Pak army shadow over caretaker govt

CARETAKER Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar is the eighth functionary to hold this temporary office in Pakistan; the first was Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, who did so from August to November 1990. Caretaker Prime Ministers and the governments they head are constitutionally mandated to keep the state machinery ticking and assist the Election Commission in holding elections within the constitutionally specified period.

Kakar’s remarks show Pakistan’s animosity towards the ‘arch-rival’ and its envy at India’s rise.

Unlike his predecessors, Kakar, who is close to the country’s establishment, is conducting, indeed projecting himself, as an elected leader. He is attending international conferences, taking long-term policy decisions and articulating his understanding of historical political processes. He is, therefore, exceeding his brief, but no one in Pakistan is pointing that out. This is clearly because he is doing what the army wants. And, after the May 9 disturbances, no Pakistani politician or commentator wants to really cross the enraged army chief, Gen Syed Asim Munir.

Kakar addressed the Margalla Dialogue on November 15, organised by the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI). The dialogue’s theme was ‘Emerging Security Challenges’. IPRI is the think tank of the National Security Division (NSD), which is affiliated to the Pakistan Prime Minister’s office. The NSD services the National Security Council (NSC), which consists of government ministers and the military leadership. The NSC, which is chaired by the Prime Minister, is the highest body in the Pakistani governance structure on security decision-making. Experience has shown that notwithstanding the presence of the elected political leadership, it is the view of the army which prevails on security and critical foreign policy issues and now even on economic matters.

Kakar’s comments on India, especially at an IPRI-organised event, could not but be a reflection of the Pakistan establishment’s current thinking on India. Hence, even though Pakistan has slightly lost its erstwhile salience in the consideration of India’s political and security classes, Kakar’s remarks cannot be ignored. This is especially as Pakistani diplomats and security analysts will now be required to press their interlocutors with these views, including those of Western countries.

Assessing that the West’s policy to contain China’s rise had failed, Kakar asserted that Pakistan derived no advantage from a Sino-Western confrontation. On the other hand, he said Pakistan’s ‘arch-rival’ India encouraged the conflict; it was offering itself as a ‘lead player’ to assist in China’s containment because of its vast population. As he put it: “India is flirting with the Western Hemisphere” to gain technology transfers, investments and other ‘engagements’. If the West found India attractive in its contestation with China because of its population, Kakar wondered why it did not consider the African continent, which also had a population of around 1.4 billion, or the Economic Cooperation Organisation (ECO), whose member nations together account for 500 million people.

On Kashmir, Kakar did not go into the constitutional changes of August 2019 but accused the international community of ‘double standards’ in ignoring the pledges made to the Kashmiri people. He said it was not for India or Pakistan to impose a solution but for the Kashmiris to decide their future through a plebiscite. He went on to express his historical understanding that no ‘colonialism’ could exist forever and that there was always a day of reckoning, no matter how long it took. In all this, Kakar was only stating the standard Pakistani position on the J&K issue.

Kakar noted that Pakistan had no objection to India-China economic and trade ties. He stated that Pakistan was not averse to either extending connectivity or doing trade with India, but contentious issues were an impediment. He also remarked that India-Pakistan trade had to be done in a ‘dignified’ way; that begging was not an option. Noting India’s economic growth, he said if India wanted to achieve 8-10 per cent growth rate, it would need supplies of cheap energy. He implied that India could not overlook supplies from Central Asia. What he left unsaid was that they would have to transit through Pakistan. It is strange that Pakistani analysts have still not understood that Central Asian energy or even Iranian pipelines bringing natural gas or oil are not really under India’s consideration for energy security.

Kakar alleged that India was suffering from the ‘disease of hubris’, which history has shown always ends in failure. It is in this context that his special ire — which is a carry-forward from what Pakistan has been spewing since 2019 — against the RSS and Hindutva has to be seen. But he went further than what Pakistan has said earlier. Wondering why the international community, which was focused on Islamic radicalism, ignored the dangers from Hindutva, he linked it to RSS supporters in the Indian diaspora which, he said, were ‘sleeper cells’ in the Western Hemisphere, as the Canadian experience had shown! He went on to claim that Pakistan had no problem with Hinduism. Jinnah, of course, did. That contributed to his insistence on the Partition. Kakar needs to read up on post-1937 Jinnah.

Kakar’s remarks on India show Pakistan’s undying animosity towards the ‘arch-rival’ and its envy at India’s rise. They also demonstrate that the Pakistani establishment realises that Pakistan would derive advantages from doing business with India, but its Kashmir trap prevents it from acting rationally. Three decades and more of sponsoring terror against India has substantially led to the country’s dire economic situation and the only way out for it is to build economic and commercial links with its ‘arch-rival’. There is no indication from Kakar’s remarks that the army is willing to do so.

Meanwhile, it was refreshing to observe that, in a departure from the past, some of Pakistan’s former cricketing greats had good words for Indian cricket, especially commending the way the game is nurtured in India. But such sentiments will make no difference to the army’s moves on India.