10 MARCH 2016 LMDLe Monde diplomatique LMDLe Monde diplomatique MARCH 2016 11

Pakistan’s relations with its neighbours changed in 2015, though where they are heading is uncertain. Plans for an economic corridor from western

China to the coast of Pakistan strengthened links between Islamabad and Beijing. Relations with Afghanistan and India were less than smooth, owing to the election of new leaders: Narendra Modi, prime minister of India since May 2014 and leader of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and Ashraf Ghani, president of Afghanistan since September 2014. And in January 2015 Salman bin Abdelaziz al-Saud succeeded to the throne of Saudi Arabia.

A series of disappointments affected Ghani’s initially friendly attitude towards Pakistan. India’s stance hardened after the Hindu nationalists came to power; nonetheless, the atmosphere grew more conducive to dialogue until a terrorist attack in January on the Indian air base at Pathankot, near the Pakistani border. Pakistan’s relations with its old ally Saudi Arabia became more complicated because of regional initiatives by the new Saudi leadership. So Pakistan’s prime minister Nawaz Sharif, elected in 2013 for a third term (1), and the head of the army General Raheel Sharif (no relation), who has a veto on matters concerning relations with neighbours and on strategic policy, need to manoeuvre carefully.

Domestic tensions complicate the task. Fighting the Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan) has become a priority since the massacre at an army secondary school in Peshawar in 2014, in which some 140 died, including more than 130 children. But the battle is far from over, especially on the ideological side (see The power behind the throne).

Pakistan’s refusal to support the intervention in Yemen in 2015 (see Yemen’s futile war, pages 8-9) shocked Saudi Arabia, which has given Pakistan much financial help with its economy, its madrasas (Quranic schools), and probably its nuclear programme. Saudi Arabia saw Pakistan as a potential source of transfers of knowledge and technology, especially as Iran was accused of pursuing a military nuclear

programme. Millions of Pakistanis work in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. And Prime Minister Sharif is indebted to the Saudi royal family for securing his release from jail after the coup by General Pervez Musharraf, and sheltering him in exile between 2000 and 2007.

Although Sharif blamed his parliament’s negative stance, Pakistan’s refusal to send troops to Yemen was based on a consensus between army and government. In 2011, during the Arab Spring, Pakistani military foundations had recruited mercenaries among former members of the armed forces to help the regime in Bahrain, whose (Sunni) king was repressing protests by the Shia majority. But taking part in the large-scale military operation launched by the Saudi-led coalition against the Houthi rebels in Yemen would have been another thing altogether. The Zaydi Shiism of the Houthis differs from Iranian Shiism, and Zaydis can be found on all sides in the Yemeni conflict. That does not stop Saudi Arabia accusing Iran of being behind the rebellion, and of starting another confrontation between Sunni Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on the one hand, and Shia Iran and its protégés in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon on the other.

The Sharifs were “invited” to Riyadh, where they said they were ready to help maintain Saudi territorial integrity. They repeated this in January, when the Saudi defence minister and deputy crown prince Mohammad bin Salman al-Saud visited Islamabad (2). But they emphasised that the army was focused on fighting the Pakistani Taliban, and that they could not risk exacerbating domestic tensions when Pakistan’s Shia minority were already under attack from the Sunni armed group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. Pakistan does not intend to miss

out on opportunities created by the agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme, such as resuming work on the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline. Afghanistan, Iran and India (which is providing the funding) want to restart development of the Iranian port of Chabahar, Tehran’s response to Pakistan’s own port of Gwadar, paid for by China. The development of Chabahar will allow landlocked Afghanistan to break Pakistan’s maritime monopoly and also give India access, via Iran, to gas-rich Afghanistan and Central Asia.

