ON arriving in Iran, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sent a tweet in the Persian language expressing hope that cultural and economic ties between the two countries would be strengthened.
Granted, the Iranian people are not allowed to access Twitter (that privilege is reserved for the top leadership), and granted that Modi does this sort of thing every time he visits another country, the gesture was still a nice bit of icing on the diplomatic cake.
Signing 12 agreements with Iran, including one to develop the Chabahar port, India walked away with a deal that is effectively its first step towards realising the promise of the International North-South Transport Corridor and linking India to hitherto difficult-to-access markets.
While India walked away with gains, we get retweets.
For its part, the Iranian government gets a viable port on the Indian Ocean and burnishes its credentials as a rising regional power.
There were tweets from our side as well when Iranian President Rouhani visited Pakistan. A few that come to mind were by DG ISPR Asim Bajwa regarding the COAS’s meeting with Rouhani. In these, he wrote that the COAS had asked Rouhani to not allow RAW to use Iranian soil to destabilise Pakistan.
Now an issue as serious as this certainly needs to be raised, but Twitter was perhaps not the appropriate forum for such a revelation, especially when you consider the embarrassment that ensued when Rouhani denied that any such exchange had taken place.
One must then ask why ISPR decided to send such a message and who approved it. Was there a purpose beyond playing to the gallery and thus putting a visiting head of state in an awkward position? Answers to these questions may never come, but the reality is that while India walks away with real gains, we get retweets.
Afghanistan got a good deal as well, potentially scoring that land-locked nation’s long-sought trade access to India, the gulf, the Indian Ocean and beyond. This is significant because previously Afghanistan had looked to Pakistan to provide that access, in particular the use of Pakistani land routes to allow the transit of goods from India to Afghanistan.
This proposal was never seriously entertained by the forces that be in Pakistan, purportedly because it would benefit India. It would have, but it would have benefited Pakistan more, in terms of transit fees, gains for the domestic transport sector and the goodwill it would have engendered with Afghanistan.
In fact, the denial of this transit route, deprived Pakistan of the use of an invaluable lever in future negotiations with Afghanistan as it would have provided real economic reasons for Afghanistan to not want to antagonise Pakistan, leading eventually to close strategic ties.
Alas, the thought of diversifying our basket of eggs is anathema. The thought of making peace with our enemies is incomprehensible even though one can only make peace with enemies. That’s kind of the whole point of making peace.
While India invests in Afghanistan, building roads, dams and bridges, we have persisted in the tired and historically unsuccessful strategy of banking on our ability to bring the oh-so-reasonable Afghan Taliban to the table. And in stubbornly adhering to this tried and failed policy, we effectively pushed an initially friendly Ghani into Modi’s arms. In essence, we are selling dial-up internet in a fibre optic world and wondering why no one’s buying our product.
No one’s buying our arguments either. The US has clearly placed the blame for its colossal failure in Afghanistan on Pakistan’s provision of safe havens for the Taliban.
It is true that all the military might of Nato and the US could not bring security to Afghanistan. It is true that a bulk of the billions of dollars showered on Afghanistan simply evaporated. It is true that Afghanistan is mired in lawlessness, warlordism and corruption which have nothing to do with Pakistan. It is also true that none of this really matters, because our own reactive and thoroughly unimaginative policies have left us holding the bag.
It is true that Pakistan is, as always, at a critical juncture. It is also true that we are victims of geography. It is also true that to tackle these huge challenges we need a holistic and comprehensive proactive foreign policy which requires lockstep coordination between the civilian and military leadership.
It is also true that no such coordination exists, as evidenced by the Angoor Adda fiasco. Here the military handed over a border crossing facility to Afghanistan in order to “strengthen brotherly relations”. Now there’s nothing wrong with that, except that the interior minister was apparently unaware of this. And it didn’t do much for brotherly relations either, as the Afghans promptly closed the said facility and demanded 10km more territory. Consider then, the utter lack of communication, coordination and imagination and despair.
Forget about being on the same page, or even on the same book. Just pray that someone, anyone, in the corridors of power learns to read.
The writer is a journalist.
Twitter: @zarrarkhuhro
Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2016