This was a bad year for Pakistan’s foreign policy. It was just that the wheels did not come off completely.
The year had started with hope. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Lahore in the last week of Dec 2015 and had agreed to the resumption of dialogue after a long pause. A new push for peace in Afghanistan had been agreed upon. The then Army Chief General Raheel Sharif had completed a visit to the US on a high note in which he had been extended unprecedented protocol. And let us not forget that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif dipped his toes in the waters of the cold war in the Middle East, visiting Riyadh and Tehran in an effort to explore whether there was any scope for mediation. But nothing worked out for Pakistan in the end.
As we look back at 2016, the lows outstrip the highs. This year would be defined by the failure of the quadrilateral process for reconciliation in Afghanistan, a sharp downturn in relations with Kabul and Washington, aggravation in ties with India, a cancelled SAARC summit after most of the members followed Indian suit and pulled out of the Islamabad meeting. This year includes a missed signal from Tehran for turning the page in the relationship and a period of frostiness with Southeast Asian countries.
Some interpret these developments as an indication of Pakistan’s growing isolation.
Others, however, see a silver lining in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) gradually moving forward, a progressing rapprochement with Moscow and the continuing stalemate at the Nuclear Suppliers Group over admission of the non-Non Proliferation Treaty member states, even though all of that is still a work in progress. It would, therefore, not be too far off the mark to say that many minds at the Foreign Office would be glad to see the year coming to a close.
Senator Mushahid Hussain, who heads the influential parliamentary committee on CPEC and chairs the Senate defense body in addition to being a senior member of the Foreign Affairs committee, thinks it was a year of “mixed results”. Former foreign secretary Salman Bashir sees 2016 as “a tumultuous year”. Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz sees it as a continuing pattern in Pakistan’s external relations. “In the past ten years there have always been ups and downs in one relationship or the other for different reasons,” he told a Senate panel, advising its members not to subscribe to the impression that Pakistan has been isolated.
But, there is certainly more to this picture than just the explanation that it was the bad patch stretching out. Realistically speaking, Pakistan and US relations today stand at a low that is comparable to what they were in 2011–12. The US has openly sided with India on multilateral fora, strongly backed its candidature at the NSG, and to Pakistan’s detriment stepped up efforts for a greater Indian role in the region in general and in Afghanistan in particular.
Meanwhile, India, emboldened by Pakistan’s weaker standing on the international scene, adopted a tougher position on bilateral relations and engaged in unprecedented dangerous escalation. It made the claim of ‘surgical strikes’ and scaled up ceasefire violations at the Line of Control. Delhi started making an overt and aggressive push to isolate Pakistan.
On the Afghan front, the normalization process that commenced with Ashraf Ghani becoming president has unraveled and Kabul has moved deeper into Delhi’s embrace. The reconciliation process, dubbed as the surest bet for peace in Afghanistan and consequently improvement in relations on the two sides of the Durand Line, stands nowhere.
“India’s success in sabotaging the SAARC Summit by mobilizing its smaller South Asian clients showed Pakistan’s lackluster South Asian diplomacy,” Senator Mushahid says as he recalls the unfavourable events of 2016. “Then, after the unraveling of the Afghan peace process, Pakistan’s relations with Afghanistan took a nosedive, with the first border clash between the two neighbours in over 50 years.” He adds: The stalemate in the Balochistan reconciliation process, which had been launched as a joint khaki-mufti initiative in 2015, was among other factors which allowed India to publicly start playing the ‘Baloch card’.
One view is that all these developments were linked to major realignments taking place around us, most important of which is China’s rise on the global stage and our deep involvement with Beijing as reflected in the collaboration on the strategic CPEC. This is believed to have brought India and the US closer and solidified the India-US-Afghanistan nexus in the region. On the other hand, Pakistan has joined hands with Russia and China on regional security and a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which is being warily watched by Kabul and Washington. “A major realignment is underway,” says Sartaj Aziz. “I think we are on the right side of history and whenever realignments happen, they have far reaching consequences.”
The other explanation is that Pakistan’s failure to rein in terrorist groups operating from its soil contributed to its foreign policy woes. There is no gainsaying the fact that the Haqqani Network, Taliban Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Jaish-e-Muhammad are some of the key concerns of the US and India, and Pakistan has done little to clear their doubts. It isn’t terribly reassuring that Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry admitted in an interview on state-run television that some of the Haqqani Network members were still in Pakistan. He relies on the justification that the Haqqani Network is part of the Taliban.
