Nawaz in Washington—What Did He Achieve?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada

 

For a Pakistani leader of any stripe, in uniform or in civvies, an official invitation to the White House is the apogee of his career. An Oval Office meeting with the POTUS is like the ultimate jewel in his crown. Blessings from the most powerful man in the world bestow on him recognition and legitimacy like no other.

No wonder Mian Nawaz Sharif—three time lucky at the head of Pakistan—descended on Washington last week in the regalia of a surrogate coming to the portals of the ‘Great One’ in obeisance to be honored as a trusted minion. His entourage was befitting to a fault to it, leaving little to imagination. Whoever matters in his ‘kitchen cabinet’ was right there: in tow behind him.

Of course Mian Sahib can never be caught short on protocol: there was his redoubtable daughter, Maryam Nawaz, filling in for her ailing mother as the ‘First Daughter.’ And how could the ‘first daughter’ leave behind her own daughters? So they were there too, making up the First Family of Pakistan in as much splendor as they could muster.

But wait a minute. What has become of poor Captain Safdar, Maryam Nawaz’ hubby whose name used to be appended to her name until not too long ago? He seems to have gone into hiding—or forced oblivion—apparently ‘out of necessity’, isn’t it?

If Nawaz Sharif could be forced into exile, out-of-necessity, why can’t he force his own son-in-law into social wilderness, out-of-necessity?

A well-informed and well-meaning friend of mine had something best encapsulating the present situation to say, on the subject of the appendage of Safdar dropping from Maryam’s name. The law of necessity, so famous in the context of our condescending and benign top judiciary, has apparently found its adherents in the feudal culture of Pakistani politics too. Zardari had no shame in appending the name of ‘Bhutto’ to his own son, Bilawal, on the heels of Benazir Bhutto’s murder. So why should Nawaz be shy of telling his daughter to drop her married name, and revert to her maiden name, out-of-necessity?

Nawaz, indeed, isn’t the first Pakistani leader to have his daughter standing in for First Lady. Ayub Khan had his daughter in that role as long as he was at the helm of Pakistan because his wife never came out in public. But Nasim Aurangzeb remained Nasim Aurangzeb; never became Nasim Ayub. And her gregarious and elegant beau, MIan Gul Aurangzeb, of Swat, never faded from the active scene.

Maryam Nawaz looks closer to the mold of Indira Gandhi, Pundit Nehru’s elegant and prodigiously talented daughter, who stood in for her late mother all through Punditji’s years as PM. Nobody heard of Firoz Gandhi, her husband banished into obscurity. But at least Indira retained his family name, Gandhi, and never adopted her father’s name.

Sorry for this inadvertent digression. Let’s get back to Nawaz’ mission in Washington.

Let’s also forgive Nawaz for his royalist fetish. For far too long, he and his impish younger sibling—the notorious khadim-e-Punjab Shahbaz Sharif—have been punching above their weight to win recognition from a befuddled people of Pakistan that they are the rightful heirs to the regal legacy of the Great Moghuls. They are the Royalty, they insist, though not many Pakistanis have an appetite for the Sharif brand of Shalimar royalty.

So also forgive Nawaz for bringing to Washington his chest-full of jokers, knaves and poltroons who think they know all there’s to know about US-Pakistan relations, besides giving Nawaz the psychological comfort he derives from the surfeit of minions around him. He’d feel terribly insecure without them.

Nawaz’ royal pretensions aside, it was an important visit, as far as Pakistan’s brief of the visit was concerned. It was largely, if not entirely, an agenda of grievances—against the terrorists hell-bent on turning Pakistan into a laboratory of their Stone-Age worldview; against a revanchist India actively abetting terror on Pakistan’s soil, besides showing no inclination to play ball with Pakistan, not even cricket; against Washington, itself, for always expecting Pakistan to ‘do more’ but never being of much help to Pakistan in moderating India’s obduracy on core issues.

It was a tall agenda that Nawaz carried with him to the Oval Office encounter with Obama. Briefly, it could be broken down to:

• Pakistan’s epic struggle against the demons of terrorism. What could Pakistan expect Washington to do to make the ‘Battle of Pakistan’ a wee-bit easier and manageable?
• Documented evidence, already given to UN Secretary-General, of India stoking the fires of terrorism in Baluchistan, Karachi et al. with weapons and training of terrorists on its soil.
• India ratcheting up pressure on Pakistan with repeated and periodic violations of LOC in Kashmir and along the Working Boundary, too.
• India constantly thwarting all attempts of Pakistan to re-engage it in a peace dialogue.
• Pakistan’s expectation from Washington that its nuclear power credentials be accorded recognition at par with India and, as such, help Pakistan to get the same benefits of civilian nuclear technology, as India, from the elite Nuclear Suppliers’ Group.
• Pakistan ready to leverage its role as a facilitator of dialogue between the Taliban and the Afghan government, disrupted since the initial round in Murree, in August this year, despite the US assessment that Islamabad’s handle over the Taliban has diminished since the death of Mullah Omar.

