There is excitement in our wider world. In three of our external poles — the United Kingdom, France and the United States of America — this excitement is palpable. But it detracts our attention from our own fragile neighbourhood.
The Labour Party’s impressive victory in the general election in the United Kingdom left few surprised. The scale of the victory was immense but it had an underside best summarised by the comment that never has a party won more seats with fewer votes. Winning two-thirds of the seats with one-third of the votes sums up this election.
In France, contrary to expectations of the right-wing winning the polls outright, the National Rally came third in terms of the number of seats won. But it is still the single largest party. Those who took the first two positions are alliances of the Left and Centre coalitions, not parties. What a hung Parliament will mean for France will become clearer in the days ahead but at least one part of the debate is that the growth of the right-wing had evoked the spectre of a 1930s-like situation with Nazism and fascism on the ascendancy in Europe.
Do the French and the British election results now presage a Left revival, reversing the trend of right-wing populism sweeping Europe?
Across the Atlantic, in the US, the issues that excite debate are not Left versus Right or even the two wars that so dominate the daily newsfeed, or, for that matter, China and what to do about it. Age has become the number one issue in the US presidential election but whether it will remain so even after the failed assassination bid on the former president, Donald Trump, remains to be seen.
The historian, Niall Ferguson, has written provocatively about the US today resembling the Soviet Union in its dying days: “We’re all Soviets Now” is the title of his article. That a gerontocracy is at the head of affairs of the country is only a part of his argument concerning the convergence between the US of today and a decaying USSR. He also points to a hugely expensive military machine which cannot deliver even after long wars (Afghanistan), widespread public cynicism and disillusionment, a public health crisis with declining life expectancy, addiction, overdoses and so on.
But the central point that evokes the comparison is, of course, age. Ferguson points out that by the current standards of Joe Biden and Trump, the troika of Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko were hardly old men when they were in power in the 1980s.
With the excitement of these debates, amidst the drama of a near successful assassination attempt, and given the fears and hopes associated with a Biden or a Trump or even a Kamala Harris presidency, it takes some effort to focus on mundane matters closer home and, in particular, on the most familiar and most recalcitrant of our neighbours.
On the surface, Pakistan’s portfolio of problems should logically imply a country so entirely self-absorbed that, even as its most proximate neighbour, we should sensibly not have much to do with it and let it address its internal demons first.
And, yet, a steady and unmistakable uptick in terrorist-inflicted violence in Jammu and Kashmir forces a rethink of logical thinking and makes it necessary to look intently at Pakistan and how it impacts us.
A former prime minister in jail still being systematically hounded provides one frame of the internal situation in Pakistan. The announcement, since qualified but not fully retracted, that a ban on his party and the pressing of sedition charges against him were being contemplated sums it up. A seriously crippled economy in which the only good news coming in is about periodic tranches of an agreed IMF package is another. A third frame is provided by a deeply eroded relationship with the Taliban in Afghanistan reflected in a serious national security crisis on account of a constant spate of terrorist attacks in Pakistan. The final context is provided by the overbearing but somewhat ineffectual role of the Pakistan military in addressing each of these issues.
The sum total of all this is a deep pessimism best summed up in a recent editorial in its leading newspaper, Dawn: “Never before has Pakistan been tested with such severity of economic distress, not has society been as demoralized as it appears now.”
Logically, a country with such a portfolio of problems would hardly risk another aggravated situation with India and be inclined to continue the quietist mode witnessed for some time since the ceasefire on the line of control of early 2021. Those with this viewpoint would emphasise that the increase in terrorist attacks is not related to Pakistan but rather to local factors, such as the accumulated grievances and alienation in J&K and residual, random attacks by local terrorist groups.
But there is another alternative construction that is logical, internally consistent, and points to a different explanation of Pakistan’s behaviour. This would be that there is a Pakistani assessment of a mood of complacency in India regarding J&K and that its Pakistan policy in place since 2019 has worked. Is the recent uptick in terrorist attacks a calibrated message to question that complacency?
Different policy takeaways emerge based on these two logical constructs. Whatever policy mix is adopted to deal with this, some things are clear. A highly-securitised policy towards Pakistan has inherent limitations. The current situation, with downgraded diplomatic relations, no trade — both of which are on account of Pakistani decisions — and no political engagement is seeing a diminishing utility that can only increase.
Admittedly, there is considerable public support for a policy of zero dealings with Pakistan and the position that talks and terror cannot happen together. Yet, in the period ahead, a more clinical approach may be called for where a securitised approach is supplemented with diplomacy. Perhaps we are now at the stage when such a more-rounded policy ought to be attempted. In any event, no matter how tempting the discussions and analysis at the policy level of our wider world, the difficulties in our neighbourhood loom too large to be put aside.
T.C.A. Raghavan is a former High Commissioner to Pakistan
