1. 10 MARCH 2016
LMDLe Monde diplomatique
LMDLe Monde diplomatique MARCH 2016 11
P
akistan’s relations with its neighbours
changed in 2015, though where they
are heading is uncertain. Plans for an
economic corridor from western
China to the coast of Pakistan strengthened
links between Islamabad and Beijing.
Relations with Afghanistan and India were
less than smooth, owing to the election of
new leaders: Narendra Modi, prime minister
of India since May 2014 and leader of the
Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP), and Ashraf Ghani, president of
Afghanistan since September 2014. And in
January 2015 Salman bin Abdelaziz al-Saud
succeeded to the throne of Saudi Arabia.
A series of disappointments affected
Ghani’s initially friendly attitude towards
Pakistan. India’s stance hardened after the
Hindu nationalists came to power;
nonetheless, the atmosphere grew more
conducive to dialogue until a terrorist attack
in January on the Indian air base at Pathankot,
near the Pakistani border. Pakistan’s relations
with its old ally Saudi Arabia became more
complicated because of regional initiatives by
the new Saudi leadership. So Pakistan’s prime
minister Nawaz Sharif, elected in 2013 for a
third term (1), and the head of the army
General Raheel Sharif (no relation), who has
a veto on matters concerning relations with
neighbours and on strategic policy, need to
manoeuvre carefully.
Domestic tensions complicate the task.
Fighting the Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-e-
Taliban Pakistan) has become a priority since
the massacre at an army secondary school in
Peshawar in 2014, in which some 140 died,
including more than 130 children. But the
battle is far from over, especially on
the ideological side (see The power behind
the throne).
Pakistan’s refusal to support the
intervention in Yemen in 2015 (see Yemen’s
futile war, pages 8-9) shocked Saudi Arabia,
which has given Pakistan much financial
help with its economy, its madrasas (Quranic
schools), and probably its nuclear
programme. Saudi Arabia saw Pakistan as a
potential source of transfers of knowledge
and technology, especially as Iran was
accused of pursuing a military nuclear
programme. Millions of Pakistanis work in
Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. And Prime
Minister Sharif is indebted to the Saudi
royal family for securing his release from
jail after the coup by General Pervez
Musharraf, and sheltering him in exile
between 2000 and 2007.
Although Sharif blamed his parliament’s
negative stance, Pakistan’s refusal to send
troops to Yemen was based on a consensus
between army and government. In 2011,
during the Arab Spring, Pakistani military
foundations had recruited mercenaries among
former members of the armed forces to help
the regime in Bahrain, whose (Sunni) king
was repressing protests by the Shia majority.
But taking part in the large-scale military
operation launched by the Saudi-led coalition
against the Houthi rebels in Yemen would
have been another thing altogether. The Zaydi
Shiism of the Houthis differs from Iranian
Shiism, and Zaydis can be found on all sides
in the Yemeni conflict. That does not stop
Saudi Arabia accusing Iran of being behind
the rebellion, and of starting another
confrontation between Sunni Saudi Arabia
and the United Arab Emirates on the one
hand, and Shia Iran and its protégés in Syria,
Iraq and Lebanon on the other.
The Sharifs were “invited” to Riyadh,
where they said they were ready to help
maintain Saudi territorial integrity. They
repeated this in January, when the Saudi
defence minister and deputy crown prince
Mohammad bin Salman al-Saud visited
Islamabad (2). But they emphasised that the
army was focused on fighting the Pakistani
Taliban, and that they could not risk
exacerbating domestic tensions when
Pakistan’s Shia minority were already under
attack from the Sunni armed group Lashkar-
e-Jhangvi. Pakistan does not intend to miss
out on opportunities created by the
agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme,
such as resuming work on the Iran-Pakistan
gas pipeline. Afghanistan, Iran and India
(which is providing the funding) want to
restart development of the Iranian port of
Chabahar, Tehran’s response to Pakistan’s
own port of Gwadar, paid for by China. The
development of Chabahar will allow
landlocked Afghanistan to break Pakistan’s
maritime monopoly and also give India
access, via Iran, to gas-rich Afghanistan and
Central Asia.
Pakistan’s embarrassment grew last
December when Saudi Arabia announced a
military alliance of 34 Sunni countries
“against terrorism” – in which Pakistan was
enrolled, apparently without having been
consulted. The crisis between Saudi Arabia
and Iran – exacerbated by the execution of the
Saudi opposition figure Nimr al-Nimr, a Shia
cleric – makes matters worse. Saudi foreign
minister Adel al-Jubeir has officially received
Pakistan’s support, but the Pakistani
government wants dialogue, assuring the
parliament that it does not wish to take sides
(3). Islamabad does not want the Middle East
chaos adding to its domestic problems, now
that ISIS is beginning to threaten Afghanistan
and even Pakistan’s own territory. The Sharifs
have already attempted to mediate between
Saudi Arabia and Iran, though without
convincing results.
