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Pakistan can’t run bilateral ties bilaterally | Opinion
India has no expectations from Khan, or any other Pakistani leader. But it wants the international community to not yield to Pakistan.
Like many Pakistani leaders before him, Prime Minister Imran Khan has also vowed to raise the Kashmir issue at every possible international platform, and he has directed the diplomats to seek mediation by the United Nations (UN) and the United States (US). But his efforts have not borne fruit. The nation’s obsession with such third-party mediation is institutional and, more significantly, symptomatic of a larger malaise. Pakistan never really learned how to run bilateral relations bilaterally, and has always needed a third entity to blame, thank, leverage, or just hold its hand. It feels compelled to do so because, Pakistan watchers say, it seeks diplomatic advantage that is disproportionately higher than its real clout, and stay relevant.
Instead of mending its ties with the US, one of its oldest allies (benefactor at times, and exploiter at others), bilaterally, Pakistani leaders often play the China card, telling Washington DC: Don’t push us, or else we will go with China. “Punishing Pakistan pushes it towards America’s major adversaries,” former Pakistani defence minister Khurram Dastgir-Khan told the Wall Street Journal in 2018 after President Donald Trump suspended aid that year.
The fix for Pakistan’s problems with the US lies largely in Afghanistan. All it ever had to do to win over Americans was dismantle the Haqqani and other terrorists’ networks, which were targeting the US-led international coalition in Afghanistan and local security forces.
It didn’t, and as US-Pakistan relations took a hit, financial aid began drying up. This pushed Pakistan towards China, which was waiting with loans and unquestioning support for Islamabad’s use of terrorism as an instrument of State policy. Just look at the evidence: China resistance to the United Nation Secirity Council designation of the founder and leader of Jaish-e-Mohammad, Masood Azhar, as a “global terrorist”. It’s not hard to see, therefore, the unmistakable presence of India, in this issue too. A third party, in that room with these two, in the shadows, but there.
Pakistan’s troubles in Afghanistan, or due to it, can be traced to a disputed border, and the restive Pashtuns on either side demanding a united Pashtunistan, and being dragged in by the US to oust the erstwhile Soviet Union.
But most of its current issues have to do with a third country, India. Pakistan wants to be a player in Afghanistan to prevent it from siding with India. This, feels Rawalpindi, can open two active fronts for Pakistan in the east as well as the west.
Pakistan has run its most consequential relationship, with India, constantly in the presence of third entities. Though the original mistake of taking the Kashmir issue, which is central to the dispute between the two countries, to the UN was committed by India, it’s Pakistan that has since sought to keep the UN in the picture, even though it agreed under the Simla Agreement in 1972 to resolve all differences bilaterally.
India has no expectations from Khan, or any other Pakistani leader. But it wants the international community to not yield to Pakistan.
