Can Sharif hold his own? : The Tribune India

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Can Sharif hold his own?

MIAN NAWAZ SHARIF has a fascinating political career.

Can Sharif hold his own?

Faceoff: Sharif, so far, has managed to prevail over the army’s machinations.



G Parthasarathy

   

MIAN NAWAZ SHARIF has a fascinating political career. Over the past three decades he has been elected to the highest political office, with a decisive mandate, thrice. He was also removed from office on three occasions by moves crafted by the army brass, backed by institutions like the National Accountability Bureau. Moreover, the craven Supreme Court fights shy of taking any action against military rulers, or the military itself, for violating the Constitution, including through army coups. 

Pakistan’s Supreme Court has the unique distinction of legalising every military coup in the country. It justifies such coups under a dubious concept described as “the doctrine of necessity”. Moreover, while the Supreme Court never hesitates to act against civilian politicians and officials on allegations of corruption and misuse of authority, it exposes itself by its reluctance to ever act against gross human rights violations by the army in Balochistan, the tribal areas of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province bordering Afghanistan, as well as in Karachi and elsewhere in Sind. The army functions in Pakistan by rules it frames. It believes it is a separate organ of the State apparatus, not accountable to any legislative body, or even to the Supreme Court.

The army has, not too subtly, been sending its message around that it would like to see that Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) is not voted back to power. It has even sought to promote divisions within Sharif’s family by promoting the cause of Nawaz Sharif’s ambitious younger brother and Punjab Chief Minister, Shahbaz Sharif. Shahbaz would evidently not be unhappy if the army’s pressures result in his son ascending the political ladder as Prime Minister in due course. Nawaz has, however, deftly overcome these challenges. More importantly, he has prevailed over these machinations by the army and its political favourites, led by the army’s “blue-eyed boy” Imran Khan’s, Tehreek-e-Insaf Party. Muslim League candidates decisively defeated high profile and handpicked leaders of the Tehreek-e-Insaf in recent byelections to Parliament. The army would, however, dearly love to engineer a hung Parliament in the coming general election, with the Tehreek-e-Insaf winning the largest number of seats.

In the meanwhile, the internal security situation in Pakistan, while seemingly under control, is marked by discontent in the tribal areas of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and in large tracts of Balochistan. The Baloch insurgency has resulted in huge human sufferings, including “disappearances” of thousands of detained civilians. It has also led to the killings of 2,500 civilians, 775 members of the security forces and 994 militants in the past seven years. Worse still, the army has even used air power to bomb towns and villages all across the tribal areas of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, bordering Afghanistan. A massive attack by the army, described by the egotistic former army chief Gen Raheel Sharif as Operation Zarb-e-Azb, backed by airpower and artillery, reduced a number of towns and villages to rubble. An estimated one million tribal Pashtuns fled their homes. 

 Several thousand Pashtuns from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) protested recently in the capital, Islamabad. They voiced protests against unauthorised and random killings, disappearances and profiling by the army, which has lost an estimated 450 soldiers in its actions in the tribal areas. Having destroyed Pashtun homes in assaults, which killed hundreds, the army called it a day and left the cash-strapped government the impossible task of resettling lakhs of Pashtuns. All this came amidst new attacks on the military by disgruntled Pashtuns from the Tehreek-e-Taliban in Swat and elsewhere. Pakistan’s army is thus involved in military operations not only in J&K, but also across its borders with Afghanistan.

India will now have to carefully plan how to deal with Pakistan, amidst “election fever” in both countries. Pakistan will continue to step up infiltration and promote unrest in J&K. The spurt in cross-border exchanges of fire in 2017 was the Pakistan army’s signal to people in J&K that despite the joy in India over the “surgical strikes” in the previous year, support for militancy would continue. The high-profile attack by the JeM in Jammu suggests that given the international financial and diplomatic pressure, the ISI will carefully regulate Hafiz Saeed’s activities, while keeping the infrastructure of terrorism of the LeT intact. Unlike the Lashkar, the Jaish, led by Maulana Masood Azhar, operates without excessive propaganda. In retrospect, India has paid a very heavy price for releasing Masood Azhar in Kandahar during the IC-814 hijacking. Azhar was the mastermind of the December 2001 attack on our Parliament. No effort should be spared to deal with him.

Diplomatically, Pakistan is painting itself into a corner on its sponsorship of terrorism. Evidently buoyed by American backing, the Afghan government has decided that little purpose is served in talks, unless Pakistan addresses its concerns on terrorism. Kabul clearly does not want to get into prolonged and meaningless “dialogue” with Pakistan on other issues, till Pakistan undertakes concrete steps to stop backing the Taliban. The Afghans made this abundantly clear in recent delegation-level talks led by Pakistan foreign secretary Tahmina Janjua and an Afghan delegation by deputy foreign minister Hekmat Khalil Karzai. After grandiosely proposing an “Action Plan for Peace and Solidarity” (APAPPS), the Pakistanis stalled and would not get into specifics on actions for ending Taliban-sponsored terrorism and eliminating Taliban havens in Pakistan.

India has to take into consideration, not only the vulnerabilities in Pakistan’s diplomatic position, where it is facing growing pressures for closing havens for terrorists, but also its internal vulnerabilities. Islamabad will make every effort to get some diplomatic space from its “all-weather friend” China. India will, at the same time, need to carefully consider measures to turn the heat on Pakistan by all available diplomatic, economic, military means, given Pakistan’s current political scenario and its economic vulnerabilities, as national elections approach. 

We would be well advised to remember that actions speak louder than words. In the beginning of the last century, US President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed: “Speak softly but carry a big stick”, adding: “A proverb advising the tactic of non-aggression, backed by the ability to carry out violent action, is needed”. He concluded: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are!”

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