It has been a breathless week, huddled in the shadow of the simmering, bubbling, politico-religious volcano that is Imran Khan’s Pakistan.
And this week’s multi-faceted developments may just signal seismic shifts in Pakistan’s internal and external relations for the foreseeable future.
Before moving on to bloodier matters, let’s start with the “Mr. Khan Goes to China” episode – essential for reviewing all aspects of what is enthusiastically described by both sides as the “all-weather strategic cooperative partnership”.
Xi’s financial lifeline for Khan?
Prime Minister Khan, leading a fresh government elected in July and facing a range colossal challenges, set the tone from the start. He did not mince words.
“Countries go in cycles, they have their high points, they have their low points,” he said. “Unfortunately, our country is going through a low point at the moment with two very big deficits, a fiscal deficit and a current account deficit. And so we, as I’ve said, have come to learn.”
Arguably few teachers beat Chinese President Xi Jinping, praised by Khan as a role model. “China’s phenomenal achievements are worth emulating,” Khan said. “No other country has tackled poverty and corruption the way China has tackled it.”
The lynchpin of the strategic partnership is inevitably the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the flagship project of the New Silk Road, or Belt-and-Road Initiative (BRI). Before his stint as guest of honor of the First China International Import Expo in Shanghai, Khan met a crucial player in Beijing for CPEC financing: Jin Liquan, president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).
Right from the start, Pakistan’s new Planning Minister Makhdoom Bukhtiar was confident that Islamabad would not need to reschedule around $2.7 billion in Chinese loans due for repayment in 2018. Instead, what’s in the cards is an improved economic package centered on taking CPEC to the next level.
A financially stable Pakistan is absolutely crucial for the success of BRI. A Pakistani audit of projects approved by the previous Nawaz Sharif administration called for streamlining CPEC, not curtailing it. Now, Team Khan does not subscribe to the notion of CPEC as a debt trap.
With Saudi Arabia and China stepping in with cash, Islamabad may avoid becoming further indebted to the IMF and its trademark “strategic adjustments”- widely dreaded across the Global South for producing a toxic mix of austerity and inflation.
Pakistan juggles China, Iran, Saudi, Turkey
Pakistan is all about its prime geopolitical location, the crossroads of South Asia, Central Asia and West Asia.
For Beijing, Pakistan as a key BRI node mirrors its new role as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). As Khan has clearly identified, this interconnection can only turbo-charge Pakistan’s geo-economic position – under the institutional framework of SCO. The Xi-Khan partnership may actually center around an economic win-win for Pakistan and the SCO.
Of course, myriad challenges lie ahead.
Take for instance Chinese Foreign Ministry’s spokesman Lu Kang having to clarify that “all the cooperation between China and Pakistan has nothing to do with territorial disputes.”
Kang was referring to the hoopla surrounding the fact that a Pakistani company launched a bus service from Lahore to Kashgar via Islamabad; essentially the northern CPEC route via the Karakoram Highway, which skirts Kashmir. China does not want any interference whatsoever in the ultra-volatile Kashmir dossier.
Saudi Arabia is also making some not-too-subtle moves. Islamabad’s official position is that Riyadh’s recent financial offer came with no strings attached. That’s unlikely to be the case; Saudi traditionally casts a long shadow over all matters Pakistani. “No strings” means Islamabad should keep closer to Riyadh, not Tehran.
The House of Saud – paralyzed by the fallout of the bloody Istanbul fiasco – will go no-holds-barred to prevent Islamabad from getting closer to Tehran. (Or Ankara, for that matter). A possibly emergent, long-term, game-changing Turkey-Iran-Pakistan alliance was the talk of the town – at least during the first part of this week of weeks.
That brings us to the crucial visitor Khan received in Islamabad before his trip to China: Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. Last month, 14 Iranian border guards were kidnapped by the Pakistan-based Jaish al-Adl Salafi-jihadi fanatics. Pakistan security forces have been helpless so far.
