral
negotiations or by any other peaceful means mutually agreed between them...”.

In other words, India has accepted the possibility that bilateral exchanges alone
may not always be able to produce purposeful results. India acknowledges that the
only alternative to bilateral processes for peaceful resolution of disputes is the
validity of mediation by single third parties or multilateral bodies. Thus, it
recognised the value of applying collective wisdom where dual efforts alone do not
succeed.

By repeatedly refusing to accept third-party or multilateral mediation on the

wrongly projected claim that Shimla had definitively excluded such mediation,
India built up the misleading but widely prevalent perception that Pakistan too had
agreed to the exclusivity of bilateralism. It is curious and disappointing that
Pakistan has done little to inform the world and its own people about the full text
of the relevant clause.

Be it 12 years before Shimla (the Indus Waters Treaty) or as recently as 2018

for Kulbhushan Jadhav, India sought third-party interventions and accepted a
multilaterally negotiated pact and a global forum’s judgement. But the world
should be reminded that less than 14 years post-Shimla, India commenced
violations in both letter and spirit.

Article 4 (ii) of the accord reads: “In Jammu and Kashmir the line of control
resulting from the ceasefire of December 17, 1971 shall be respected by both
sides without prejudice to the recognised position of either side. Neither side
shall seek to alter it unilaterally irrespective of mutual differences and legal
interpretations. Both sides further undertake to refrain from the threat or the
use of force in violation of this line.”

But India used stealth in 1984 to undermine Shimla. Moving troops to three high-
altitude passes, it took unlawful control of 70 kilometres of the Siachen glacier by
placing forces on the Saltoro Ridge and forcibly took over about 2,400 square kms
of disputed Kashmiri territory. In a limited sense, Siachen was India’s Kargil on
Pakistan.

Elsewhere, on the 674.6 kms of the LoC, soon after Shimla, India has prevented
access of the United Nations Military Observers Group. Such non-access enables
regular fabrication of allegations against Pakistan for sending ‘infiltrators’ across
the LoC — without impartial, independent verification. Onward of 2004, India’s
side of the LoC has become, for about 450 kms, one of the most electronically
fortified fences in the world. The only way ‘infiltrators’ can cross this barrier is to
fly over it.

Particularly in the Kashmir context, bilateralism masks an attempted bullyism

which is unacceptable for Pakistan. India opposes third-party mediation only
because any independent entity would be unable to ignore India’s prime
responsibility for preventing a just, peaceful resolution.

Even though Aug 5 poses entirely new challenges on how to revoke a state’s
predatory excesses, Pakistan should forcefully and frequently draw the world’s
attention to the full text of the relevant clauses of the agreement in order to disrobe
India of its democratic disguise and its latest attempt to strangle the Kashmiri
people. Meanwhile, it will help greatly if the opposition in our parliament at this
critical juncture demonstrates less partisanship and more solidarity with a
government facing an unprecedented national crisis.

A sinister move
Zahid HussainUpdated August 07, 2019
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The writer is an author and journalist.

NARENDRA Modi’s risky and reckless move to divide and annex India-held
Kashmir carries catastrophic consequences not only for the region but also for
India itself. By revoking the special status for the disputed territory, India has
removed the thin veil hanging over its occupation. In the process, it has united
Kashmiris as never before in challenging the usurpation.

Indian belligerence will also have serious ramifications for the region with the
danger of the conflict turning into a wider conflagration. By removing the so-called
instrument of accession, India has further complicated the Kashmir dispute. It is
now back to the pre-1948 situation. The timing and the circumstances make India’s
action more intriguing.
Modi had long promised to strike down Article 370 of the Indian constitution that
provided Kashmir a semi-autonomous status. But the urgency and the way it was
done demonstrate hubris and overreach on the part of the Indian prime minister
after he returned to power with a greater mandate. The Indian opposition parties
have called it the darkest chapter in Indian democracy and have also challenged the
legality of the action through a presidential order.

Days before the move, India had deployed thousands of additional troops in the

occupied region to crush mass protests. Kashmir has been in a state of lockdown
under curfew-like conditions. Even those Kashmiri leaders who had sided with
India in the past have been detained. The remarks by Mehbooba Mufti show the
across-the-board outrage in occupied Kashmir over Modi’s sinister design.

It is an extremely ominous situation. The Indian escalation

will have global implications.
“They just want to occupy our land and want to make this Muslim-majority state
like any other state and reduce us to a minority and disempower us totally,” the
former chief minister said. The sentiments of Omar Abdullah, another former chief
minister, have not been very different. Delhi is now left with no ally in Kashmir
after Modi’s hubristic action.

It will now be more difficult for India to maintain its hold over the occupied
territory through brute force. The Kashmiri people are already up in arms and have
been fighting the occupation forces for the past several decades; the deployment of
more troops will not be able to defeat the resistance. The disputed territory is
already one of the most heavily militarised areas in the world.

There is no way the attempt to turn Kashmir into another Palestine will succeed.
The latest Indian action has given further impetus to the freedom struggle that is
now being led by a young generation of Kashmiris who have grown up in an
atmosphere of violence. Brutality perpetrated by the Indian military and the latter’s
gross human rights violations have failed to crush the Kashmiris’ struggle. The
situation in the disputed territory is worse than at any time in the past and it’s
likely to get more explosive after India’s latest action.

