Narendra Modi’s Pakistan visit vindicates Nawaz Sharif


Narendra Modi’s Pakistan visit vindicates Nawaz Sharif
Hand in hand: Sharif receives Modi in Lahore.
By Sameer Arshad

By Sameer Arshad

It was a moment of vindication for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif when his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, held his hand after hugging him upon his arrival in Lahore. Sharif pulled off a diplomatic coup with the Hindu nationalist’s unannounced stopover in a U-turn of sorts after years of his anti-Pakistan rhetoric. The warmth in the body language of the two vindicated Sharif’s dogged pursuit of peace with India, which he has blamed for his 1999 removal from power, incarceration and seven-year exile.

Sharif himself has come a long way since he began his career in the delusory cold war era in military ruler Zia-ul-Haq’s political incubator. His transformation began in the 1990s when he first struck a chord with fellow Punjabi Prime Minister I K Gujral. Like Gujral, who was born in Jhelum on the Pakistani side of Punjab, Sharif has an emotional attachment with Amritsar from where his family was uprooted in 1947. The Sharifs have maintained close links with their Indian village and even created its replica near Lahore, where Modi was hosted.

Beyond sentimentalities, the need for building bridges represented realpolitik for pragmatic businessman-politician Sharif when he began his economic liberalisation in the 1990s. He realised the policy would not succeed unless there is peace with India. To this end, he took the gamble of inviting Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and signing the 1999 Lahore declaration. It backfired. Army chief Pervez Musharraf fumed over Kashmir’s exclusion from the declaration and months later deposed Sharif.

Sharif was convicted of corruption and banished after 14-month imprisonment in notorious Attock prison. He stayed the course even when he was fighting for his political survival ahead of the 2008 election on Musharraf’s watch months after he ended his exile. Sharif would have been expected to be once bitten twice shy. But his party echoed his conciliatory attitude in its hurriedly-formulated manifesto and reiterated the pledge to accord special priority to a peaceful settlement of issues with India.Nawaz-Modi_121

Sharif was barred from contesting the election. But his party emerged as the second largest in the parliament as the People’s Party won the election riding on sympathy wave following Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. Sharif continued his conciliatory attitude toward India even as the leader of the main opposition party. In May 2008, he called for visa-free travel for Indians and unilateral Siachen Glacier demilitarization. Five years later, his party went many steps forward and proposed something unthinkable in its manifesto: To link India with Afghanistan besides energy-rich Iran and Central Asian republics through the Pakistani territory.

The promise was radical as India’s presence in Afghanistan has been a red rag for Pakistan. Far from allowing transit facilities, it has seen any Indian presence in Afghanistan as destabilising. For India, the transit is important as a leading donor in Afghanistan with investments worth $2 billion.

Sharif saw his return to power in 2013 a vindication of his India policy and declared it was a mandate for building bridges. Sharif linked good ties with India to Pakistan’s prosperity and told an India channel he would visit Delhi even uninvited. He reiterated promotion of peaceful relations with India was his foreign policy’s “cardinal principle” in his 2014 Independence Day speech amid another tussle with the military. The statement followed Sharif’s presence at Modi’s inauguration. He enraged hawks further by not meetings Kashmiri separatists during his stay in Delhi and instead met steel tycoon Sajjan Jindal, believed to be his go-between with Modi.

Sharif’s conciliatory policy would not have been sustainable without a consensus among mainstream political parties. The consensus was reflected in their 2013 manifestos. For instance, Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf pledged not to allow the country’s territory or people for promoting terrorism while recognizing terrorism as a growing internal destabilizer. It promised to move substantively on a strategic dialogue with India.

The Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid) too recognized the threat to national security “from unconventional sources” and no longer “an issue of defending the country against foreign military aggression from across the border (India)”. It called for “zero tolerance policy for any non-state actors to plan, organise, train or launch military attacks against any of Pakistan’s neighbours”.

The consensus has its roots in the blowback Pakistan faced after 9/11 as it signed up for the US war on terror. The backlash became ominous as the Taliban began posing an existential threat to Pakistan after 2009 fall of Swat just over 300km from Islamabad. The military establishment, too, encouraged a calmer eastern front with India as it battled the destabilising insurgency. It even went on to drop insistence on implementation of the UN resolutions in Kashmir under Musharraf.

Sharif’s family business interests and that of his industrialist supporters have created a positive vested interest in peace too. The Sharifs are believed to have benefited greatly from 900 crore sugar imports to India in the 1990s. They have had ties with the Jindals cutting across generations and have mutual interests in iron ore mining in Afghanistan. Jindal has been trying to get Afghan iron ore deposits transported via Karachi rather than an unviable detour. It dovetails with Sharif’s 2013 poll promise of allowing India transit facilities to build a transit economy. The interests of Indian businesses in the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline are dependent on the transit too. And if this delivers the windfall of peace for common folks in south Asia, no one is really going to complain.

Credit: Times News Network




Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *