News on Pakistan tends to be grim if it is about its economy. Or politics. Thursday’s attack on its former Prime Minister Imran Khan was plainly shameful. News about foreign relations, though, can be puzzling. Take Islamabad’s new pact with Beijing for a $10 billion high-speed railway project, firmed up after current PM Shehbaz Sharif met Chinese President Xi Jinping. While the details of this ‘strategic’ deal remain shrouded in secrecy, what’s visible is yet another embrace across the Karakoram range in a maze of motives that go beyond beltways for trade gains. What Pakistan may view as an encashable chip, speedy Chinese access to a port in the Arabian Sea, China might see as a future asset for power projection. After all, Beijing’s belt-and-road game has a tendency to transform loans given in the guise of aid into hard assets of military value. The puzzle is Pakistan’s economy-versus-autonomy calculus. Not so much for its Faustian touch in a world of realpolitik, but for how it has swung this way or that in recent times.
As with bowling in cricket, overcast skies have played a role. During the Cold War, and for many hot wars thereafter, Pakistan was a ‘frontline’ ally of the US, even as it forged “all-weather” relations with China and got closer to Russia once India-US ties began to strengthen. Armed by the US, Pakistan’s army based in Rawalpindi had a big say in all of this. But then a swing factor came into play, the makings of which can be traced to its 1992 World Cup victory under Imran Khan as the captain of its cricket team. Not only was he a famous exponent of ‘reverse swing’ as a bowler, his popularity helped him become the country’s top elected leader a few years after he joined politics. Under Khan, Islamabad swung away from the West, first by way of rhetoric and then in ways that might have alarmed Rawalpindi. The extent to which it went East was not clear, since the country had long supped with China, but the world noticed that Khan was in Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin when Russia invaded Ukraine earlier this year. This was in February, only a few days after Moscow and Beijing declared a “no limits” relationship, and shortly before Khan lost the confidence of his National Assembly (and his power with it). Khan was rallying supporters and raging against the army’s role in politics when he was shot at. Whether or not his agitation amounts to anything, Pakistan is clearly back in US favour under PM Sharif, as signalled by a recent upgrade of its weaponry and reprieve on terror finance.
The path we saw Pakistan take resembles that of a peculiar reverse-swing delivery: West to East, and then, as a surprise, West again. As masters of this technique can testify, it works only if one side of the ball is scruffy while the other is shiny, and could yet fail because it needs various other air conditions met. A cloudy sky, for example, is found to enhance its success rate. All-weather, it certainly isn’t. As with the cricket pitch, so with the arena of geopolitics. Whether or not Pakistan’s turns have been by strategy or accident, or dictated by a power tussle between its army and politicians, as Khan’s fans say, those in charge of the country must recognize that its interests would be served best by neutrality. Like India, it should make autonomy work for its economy. It can be done. And, regardless of its quarrelsome ties with New Delhi, it mustn’t end up playing a Chinese game.
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