Surely, the latest development has a direct bearing on relations between New Delhi
and Islamabad. The change in Kashmir’s status has already sucked Islamabad into
the crisis. There has been an escalation in shelling across the Line of Control with
India reportedly using cluster bombs with increasing civilian casualties.

There is every possibility that the Modi government will step up cross-LoC attacks
to divert international attention from the worsening Kashmir situation. Just as the
military stand-off triggered by the Indian incursion in February had begun to
subside, the war clouds are back. It is an extremely ominous situation. The Indian
escalation will have global implications.

Although there have been serious international concerns over the rising tensions
between the two nuclear-armed nations, the reaction over India’s incendiary action
in Kashmir has been somewhat muted. It seems that the BJP government made that
calculation before moving on the issue.

The condoning by Western powers including the United States of the Indian air
strike on Balakot on so-called counterterrorism grounds seems to have encouraged
the Hindu nationalist government to implement its agenda of destroying the
Kashmiri identity. Some reports quoting Indian officials maintain that the Modi
government had sounded out Washington on its intentions months ago.

In February this year, Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval had reportedly
phoned his American counterpart John Bolton and told him about the Modi
government’s plans to do away with the ‘special status’ for India-held Kashmir.
Then just weeks ago, the Indian foreign minister S. Jaishankar is said to have
briefed US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the issue.

Although American officials deny that any such information was shared with the
Trump administration, the Indian claim raises some serious questions. It becomes
more intriguing when we recall that President Trump offered to mediate on the
Kashmir dispute during his talks with Imran Khan last month.

Was the American president aware of the Indian plan then? It seems that we took
his offer of mediation too seriously while there were already signs of a build-up of
Indian forces in the occupied territory. It should be a cause of serious concern for
Pakistan that there is complete silence over the Indian action. That makes India
more belligerent.

But the use of brute force will not silence the Kashmiri freedom struggle. Modi has
been described as the most divisive and most powerful Indian leader in decades,
and his jingoism presents a bigger threat to India’s secularism. India is much more
politically polarised with Modi trying to turn the country into a Hindu rashtriya.
Secularism, which kept the multi-ethnic and multifaith country united, has been
weakened by the Indian move to abolish Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status.

Pakistan needs to remain prudent in the wake of Indian provocation. Indeed, we

must extend political and moral support to Kashmir’s struggle for the right of self-
determination and expose India’s sinister designs at every international forum. But
we must not return to the disastrous policy of the 1990s that did more harm than
good to Kashmir’s indigenous uprising.

The people of Kashmir have shown that even the massive use of force by India has
failed to destroy their resolve. Modi’s latest action has only reinforced their
determination. The India action has proved that Kashmir is the most dangerous
spot in the world and a potential nuclear flashpoint. It is also time for the
international community to realise the seriousness of the situation.

The wages of isolation

Khurram HusainUpdated August 08, 2019
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The writer is a member of staff.

THE most telling moment in the parliament session called to discuss the Modi
government’s recent actions on changing the legislative status of Kashmir
came when the prime minister, after being harangued and berated, turned to
the opposition leader who was sitting directly across the aisle from him, and
asked in a vexed tone: “What do you want me to do? Attack India?”

And there in that brief exchange was revealed all the helplessness with which
Pakistan’s government stood and stared as India unilaterally devoured a disputed
territory. Of course, Shahbaz Sharif had no answer to this question, all he could say
was that he wanted the prime minister to give a strong speech and “inspire the
nation” at this critical juncture. Sure, and then what?

The steps announced by the National Security Council are notional at best.

Downgrading ties with India and cutting off bilateral trade will not cause anyone in
Delhi to flinch. Taking the matter to the United Nations, especially the Security
Council, is the right step since that is where the disputed nature of Kashmir has
been acknowledged for decades, but how many of the big powers are likely to line
up behind Pakistan’s position and urge Modi to reverse the step?

Some important expressions of alarm have indeed been sounded from global
forums, the International Commission of Jurists being one example. It has invoked
the grave human rights violations in the Valley, citing reports by the Office of the
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, to say that occupied
Kashmir “has been the theatre of grave human rights violations, including unlawful
killings, enforced disappearances and torture, committed with impunity by Indian
security forces.”

The UN secretary general would only say “we urge all

parties to exercise restraint”.
Notice that even here, the focus and emphasis is on the human rights violations and
the impunity enjoyed by Indian security forces in Kashmir and only secondarily on
the annexation and truncation of occupied Kashmir.
The secretary general of the United Nations would only say “we urge all parties to
exercise restraint” without adding anything more.

China issued a strongly-worded statement, but kept the focus on Ladakh, where it

has territorial claims. “China is always opposed to India’s inclusion of the Chinese
territory in the western sector of the China-India boundary into its administrative
jurisdiction,” the statement issued by China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Hua
Chunying, read. “Recently India has continued to undermine China’s territorial
sovereignty by unilaterally changing its domestic law,” she said, adding that the
action would “not have any legal effect”. Regarding Pakistan’s concerns, the
statement acknowledged the disputed nature of Kashmir, and said only that “[t]he
relevant sides need to exercise restraint and act prudently. In particular, they should
refrain from taking actions that will unilaterally change the status quo and escalate
tensions”.

