Nawaz Sharif’s No-Risk Indian Gambit
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
Nawaz Sharif & Co. has just left New York at the conclusion of a week-long yatra in the backdrop of the UN General Assembly’s annual get-together that routinely draws heavyweights of the global arena.
There was nothing unusual as far as the grand safari’s logic was concerned. It’s engraved on the ‘must-do’ list of a Pakistani leader to show himself up at the GA’s annual conclave. That’s what most world leaders do, au rigueur, to let all and sundry know they belong to the grand league of movers-and-shakers.
However, for a Pakistani leader—especially one presumed to have secured a categorical, if not ‘heavy,’ mandate at the national polls—it’s regarded a totem of his importance to travel to New York in style. In Pakistani parlance that translates as in-the-company-of dozens-if-not-scores-of factotums and hangers-on. So, there, too, it wasn’t unusual for NS descending on Manhattan with a large retinue of minions. After all, it adds gravitas to public appearances if a leader struts on the UN stage accompanied by choc-full of courtesans.
What does it matter that such royal regalia and trappings of a week-long sojourn in upscale Manhattan’s world-class hotels would be hard to justify against a paltry 20-minute GA address. That, too, from a country mired up to its eye-balls in economic morass of epic proportions, and with its worthless currency in a free-fall, vis-à-vis the dollar and other hard currencies.
But NS’ week-long sojourn, too, had a perfect and plausible justification. Manmohan Singh wasn’t available for a one-on-one until September 29. So NS had no choice but to prolong his own stay until that meeting materialised. The confab with Manmohan had become the icing on the cake for the NY yatra once it became unambiguously certain that President Obama wouldn’t be receiving him for an audience. Had that come through, that really would have been the icing on the cake. Nothing matters more for a Pakistani leader—of any stripes or color—than a tete-a-tete with the White House supremo.
Nawaz has, undoubtedly, set his sights on mending fences with India as a major initiative of his third term in power. He may see poetic justice in it. He was hounded out of power by a Bonapartist General Musharraf largely because Nawaz had embarked—a few months earlier—on his ‘bus-diplomacy’ with his then Indian opposite-number, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. In fitness of things, therefore, NS sees his overtures to Manmohan as a continuum of his old policy. He’s, in a sense, picking up the thread from the point where it was snatched out of his hands by a power-grabbing and lustful Musharraf.
Manmohan had initially reciprocated to Nawaz’ gambit with a heartening and encouraging warmth. Sending his special emissary to Lahore to congratulate NS on his electoral victory—quick on its heels—was Manmohan’s way to assure NS that the two were almost on the same page in their desire to bury the bitter past and turn a new leaf in their countries’ relations.
But while NS may still exude vigour and grim determination to pursue his cherished goal of India-Pakistan détente, Manmohan seems to be running out of steam.
The Indians—never at a loss to put all the blame of loss of momentum exclusively on Pakistan—are, as usual pointing the finger at Islamabad. They are beefing up their brief against Pakistan on its government’s alleged complicity in the recent violations of the 2003 Line of Control (LOC) between the two neighbours in disputed Jammu and Kashmir. These were no ordinary violations; they drew some blood, too, more on the Indian side than Pakistan’s. That makes it so much easier for the self-righteous Indians to blame Pakistan for failing to check the so-called ‘export-of-terror’ across the LOC from the Pakistan side.
Manmohan Singh kept himself close to this you-are-the-culprit-Pakistan script in his GA address and called Pakistan “the epicenter” of terrorism in the region. It wasn’t an ordinary accusation. It was huge, and it was explicit. It could have easily been the catalyst to unnerve NS and forced him out of the planned meeting with Manmohan.
But the fact that NS remained unruffled by Manmohan’s no-holds-barred and frontal salvo against Pakistan underlines the keenness of his desire to forge ahead on his peace initiative. He deserves to be given full credit for keeping his nerves cool and not letting raw sentimentality cause a detour in his march to erect a new milestone of peace with India. Patience is always a virtue and becomes a true blessing when deployed to pierce the resistance and reluctance of an obdurate party that India is in the prevailing ground reality.
It’s an interesting—if also curious—trading of places between the leaders of India and Pakistan that can be seen in limelight at this juncture of their bilateral relations.