In 2014 Afghan president Hamid Karzai
ended his term in office by criticising
Pakistan’s double-dealing and US strategy in
Afghanistan. The bulk of NATO forces have
now withdrawn: only 10,000 troops,
instructors and members of special forces
remain, most of them Americans. Karzai’s
successor, Ashraf Ghani, has played the
Pakistani card to restore peace. There have
been visits by high-level civilian and military
figures in an attempt to coordinate action
against the Pakistani Taliban, who now have
sanctuaries in Afghanistan, in an
unprecedented – but not necessarily deliberate
– symmetry with the sanctuaries already
offered to the Afghan Taliban in Pakistan
since 2001. Ghani hopes Pakistan will press
the latter to engage in dialogue.
This rapprochement has been severely
criticised in Afghanistan – especially after
plans for cooperation between Pakistan’s
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and
Afghanistan’s National Directorate of
Security (NDS), with some training entrusted
to the ISI, were made public in 2015. The
project was abandoned, and the head of the
NDS was forced to resign. The agency also
revealed that Mullah Muhammad Omar, emir
of the Afghan Taliban, had died, back in 2013.
This undermined the position of Omar’s
successor, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, who, in
2014, had permitted the first official meeting
between Taliban emissaries and
representatives of the Afghan government,
under the auspices of the ISI, with US and
Chinese observers. After the news of Mullah
Omar’s death, the crisis among the Taliban
worsened and dialogue was suspended.
However, the Heart of Asia-Istanbul
Process conference, an annual regional forum
(4) held in Islamabad last December, helped
reduce Afghan-Pakistani tensions, which had
become strained after Kunduz was briefly
captured by the Taliban and the Afghan
defence ministry accused the ISI of working
with the attackers (5).
General Raheel Sharif’s visit to Kabul in
December put Afghanistan’s internal
dialogue back on the agenda. Representatives
of Pakistan, Afghanistan, the US and China
then met in January to begin re-establishing
contact between Pakistan and the Afghan
Taliban – but without success. Afghanistan
was demanding that Taliban factions which
refused negotiation and its preconditions
should be attacked – something Pakistan was
reluctant to accept. The parties met once
more in January, and twice in February. In
the end, all Taliban factions, together with
the Haqqani network and Hezb-e-Islami,
have been invited to talks this month in
Pakistan. But nothing is certain – the basis
for future negotiations has not been defined
officially, and divisions among Taliban
factions, with some of those factions even
joining ISIS, could thwart progress.
Pakistan sees the Afghan and Indian
questions as inseparable. Its strategy is to
avoid being caught between its historic
adversary, India, and an Afghanistan in which
India could have too strong a presence (6).
India has been concerned at Ghani’s
overtures to Pakistan – especially as he took
seven months to make his first visit to India.
Yet the fluctuating relations between
Afghanistan and Pakistan have given India
room to manoeuvre. The re-starting of the
Chabahar port project, the long-awaited
decision to deliver attack helicopters to
Afghanistan (the weak point of its national
army, now in the frontline in the fight against
Jean-Luc Racine is emeritus director of research
at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique,
senior researcher at the Asia Centre, Paris, and
the author of Cachemire: au péril de la guerre
(Autrement, 2002) and L’Inde et l’Asie (CNRS, 2009)
Ashraf Khan is a journalist in Karachi
the Taliban), and Modi’s visit to Kabul for the
inauguration of the new parliament building,
financed by India, have defused the tension.
The situation in Kashmir, divided by the
line of control (7), had become tenser after
the election of Modi in India. Hope is now
growing for the resumption of dialogue,
stalled since the 2008 Mumbai attacks. At a
discreet meeting in December, national
security advisers resumed discussions that
were not restricted just to terrorism and
Kashmir. The breakthrough came because of
a change in the positions of India – which had
made discussing terrorism a precondition for
any other talks – and of Pakistan, whose
military are now on board. (The new national
security adviser General Nasser Khan Janjua
is close to Raheel Sharif.) The supposedly
chance meeting between Nawaz Sharif and
Modi in Paris, during the UN climate
conference in December, and Modi’s later
“impromptu” visit to Pakistan were positive
signs. Modi’s predecessor, Manmohan Singh,
had failed to convince his entourage of the
necessity of visiting Pakistan during a decade
in office.
