Back to daggers drawn

The détente was probably not meant to last for long. Days after PM Modi dialled his Pakistani counterpart, the two sides are back to acrimonious exchanges. Imran Khan had raised hopes with his famous ‘you take one step forward and I will take two in return’ offer but it now appears this was more of a customary politically-correct but empty statement by a politician on assuming office. The Pakistan army, which unabashedly uses armed non-state actors as a tool of foreign policy, was not amused. Its chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa used the defence day forum to promise to avenge every drop of blood shed on the border. And now Imran Khan has nettled South Block by terming its bête noire ISI as his country’s first line of defence.

The State’s policies and priorities have to be terribly warped when its intelligence agency is held up as the first line of defence. A normal country generally has diplomats and its soft power backed by military deterrence as its front-office to the world. The implication of a newly elected Pakistan PM talking up ISI was not lost in India. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh played the statesman by ending his barrage with the hope that Pakistan mends its ways. But the vitriol was unmistakable and undisguised. His Cabinet colleagues picked up the threads to deliver more verbal fusillade.  

It is hard to say whether this was a ploy to keep Pakistan under a joint Indo-US pincer pressure. A better alternative would have been to throw a few olive branches in the mix. Talks on a passage to Kartarpur could have built on recently held conversations on soft subjects. But Kartarpur seems to have fallen in the cracks of political divisiveness. Neither PM Modi at the fag-end of his term is likely to pick up the talks gauntlet nor can Imran take up a big ticket subject early in his tenure and risk a failure. Back channel, rather than public diplomacy, with its attendant domestic constraints, seems a more viable option.