Manmohan Singh, in office for almost a full decade, is now as good as a lame-duck leader. India is close to entering the home stretch of general elections, due next spring. The tidings aren’t good for Manmohan or the coalition he has been leading the past five years. Political pundits don’t give it even a reasonable chance of getting past the finish line as victor once again. BJP, its main rival and challenger is on a roll and is expected to eliminate the current clap-trap of power in Delhi.
So, Manmohan doesn’t have much incentive to gamble on mended relations with Pakistan with fewer chips in his hand. He’s weak and vulnerable already and would be, understandably, chary to be seen as making concessions to Pakistan; and that, too, a Pakistan which has been routinely demonised in the Indian news media as a terrorist-friendly haven an a cockpit of intrigues and conspiracies against India.
Manmohan’s annoying reiteration of Kashmir being an “integral part” of India in his GA speech was nothing but pandering to the hawks back home in India on an issue that instantly drums up raw emotions on both sides of the Divide.
Of course NS is no novice to the game and can understand that his opposite number is far from being a free agent in NS’ own class. That’s the role reversal in the India-Pakistan equation referred to above.
For a change that must delight every pundit on India-Pakistan equation, Nawaz is his own master and supremely confident in matters of foreign policy. Indians might still suspect that he has to watch his flanks and look across his shoulder at the king-maker Pakistani military establishment—the theme was repeated by Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid of India in his CNN interview recorded after the Nawaz-Manmohan meeting—when it comes to relations with India. But that’s a false allegation. The establishment Indian media may go on parroting this old line, but the Pakistan military brass is no longer an obstacle to mending fences with India.
It may even surprise some Pakistanis that the military and NS are on the same page on relations with India. NS is holding a strong hand, also on the basis of the fact that the extended term in office of General Kayani is coming to an end, and it’s highly unlikely that he’d get another lease in office. Nawaz is in a unique position to shuffle the deck of cards and have generals of his choice and taste in key positions. He could never have dreamed that he’d be in a position of such strength so early in his third term in power.
By all indications, therefore, NS has little or nothing to lose by soldering on, vis-à-vis India despite obvious constraints of Manmohan and limitations foreshadowed by circumstances. For him it’s a win-win situation. He would lose nothing if he runs out of a partner on the Indian side. There would be no deficit in his brief if—a few months down the road—he has a Hawkish Narendra Modi to deal with. The odium for failure to build on the momentum that the latest meeting between NS and Manmohan in New York would be, squarely, on Modi or whoever succeeds Manmohan. There would be no burden crushing down on Nawaz.
It was, perhaps, this awareness and understanding that propelled Nawaz to raise the Jammu and Kashmir issue in his GA address that clearly got the Indian tails up. They couldn’t have expected that Nawaz—portrayed in the Indian media as desperate for his meeting with Manmohan—would have the gall to dust up an issue that those in power in Islamabad before him had deliberately left on the back burner.
The breakfast meeting on September 29 was never, from the start, expected to achieve much and lived up to its script. It was all a goody-goody media photo-op, and just that. The body language, on both sides, didn’t emit much warmth or exuberance, either. But mutual expression of good intent for the present and pious intent for peace in the future was still some accomplishment of sorts.
Trust deficit on both sides is huge. It has accretion of decades on it. So only the naïve would entertain wishful ideas for a rush job to melt the glacier-thick ice between the two South Asian neighbours, which can’t seem to shrug off the deadly habit of taking the best of intent with a pinch of salt. And yet there is no reason to stop dreaming for a new dawn breaking on the horizon. Hope is a great equaliser.
Tail Piece: What’s all this nonsense that a prominent television anchor of Pakistan has tried to stick on NS. Nawaz had hosted two television anchors—one each from India and Pakistan—at breakfast, exclusively, before his meeting with Manmohan. In the course of it, he tried to make light of Manmohan Singh’s complaint to Obama about Pakistan being allegedly soft on terrorist groups operating from its soil. Nawaz, not known for his sense of humour likened Manmohan’s save-me-uncle grouse to a village woman spoiling for a fight. The Pakistani anchor tried to put a mischievous spin on NS’ innocuous remark. To his relief, it was the Indian anchor—the well-known Barkha Dutt of NDTV—who dismissed it as an off-the-cuff banter of no consequence. But the episode still has a lesson for the Pakistanis: they must watch out for this new, and impetuous, breed of tele-journalists and anchors who think they have earned the right to doctor public opinion in the direction they want.
(The writer is a former ambassador and career diplomat)
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