Khan and Zarif talked about that – but also talked about Khan’s offer to mediate between Iran and Saudi Arabia in trying to find a solution for the tragedy in Yemen. The fact is, a Tehran-Islamabad rapprochement is already a work in progress.
That is the sophisticated geo-political game Khan must play. Meanwhile at home, he has to get down and dirty as he gets to grips with violent domestic religious turmoil.
‘Go legal – or else…’
I’ve been in Islamabad since Monday – right on the lip of the volcano, and enjoying the privilege of being part of one of the most extraordinary geopolitical conferences in recent times, something that in the current polarizing dynamic could only happen in Asia, not the West. But that’s another story.
While I was parsing elaborate analyses of this geopolitical chessboard, reality intervened.
Or – perhaps – it was a graphic intimation that Pakistan may just be changing for the better.
Street blockades paralyzed key nodes of the nation because Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman laborer, in jail for nine years, was finally acquitted by the Supreme Court of spurious charges of blasphemy. There are less than 4 million Christians in Pakistan out of a total population of 197 million.
I was with a small group on the motorway to Peshawar, prior to taking a detour to Taxila – Alexander-the-Great land, where I planned further research on ancient Silk Roads – when suddenly we were halted.
A mullah was blaring his hate through a loudspeaker. A couple of his minions blocked all circulation.
Why the police would not dislodge this small group is the matter of all matters in Khan’s arguably new Pakistan. The highway standoff embodies the high-stakes grapple underway between the state and religion.
Back in Islamabad, as he led me around the campus of the National Defense University, Timoor Shah, a bright young man at the Center for Policy Studies, gave me a crash course on the nuances.
What a global audience should understand is this. On one side stand the state, the military and the judiciary. (Accusations continue to be hurled that Khan was privileged in the July elections by the military – the top institution in Pakistan – and an activist judiciary.) On the other side, stand fringe religious nuts and an opportunistic, discredited opposition.
The Tehreek-e-Labbaik (TLP), a minor extremist political party whose only platform is to punish blasphemy, has issued death threats against the three Supreme Court judges. Pakistan could do worse than import a strangle/bone-saw/dissolve-in-acid Saudi execution squad to deal with such groups.
It’s instructive to consider what the director general of the PR arm of the powerful intelligence service, ISI, Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor had to say: This is a legal matter and the Pakistan Army should not be dragged into it. Ghafoor also stressed, “We are close to winning the war against terrorism and our attention should not be diverted.”
Ghafoor told politico-religious parties protesting against the Supreme Court judgment – quite a few of which were firmly on the lunatic fringe – to go legal or else. Amid this, TLP chief Khadim Hussain Rizvi swears that that the Army has threatened to “destroy” his party.
The military sent a delegation, including ISI officials, to talk to the religious protesters. Ghafoor was careful to stress that the ISI is an intelligence department that reports to the prime minister.
In the end, the government caved in. Despite knowing that Aasia Bibi faces fundamentalist wrath and her only path to safety would be a one-way ticket out, they agreed to put her on something called the “Exit Control List.” Even that did not prevent TLP fanatics from threatening “a war if they sent Aasia Bibi out of the country.”
‘Taliban Godfather’ killed
As if all this were not toxic enough, on Friday evening Maulana Samiul Haq – the fabled “Godfather of the Taliban” – was stabbed to death in his house in Rawalpindi, Islamabad’s twin city.
Haq led the sprawling Darul Uloom Haqqania, a madrassa, or religious school, in Akhora Khattak, near Peshawar, founded in 1988. The madrassa graduated none other than Mullah Omar, as well as other Taliban notables.
Haq embodies a torrent of turbulence in modern Pakistani history – including his stints as senator during the Zia ul Haq and Nawaz Sharif administrations. He also tabled a notorious Sharia bill during Sharif’s last term.
But for me, the story was personal. In a tortuous way, Samiul Haq saved my life – courtesy of a letter of introduction he had signed after I visited his madrassa to follow a Talibanesque indoctrination in progress.
When, along with my photographer Jason Florio, we were arrested by the Taliban at a military base in Ghazni in the summer of 2000, we were only released from waiting six months to be tried as “spies” because of Samiul Haq’s letter.