A report in Gulf News mentioned that the ambassador of the United Arab Emirates

basically welcomed the Indian move. “He commented that from his understanding
the reorganisation of states is not a unique incident in the history of independent
India and that it was mainly aimed at reducing regional disparity and improving
efficiency. He viewed this latest decision related to the state of Jammu & Kashmir
as an internal matter as stipulated by the Indian constitution,” the report said.

Meanwhile, the official Saudi Arabian news agency announced on Aug 6 that the
crown prince “received a telephone call today from Pakistani Prime Minister Imran
Khan. During the call, they discussed the development of the situation in the region
and efforts exerted towards it. HRH the Crown Prince was also briefed by the
Pakistani Prime Minister on the latest developments in Kashmir.” That was it.

The reaction from Turkey’s President Erdogan went a little further, but even here
the language was restrained. According to the release from the president’s
Directorate of Communications, “Erdogan called on Pakistan and India to
strengthen the dialogue process” and “Erdogan also shared his concerns over the
situation and assured Khan of Turkey’s ‘steadfast support in this regard’.” There is
no indication of what “steadfast support” means, especially in the context of the
actions announced by the NSC on the evening of Aug 7. It is doubtful that Turkey
will put its own trade or diplomatic relations with India on the line.

The reaction from the United States is the most telling. The State Department first
acknowledged the situation, then simply said “[w]e note that the Indian
government has described these actions as strictly an internal matter”. Zalmay
Khalilzad had just emerged from a round of talks with the Taliban in Doha when
Modi’s government took the step on Aug 5.

On the same day, Khalilzad tweeted, “I will travel to #Delhi later today for pre-
scheduled meetings to further build international consensus in support of the
#AfghanPeaceProcess.” Later, he tweeted a picture of himself sitting with India’s
Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar, saying: “#India has an important role to
play in helping deliver & sustain a durable peace in #Afghanistan”. Clearly, the
focus of the United States will remain the peace process in Afghanistan.

He was in Pakistan three days before Modi’s action on Article 370, when he met
the army chief and the prime minister, and simply stated that “[w]e discussed
Pakistan’s role in support of the process & additional positive steps they can take”.

The message from Washington, D.C. is clear: ‘let’s stay focused on Afghanistan,
shall we?’ A couple of days after the Aug 5 action, a senior US delegation visited
Islamabad to underline that progress on the action plan submitted to FATF is
crucial to avoid blacklisting.

And that is the round-up, folks. What has been known by wiser minds for decades
has now become clear. The justness of Pakistan’s stand on Kashmir has been
clouded by the bloodletting that the valley has seen over the decades. Hence today,
when the people of Kashmir need us more than ever, our prime minister asks:
“what do you want me to do?”

A dark dawn
F.S. AijazuddinUpdated August 08, 2019
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The writer is an author.

KASHMIR — nature’s handmaiden — lies ravished by the BJP. India’s
Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah has revoked, with the stroke of a
presidential pen, the special status of Jammu & Kashmir guaranteed under
Article 370 of the Indian constitution. He has relegated them to the dustbin
that contains the remains of Junagadh, Hyderabad and Goa.

Since 1948, the Jammu & Kashmir problem balanced like an inverted pyramid,
resting on UN Resolution No. 47 of 1948, which provided that the “United Nations
would conduct a free and impartial plebiscite” in the disputed territory. That
resolution was adopted paragraph by paragraph, not as a complete resolution — an
ominous portent for a state that would itself be dismembered piece by piece. This
international commitment underpinned Pakistan’s persistent demand for a
plebiscite.

As any plebiscite would apply to the whole of the former state of Jammu &
Kashmir, it is useful to remember what that territory in 1947 comprised: “the
valley of Kashmir, Jammu, Ladakh, Baltistan, Mirpur, Poonch, Muzaffarabad,
Gilgit, Nagar, Hunza and smaller kingdoms and hill states.” Today, Jammu,
Kashmir and Ladakh are in Indian custody and control, while much of the rest is
within Pakistan, except for Aksai-Chin which Pakistan handed over to China in
1962.

India’s action in altering the status quo of Jammu & Kashmir has implications
which go beyond the illegal brutality of the act itself. It is a unilateral abrogation of
the Shimla Agreement of 1972 and the Lahore Declaration of 1999, both of which
have bound India and Pakistan to this commitment: “Pending the final settlement
of any of the problems between the two countries, neither side shall unilaterally
alter the situation and both shall prevent the organisation, assistance or
encouragement of any acts detrimental to the maintenance of peaceful and
harmonious relations.” In addition, both signatories “resolved to settle their
differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations or by any other
peaceful means mutually agreed upon between them”.

India’s action is a unilateral abrogation of the Shimla accord.

When signing the Shimla Agreement in 1972, Mr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto justified
these clauses to himself because he thought he had bound India to direct bilateral
negotiations. Mrs Gandhi agreed to the clauses because, having removed the
United Nations fly out of the ointment, she had no intention of holding bilateral
discussions with Pakistan over Jammu & Kashmir — ever.

Mr Bhutto’s detractors suspected that he had a ‘secret understanding’ with Mrs

Indira Gandhi. Her principal secretary P.N. Dhar who was with them at Shimla,
recalled: “Bhutto not only agreed to a change in the ceasefire line into a line of
control, for which he had earlier proposed the term ‘the line of peace’, but also
agreed that the line would be gradually endowed with ‘the characteristics of an
international border’.”

In his time, president Musharraf authorised his principal secretary Tariq Aziz to
hold confidential negotiations on Jammu & Kashmir with Mr Satinder Lambah
(former prime minister Manmohan Singh’s private envoy). Lambah later revealed,
after their abortion, that Pakistan had agreed not to pursue its case before the
United Nations. In exchange, India “agreed to the reduction of military troops, not
paramilitary, but that was subject to Pakistan ensuring an end to hostilities,
violence and terrorism. That was a major prerequisite”.

All that is now history. Mr Amit Shah as chairperson of the BJP delivered the 2019
election to Mr Modi. As his home minister, he has fed a majority Muslim region to
satisfy India’s Hindutva’s appetite.

How does this change in the constitutional status of Jammu & Kashmir affect
Pakistan? Its only legal recourse is for it to return to the flaccid arms of the United
Nations. The Foreign Office will unleash a diplomatic blitzkrieg in foreign capitals
(as it does after every Indian infraction), with the OIC, the EU, and anyone else
who will listen. However, Afghanistan, the Iran crisis, Yemen, and Brexit are of
more immediate concern to the international community than a 70-year old
regional issue that has achieved a conclusion, however illegally delivered.

Mr Shah, like Hitler in his Mein Kampf, has never disguised his religious
intolerance. Mr Shah used the anti-Pakistan card to coalesce India before the 2019
elections. For him, Kashmir was a residual Muslim canker, which needed swift
excision. He is a butcher to Vallabhbhai Patel’s surgeon who, as ‘The Iron Man of
India’ in 1947, ‘persuaded’ Indian states to integrate into the Indian Union.

The avowed aim of Messrs Modi and Shah is not Akhand Bharat. It is a saffronised
India, a Hindutva hegemony. Shah will support Modi for one or perhaps two more
terms to complete this BJP/RSS agenda, after which he will take over as prime
minister. He can expect no opposition from Congress. It has already committed
suicide.

Pakistan should now prepare itself for at least 15 abrasive years of Indian hostility.

Beyond Modi’s foul stroke

I.A. RehmanUpdated August 08, 2019
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I.A. Rehman
NARENDRA Modi has carried out the biggest upheaval in independent
India’s history and looks likely to get away with it, in the short run at least.
And Pakistan has received a challenge that it will find hard to meet if it
remains stuck in its traditional brief on Kashmir.

The implications of the Modi government’s action are grave by any standard. By
beginning the end of the special status of its part of Jammu & Kashmir under
Article 370 of the Indian constitution, it has repudiated the solemn compact made
with the people of Jammu & Kashmir at the time of the state’s questionable
accession to India.

It has also repudiated the pledge Jawaharlal Nehru had made in 1952 that the
constitution of India would not be extended to the India-held Kashmir against the
will of its people. What he had said is worth recalling:

“I say with all respect to our Constitution that it just does not matter what your
Constitution says; if the people of Jammu & Kashmir do not want it, it will not go
there. Because what is the alternative? The alternative is compulsion and
coercion. ... I say with all deference to this Parliament ... the decision will be made
in the hearts and minds of the men and women of Kashmir; neither in this
Parliament, nor in the United Nations, nor by anybody else.”

Pakistan must not allow Modi’s excesses to divert it from its

goal of eventually achieving peace in South Asia.
The Modi government has belittled India by imposing its fiat on the Kashmiri
people after losing its battle in their hearts and minds. It has not only dealt a
grievous blow to India’s quest for a secular order, it has also pushed the polity
further away from its democratic pretensions.

Above all, the region has been pushed perilously close to an armed conflict.

Modi has been able to attempt all this because he considers himself, with
considerable justification, to be in an impregnable position. He has led the BJP to
an unprecedented victory in the latest general election. The opposition parties are
scattered and demoralised. A large part of the population is still under the spell of
the revanchist theory of Hindutva, as evidenced by ordinary Indians’ murderous
attacks on fellow citizens for gao rakhsha. Amit Shah’s bill has been adopted by
the Rajya Sabha where the BJP does not have a majority, and also by the Lok
Sabha. And the international community does not seem to be ready to create
problems for the Indian government beyond making vacuous remarks.

However, the Modi government has taken grave risks and the rosy picture
described above could change.

The Kashmiri people’s struggle is unlikely to be suppressed. It may lose steam

now and then, only to resurge when another Burhan Wani arrives. The attack on
Kashmir’s autonomy should change the nature of the resistance by replacing
Muslim separatism with Kashmiri people’s movement for national liberation, a
struggle that has its roots in Habba Khatoon’s defiance of Emperor Akbar in the
16th century.

India’s economy has self-generating capacity to a considerable extent, but the

country depends on foreign capital, whose availability cannot be taken for granted,
for maintaining high growth rates. Any economic setback will erode the regime’s
political base.

Further, it will be wrong to presume that the secular, democratic and even the left
elements in Indian society have been routed forever. They will survive and give
battle to the BJP because, apart from anything else, they are in the mainstream of
humankind’s march towards democracy and justice, while religious fanatics have
little to offer to the coming generations.

Where do all these developments in India leave Pakistan?

One hopes the present phase of unprofitable wailing and desperate calls on half-
friends will soon be over and Pakistan will settle down to a long-term response to
the Modi designs to shape the destiny of the Kashmiri people.