Investigations into the Mumbai and Pathankot attacks, meanwhile, remain frozen and Hafiz Saeed continues moving about freely in the country holding rallies. Pointing this out may be akin to making “enemy” excuses and indeed, geopolitical realignments might be the real reason why we find ourselves in a tight spot, but why should we give others the justification to malign us?
“Challenges, especially in the security domain, abounded but crystallized the direction that our foreign policy should take as well as our relationship priorities,” former foreign secretary Bashir says. “India’s failed attempts to isolate Pakistan showed the paucity of reason, if not intelligence, on the part of the Modi government. It was a total misreading and non-comprehension of regional and ground realities.”
The changing geo-political scenario not only brought us challenges, but also helped us survive some of those crises. If the Indian move to have Pakistan condemned at the BRICS Summit failed or Delhi’s candidature for NSG remains held up, this was more due to international politics and not our diplomatic brilliance. “Indian attempts to bully, browbeat and isolate Pakistan failed, since its Kashmir policy was in tatters,” Senator Mushahid explains. “India itself failed to gatecrash the Nuclear Suppliers Group despite the best efforts of the Obama Administration, and the US-India military alliance formalised in August, forcing Russia to do a rethink on relations with Pakistan, evident in the successful joint China-Russia efforts to block India’s anti-Pakistan efforts at both the BRICS Summit and the ‘Heart of Asia’ Conference.”
Kashmir, meanwhile, dominated the foreign policy agenda, particularly during the second half of 2016 following the start of the uprising in the valley after the killing of Kashmiri fighter Burhan Wani. Some 160 Kashmiris have been killed in the crackdown launched by the Indian security forces to quell the movement, while thousands have been injured and dozens have been blinded for ever from the indiscriminate use of pellet guns.
“The popular, spontaneous, widespread and indigenous uprising of the Kashmiri people, sparked by the July martyrdom of Burhan Wani, pushed Pakistan to launch a vigorous diplomatic offensive on Kashmir,” says Senator Mushahid. Kashmir was highlighted and this was reinforced by statements of concern from the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva and the OIC.
The government also sent special envoys to key capitals to highlight human rights violations in Kashmir. This achieved limited success, however, primarily because of India’s clout and because the Pakistani position was not broadcast effectively. The US and most Western countries remained indifferent.
But how will things change in 2017?
There have changes on the domestic scene. New Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Bajwa believes in giving the government more space, which implies that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who is beginning his last full year in office, would have more freedom to operate his foreign policy. On the international front, Donald Trump’s entry to the White House could also herald changes, not only in Pakistan-US ties, but also in the attitudes of some of the other key players. Furthermore, the Brexit vote is forcing London to reassess its foreign policy and indications are that the UK would seek to strengthen its partnership with Pakistan.
Both Senator Mushahid and former foreign secretary Bashir are hopeful that 2017 would be a different year. Senator Mushahid foresees three challenges: the Trump presidency, reinvigoration of ties with neighbours and regional countries, and promoting CPEC. His advice of the government is: “Build better ties with the incoming Trump Administration, which unlike its predecessor, would be favourably disposed towards Pakistan, given the Trump national security team of Generals Mattis and Flynn, who have dealt closely with Pakistan in the past, Trump’s cordial comments in his phone call with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and the worldview of the new US Secretary of State Max Tillerson, the boss of Exxon, who would be favourably disposed towards CPEC given its potential for regional connectivity via energy and economic cooperation.”
At the regional level, he suggests delinking our India policy from Pakistan’s relations with other neighbours in the region such as Iran, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, and building better ties with them through a more proactive, positive, bilateral approach.
On CPEC, the chief of the parliamentary committee on the project, recommends taking it forward by promoting it as a major multilateral, regional platform for corridors and connectivity, and a counter to India’s hegemonic isolationism.