This obviously pales when compared to the high-profile, principled move by the Pakistani Supreme Court to save Aasia Bibi from a death sentence.
But it could be the first salvo in a Khan-era Pakistani war against religious fundamentalism.
Is this a game being played. IMF team visiting Islamabad on November 7, 2018. Khan visits China even as the agitation in Progress. We have to open up CPEC to IMF if no loan forthcoming from China. To IMF, well extremists can take over from what you have seen. We are a Nuclear weapon nation and we cannot allow the Nation to slip into the hands of extremists. IMF, please choose.
Is this a game being played. IMF team visiting Islamabad on November 7, 2018. Khan visits China even as the agitation in Progress. We have to open up CPEC to IMF if no loan forthcoming from China. To IMF, well extremists can take over from what you have seen. We are a Nuclear weapon nation and we cannot allow the Nation to slip into the hands of extremists. IMF, please choose.
Kool
Kool
Omar Khokhar The religion of peace = the cult of the pedo’ prophet
Omar Khokhar The religion of peace = the cult of the pedo’ prophet
Pepe is amazing. He is fluent in all of the details in so many theaters. His analyses run circles around anything produced by so-called Western "experts" most of whom are just CIA paid hacks.
Pepe is amazing. He is fluent in all of the details in so many theaters. His analyses run circles around anything produced by so-called Western "experts" most of whom are just CIA paid hacks.
Why do you live in the US, do your daughters prefer the larger limbed Americans ?
Why do you live in the US, do your daughters prefer the larger limbed Americans ?
In all fairness Pakistan and broke, over-populated and lacks any future. Chinese should be wary of pouring money is a failed state. Pakistan lacks the resources and educated manpower to progress and has been a begging bowl since its artificial creation in 1947. Over 90% of Pakistan’s population is illiterte and the corrupt military eats up 80% of the begging bowl national budget. What kind of sane country would invest in such a sh*thole?
In all fairness Pakistan and broke, over-populated and lacks any future. Chinese should be wary of pouring money is a failed state. Pakistan lacks the resources and educated manpower to progress and has been a begging bowl since its artificial creation in 1947. Over 90% of Pakistan’s population is illiterte and the corrupt military eats up 80% of the begging bowl national budget. What kind of sane country would invest in such a sh*thole?
Yashad Rizvi Islam has no relevance in the modern world, look at the cesspool of headchopping Saudis. Pakistan is a danger to itself and the world and needs to be de-nuclearized and Balkanized with Punjab and Sind reverting back to India and the Pashtun areas to Afghanistan and Baluchistan to its original Iranian owners. The current cancerous failed state of Pakistan is a British imperialist creation like the Zionist enitity in Palestine, interestingly the British created both these moth eaten states in the same time frame 1947-1948 and both have been parasitic nuisance for the world and the region.
Yashad Rizvi Islam has no relevance in the modern world, look at the cesspool of headchopping Saudis. Pakistan is a danger to itself and the world and needs to be de-nuclearized and Balkanized with Punjab and Sind reverting back to India and the Pashtun areas to Afghanistan and Baluchistan to its original Iranian owners. The current cancerous failed state of Pakistan is a British imperialist creation like the Zionist enitity in Palestine, interestingly the British created both these moth eaten states in the same time frame 1947-1948 and both have been parasitic nuisance for the world and the region.
Yashad Rizvi Don’t post vulgar childish idiocy. Stick to the topic of Pakistan and its failed state. You silly uneducated trolls expose yourself so easily 🙂
Yashad Rizvi Don’t post vulgar childish idiocy. Stick to the topic of Pakistan and its failed state. You silly uneducated trolls expose yourself so easily 🙂
Shouldn’t the lovely Kingdom of Saudi Arabia be held at least partially responsible for turning Pakistan into a Wahhabist hellhole??
Shouldn’t the lovely Kingdom of Saudi Arabia be held at least partially responsible for turning Pakistan into a Wahhabist hellhole??
