The most famous phone call, to date, in History is the one telephone’s inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, made to his associate sitting in an adjacent room. He said, in his very first call from his revolutionary invention: “Mr Watson, come in. I want to see you.”
But Pakistan’s policy makers and those in its famed ‘establishment’ are agog, for quite some time now, about ‘the’ call that hasn’t come, to date, from far away Washington, DC.
Last month, in Islamabad, when he was being interviewed by an American news channel, Pakistan’s Prime Minister and leader, Imran Khan (IK) adroitly sluffed off the question from his interlocutor about President Joe Biden not calling, once, since taking office last January. IK was quite unruffled and unphased in telling the interviewer that the President was welcome to call whenever he wanted too. He added, emphatically, that he would be available whenever Biden ‘had time’ for talking to him.
IK’s bold face on the issue of the ‘missing call’ from Biden was the best he could do to squelch the plethora of speculations from pundits as to why Biden, for some strange reason, hasn’t, yet, deemed it proper or propitious to talk to the leader of the sole atomic power in the Muslim world.
Pundits and diplomatic tea-leaves readers have, nevertheless, been scratching their heads to fathom the reason—or logic, if any—that could explain Biden’s intriguing embargo on picking up his phone and talk to IK. Not that IK should figure prominently on the White House’ denizen’s phone calls list, had there been no Afghanistan to engage Biden’s time and energy. But ignoring the leader of the most important neighbor of Afghanistan, at this sensitive stage when he has made disengagement from the Afghan imbroglio his topmost priority, is what gets the goats of many a pundit and riles them, in the truest sense of the word.
Of course, Biden may have his own reasons for not feeling any urge, or urgency, to talk to IK at this stage. There could be any number of reasons keeping Biden from reaching for his phone to call IK.
Pakistan, in his eyes, isn’t all that important at this particular time when he has decided to pull out his troops from Afghanistan.
Pakistan, in Biden’s esteem, is not part of the solution but problem at this juncture with US turning its back on a country which has been in its hair-triggers for such a long time. This logic fits into the pattern that has long been the main focus of American intelligentsia and think-tank gurus; they have been routinely blaming Pakistan for adding to their concerns in Afghanistan. Donald Trump—who could always be counted upon to pull a rabbit out of his hat—had no qualms in rashly declaring Pakistan to be totally unreliable and untrustworthy.
But the question is, why should Pakistanis be so sensitive and hurting about the phone call from Washington that hasn’t come through, in more than six months?
What’s it in that missing phone call that should so agitate Islamabad and its movers and minders?
Yes, on the face of it, it looks like an American affront in regard to a country that has paid an enormous price—in terms of its people killed and assets lost—for its co-operation with US, ever since George W. Bush launched his war against terror.
Imran Khan, in particular, hasn’t shied away, whenever he got an opportunity to say so that Pakistan has sacrificed so much in a war that was never its own. Of all the leaders of Pakistan, since this country got into bed with US in response to Bush Jr.’s hectoring on settling his scores with the ‘terrorists,’ IK has had the gall to not mince his words in saying that war wasn’t a solution of Afghanistan.
Going by IK’s candor, Pakistan should be least caring whether or not Biden chooses to call him to discuss Afghanistan.
And what should Pakistan expect to hear from Biden, given the history of US continually breathing down Pakistan’s neck—in all these long, twenty, years of America’s longest war—and badgering it for ‘not doing enough’ and constantly hammering its call on Pakistan to ‘do more’?
(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)
