The World of Pakistan in 2021
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada

 

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or a soothsayer to pronounce that the year 2020, in the words of Queen Elizabeth in 1997, the year of Princess Dina’s death, was a ‘horrible year.’ And it may not be an exaggeration to add that it was an annushorribilisfor the whole world, without any exception.

Pakistan, strictly in the context of Covid-19, was lucky to have dodged the pandemic’s bullet with far fewer casualties than its next-door neighbour India where the pandemic has taken a horrible toll of lives. Pakistan’s remarkable feat has been acknowledged universally, not only by WHO but also by those Western institutions which are, often, niggardly in giving Pakistan credit of any kind.

On the domestic political front, too, Imran Khan’s government seems to have got off lightly vis-à-vis those traditional politicians—mostly spent-bullets—and scions of Pakistan’s political dynasts who have been tilting at all windmills to dislodge IK from power. IK played his cards well by letting his opponents and foes dig themselves into holes and getting marooned there. It was ingenious to have given his purblind detractors a free pass to hold public rallies to cry themselves hoarse against him.

But in the process of pouring out their bile against IK, seasoned agitators, like MaulanaFazal-ur-Rehman, and political upstarts, like Maryam Nawaz and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, only exposed their utter disregard of people’s safety and well-being in the midst of a pandemic. These anti-IK rallies in major cities of Pakistan left no doubt in the mind of a common man that self-interest—to save the money looted by these dynasts from Pakistan and stashed abroad—was the sole motivation for agitation. These foes of IK ended up doing his work of exposing these robber-barons. It was a classical example of cutting one’s nose to spite an adversary.

How would a well-wisher of IK wish, desperately, that his performance in governance could have matched this outstanding success against his petty-minded and puny political enemies.

IK’s governance, and his overall performance as a leader on whom his followers pinned so much hope, was at best spotty and half-hearted. Granted that IK inherited a plate full of problemswhen he ascended to power two-and-a-half years ago. On top of it, Covid-19, landed on his door uninvited and taxing his government’s abilities to the hilt, besides taking his eye off other major, pressing, problems.

Being charitable, in the context of governance, one should allow him room that things haven’t turned out well even for those economies, the world over, which were healthy and robust. So, Pakistan, with a sick and moribund economy, couldn’t have escaped the blight in the jaws of the pandemic. However, where IK’s lack of success is too conspicuous to ignore is his failure to give a firm direction to the country, as far as economic performance is concerned. Pakistan’s perennial problems—paucity of hard currency, the burden of foreign debt, poor industrial output, appalling shortages in power production and gas et al. —have remained as challenging on IK’s watch as before. Besides, the most damning indictment against IK is his government’s failure to arrest runaway inflation and spiralling cost of living. This is denting his erstwhile popularity and approval rating with the people—something he should ill-afford to ignore in times ahead.

His strategy of giving his political rivals a long rope has served IK well, and there should be no compulsion on him to deviate from this course in 2021. However, a course-correction in his economic performance should be his priority number one.

Up until now, he has gotten away with this alibi of blaming the robbing regimes of his predecessors—Nawaz and Zardari—for the bleeding of the economy. However, half way down his five-year term in office, it may no longer work. It will be his call, from now on, and his responsibility to fix the economy. IK’s future at the helm of Pakistan will be made or marred by his economic performance. He shouldn’t expect a hard-pressed people to give him a free pass on it; they will be ready to call any further bluff of his on economy.

The world around Pakistan’s landmass will pose no lesser a challenge to test IK’s acumen of a leader. Challenges aplenty abound all around, beckoning Pakistan to respond.

India will remain a non-starter, as much in 2021 as it has been in the years since Modi’s communal politics put India under its chokehold. No matter how hard Pakistan may try to engage India into a dialogue, Modi isn’t going to resile from his staunchly anti-Pakistan platform of extreme hatred of Pakistan and unbridled hostility to it.