That Pakistan is in no position to intervene directly is quite clear. It must also deal
with Indian provocations in a manner that open hostilities are avoided. While it
must offer its moral and diplomatic support to the Kashmiri people at all possible
forums and reserve its right to repel aggression, it should trim its expectations of
meaningful support from the Muslim countries. In fact, Pakistan should accept the
transformation of the Kashmiri people’s struggle into a movement for national
redemption.

Besides, Islamabad should critically assess the value of the support friendly
countries are offering. This applies specifically to Mr Trump’s offer of mediation
on Kashmir. The question whether Trump invited Prime Minister Imran Khan to
Washington after getting wind of Modi’s plans to scrap Article 370 is quite valid.
A correct answer will help in understanding whether Trump offered mediation in
the context of the original Kashmir dispute, or in the context of the present uprising
in Kashmir, or in the post-Aug 5 context. In any case, it would be naive to expect
that Trump will ignore his hard-earned openings into the Indian market for the sake
of Pakistan, however keen for the latter’s help in Afghanistan he might be.

There is a danger that New Delhi’s decision about Kashmir will give a boost to the
hate-India fundamentalists in Pakistan. This should not be allowed to happen, for
this will strengthen the Hindutva following and adversely affect the Indian
democratic forces’ struggle to regain their lost ground. Whatever views Pakistan
may have had about India’s secular credentials, a secular, democratic India will
remain Pakistan’s best bet. Pakistan must not allow the Modi government’s
excesses to divert it from its goal of eventually achieving peace and harmony
across South Asia.

Meanwhile, Pakistan must concentrate on acquiring economic strength, making the

polity truly democratic, confining religion to the private lives of the faithful, and
guaranteeing justice for all. Success on these fronts alone will enable Pakistan to
extend succour to the incredibly brave people of Kashmir.

Hegemony unhinged
Aasim Sajjad AkhtarUpdated August 09, 2019
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The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

NARENDRA Modi’s BJP government has sent the subcontinent spiralling
towards a new and potentially unprecedented crisis. The already subjugated
people of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh, currently in the throes of a complete
communication blackout, face a fresh assault on their basic freedoms,
including their very right to life. Pakistan-India relations have already taken a
hit with Islamabad’s decision to withdraw its high commissioner in Delhi. And
all this so soon after the country’s respective airspaces were reopened
following months of eyeballing.

Exclamations aside, it is not at all surprising that the Modi regime has upped the
ante in what has been Indian democracy’s longest-festering sore. His recent
landslide victory in the general election reinforced his mandate to transform India
into a Hindu majoritarian state. Donald Trump then added further fuel to the fire by
claiming that Modi had asked him to mediate with Pakistan on the Kashmir issue.
Hyper-nationalists were demanding a response, and in the revocation of Article
370, they got what they wanted.

The question, as ever, is how far all of this will go. We appear to have entered an
era in world affairs in which nationalist posturing is trumping the imperative of
economic growth and expansion; in which the logic of capital — which has been
virtually unimpeded in recent decades — is now being thwarted by an insular
right-wing identity politics. Or is it?

Modi embodies these contradictory pulls in extremely demonstrative ways. He rose

to prominence as chief minister of Gujarat by luring waves of foreign direct
investment into the state, propelling it to the highest growth rates in India. The
Gujarat development model dovetailed perfectly with neo-liberal ideology in
which free entry and exit of capital keeps investors happy, while a burgeoning
urban middle class is afforded cheap credit to indulge in ostentatious consumption.

It is not surprising that the Modi regime has upped the ante.
It was also as chief minister, Gujarat, that Modi presided over one of modern
India’s most shameful episodes in 2002. Organised Hindu mobs ransacked
Muslim-majority neighbourhoods, killing thousands and maiming many more. The
BJP state government let it all happen, feigning ignorance. The whole episode in
fact bolstered Modi’s reputation as the man to restore mythical Hindu Raj across
India.

Modi rode this wave of support all the way to the prime minister’s house in Delhi.
During his first term in office, he remained loyal to the neo-liberal mantra amidst a
downturn in the global economy following the financial crisis of 2007-9. India’s
urban middle classes remained loyal to him despite the slowdown, but it was clear
in the lead-up to general elections earlier this year that Modi’s development
miracle narrative was insufficient to win him re-election. If neo-liberal growth has
a captive middle class gallery, then its fallouts are borne by the poor, and women
and minorities within the toiling classes most of all. And so Modi decided to play
the hyper-nationalist card, to offset the fallouts of neo-liberal economics by
appealing to Hindu majoritarian sentiment. It worked, earning Modi a bigger
mandate the second time around.

Read: Special status for occupied Kashmir 'fed terrorism', Modi says in TV

address

Donald Trump offers a similar tale. On the back of the financial crisis, and the
impoverishment of the white working class, he won the 2016 US presidential
election by promising to bring back the jobs, which of course American companies
had themselves outsourced to low-wage countries like China over the previous
decades. In essence, Trump played the economic card and made a commitment to
his white working class constituency to rein in the neo-liberals.

After coming to power, he did nothing of the sort. There has been no major shift in
economic policy, only attempts to renegotiate trade deals with China — which
have been more bark than bite. As the next US presidential cycle approaches,
Trump has abandoned the economic card that won him white working-class votes
in 2016, and is now relying completely on xenophobic populism to win him white
votes of all kinds. In other words, he is banking on a hyper-nationalist politics
winning him the day, as it did Modi in India.

