Nawaz Sharif lost his job in 1999 as Prime Minister of Pakistan because, among other things, his India policy was not to the liking of powerful vested interests in his country. These interests continue to rule the roost, which begs the question whether he will be allowed to succeed this time around in attaining his ambition vis-à-vis India.
It is well known that the importance of the Pakistani military depends heavily on the state of border tension with India. This factor held supreme for 30-40 years since Independence. Afghanistan may have entered the frame, but the importance of India remains. ,
Foreign policy plank
Immediately after his victory in the recently-held Pakistan National Assembly elections, Sharif, as is his wont, went ahead with the declaration that peaceful and constructive ties with India would be one of the important planks of his foreign policy. He even stated categorically that he would like to pick up the effort at the point they had been disrupted in 1999 by the coup staged by Pervez Musharraf, predecessor of the present Pakistani army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. The simple question is: Will the hawks in the Pakistani military (which may not include Kayani) allow the Prime Minister-designate to get on with his stated programme?
Kayani has played by the book and warned Sharif about going too fast with his India policy. In his view, the relationship between Pakistan and India “demands a comprehensive strategy for addressing the geopolitical challenges which have cropped up over the years” since 1999 when Sharif was forced into the wilderness. The inference is that India is still a major factor in the matrix of these “geopolitical challenges”, which of course it is not. The Indian military does not want to keep the border with Pakistan hot for its own reasons, which is not the case with its Pakistani counterpart. Since New Delhi’s hands are full trying to counter the border “initiatives” of Beijing, the expectation would be that it would be relieved if the India-Pakistan border turned “cold”.
Strained axis
In fact, if India does play any role in Islamabad’s geopolitics, as perceived by the Pakistani military, it should relate to the Beijing-Islamabad axis. But this “axis” itself is now under strain, given Beijing’s new perspective on Asia (and ties with New Delhi in particular) and its emerging long-term view of its place in the world. As a matter of fact, Pakistan’s natural geopolitics is now populated only by Afghanistan, especially after the US withdrawal from the region next year, which should make the Pakistani military even more valuable to Washington than before.
Afghanistan is also critical to Pakistan in that it could be a rich export zone for terrorists bent on wreaking havoc in the subcontinent. This is perhaps why Kayani has upped the ante recently against the terrorist menace, congratulating the Pakistani people for participating in the poll exercise despite threats. It is, however, significant that the general’s stand was articulated immediately after Sharif spoke of taking the Taliban talks offer seriously, the PM-designate’s platform being that “all options should be tried, and guns are not a solution to all problems”.
Is Nawaz Sharif sending a message to the Pakistani generals as well?