The writer is a freelance journalist based in Islamabad and can be reached at mamoonarubab@gmail.com and @bokhari_mr
The year had started with hope. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Lahore in the last week of Dec 2015 and had agreed to the resumption of dialogue after a long pause. A new push for peace in Afghanistan had been agreed upon. The then Army Chief General Raheel Sharif had completed a visit to the US on a high note in which he had been extended unprecedented protocol. And let us not forget that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif dipped his toes in the waters of the cold war in the Middle East, visiting Riyadh and Tehran in an effort to explore whether there was any scope for mediation. But nothing worked out for Pakistan in the end.
As we look back at 2016, the lows outstrip the highs. This year would be defined by the failure of the quadrilateral process for reconciliation in Afghanistan, a sharp downturn in relations with Kabul and Washington, aggravation in ties with India, a cancelled SAARC summit after most of the members followed Indian suit and pulled out of the Islamabad meeting. This year includes a missed signal from Tehran for turning the page in the relationship and a period of frostiness with Southeast Asian countries.
On the Afghan front, the normalization process that commenced with Ashraf Ghani becoming president has unraveled and Kabul has moved deeper into Delhi's embrace. The reconciliation process, dubbed as the surest bet for peace in Afghanistan and consequently improvement in relations on the two sides of the Durand Line, stands nowhere
Some interpret these developments as an indication of Pakistan’s growing isolation.
Others, however, see a silver lining in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) gradually moving forward, a progressing rapprochement with Moscow and the continuing stalemate at the Nuclear Suppliers Group over admission of the non-Non Proliferation Treaty member states, even though all of that is still a work in progress. It would, therefore, not be too far off the mark to say that many minds at the Foreign Office would be glad to see the year coming to a close.
Senator Mushahid Hussain, who heads the influential parliamentary committee on CPEC and chairs the Senate defense body in addition to being a senior member of the Foreign Affairs committee, thinks it was a year of “mixed results”. Former foreign secretary Salman Bashir sees 2016 as “a tumultuous year”. Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz sees it as a continuing pattern in Pakistan’s external relations. “In the past ten years there have always been ups and downs in one relationship or the other for different reasons,” he told a Senate panel, advising its members not to subscribe to the impression that Pakistan has been isolated.
But, there is certainly more to this picture than just the explanation that it was the bad patch stretching out. Realistically speaking, Pakistan and US relations today stand at a low that is comparable to what they were in 2011–12. The US has openly sided with India on multilateral fora, strongly backed its candidature at the NSG, and to Pakistan’s detriment stepped up efforts for a greater Indian role in the region in general and in Afghanistan in particular.
Meanwhile, India, emboldened by Pakistan’s weaker standing on the international scene, adopted a tougher position on bilateral relations and engaged in unprecedented dangerous escalation. It made the claim of ‘surgical strikes’ and scaled up ceasefire violations at the Line of Control. Delhi started making an overt and aggressive push to isolate Pakistan.
Senator Mushahid foresees three challenges: the Trump presidency, reinvigoration of ties with neighbours and regional countries, and promoting CPEC
On the Afghan front, the normalization process that commenced with Ashraf Ghani becoming president has unraveled and Kabul has moved deeper into Delhi’s embrace. The reconciliation process, dubbed as the surest bet for peace in Afghanistan and consequently improvement in relations on the two sides of the Durand Line, stands nowhere.
“India’s success in sabotaging the SAARC Summit by mobilizing its smaller South Asian clients showed Pakistan’s lackluster South Asian diplomacy,” Senator Mushahid says as he recalls the unfavourable events of 2016. “Then, after the unraveling of the Afghan peace process, Pakistan’s relations with Afghanistan took a nosedive, with the first border clash between the two neighbours in over 50 years.” He adds: The stalemate in the Balochistan reconciliation process, which had been launched as a joint khaki-mufti initiative in 2015, was among other factors which allowed India to publicly start playing the ‘Baloch card’.
One view is that all these developments were linked to major realignments taking place around us, most important of which is China’s rise on the global stage and our deep involvement with Beijing as reflected in the collaboration on the strategic CPEC. This is believed to have brought India and the US closer and solidified the India-US-Afghanistan nexus in the region. On the other hand, Pakistan has joined hands with Russia and China on regional security and a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which is being warily watched by Kabul and Washington. “A major realignment is underway,” says Sartaj Aziz. “I think we are on the right side of history and whenever realignments happen, they have far reaching consequences.”
