Articles

Is the current institutional conflict in Pakistan an indication that it is increasingly becoming a dysfunctional state, or is it a sign that the political system is now becoming more democratic? The Zardari government is at loggerheads with the judiciary as well as the army.

The crassly cynical political developments in Pakistan, epitomized by the Memogate scandal, befit a banana republic. The Army is accusing the Head of State of acting against national security by seeking to conspire with the US to curb its power. In a move without parallel anywhere the Army Chief has approached the Pakistani Supreme Court to investigate the matter. The former Pakistani Ambassador to Washington is lodged in the Prime Minsiter’s Residence for fear that he may either be physically eliminated by the military or coerced into signing some statement under duress.

Shamsi Base

Pakistan’s future is raising concerns internationally. Can this nuclear-armed country step back from the brink by radically changing its internal and external outlook? Pakistan cannot break its Islamic links as it came into being because of Islam. But must it discard the relatively softer face of Islam that connects it to its Indian subcontinental roots and embrace more extremist Islamist ideologies?

The already strained US-Pakistan relations appear to have gone into almost a freefall after NATO gunships fired on two Pakistan army posts along the Pak-Afghan border in the Mohmand Tribal agency killing 24 soldiers and injuring around a dozen more, ironically enough three years to the day of the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai.

Chinese roads on the LAC

It is more practical to limit the review of India’s security mainly to the classic concept of a nations’s security, not its extended definition given today that includes energy, food, water etc. With the end of the Cold War and the lowering of the threat of a military conflict between the big powers, attention has shifted to economic competition. With depletion of fossil fuel resources and the search for viable alternatives, the focus is on energy security. Climate change and prospects of water scarcity has brought the issue of food security to the fore.

There is no policy change

The positive vibes emanating from the meeting between the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan in Addu, the Maldives, have generated a lot of misplaced optimism on the future of Indo-Pak relations.

Our policy towards Pakistan, as the SAARC summit at Maldives last week showed, is stuck in the double grooves of hope and good faith. We think that India and Pakistan can turn a 'new chapter' in their relationship and believe in the good faith of Pakistan’s leadership in translating their peaceful protestations soon into policy.

Manmohan Singh is taking huge risks in appeasing Pakistan in the hope that it will lead to a thaw in bilateral relations and mould his stature as a ‘statesman'. But his gestures have been disproportionate to the existing ground realities. He is offering Pakistan far too many concessions while overlooking India’s national interest

India, on Pakistan’s insistence, was excluded from the International Conference on Afghanistan in Istanbul in January 2010. For the “Process on Regional Security and Cooperation for a Secure and Stable Afghanistan”, the second such conference held in Istanbul on November 2 this year, India got invited, signifying Turkish willingness to make amends for the earlier diplomatic snub administered to India, the reduced potency of Pakistani objections and, no doubt, more Afghan assertiveness in India’s favour, not to mention that of the US and other key western countries.

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US exasperation with Pakistan is mounting, with sharper warnings to it to curb the Haqqani group. The need to repeat such warnings in public also suggests a degree of helplessness in compelling Pakistan to do America’s bidding. Pakistan’s tenacious resistance, even when cornered on an issue of such vital concern to the US, flows from its calculation that it still retains enough room for defiance.