The cause was the liberation of Indian held Kashmir. The setting, on June 28, a joint session of Pakistan’s National Assembly and Senate. The two houses had been called together to cobble a bipartisan resolution condemning atrocities by Indian security forces in Kashmir, But once again, politics got in the way of the national interest.
As the session proceeded, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and opposition leader Nawaz Sharif seemed to have forgotten their original purpose they were too busy trying to score political points instead. The session degenerated in to chaos, and, needless to say, no resolution was forthcoming. “Kashmir is not a cause, it is a shoe with which to beat the Opponent over the head,” said the influential Sunday Times. “Pakistani leaders use Kashmir but don’t agree on any strategy for it.”
Kashmiris not the only blot in Pakistan’s foreign policy ledger. As Pakistanis look at the wider world around them, they see their country’s adversaries gaining in strength; its friends deserting it. Those it bet on have turned out losers. Even Prime Minister Bhutto concedes that Islamabad’s external relations are a mess. And the prospects for progress in its three main areas of interest India and Kashmir, Afghanistan, and the tiff with the United States over its nuclear weapons program are bleaker than ever.
Relations with archrival India have reached a new nadir, illustrated recently by the mutual roughing up and expulsion of diplomatic personnel. As for Kashmir, Pakistani military Strategists may delight in the fact that almost half a million Indian troops are tied up in anti-insurgent duty in the state, but those same troops are bulldozing their way through the Pakistan backed insurgents with brutal efficiency.
Pakistan’s attempts to internationalize the Kashmir issue have come to naught. Islamabad is still reeling from its debacle at the United Nations Human Rights Conference in Geneva in March, when a Pakistani resolution condemning Indian atrocities in Kashmir failed to pass after Iran and China withdrew the support.
If the Bhutto government tries to push a similar resolution at the UN General Assembly session in September, it risks a replay of the Geneva imbroglio. Of course, if it doesn’t, the opposition is bound to accuse it of betraying the Kashmiri cause.
In Afghanistan, a Pakistani sponsored accord between rival Mujahideen factions, which went into effect last year, has collapsed. Islamabad’s Afghan protégé, Pashtun leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, has been ousted from Kabul. The Pashtuns, Pakistan’s historical allies in Afghanistan, have lost military and political power for the first time in 300 years.
Islamabad feels it is being unfairly singled out by the U.S. on the nuclear issue. “Pakistan should not be asked to do anything unilaterally, It has to be done on a regional basis because we still have a serious ‘threat perception from India,” says President Farooq Leghari. Pakistanis were deeply alarmed by India’s deployment in June of its short range Prithvi missile. “The Prithvi is a country specific missile for Pakistan and has a range that can hit most of our cities,” says Leghari. Bhutto says the Prithvi’s deployment threatens Aan arms race.
If so, that would be a race Pakistan, with its scanty resources and weak technology base, could ill afford? That’s especially the case now that the days of sophisticated U.S. weapons on easy credit terms are over. Though public opinion insists that the military “do something” to match India, the options are limited. Pakistan could deploy Chinese made M11 missiles, of which it has a few, but that risks aggravating friction with the U.S.
New Delhi has rejected Islamabad’s attempts to lower the nuclear temperature on the subcontinent. “Eight times we have submitted proposals to India for establishing a nuclear free South Asia. Each time we have been seriously rebuffed,” says Bhutto. Pakistan also perceives a growing threat from “Indo Israeli collusion,” which the former head of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, retired Gen, Hameed Gul, claims is“‘a new factor that has qualitatively changed our security environment.”
Pakistani diplomats and foreign policy experts blame two major omissions for the litany of failures. “Since the end of the Cold War there has been no systematic foreign policy review of the changed geopolitical environment, and what we should be doing. Pakistan has no coherent post-Cold War policy on any major issue at present,” says & retired senior diplomat. “The other problem is that there is no coherent high level, decision making body that can bring together the army, the ISI and the civilian government.
For decades, the military made the important foreign policy decisions. This was especially so in the three key areas of India Kashmir, Afghanistan and the nuclear program. In the 1980s, under President Zia ul Haq, the Foreign Office was almost relegated to playing the role of a diplomatic post office while the ISI virtually ran the war in Afghanistan. ‘With India and Kashmir occupying so much of the government’s time, other relationships are deteriorating. Pakistan is trapped between the conflicting demands of two close allies, Iran and Saudi Arabia, whose rivalries extend into Afghanistan and Central Asia. As for China, which still has close links with Pakistan’s military, it has been irked by Pakistani fundamentalists’ support for Islamic militants in Xinjiang province.
One uncomfortable effect of the drift in foreign policy has been a strengthening of the voices of the extreme right. 4 mixes of retired military intelligence officers and religious fundamentalist parties such as the Jamaat e Islami, this lobby advocates a tough, confrontational stance towards India and the U.S. One of its spokesmen, former ISI head Gen, Gul, advocates preparing for war with India and defying the U.S. by testing a Pakistan nuclear device.
Article extracted from this publication >> September 23, 1994