The other explanation is that Pakistan’s failure to rein in terrorist groups operating from its soil contributed to its foreign policy woes. There is no gainsaying the fact that the Haqqani Network, Taliban Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Jaish-e-Muhammad are some of the key concerns of the US and India, and Pakistan has done little to clear their doubts. It isn’t terribly reassuring that Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry admitted in an interview on state-run television that some of the Haqqani Network members were still in Pakistan. He relies on the justification that the Haqqani Network is part of the Taliban.
Investigations into the Mumbai and Pathankot attacks, meanwhile, remain frozen and Hafiz Saeed continues moving about freely in the country holding rallies. Pointing this out may be akin to making “enemy” excuses and indeed, geopolitical realignments might be the real reason why we find ourselves in a tight spot, but why should we give others the justification to malign us?
“Challenges, especially in the security domain, abounded but crystallized the direction that our foreign policy should take as well as our relationship priorities,” former foreign secretary Bashir says. “India’s failed attempts to isolate Pakistan showed the paucity of reason, if not intelligence, on the part of the Modi government. It was a total misreading and non-comprehension of regional and ground realities.”
The changing geo-political scenario not only brought us challenges, but also helped us survive some of those crises. If the Indian move to have Pakistan condemned at the BRICS Summit failed or Delhi’s candidature for NSG remains held up, this was more due to international politics and not our diplomatic brilliance. “Indian attempts to bully, browbeat and isolate Pakistan failed, since its Kashmir policy was in tatters,” Senator Mushahid explains. “India itself failed to gatecrash the Nuclear Suppliers Group despite the best efforts of the Obama Administration, and the US-India military alliance formalised in August, forcing Russia to do a rethink on relations with Pakistan, evident in the successful joint China-Russia efforts to block India’s anti-Pakistan efforts at both the BRICS Summit and the ‘Heart of Asia’ Conference.”
Kashmir, meanwhile, dominated the foreign policy agenda, particularly during the second half of 2016 following the start of the uprising in the valley after the killing of Kashmiri fighter Burhan Wani. Some 160 Kashmiris have been killed in the crackdown launched by the Indian security forces to quell the movement, while thousands have been injured and dozens have been blinded for ever from the indiscriminate use of pellet guns.
“The popular, spontaneous, widespread and indigenous uprising of the Kashmiri people, sparked by the July martyrdom of Burhan Wani, pushed Pakistan to launch a vigorous diplomatic offensive on Kashmir,” says Senator Mushahid. Kashmir was highlighted and this was reinforced by statements of concern from the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva and the OIC.
The government also sent special envoys to key capitals to highlight human rights violations in Kashmir. This achieved limited success, however, primarily because of India’s clout and because the Pakistani position was not broadcast effectively. The US and most Western countries remained indifferent.
But how will things change in 2017?
There have changes on the domestic scene. New Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Bajwa believes in giving the government more space, which implies that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who is beginning his last full year in office, would have more freedom to operate his foreign policy. On the international front, Donald Trump’s entry to the White House could also herald changes, not only in Pakistan-US ties, but also in the attitudes of some of the other key players. Furthermore, the Brexit vote is forcing London to reassess its foreign policy and indications are that the UK would seek to strengthen its partnership with Pakistan.
Both Senator Mushahid and former foreign secretary Bashir are hopeful that 2017 would be a different year. Senator Mushahid foresees three challenges: the Trump presidency, reinvigoration of ties with neighbours and regional countries, and promoting CPEC. His advice of the government is: “Build better ties with the incoming Trump Administration, which unlike its predecessor, would be favourably disposed towards Pakistan, given the Trump national security team of Generals Mattis and Flynn, who have dealt closely with Pakistan in the past, Trump’s cordial comments in his phone call with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and the worldview of the new US Secretary of State Max Tillerson, the boss of Exxon, who would be favourably disposed towards CPEC given its potential for regional connectivity via energy and economic cooperation.”
At the regional level, he suggests delinking our India policy from Pakistan’s relations with other neighbours in the region such as Iran, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, and building better ties with them through a more proactive, positive, bilateral approach.
On CPEC, the chief of the parliamentary committee on the project, recommends taking it forward by promoting it as a major multilateral, regional platform for corridors and connectivity, and a counter to India’s hegemonic isolationism.
The writer is a freelance journalist based in Islamabad and can be reached at mamoonarubab@gmail.com and @bokhari_mr