The terrorist attack at Pathankot in January
halted the dialogue. Nawaz Sharif assured
India of his determination to neutralise
terrorist groups using information from
Indian investigators; and members of Jeish-e-
Muhammad, which India is suspicious of,
have been arrested. But gestures of goodwill
are unlikely to be enough, and a meeting
between foreign ministries originally
scheduled for mid-January was postponed.
Yet, the principle of dialogue has not been
abandoned. India has shown astonishing
moderation, hoping to thwart the objective of
the Pathankot attack – which was to prevent
any high-level dialogue.
China and Pakistan have considered each
other as “brothers” since the 1970s, and have
close ties, initially motivated by strategic
considerations: China sees Pakistan as a
counterbalance to India. China aided
Pakistan’s nuclear programme, and their
defence industries have cooperated on the
jointly developed JF-17 Thunder/FC-1
Xiaolong fighter-bomber. But under the
leadership of President Xi Jinping, China’s
geopolitical aims seem increasingly tied to its
geoeconomic aims. India and China still have
a border dispute, and India has strengthened
its military presence in the Himalayas with a
new 40,000-strong mountain strike corps and
improved infrastructure. This does not
prevent dialogue: their leaders visit each
other, and the value of Sino-Indian trade
($65bn in 2014) is seven times greater than
that of Sino-Pakistani trade.
Xi visited Pakistan in 2015, and announced
the imminent implementation of the China-
Pakistan Economic Corridor, an idea put
forward during Pervez Musharraf’s
presidency. This multi-route axis will link the
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in
western China, to Gwadar. China has set
aside $46bn to finance the initiative, which
includes industrial and energy projects. But
the security of construction sites and the
safety of Chinese workers will have to be
guaranteed. China has suggested that it would
be desirable to normalise the status of Gilgit-
Baltistan, in northern Pakistan, through which
the corridor will pass (this Himalayan
territory is claimed by India). The corridor
will also have a branch to Afghanistan, whose
mineral resources interest China.
Pakistan has so far refused to grant India
most favoured nation status in trade. Since
2010 an agreement between Pakistan and
Afghanistan has allowed Afghan lorries to
pass through Pakistan on their way to India,
but does not allow them to return, nor does it
allow any trade shipments from India to
Afghanistan (8). Nawaz Sharif, a former
businessman, is said to favour normalising
relations with India, and the Pakistani
chambers of commerce agree with him. But
while the military refuse to abandon their
strategic position of “Kashmir first”, the
civilian authorities can achieve little. And
that is the key issue in any dialogue which
may resume in 2016.
Many in Pakistan believe this policy has
come at a high price, because it has
encouraged terrorism and harmed the
economy. Pakistan’s geographical position
should be a major asset: it lies between the
energy-rich and emerging giants of East Asia,
the Middle East and Central Asia, and
between the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean,
very near the Gulf. Sherry Rehman, chair of
the thinktank Jinnah Institute and former
ambassador to Washington, wrote in 2014:
“Business, trade, economic integration are
the future, and must drive the motor for
game-change” (9). The growing fight against
terrorism and the Pakistani Taliban is
essential, but it is not enough.
A transformation of the national narrative
is required, and therefore of the “Pakistan
ideology”, the official doctrine taught to
children and soldiers, which describes
Pakistan as an “ideological state” created for
the Muslims of South Asia. Any elected
government will need to tackle this but will
only be able to do so if the military do too.
The army accepts resumption of the dialogue
with India – or at least has decided not to
obstruct it – though the outcome remains
uncertain. But it has refrained from any
discussion of the nature of Pakistan, its
official ideology, and the relationship between
Islam, state and nation. That is a debate the
politicians are careful to avoid, too.
TRANSLATED BY CHARLES GOULDEN
(1) He previously served 1990-3, and from 1997 until
Pervez Musharraf’s coup in 1999.
(2) “Pakistan will stand by Saudi Arabia if territorial
integrity threatened: PM Nawaz”, The Express Tribune,
Karachi, 10 January 2016.
(3) Irfan Haider, “Grave dangers face Muslim world
in light of Saudi-Iran standoff: Sartaj”, and editorial
“A delicate balance”, Dawn, Islamabad, 5 and 6
January 2016.