The last time the world went the way of hyper-nationalism — which at best rides
on the economic miseries of the poor, and at worst, caters openly to the middle and
upper classes — was in the 1920s and 1930s and its primary beneficiaries were
Mussolini’s fascists and Hitler’s Nazis.

The world is of course a very different place today. But the BJP under Modi’s
leadership is capable of going very far to cement its hegemonic urban middle class
base. In Pakistan too it is this same class that is most supportive of the worst forms
of state nationalism. Perhaps it is time for our urban middle class to take the moral
high ground, to the benefit of not only Pakistan’s long-suffering toiling classes, but
also all of the region’s teeming masses. Now that would be a politics to celebrate.

Modi’s final solution

Ashraf Jehangir QaziAugust 10, 2019
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The writer is a former ambassador to the US, India and China and head of UN
missions in Iraq and Sudan.
INDIAN Prime Minister Narendra Modi says his actions in India-held
Kashmir will end “terrorism and separatism”.  Pakistan’s prime minister
calls this “changing the demographics”. This is ethnic cleansing, which if
applied to the majority of a population is tantamount to genocide. The
Supreme Court of India can nullify the Indian president’s proclamation
removing Article 370 from the Indian constitution. If it does, how will Modi
react? If it does not, what will be the reaction in IHK? The UN secretary
general has called for the restoration of the special status of IHK pending a
final settlement according to the UN Charter. UN resolutions zindabad!

Prime Minister Imran Khan has warned the world the Kashmir crisis could lead to
conventional war which could escalate to a level of conflict which “no one would
win”.  He said in such a situation he would respond like Tipu Sultan not Bahadur
Shah Zafar! Accordingly, Pakistan will “hope for the best and prepare for the
worst”. The Pakistan Army said “it will go to any length in support of the Kashmir
freedom struggle”. The National Security Council has taken a set of initial
measures downgrading diplomatic relations.

The Indian foreign minister has asked Pakistan to reconsider its decision to
downgrade and limit relations with India. The Pakistani foreign minister has said
Pakistan is willing to review its decision if India reconsiders changing the status of
IHK. Straws in the wind? Is the crisis moving towards escalation or de-escalation?
The next few days are critical.

Is the crisis moving towards escalation or de-escalation? The

next few days are critical.
According to the renowned author and human rights activist, Arundhati  Roy,
removal of Article 370 and the division of IHK violates the Indian constitution,
UNSC Resolution 122 which rejected the alleged accession of Kashmir to India,
the UN Charter and UN resolutions, the Shimla Agreement and the Lahore
Declaration, and thereby eliminates the LoC as a legal entity.

Experts estimate a nuclear war between India and Pakistan could eventually lead to
the death of nearly a quarter of the world’s population. The major powers will
never permit such a possibility. Neither India nor Pakistan has a first-strike nuclear
capability against each other. Whoever strikes first will not escape an equally
deadly retaliatory nuclear response.

The prime minister has to credibly convey his message to the world: he will bend
every effort to defuse the situation including attempting to engage with Modi to
avert the prospect of genocide in IHK. However, if the Indian prime minister
rebuffs him and remains implacably determined to physically eliminate Kashmiri
resistance and ‘separatism’, he will find Pakistan equally implacable in its resolve
to stop him. Accordingly, the international community needs to play its role.
This message would seek to counter Modi’s message to the people of the Valley
that beyond futile gestures, empty rhetoric and theatrical diplomacy, Pakistan will
inevitably abandon them to their fate once again, as it has for more than 70 years.

Many Pakistanis do in fact strongly believe that Pakistan must do all it can but it
cannot risk its own existence for Kashmiris even if they are threatened with ethnic
cleansing, mass murder and genocide. They insist Pakistan’s nuclear deterrence
capability must be exclusively aimed at deterring Indian aggression against
Pakistan, not possible or even likely Indian genocide against the people of IHK.

They hope the display of aggressive, hectic and high-profile diplomacy, vociferous
public protests, high-level statements of extreme resolve, the ratcheting up of
reversible tensions on the ground, international leaders urging or even demanding a
review of Indian policies, and a possible UNSG reference to the UNSC under
Article 99 of the UN Charter will suffice. They may well be right. All these
avenues must be systematically and thoroughly explored.

But given the resolve and resilience of the Kashmiri resistance which has lost all
fear of punishment, torture and death; the immediate and massive change of
attitude of erstwhile pro-India ministers and officials in the Valley; and the insane
historical hatred and political vengeance of Hindutva Nazis, ironically aided by
Israel, Modi may well have irreversibly embarked on a path towards a ‘final
solution’. A former Indian foreign secretary once told me “great powers cannot be
bound by laws and principles that apply to lesser nations” and “Kashmir is a test
case of India’s great power aspirations”.

A US delegation was recently in Islamabad to ensure Pakistan’s cooperation

regarding Afghanistan and to warn it that actions against banned outfits on
Pakistan or AJK are “key to exiting the FATF list”. The timing is brilliant. The
message is loud and clear: do not harbour illusions about the US supporting
Pakistan even in the event India perpetrates massive pogroms in Kashmir. Stuff
happens! The US may, however, try to calm India if Pakistan obliges it in
Afghanistan.

