While on the subject of China and India vis-à-vis Pakistan, the professor argues that Beijing is advising Islamabad to buy peace with Delhi. And in so many words his case is that Pakistan should not expect a China bail out in case of what noted Left intellectual Khaled Ahmed terms as a strategic mistake like in 1971 (Bangladesh War) and Kargil misadventure. At least a section of Pakistani security analysts appear to share this perception. It manifested clearly during the December visit of Premier Wen to Pakistan.
While the mainline English media and the influential Urdu media was flooded with commentaries written in honey, there were a couple of ‘jarring’ notes that termed the Sino-Pak relationship as an ‘alliance of convenience’ and bitterly complained that the MoUs worth $30 bn that marked Wen visit were not worth the paper they were signed. Because, despite all the hype, the volume of bilateral trade is nowhere near the mark achieved by India and China.
Like most Pakistani scholars, Dr Malik subscribes to the view that the United States is going out of its way to court India because of the China factor and of its utility in the Afghan theatre. America is clueless on the way forward though. It depends on Pakistan army for an opening which can come if the North Waziristan based militant groups targeting southern Afghanistan are neutralized.
Beyond huffing and puffing, Gen Kayani’s army is unwilling to do any Pentagon bidding as the Washington Post had clearly brought out in its Dec 31 despatch from Kabul and Islamabad. The Kayani induced frustration in the American military leadership and diplomatic corps is mounting with every passing day. America knows it cannot win a war in Afghanistan and is keen on an honourable exit within a reasonable open-ended time frame.
The US doesn’t appear to have factored in China’s role in Afghanistan where it is developing a vested business and strategic interest by investing millions in mining in particular. It is also investing heavily in the so called badlands of Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier that border Afghanistan. It is these areas like North Waziristan and Bajaur agency that are the bases and launch pads of al Qaeda, the Taliban, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Mujahideen and the Haqqani network, which are controlled from Rawalpindi. The egging for talks with Taliban makes sense against this backdrop.
The New Year 2011 may have begun with three separate US missile attacks on targets inside northwest Pakistan, (the undeclared cross-border war claimed more than 2,000 people last year) but the Year also opened with a reprieve from the IMF which has put off its plan to cut funding from the New Year.
And it agreed to let Pakistan to have nine more months for implementing politically unpopular fiscal and tax reforms that have already been packaged and sealed. Whatever be the love-hate relationship with the West post 9/11, Pakistan received access to £7.5 billion from the IMF in 2008-2009 and it is more than the entire assistance it had received since its independence in 1947.
This is undoubtedly the reward for Pakistan’s participation in the US led War on Terrorism. On the flip-side, as Hafeez Malik brings out so clearly, is the denial of Afghanistan as its strategic depth. You gain some. You lose some. That is the order of nature in the growing up process to avoid falling into isolation.
