Pakistanis are loath to admit it, but they are not very comfortable with a tight Chinese embrace and overdependence on the Communist nation. Selling Pakistan as a nation desirous of ‘peace’ with the ‘enemy’ is a good strategy of the Rawalpindi Shura to redeem the country’s image in the West.
Indian media has given prominence to a report that the Pakistan Army, the de facto ruler of the Land of Pure, wants ‘pace’ and ‘dialogue’ with India. It could well be part of a PR drive to shed the negative image of its terror-sponsoring Army, especially its intelligence wing called the Inter- Services Intelligence (ISI).
Pakistani military does need an image makeover. Recent events have shown that the Khakis have subdued not only the civilian administration but also the judiciary. The covert military rule discredits the façade of democracy that Pakistan likes to maintain.
Pakistanis may boast about shooing off the American yoke they had carried for the better part of the last 70 years, but they are truly unnerved by the prospects of alienating the US and the West where the Pakistani image has acquired an almost irretrievable negative image.
Pakistanis are loath to admit it, but they are not very comfortable with a tight Chinese embrace and overdependence on the Communist nation. Selling Pakistan as a nation desirous of ‘peace’ with the ‘enemy’ is seen by Rawalpindi Shura as a good strategy to redeem the country’s image in the West.
The “Peace-Dialogue” scoop of sorts is based on a report written by Kamal Alam, a visiting fellow at a British think-tank, the Royal United States Institute (RUSI). He is a young Pakistani with probably links with the country’s military, as most Pakistani commentators have.
Alam has been associated with think tanks and establishments in a number of Islamic countries but India doesn’t seem to have been his area of study. So, his effort to make out a convincing case for the Pakistani Khakis as peaceniks falls flat.
One or two instances quoted in the Alam report are supposed to indicate a change of heart in the Pakistan Army vis-a-vis India, which is hard to digest. For instance, the fact that the Indian military attaché in Islamabad was invited to witness the Pakistan Day parade in March does not amount to any conciliatory gesture. Military parades in Pakistan are a regular ‘tamasha’ intended to pump up jingoistic fervor of the already radicalized society.
The day the Pakistan Army gives up its India obsession will perhaps mark the real beginning of a less tense, maybe peaceful era of relations between the two nations.
The presence of a representative from the ‘enemy’ nation at the Parade does not indicate a thaw in the frozen bilateral relations. The Indian military attaché was like a spectator who did not carry any important diplomatic or political agenda with him. There were no accounts of the Indian attaché having met or talked to any Pakistani leader.
Some significance could still have been attached to his presence at the Pakistan Day event had it been clear that Pakistan has abandoned its long policy of tailing and harassing members of the Indian mission in Islamabad, including the military attaché. Memories of display of many petty peeves by the Pakistanis are still fresh in the minds of Indians. And, of course, terrorism is the leitmotif of Pakistan’s India policy.
In the last few months, the English language newspapers in Pakistan have carried many editorials and commentaries which speak of the need to resume ‘dialogue’ which can lead to easing of tension between the two countries. Almost all these commentaries emphasize that the Generals and the civilian administration are on the same page in resuming talks with India to ease tensions. But such comments are always accompanied by the accusation that India has not reciprocated to Pakistan’s expressed desire for ‘peace’.
What reciprocity does Pakistan expect when it continues with its policy of exporting terror to India? Pakistan has also launched an intense diplomatic offensive against India in the vain hope that the world focuses on Kashmir. India, with Narendra Modi as Prime Minister, is very unlikely to take seriously the false Pakistani noises for peace.
Indian media may not have taken much notice of it, but the Pakistani media frequently puts out reports that their Chief of Army Staff has spoken in favour of ‘peace’ with India. In fact, it has also been reported that one of the Generals, Aamir Raza, a former Director General of Military Operations, had told a RUSI audience (in London last year) that the Pakistan Army was now more ‘confident’ of itself as it had overcome the problem of domestic terrorism. The implication of this statement is that the Pakistan Army has subdued the in-house delinquents and therefore is no more paranoiac about India.
That again is misleading. The day the Pakistan Army gives up its India obsession will perhaps mark the real beginning of a less tense, maybe peaceful era of relations between the two nations. But wait till eternity for that day to arrive because it will also mean that the Pakistan Army becomes subservient to the civilians, something it will not accept having taken up the role of savior of the nation as well as the defender of Islam.
A curious part of the media report on the Kamal Alam paper is that it also quotes Pakistani Generals as saying that they ‘welcome’ India’s ‘participation’ in the China Pakistan economic corridor, which is the Pakistani flagship programme under China’s Belt Road Initiative.
India has unequivocally made known its rejection of both BRI and CPEC, which slices through what India consider as its territory (in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir). China itself calls the area as a ‘disputed’ territory.
If the Pakistani misstatement on CPEC is deliberate, as it well might be, it puts another question mark over Pakistan Army’s desire for ‘peace’ with India. China, in pursuit of lowering tension with India, itself is now reconciled to India’s refusal to join its BRI project. Chinese spokesperson made this clear after Modi-Xi informal summit (April 27-28 at Wuhan) when he remarked that Beijing would not press Delhi to join the BRI venture.
While Indian think-tanks and many in the civil society might like a renewed effort to lift India-Pak relations from the abyss into which the dialogue process has fallen, it is hard to see a quick turnaround in the bilateral ties. Frankly, better relation with Pakistan is not an early possibility more since that country has slipped into election mode. Well, notwithstanding the alleged revival of Track II diplomacy!
— By Tushar Charan