(4) The participating countries are: Afghanistan,
Azerbaijan, China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkey,
Turkmenistan, and the United Arab Emirates. Countries
and organisations supporting the initiative include
Australia, Canada, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Japan,
Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, the UK, the US, the EU,
NATO and the UN.
(5) “MoD blames ISI for Kunduz assault”, Tolo News,
Kabul, 1 October 2015.
(6) See Jean-Luc Racine, “My neighbour’s neighbour”,
Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, November 2014.
(7) India and Pakistan have clashed several times since
Kashmir acceded to India in 1947, on the decision of
its maharajah. Since 1949, Kashmir has been divided
into two territories under Pakistani administration, Azad
Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, and one under Indian
control, Jammu and Kashmir.
(8) The official value of trade in 2014 was $2.6bn.
Counting trade via intermediary countries (United Arab
Emirates, Singapore) could double this figure.
(9) Sherry Rehman, “The audacity of hope: Beyond
photo-op, Modi and Sharif must move quickly and come
up with a peace plan”, The Times of India, Mumbai,
27 May 2014.
AFGHANISTAN, INDIA, CHINA,THE GULF PRESS IN
Pakistan’s difficult neighbours
The power behind the throne
Pakistan will have to change its national self-definition if it wants to improve its
economic future – and make relations across all its borders less fraught
BY JEAN-LUC RACINE
BY ASHRAF KHAN
7.0
9.8
5.7
50.0
9.6
80.8
22.8
9.5
8.5
22.6
15.9
84.5
216.4
10.2
CHINA
Tibet
Xinjiang
AksaiChin
TAPI Arunachal
Pradesh
EGYPT
SOMALILAND
SOMALIA
KENYA
SRI LANKAI N D I A N O C E A N
G u l f o f
B e n g a l
Straits of
Malacca
G u l f o f
O m a n
Mediterranean
Sea
ETHIOPIA
ERITREA
DJIBOUTI
SUDAN
INDIA VIETNAM
NEPAL
BHUTAN
BANGLADESH
MYANMAR
THAILAND
CAMBODIA
MALAYSIA
INDONESIA
SINGAPORE
TAIWAN
SOUTH
KOREA
LAOS
IRAN
KAZAKHSTAN
AZERBAIJAN UZBEKISTAN
TURKMENISTAN
AFGHANISTAN
PAKISTAN
TAJIKISTAN
KYRGYZSTAN
MONGOLIA
TURKEY
SYRIA
IRAQ
SAUDI
ARABIA
YEMEN
OMAN
UNITED
ARAB EMIRATES
Gwadar
Chabahar
Kashgar
Gilgit
Karachi
New Delhi
Beijing
Dhaka
Colombo
Islamabad
Kabul
Tehran
Baghdad
Damascus
Ankara
Riyadh
Sanaa
Mumbai
BAHRAIN
QATAR
KUWAIT
JORDAN
LEBANON
CYPRUS
ISRAEL
PALESTINE
ARMENIA
GEORGIA
RUSSIA
Ka
shmir
Border dispute
Nuclear power
Major US military presence
Ongoing conflict Defence spending1
in 2014
($ billion)
Accords and partnerships Discords and competing projects Conflicts and regional militarisation
Historical ideological ally Planned China-Pakistan
Economic Corridor
Historical
enemy
Unstable
relations
Strategic and
economic ally
Major Pakistani
diaspora
Port financed by China
Port financed by India
Indian maritime route
Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline
(under construction)
Planned gas pipeline
Planned road axis
Sources: SipriYearbook 2015;“Géopolitique du Pakistan”, Hérodote, no 139, La Découverte, 2010; US Department of Defence; Le Monde; Reuters 1
Countries spending in excess of $5bn only
9.8
CÉCILE MARIN
Pakistan’s neighbourhood relations
I
n June 2013, for the first time in 68 years of
independence, an elected government
handed power over to another elected
government in Pakistan: until then, each
period of democratic rule had ended with a
military coup. Nawaz Sharif, prime minister
since this latest election, knew this only too well,
having been overthrown twice. Fears of a fresh
coup appeared well founded when Imran Khan,
the cricketing legend turned iron-willed
politician, refused to accept the election results.
His Movement for Justice (PTI) had just entered
parliament after a spectacular election
breakthrough. He called for the prime minister to
stand down and submitted several complaints to
the Supreme Court.
On 14 August 2014, Independence Day,
thousands came from Lahore to protest against
the government in Islamabad.Amid rumours of
an alliance between Pakistan’s army generals
and Imran Khan, he and his followers staged a
126-day sit-in in the capital – until a terrorist
attack that December on a military school in
Peshawar, in the north of the country, killed
over 140, including more than 130 children.
