Imran is Cornering Modi
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
Tongues of Pakistan’s jaded and beaten horses have been wagging against Imran Khan ever since he routed them at the last general elections. Pakistan’s traditional politicians have never been known for magnanimity—or even civility—and in the face of their humiliating defeat at the hands of one routinely brushed aside by them as ‘callow’ and ‘inexperienced,’ their hostility knows no limits.
The latest salvo against Imran and his govt. aims at questioning not only his art of governance but also track his record in power. They are being aided, amply in this vendetta by a section of that news media which had grown enormously vocal and rich on the favors peddled out by Nawaz—and before him his corrupt twin, Zardari—in official patronage but now finds itself orphaned under Imran.
Some vigilantes and eager beavers of the media have come up with Trackers to keep regular record of Imran government’s day to day performance. The idea is to hold the putative architect of Naya Pakistan constantly on his toes and hold him accountable to the gallery of public opinion.
Be that as it may, but there should also be acknowledgment of the waves Imran has been making on the foreign relations of Pakistan.
Imran was considered a total novice in foreign policy, not only by his detractors but even friends and admirers too. That was a sense that ran through the broad spectrum of Pakistan-watchers as well. Given his sharp focus on cleansing the Augean stables of corruption in Pakistani politics, few expected him to have much time to focus on foreign policy.
However, Imran proved all such people—admirers and doubters alike—wrong in his maiden address to the nation in which he held the spotlight on Pakistan’s external relations as much as on his overarching domestic focus on corruption.
The most eye-catching of the ‘callow’ PM’s initiative was to lob the ball, with utmost dexterity, into the court of his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi. In what could only be described as an act of great magnanimity, Imran reached out to Modi by letting the whole world know that if India took one step forward, he will be taking two.
Modi’s track record on Pakistan has nothing in it to infuse any optimism that he’d trade his persistent hostility to Pakistan with any semblance of amity, any time soon. Modi’s constituency is the rich Gujrati enterprising billionaires of the Ambanis-type who have bankrolled his career and paved his way to the pinnacle of Indian politics. That pedigree explains Modi personifying his relations with Pakistan to the extent of his camaraderie with Nawaz Sharif only. But even there he didn’t mind stabbing the Nawaz govt. in the back when he refused to attend the SAARC Summit in Islamabad. Not just that he wouldn’t come but he actively persuaded other South Asian countries to also boycott the conclave.
Undaunted by Modi’s perfidious track record, however, Imran seems determined to put his best foot forward to reach out to India. Never mind the outcome of his initiative to court India on his own terms. He will have, at the very least, shown the world who’s the guilty party. That would not be a mean achievement at all. There will be little room to doubt that Pakistan on his watch has an open mind, and heart, on its avowed wish to have good neighborly relations with its eastern neighbor.
Imran’s latest initiative on a visa-free access to Baba Guru Nanak’s shrine at Kartarpur, in the Narowal district of Pakistan’s Punjab, for Sikh pilgrims from India, is a brilliant move by any stretch of imagination.
The idea of a corridor to the holy shrine from India’s Gurdaspur to Kartarpur had been on the cards since 1988. Understandably, open hostility from India for relations with Pakistan served little incentive to previous governments to think of putting life into this moribund project.
But Imran’s rich cricket experience has taught him that playing on the front foot is much better than being defensive on the back foot. Few would find much co-relation between experience of cricket and foreign policy initiatives. However, Imran is out there to force the Cassandras to change their overall perception and rethink, or revisit, their lingering doubts that there can be a link between a good cricket player and an emerging good and forward-looking politician.
By the time these lines are read, Imran will have laid the foundation stone of the four-kmcorridor, cutting across the border between India and Pakistan. Not only that it will fulfill an old and cherished dream of millions of Sikhs to visit a revered shrine of theirs in Pakistan but they will be doing it hassle-free.