On the face of it, Pakistan wasn’t seeking anything unusual, or extraordinary, from Washington, in return of a mountain of its help given to US in its capacity as a faithful partner in the still ongoing war on terror—except for the fact that Pakistan itself has become a major battle-ground in the process of combating the monster of terrorism.

But one wonders if those advisers and confidants of Nawaz drawing up this elaborate and ambitious agenda of his parleys with Obama in the White House weren’t as skeptical as any outsider of what to expect from Washington in terms of response or return?

Pakistan’s jeopardy—a perennial factor, at that—in dealing with the US is two-pronged. One, it’s, and has always been, a victim of its own inflated expectations of Washington’s helpful hand. Two, it has, to its own consternation and regret, found Washington habitually short on delivery and tall on rhetoric and window-dressing.

This latest experience hasn’t been different from the mold cast over the past many decades, with Washington badgering Islamabad to ‘do more’ on issues where its interest is supreme but standing aloof on things that are sensitive and crucial to Pakistan.

The demand on Pakistan is still the same old, broken-record, call to do more on combating terrorism. There’s hardly any recognition of the horrendous price paid, already, in blood of its people by Pakistan to get a handle on the monster terrorism. Pakistan’ battle for its survival waged by its valiant jawans is not over yet and it’s hard to say with any precision how much more sacrifices it would exact before the finish line is reached.

But Washington’s response to the litany of Pakistani grievances was nothing more than a shrug. Yes, it wants peace in S. Asia—though it doesn’t agree with Pakistan’s view that India-Pakistan tension is the greatest threat to peace in the region—but wouldn’t be engaged as a third party to press India to parley with Pakistan.

The Foreign Office mandarins, I know from personal experience, must have burned a lot of midnight oil on preparing the brief for King Nawaz’ meeting with Emperor Obama. But their labor of love is of no consequence. It doesn’t melt the K-2 of indifference in Washington—at all levels of administration—to Pakistan’s mounting headaches with a Modi-led India.

What the Foreign Office mandarins know for a fact—and never mind what their political masters know or know not because they are too dim-witted to know what goes around Pakistan or the world beyond—is that Washington sees in Modi’s India its best chance to line up a credible challenge to China.

Going by this premise, Washington would be the last interlocutor in the world to take Islamabad seriously vis-à-vis India’s mounting intransigence on Kashmir, LOC or terrorism actively abetted from Delhi in Pakistan.

Modi may have calculated that since he has the upper hand in the India-Pakistan tangle, his best option is to frustrate Pakistan to the point where its patience snaps. India’s latest creed of Hindutva seeks not only India’s supremacy in the region but also Pakistan’s subservience and surrender.

Washington wouldn’t lean on Delhi out of fear of losing the trump card of a revanchist India under Modi ready to play to US tune in the tussle with China. Pakistan may go on beating its chest that India is embarked on militarism and disparity between India and Pakistan in conventional weapons is widening all the time, but that doesn’t move Washington’s mandarins at all.

To add insult to Islamabad’s injury, the demand from Washington, as articulated by an establishment loyalist NY Times, is on Pakistan to “limit” its nuclear arsenal—the one factor that gives Pakistan the comfort of an ultimate Equalizer if Delhi becomes nasty and overly-belligerent.

The bottom line that Pakistan needs to remember is that its relationship with Washington is one not between equals. Washington sees itself as the master, and Pakistan the minion that must jump without demur when so ordered.

But a greater tragedy is that Pakistan, for as far as one can remember, has been under the writ of rulers who see no harm in being snubbed, humiliated and shrugged off by their masters in Washington. The script hasn’t changed much in more than 60 years.

For Nawaz, of course, it wasn’t a journey of disappointments, entirely. His ‘First Daughter’ was invited to the White House by First Lady Michelle Obama and hailed in the media, dotingly, as heir-apparent-in-grooming to Nawaz. Nothing could regale King Nawaz more than his American masters fawning on his chosen successor.

Rejoice, Pakistan. Mughal splendor is all set to return to Pakistan. A new ruling dynasty is waiting in the wings to take to the national stage. The drama is about to begin; hold on to your seats. (The writer is a former ambassador and career diplomat)

K_K_ghori@hotmail.com