This doesn’t mean Pakistan should abandon its policy of calling out Modi’s bluff on Indian-Occupied Kashmir (IOK). IK must make it a plank of his foreign policy to constantly keep its focus on drawing the world’s attention to Indian atrocities in IOK against its Muslim-majority population. Much as the world seems to have given up all moral pretensions, Pakistan shouldn’t surrender the cause of oppressed Kashmiris of IOK to the apathy and insouciance of a morally-bereft and expediency-driven world.

The year 2020 witnessed a sharp upturn in Pakistan’s traditional, close, relations with Saudi Arabia and oil-rich Gulf states, some of whom have opted in favour of openly seeking out Israel’s Zionist regime. This has put a strain on our customarily warm and cordial relations with these states. Saudi Arabia, under a maverick and stridently assertive Crown Prince, Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS), is taxing Pakistan’s patience on two fronts: it wants Pakistan to recognise the Zionist entity while, simultaneously, putting heat on Pakistan to distance itself from Iran.

All of Imran Khan’s limited experience in handling the ticklish foreign relations of Pakistan is going to be tested to the hilt in dealing with these Arab brethren of ours in the upcoming year and times beyond. These rulers calling the shots in KSA and UAE, for instance, aren’t their own masters. Their masters and mentors, in turn, are a highly crafty lot and masters in the arcane game of exploiting and using puppets to their utmost advantage. Pakistan has long been in their cross-hairs. They, now, have Pakistan’s erstwhile Arab allies and ‘brothers’ dangling at the end of their stick. They will apply all the crude pressure in the world, through these newly-acquired puppets, on Pakistan to bend to their whims and diktats. They will try putting IK’s feet to fire, using these proxies. MBS recalling his three- billion- dollar loan to Pakistan by virtually putting a gun to IK’s head may just be a paradigm of things to come. IK will be naïve to expect any mercy from his heartless Gulf Arab friends. To the contrary, he should be prepared to tackle more of arm twisting from them.

Pakistan’s multi-faceted relations with its most trustworthy friend, China, will be simultaneously tested in the process of these shifting alignments in its relations with the Gulf States. Some of IK’s closest colleagues and advisers have been known to have questioned the benefits of CPEC, at the bedrock, lately, of China-Pakistan strategic economic co-operation. IK ought to understand that there’s no other country in the world whose long-term economic and geo-political interests are so closely intertwined with Pakistan as China’s. China has, on innumerable occasions, given sterling proof of it that it’s a friend indeed of Pakistan by rushing to its help in times of need. IK will be best served by keeping his doubting Cassandras in check on CPEC.

Afghanistan will go on testing Pakistan in more ways than one. The Afghan conundrum stays right at the epicenter of Pakistan’s foreign policy matrix. The dialogue between the Taliban and the puppet Kabul regime of Ashraf Ghani is dragging on in Doha, Qatar, but going nowhere. Its denouement will depend, in large measure, on the incoming Biden administration’s take on the Afghan imbroglio. Donald Trump, among other things, will be bequeathing this hot potato to his Democratic successor. How Biden deals with it is hard to speculate at this stage.

However, IK should know—and formulate his initiative on dealing with the upcoming Biden administration in the Afghan context—that much as some wish to cut Pakistan out of a final deal on Afghanistan, nothing will succeed without Pakistan. Afghanistan is Pakistan’s backyard and no amount of machination or monkeying by Modi and his anarchist regime could ever change this fundamental reality or knock Pakistan off its pivotal role in Afghanistan. The year 2021 is going to be the catalyst of a new dawn in Afghanistan. Pakistan will have a crucial role to play in it.

Imran Khan stands at a critical point in his stint as PM and self-proclaimed pioneer of a ‘New Pakistan.’ He’s already half-way done in his journey of five years. So far, his score card may have more negative points than positive. He should have all his energies and faculties focused in reversing the trend in the next-half of his stint. He’s not going to get a new deck of cards to play with, unless he calls for fresh elections. So, he must be content on shuffling the cards he has with refreshed determination and resolve. Pakistan will be holding its breath to see what comes out of it. - K_K_ghori@ hotmail.com

(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)