It only takes someone like Imran, with a great leap of imagination, to come up with such a bold and daring initiative: visa-free access to Kartarpur for Sikh pilgrims from India.
Nay-sayers may have a point that in Pakistan’s current state of insecurity, on account of the scourge of terrorism still not fully eradicated, it could be adding to security concerns to allow Sikh pilgrims to stream into a sensitive part of the country without visa. But, on Imran’s part, it’s a measure of confidence that Pakistan can tackle this challenge with minimal risk.
The good news is that the civil and military leaderships in the country are on the same page on this initiative.
To put the developments in their right perspective, it was General Qamar Bajwa, the military Chief, who’d mooted the idea of free access for Sikhs to Navjot Singh Sidhu, Imran’s old cricket pal, at Imran’s inauguration as PM in August. Sidhu has already arrived in Lahore to be present at the ground-breaking ceremony of the corridor on November 28 at the hands of his friend Imran Khan. Nothing could be more delightful to Sidhu than his old friend delivering on his pledge to enable Sikhs to visit their saint’s revered shrine with such ease and facility.
But in all this mood of festivity, one shouldn’t forget to admire and appreciate the finesse underpinning Imran’s brilliant move on Kartarpur. Winning the hearts and minds of the Sikhs, predominating the Indian Punjab that shares such a long border with Pakistan, will be a big feather in Imran’s cap. This tactical move by a novice in foreign affairs should shame many a foreign policy aces and wizards.
Imran’s tactical move has already forced the hand of Modi to reciprocate on his own part, as far as placating the Sikhs is concerned.
With an eye on stealing the winds from Imran’s sails, Modi has hastened into pre-empting the Pakistani move. He rushed the Indian Vice-President to lay the foundation stone of the corridor on the Indian side two days ahead of the Pakistani D-Day.
Leap-frogging Imran may give an ego massage to an attention-seeker Modi. However, there’s no gainsaying that this calculated move of Modi is more geared to gaining the Sikh sympathy more than pre-empting the Pakistani move.
Modi has his eyes and heart set on the impending general elections in India next April-May. His track record on economy is dismal. Many of his much-touted moves, like the disastrous demonetization scheme that ruined millions of low-income Indians, has backfired on him and his teetering reputation is becoming a huge liability for BJP.
The card that BJP has used all these past four years of Modi with flourish is Pakistan-baiting. BJP is fixated on the hateful Hindutva philosophy of an India-for-the-Hindus only. It’s a policy that sells well to Hindu revisionists and revanchists sworn to settling old scores with Muslims of India. Enmity for Pakistan is the lynch-pin of this nihilistic policy.
So, no wonder that Modi Sarkar is fixated on pursuing its agenda of hostility against Pakistan, relentlessly and unabashedly. Modi sabotaged the last SAARC Summit to embarrass Pakistan. His irascible Foreign Minister (FM), a rabidly anti-Muslim Sushma Swaraj, walked out in a SAARC FM meeting, on the sidelines of UNGA last September, in New York, as soon as FM Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi stood up to speak at the forum. A day earlier she had declined to share lunch with her Pakistan counterpart, with her spokesman accusing Pakistan of “unclean intentions.”
One need not be a foreign policy ace to predict that there will be no reciprocation from Modi to Imran’s initiatives to thaw the ice between the two countries till the election fever isn’t over in India. But that doesn’t belittle the thrust and impact of Imran’s tactical moves to put Modi on the spot and under pressure.
Modi might think he’s not a fox easily cornered. But none can also deny that Imran has the advantage of the offensive and the more he applies the heat on India the more Modi will feel the compulsion to reciprocate, even though niggardly as is the predilection of India.
The latest news from the Foreign office in Islamabad is that Pakistan is going to invite Modi to the next SAARC Summit, still due in Islamabad. Let’s see and wait how Modi tries to wriggle out of it. The burden of proving himself is on him. Imran has brilliantly lobbed the ball into Modi’s court. - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com
(The author is a former ambassador and a career diplomat)
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