FATF is determined not just to keep Pakistan on the grey list but to respond to any
attempt to stop Indian atrocities in Kashmir with an immediate threat of placing it
on the black list with all its economic and stability consequences. The IMF has said
if Pakistan cannot get off the FATF grey list the flow of monies to Pakistan will be
affected.

In these wretched circumstances, the prime minister must do whatever it takes to

get off the FATF grey list as soon as possible without undermining the credibility
of his response to the situation in IHK. If Pakistan cannot deliver on its several
commitments to FATF it can have no national, foreign or even Kashmir policy.
Pakistan has to bat out the day on a very sticky wicket!
After all the ‘aggressive diplomacy’, inescapable questions remain: can Pakistan
stop potential genocide in IHK without the full backing of the international
community? Is such support likely? Is Pakistan ready to shoulder the inevitable
costs and sacrifices of credibly supporting the Kashmiri freedom struggle which
may become an existential struggle? Can a ‘soft state’ choose ‘hard options’ to
avoid calamitous outcomes? Can Pakistan tell the US there is no deal on
Afghanistan if it does not restrain India in Kashmir? Can our governing elites give
public and honest answers?

Hopefully, Modi has bitten off more than he can chew.

The Kashmir challenge

Muhammad Amir RanaAugust 11, 2019
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The writer is a security analyst.

YET another intifada is on the cards in India-held Kashmir (IHK), which
many believe would have a far-reaching impact on the geopolitical landscape
of the region. While the international community is still assessing the probable
responses by India and Pakistan, non-state actors are also closely monitoring
the situation and exploring the spaces to exploit.

The Indian revocation of the special status of occupied Jammu & Kashmir has shut
down almost all prospects for it to resolve the issue through dialogue, either with
the Kashmiri leadership or with Pakistan. One wonders if India did not have any
alternatives other than what it has already demonstrated in the form of strict
security measures, communication blackouts, and draconian administrative
measures to run the affairs of J&K.

The use of some counter-violent extremism, or CVE, terms like ‘reintegration’ and
‘mainstreaming’ by India’s policymakers and political circles suggest they
consider the entire IHK population to be radical. Apparently, India is missing the
mega blueprint to absorb the shocks of the measures it has taken to ‘fix’ the
Kashmir issue once and for all.

Obviously in the absence of such plans, an intifada would be blamed on Pakistan.

This would be an easy way out for India, but would come at a cost. Not prepared to
counter the Indian move to revoke the special status of IHK, Pakistan is also
confronted with a delicate challenge. However, an even more critical question for
Pakistan is how to respond to the emerging intifada.
The dynamics of the insurgency in India-held Kashmir will be
different this time.
The new intifada will have different characteristics from earlier movements. While
it will mainly comprise nonviolent political expression, violent emotions will also
be there. Emotions are running equally high amongst pro-independent, pro-
Pakistan and ultra-radical segments of the resistance movements in occupied
Kashmir. They can resort to violent actions separately or form an alliance to
increase the impact of the intifada.

It is not certain how many members of the banned Jaish-e-Mohammad and

Lashkar-e-Taiba are present in IHK and what the level of their operational capacity
is. But groups like Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, an affiliate of Al Qaeda in the Indian
Subcontinent, are gradually making inroads into the ultra-radical militant
movements in Kashmir. The AGH is also against Pakistan. The group is trying to
convince other armed groups to form an independent jihad alliance against India.
Recently, Al Qaeda head Ayman al-Zawahiri had endorsed this idea. In this
context, Kashmir-based armed groups like Hizbul Mujahideen will also be under
intense pressure to reorganise their operational structures.

These groups can trigger a long-term resistance movement in IHK. Pakistan is

morally and politically bound to support the Kashmiris. However, supporting the
resistance movement will have serious consequences for Pakistan. The poor state
of Pakistan’s economy, internal political crises and struggling diplomacy are
factors which will limit active support to the resistance movement in IHK.

The IMF and FATF swords are hovering over the country’s economy. The world at
large, including friends and foes of Pakistan, are least receptive to violent
resistance movements. India knows this, and its media and opinion makers are
highlighting this point continuously. India has chosen the best time for revoking
the IHK special status when Pakistan is facing multiple challenges and trying to
regain its geopolitical importance through facilitating the peace process in
Afghanistan.

Pakistan has remained a scapegoat for US failures in Afghanistan. Similarly, India

has always blamed Pakistan for its own failures in IHK. But the situation is
different now, and it could be difficult to keep the escalation of tension at the LoC
and Working Boundary to manageable levels.

Meanwhile, the dynamics of the insurgency in Kashmir will be different this time,
where Pakistan will not be in a position to influence the resistance movement. As a
result, Pakistan-India tensions could at anytime turn into conventional warfare;
Prime Minister Imran Khan has already indicated this in his parliamentary speech.
How can Pakistan avoid this situation?
Pakistani and Indian diplomatic confrontation has remained confined to two
unrelated domains: Pakistan has focused on internationalising the Kashmir issue,
while India exploits the militancy aspect. While India has played its cards
effectively during the last several years, Pakistan is just on its way to regaining its
diplomatic strength, not only through facilitating the Afghan peace process but also
by acting against all shades of militant groups. There are apprehensions of a
turnaround, although it seems complicated this time because of all the factors
mentioned.