Can’t do anything as long as they sit over petroleum reserved.the world runs on oil so we have to tolerate those extremists.
As long as they sit over a huge petroleum reserve and are big buyers of American arms they are beyond reproach.
As long as they sit over a huge petroleum reserve and are big buyers of American arms they are beyond reproach.
The USA, KSA, IMF and now China. Insanity must be contagious.
The USA, KSA, IMF and now China. Insanity must be contagious.
Ilya Ilyayev Oh but it’s so much fun to mock hypocrites.
Ilya Ilyayev Oh but it’s so much fun to mock hypocrites.
All in due course!! A country like Pakistan is always going to be too important for major global actors to be allowed to become a failed state. Once Pak is able to address its internal religio-polical and economic destablizing factors, there is every reason for it to rise in the geopolitcal arena and start commanding its share of influence in the regional and global power spheres.
All in due course!! A country like Pakistan is always going to be too important for major global actors to be allowed to become a failed state. Once Pak is able to address its internal religio-polical and economic destablizing factors, there is every reason for it to rise in the geopolitcal arena and start commanding its share of influence in the regional and global power spheres.
And love your articles Pepe. Analysis is usually very comprehensive and authentic
And love your articles Pepe. Analysis is usually very comprehensive and authentic
And supported equally by US.
And supported equally by US.
Very doubtful . Even Chinese investments need an element of peace. It’s geopolitical positioning ensures a steady flow od dollars.
The Americans know that . Running with the hare and hunting with the hounds has paid dividends.
Very doubtful . Even Chinese investments need an element of peace. It’s geopolitical positioning ensures a steady flow od dollars.
The Americans know that . Running with the hare and hunting with the hounds has paid dividends.
Pakistan’s economic well-being lies in facilitating East-West trade between India, itself, Afghanistan, Iran and the Central Asian states, something it will never do unless it lets go of the ideological basis for it’s existence. It has instead chosen the slow economic suicide route and to deepen it’s debts by paying China to build a road to import cheap products and leads to nowhere but the sea.
Pakistan’s economic well-being lies in facilitating East-West trade between India, itself, Afghanistan, Iran and the Central Asian states, something it will never do unless it lets go of the ideological basis for it’s existence. It has instead chosen the slow economic suicide route and to deepen it’s debts by paying China to build a road to import cheap products and leads to nowhere but the sea.
Ilya Ilyayev : No relevance? The Ummayids invaded Western India(modern day Pakistan) in 711. It was a massive genocide and Islam has been the bloody catalyst ever since. A decent study of history through the Qur’an, Hadiths and Um-Dat al-Salik shows Islam to be immeniently relevant. Mr Escobar minimizes the the overriding influence of Islam in Pakastani culture.
Ilya Ilyayev : No relevance? The Ummayids invaded Western India(modern day Pakistan) in 711. It was a massive genocide and Islam has been the bloody catalyst ever since. A decent study of history through the Qur’an, Hadiths and Um-Dat al-Salik shows Islam to be immeniently relevant. Mr Escobar minimizes the the overriding influence of Islam in Pakastani culture.
Srinivasan Gk precisely. It has paid dividends in the past and will continue to pay dividends but the desperation and acute dependancy due to internal termoil has meant that too often Pak has not been in a position to set its own terms of engagement. Thus far the engagement has been involuntary in nature, taking its own course determined mainly through collision of conflicting nature of demands and interests of bigger powers.
The present IK govt has expressed the willingness to change this situation and seems to be more ready and prepared to take the tough decisions required. IK enjoys the support of army as well.
Srinivasan Gk precisely. It has paid dividends in the past and will continue to pay dividends but the desperation and acute dependancy due to internal termoil has meant that too often Pak has not been in a position to set its own terms of engagement. Thus far the engagement has been involuntary in nature, taking its own course determined mainly through collision of conflicting nature of demands and interests of bigger powers.
The present IK govt has expressed the willingness to change this situation and seems to be more ready and prepared to take the tough decisions required. IK enjoys the support of army as well.
Symptoms of a failed state getting exposed
Symptoms of a failed state getting exposed