Political conflicts were suspended and there
was a unanimous call to fight terrorism. This led
to an unprecedented rapprochement between
Nawaz and the chief of the powerful Pakistan
Army,GeneralRaheelSharif.Anewgovernment-
military strategy was put in place, a National
Action Plan (NAP) that set out to eradicate
violent religious groups from the country.
The NAP eased the conflict between the two
centres of power. According to Syed Jaffar
Ahmed, director of the Pakistan Study Centre at
the University of Karachi, “after the events of
2014, a new trust has developed between the
political class and the army’s senior ranks. There
is every reason to believe the two are getting on
really well.” However, many observers believe
the military are preventing any government
attempt to evade their supervision. Touseef
Ahmed Khan, a political commentator, points out
that Nawaz Sharif does not even have a full-time
foreign minister, and says the army is pulling the
strings in all the country’s diplomatic relations –
with neighbouring countries, regional powers
and the US.
Sharif’s government also faces a persistent
terrorist threat. As part of the NAP, the army has
stepped up its large-scale operations in tribal
zones where the Pakistani Taliban and other
armed groups are hiding. According to the
interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, who
is close to the prime minister, there has been a
“remarkable” improvement in the country’s
security. Though suicide bombings, kidnappings
and terrorist attacks against the police have not
stopped, their numbers have fallen for the first
time since 2001. Even so, Ali Khan admits there
is still “a lot to do for the complete eradication of
terrorism” (1).
Specialists warn against policies that cut off
branches without digging up the roots. To Syed
Jaffar Ahmed, targeting the madrasas (Quranic
schools) alone makes no sense since “they no
longer have a monopoly on fundamentalism.”
Alarmed by the “rise of religious extremism
among the educated classes,” he cites as evidence
the violent attack in May 2015 when a group of
45 Ismaili Muslims, men and women, were taken
off a bus and shot in the neck.The killers, arrested
several weeks later, were mostly well-off youths
from the country’s best business and engineering
schools: despite their prestigious degrees, they
were putting out ISIS-inspired propaganda.
“Pakistan has changed over the last 40 years;
the impact of fundamentalism is felt strongly,”
says Syed Jaffar Ahmed. The 1977 coup by
General Zia ul-Haq marked a key turning point.
Two years later the country found itself right next
door to the Soviet war in Afghanistan, and
thousands of young people were given military
training so they could join the jihad against the
“infidels” across the border. “The students who
took part in this war during the Zia regime have
now become university professors, and are
indoctrinating the young in their turn,” says
Touseef Ahmed Khan. “Changing attitudes and
putting an end to teaching that promotes
extremism in society is one of the government’s
biggest challenges.”
Economic stagnation and administrative
difficulties are another major challenge for the
government, which came to power during the
worst energy crisis the country had ever known.
Sharif promised to put an end to power cuts,
lasting for hours or even entire days, in less than
12 months. Two and a half years later, they still
happen, though they are shorter.
Tomakeupitsbudgetdeficit,thegovernment
had to take a loan of $6.6bn from the
International Monetary Fund, granted on
condition that Pakistan reformed its fiscal and
energy sectors. The government’s deregulation
and disinvestment policy left tens of thousands
of Pakistanis below the poverty line – and they
are now 35-45% of the population (2).
According to economist Tariq Yusuf, the
country needs a decade of 6% annual growth
to put this right. The IMF forecasts 4.5%
growth for fiscal 2015-6. This projection is
based on a fall in oil prices and improved
energy supply from the China-Pakistan
Economic Corridor (see Pakistan’s difficult
neighbours). Meanwhile, the literacy rate is
among the lowest in the region (54.7%):
columnist Wusatullah Khan says the country
does not even have sufficient resources to raise
the standard of primary education.
Despite these challenges, Nawaz Sharif
will most likely see out his mandate; he has
almost finished his third year at the head of
the government – the longest he has held
power as yet.
TRANSLATED BY MOLLY ASHBY
(1) Speech in parliament, 30 December 2015.
(2) According to the Sustainable Development Policy
Institute, a thinktank in Islamabad.
Islamabad does not want the
Middle East chaos adding to its
domestic problems, now that
ISIS is beginning to threaten
Afghanistan and even Pakistan’s
own territory
Created by the partition of India along sectarian lines in 1947, Pakistan has fought several wars with India over the Kashmir region, to which both
countries lay claim. Pakistan’s ideological and economic alliances with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and China stem from these clashes
SpeciaL REPORT