The leaders of sectarian and militant groups are trying to establish their relevance
in the changing situation. Some audio, video and text messages are circulating in
social media groups in which they are declaring their support for the Kashmir
cause. They have not yet received a response from the state and media. Even the
reactivation of forums like the Difa-i-Pakistan Council is not apparent; this was an
alliance of small radical religious and political parties that could bring the people
to the streets on such critical regional issues.

Pakistan’s changed approach can become its strength. The international

community can see that despite the presence of extremist groups in the country and
an emotionally charged environment, Pakistan has not allowed the radicals to
hijack the issue and create spaces for themselves. This approach will help Pakistan
win the trust of the international community and internationalise the Kashmir
issue.

India will certainly have to face the consequences of the emerging intifada. But
Pakistan should evolve a political and diplomatic strategy to stop India from
holding it responsible for the uprising, and to prevent Delhi from resorting to
‘infiltration’ and ‘terrorism’ mantras to discredit the intifada. It will not be an easy
task as India has already made inroads and gained support among allies of Pakistan
over the last decade. The ‘militancy’ card has caused considerable damage to
Pakistan’s economy and diplomacy, but India has now provided it with an
opportunity to reverse the process.

It is an opportunity and demands unity from all segments of society, and from the
political and security leaderships. It is time to put political vendettas aside and
concentrate on the Kashmir cause. A protracted political crisis will only spoil the
opportunity.

The writer is a security analyst.

A ‘new’ order
Aqdas AfzalAugust 11, 2019
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The writer teaches economics and public policy at Habib University, Karachi.
SEVENTY-FIVE years ago, delegates from the victorious nations of the
Second World War met in Bretton Woods to design a new economic order.
This economic order, or system, was to be governed by two new institutions:
the IMF and the World Bank.

Few people know that the US delegation led by Harry Dexter White muscled out
competing ideas for the new system that sought to assign checks on rich lending
countries. Dexter’s team stalled British efforts to set up an international clearing
bank for automatically reducing borrower countries’ deficits. The US secured a
third of all votes, guaranteeing itself the power to veto any proposal as well. Some
say this new economic order was designed to ensure America’s geopolitical
dominance.

The Bretton Woods’ delegates were ardent proponents of free trade. Free trade’s
supposed positive influence was not new thinking. Even in the early 19th century,
Adam Smith and David Ricardo extolled the virtues of free trade and advised
nations to improve their ‘comparative advantage’. Thus, free trade between nations
became one of the pillars of the new economic order.

Free trade has been successful in lifting millions out of poverty. The problem is
that these gains are concentrated in only a few nations. For others like Pakistan,
free trade has led to persistent current account deficits and plummeting exchange
rates. The primary reason why such nations have not been able to benefit from the
economic order is the inability to produce high-value exports. Specifically,
Pakistan’s economy has not been able to make the transition from agriculture to
even light manufacturing. Why has Pakistan failed?

Free trade gains are concentrated in only a few nations.

Standard trade and growth theories that assume that countries can always improve
their comparative advantage are of little help. Had that been the case, Pakistan
would have been able to diversify and increase the total value of its exports; 21 per
cent of its export earnings would not come from agriculture.

‘Product-space’ scholars like Ricardo Hausmann offer a more plausible

explanation by showing there is nothing automatic about high-value exports. They
argue that a country’s export sector is connected in such a way that a country
cannot automatically move from having a comparative advantage in textiles to
having one in machinery, chemicals or artificial intelligence, ie what a nation
exports today largely determines what it will export 10 years later unless policies
encourage economies towards high-value sectors.
Given that the present economic order is based on free trade and the fact that
Pakistan has been unable to develop comparative advantage in high-value exports,
what options are available for policymakers?

Policymakers can decide to leave the free trade economic order and impose a
stringent import control regime while implementing import-substitution-
industrialisation (ISI). Many Latin American states tried ISI with sub-par results as
inward-oriented growth is costly in a globalised world — intermediate goods,
foreign technology, foreign savings and ideas are not available locally.

Policymakers can also decide to go the East Asian ‘Tigers’ route. East Asian
countries achieved exponential economic growth rates by improving their
comparative advantage in high-value exports within the free trade economic order
through developing good policies and effective implementation. It should be
mentioned that there was nothing automatic in this process as the government
played a key role — picking ‘winners’, credit allocation, promotion of industrial
investment, encouraging firms to upgrade technology, etc.

However, the best way forward for Pakistan is a combination of both ISI and
export-oriented industrialisation policies. It should play within the free trade arena
to earn foreign exchange but then channel heavy investment to import substitution
that will actually improve its comparative advantage. At the same time,
policymakers need to pick sectors like IT and AI and make winners out of them by
establishing world-class universities and business incubators, which will train the
next generation of Pakistani technology workers and entrepreneurs. Compared to
commodities, technology-based exports have tremendous potential as they earn
more foreign exchange and increase in demand as incomes in our trading partners
rise.

The Bretton Woods system just turned 75. Though free trade has been a pillar of
this system, it has not benefited everyone since nations like Pakistan have failed to
produce high-value exports. In order to gain from free trade, Pakistan’s economy
needs a structural shift to produce high-value exports. To do so, policymakers need
to design policies that will tangibly assist in improving its comparative advantage.
With the rise of African economies, the window to improve Pakistan’s
comparative advantage may be closing sooner than we think. The time to act is
now.