Pakistan and India can move on from their destructive relationship
https://arab.news/m5gn2
While the upcoming elections dominate the news agendas in Pakistan these days, an unexpected question has also risen through the news cycle that is linked to the poll outcome: Is it time for Pakistan and India to put their needless bilateral bitterness behind and head for a collaborative fresh start at political amiability and economic productivity?
Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif seems to think so and as likely contender for a new stint in power, his proposal should be taken seriously as it also makes eminent political sense given that at the heart of Pakistan’s current domestic polycrisis is the long unaddressed question of how to rejuvenate its economy, which can’t be done sustainably without engaging with India.
Indo-Pak bilateral trade in 2021-22 was $1.3 billion and the same year Pakistan was begging the IMF for $1.2 billion to stay afloat. If bilateral ties were normalized Pakistan would be charting exports of $5 billion a year to India alone, obviating the crippling dependency on the IMF.
India and Pakistan have not had ambassadors in each other’s capitals for several years now. This downgraded diplomatic relationship that clipped direct communication is not only unproductive, it is downright dangerous between nuclear neighbors with a history of having fought wars.
Sharif understands this and is sticking his neck out against an India-phobic security establishment by calling for détente between Islamabad and New Delhi. Some may argue that space for his unexpected statement that you can’t be economically powerful without sustainably befriending all your neighbors, particularly with large consumer markets, comes from the dwindling political options for the establishment.
That may be so, but Sharif has a history of taking the high political ground on the subject of befriending India which goes against the grain of the prevalent political narrative. He also has an uncanny penchant for personal rapport with a string of Indian prime ministers with an openly hawkish line against Pakistan including the late Atal Behari Vajpayee and incumbent premier Narendra Modi.
How Pakistan and India frame a mutually destructive neighborhood relationship is now so passe – it has held sway for 75 years now – and helps neither.
Adnan Rehmat
In the previous two of his three stints as prime minister, Sharif managed to unprecedentedly host his counterparts in Lahore, both Vajpayee and Modi. In contrast, former prime minister Imran Khan was never able to get Modi to even pick up his phone calls despite repeated attempts.
This ability of the Sharif’s instant rapport with Indian premiers is something the treasury can’t buy with even a billion dollars’ worth of diplomacy but is available to the state of Pakistan at his discretion. Now that it seems likely that Sharif may yet stride back into the corridors of power, the state should not bypass this incredible opportunity of engaging meaningfully with India.
To be sure it will be not less than difficult to befriend India even with Sharif’s considerable diplomatic prowess. To be able to pull it off with India, Sharif will first have to decisively convince his own security establishment. The bitterness in Islamabad is still fresh at Indian constitutional annexation of the part of Kashmir under its control in 2019 by the Modi government and this month’s Supreme Court decision in Delhi upholding the decision, as this undermines Pakistan’s diplomatic position.
But how Pakistan and India frame a mutually destructive neighborhood relationship is now so passe – it has held sway for 75 years now – and helps neither. With national elections in both Pakistan and India scheduled within months of each other in the next few months, now is the perfect time to reestablish at least basic functionality in bilateral ties and seek more mature and innovative ways of good neighborliness.
A forward-looking approach will not just benefit the two countries politically but unleash a socio-economic windfall for one-fifth of humanity that is South Asia. Who better to do it but Sharif and Modi who, on the face of it, are poised to come back to power and who enjoy good personal rapport.
Pakistan and India must immediately agree to appoint ambassadors who will kick open avenues of communication and avoid the impulse to talk tough to each other through the media. It would also be a game changer if the sitting prime minister of each country attends the swearing in ceremony of their newly elected counterparts across the border.
That in turn can lead to revival of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to inject newfound bilateral optimism into the region’s primary multilateral platform to unleash economic and cultural engagement across the region.
- Adnan Rehmat is a Pakistan-based journalist, researcher and analyst with interests in politics, media, development and science.
