TeaThe Pakistani lobby of security personnel is determined to make their Indian counterparts realize that any peace initiative with Islamabad is a bad idea. This is not only because of the dominant sentiment in New Delhi, which regards Pakistan as irrelevant, but also because of an internal division in Islamabad that prevents it from moving forward. Pakistan’s poor economic condition has also not changed. The traditional security lobby does not care about the suffering of ordinary Pakistanis, to whom vegetables do not reach.
Two senior Pakistani journalists Hamid Mir and Naseem Zahra took former army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa (retd) to the cleaners. However, the time of Discussion Looks like an attempt to disrupt Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s visit to India to attend the SCO meeting in Goa in early May or to block further talks between the Shehbaz Sharif government and Delhi. It is said that even Sharif could visit delhi But that probably won’t happen. Meanwhile, the idea is to increase the burden of the foreign minister.
The conversation on TV sounded like an attack against Bajwa, accused of “selling Kashmir to India” to him. Bajwa cited financial pressure from Pakistan in a briefing to journalists in April 2021 to argue why the military needed to look past Kashmir and find other means of engaging Delhi. It is a mystery why Mir and Zahra remained silent even when journalist Fahad Hussain was there. informed of on that in detail. It was not that Mir was afraid of politicians at that time, because just a month later, in May 2021, he joined the protest against the attack on journalist Asad Ali Toor and bullied Army “with things made public, things inside your homes”
Mir was fired due to his controversial speech geo news Although he resumed hosting the channel capital talks Show in March 2022. Yes, Mir survived an assassination attempt in 2014, but right now, he may not be worried considering the current army chief, General Asim Munir, is still struggling to find his feet in his organizational universe. And it continues to be attacked. many directions.
May be raising voice against Mir and Zahra Bajwa who recently did so called Mir a “liar”. But in the process, he has joined the bandwagon of hawks in the larger security community, which has pushed Bajwa back on his initiative to broker peace with India. We now understand through sources that the Foreign Office and other sections of the establishment were not with the Army Chief in 2021. The then Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi was part of the group that prevented Imran Khan from reversing his decision to import from India. Covid crisis.
Now that the Foreign Office ladder is on the same page regarding the Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari visit to Goa, Qureshi, former Ambassador abdul basit, Mir, Zahra and others want to make the journey difficult. Not only is he questioning the decision to attend the SCO summit, Qureshi wants the External Affairs Minister to do so Raise Also tried to meet Hurriyat leaders on Kashmir issue. It does not matter to Qureshi and others that the Goa SCO meeting is a multilateral event where bilateral discussions are not allowed. At this stage, they want to muddy the waters enough for talks on the sidelines or make the trip politically costly for the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) alliance. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), especially wants to stick the tag of corruption and anti-national on its political rivals.
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Is it time to talk?
The fact is that Kashmir is an emotive issue and cannot be resolved without some stability in the government, even though many leaders in Pakistan’s history have tried. The second issue is of Israel. Lack of trust in any regime or team of rulers will continue to prey on hawks in taking giant leaps to resolve this issue. We know from history that even a self-confident person like Musharraf can stumble if he does not look back. This is not the right time for the present coalition government to take any initiative or be seen as losing out to India. Whatever the case, the visiting delegation is loaded with a bevy of reporters, some of whom are waiting for the young foreign minister to fall so they can turn it into a spectacle, as Mir and Zahra did Is .
But Mir’s Kashmir allegations against Bajwa have shown how the Pakistan Army now lacks a strong centre. Like Pervez Musharraf, Bajwa thought he could take with him the changing direction on relations with India. Despite not losing to India in the Balakot debacle, during which Pakistan captured an Indian Air Force pilot and retaliated with claims of a precision surgical strike, Bajwa felt that conflict could not be the direction of bilateral relations. I remember a conversation in 2021 with someone who had deep ties with the ruling establishment. The man told me how there was a broad agreement among army officers on the new formula for peace with India – ‘Delhi will keep its Kashmir and we will keep ours’. Certainly, Bajwa made the classic mistake of not educating the officer cadre or developing a consensus. For instance, sources claim that the then foreign secretary Sohail Mahmood was not onboard, which in itself is an indicator that all was not well at GHQ about the idea of Bajwa moving on.
It is not just that the issue of Kashmir tugs at Pakistan’s conscience, but the fact that the troubles of the economy haven’t really hurt those who ask India’s hawks to reconsider. As Mir and Zahra railed against Bajwa on a particular issue, I wondered whether they thought it was possible to revive the jihadi network or that there was any possibility of fighting on the army’s frontiers when the economic situation was really Was under so much pressure. Some of the other journalists present at the Bajwa-journalists meeting in 2021 denied that the general said anything about there being no fuel for the trucks, as Mir and Zahra claim, but they contended Talked about general inefficiency. Historically, Indo-Pakistani wars were also due to low fuel and other capability to fight long wars. Looking at the economic condition of Islamabad, it will be a big challenge. Peace on the LoC and generally provides an opportunity for top political and military commanders to bring about a significant change.
A well-appointed economist friend from Pakistan said it could take 12-15 years for the current lobby – with well-established interests that would allow them to invest in R&D and shift from import substitution to export-oriented-manufacturing Do not give – to be replaced. Thus, Pakistan’s economy is not going to turn around anytime soon. The military-strategic lobby that Hamid Mir represents can change his mind only if there is a financial crisis in his house. The answer is not even in Pakistan drifting completely into the Chinese camp as this would probably require far bigger changes in elite lifestyles that the current lobby does not want.
Meanwhile, one can only wish for a successful and uneventful Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari journey. I hope both sides realize that this is not the time to pretend. No one expects great success, but don’t let this meeting go wrong at the altar of ego, and failure. In the next few years, both India and Pakistan would benefit from thinking about starting a real dialogue on climate change between people, farmers, traders and businessmen and youth. While the security sector is important, it is the other dialogues that will matter more.
Ayesha Siddiqa is a Senior Fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London. She is the author of Military Inc. She tweets at @iamthedrifter. Thoughts are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)