Pakistan’s embarrassment grew last December when Saudi Arabia announced a military alliance of 34 Sunni countries “against terrorism” – in which Pakistan was enrolled, apparently without having been consulted. The crisis between Saudi Arabia and Iran – exacerbated by the execution of the Saudi opposition figure Nimr al-Nimr, a Shia cleric – makes matters worse. Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir has officially received Pakistan’s support, but the Pakistani government wants dialogue, assuring the parliament that it does not wish to take sides (3). Islamabad does not want the Middle East chaos adding to its domestic problems, now that ISIS is beginning to threaten Afghanistan and even Pakistan’s own territory. The Sharifs have already attempted to mediate between Saudi Arabia and Iran, though without convincing results.

In 2014 Afghan president Hamid Karzai ended his term in office by criticising Pakistan’s double-dealing and US strategy in Afghanistan. The bulk of NATO forces have now withdrawn: only 10,000 troops, instructors and members of special forces remain, most of them Americans. Karzai’s successor, Ashraf Ghani, has played the Pakistani card to restore peace. There have been visits by high-level civilian and military figures in an attempt to coordinate action against the Pakistani Taliban, who now have sanctuaries in Afghanistan, in an unprecedented – but not necessarily deliberate – symmetry with the sanctuaries already offered to the Afghan Taliban in Pakistan since 2001. Ghani hopes Pakistan will press the latter to engage in dialogue.

This rapprochement has been severely criticised in Afghanistan – especially after plans for cooperation between Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS), with some training entrusted

to the ISI, were made public in 2015. The project was abandoned, and the head of the NDS was forced to resign. The agency also revealed that Mullah Muhammad Omar, emir of the Afghan Taliban, had died, back in 2013. This undermined the position of Omar’s successor, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, who, in 2014, had permitted the first official meeting between Taliban emissaries and representatives of the Afghan government, under the auspices of the ISI, with US and Chinese observers. After the news of Mullah Omar’s death, the crisis among the Taliban worsened and dialogue was suspended.

However, the Heart of Asia-Istanbul Process conference, an annual regional forum (4) held in Islamabad last December, helped reduce Afghan-Pakistani tensions, which had become strained after Kunduz was briefly captured by the Taliban and the Afghan defence ministry accused the ISI of working with the attackers (5).

General Raheel Sharif’s visit to Kabul in December put Afghanistan’s internal dialogue back on the agenda. Representatives of Pakistan, Afghanistan, the US and China then met in January to begin re-establishing contact between Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban – but without success. Afghanistan was demanding that Taliban factions which refused negotiation and its preconditions should be attacked – something Pakistan was reluctant to accept. The parties met once more in January, and twice in February. In the end, all Taliban factions, together with the Haqqani network and Hezb-e-Islami, have been invited to talks this month in Pakistan. But nothing is certain – the basis for future negotiations has not been defined officially, and divisions among Taliban factions, with some of those factions even joining ISIS, could thwart progress.

Pakistan sees the Afghan and Indian questions as inseparable. Its strategy is to avoid being caught between its historic adversary, India, and an Afghanistan in which India could have too strong a presence (6).

India has been concerned at Ghani’s overtures to Pakistan – especially as he took seven months to make his first visit to India. Yet the fluctuating relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan have given India room to manoeuvre. The re-starting of the Chabahar port project, the long-awaited decision to deliver attack helicopters to Afghanistan (the weak point of its national army, now in the frontline in the fight against

Jean-Luc Racine is emeritus director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, senior researcher at the Asia Centre, Paris, and the author of Cachemire: au péril de la guerre (Autrement, 2002) and L’Inde et l’Asie (CNRS, 2009)

Ashraf Khan is a journalist in Karachi

the Taliban), and Modi’s visit to Kabul for the inauguration of the new parliament building, financed by India, have defused the tension.

The situation in Kashmir, divided by the line of control (7), had become tenser after the election of Modi in India. Hope is now growing for the resumption of dialogue, stalled since the 2008 Mumbai attacks. At a discreet meeting in December, national security advisers resumed discussions that were not restricted just to terrorism and Kashmir. The breakthrough came because of a change in the positions of India – which had made discussing terrorism a precondition for any other talks – and of Pakistan, whose military are now on board. (The new national security adviser General Nasser Khan Janjua is close to Raheel Sharif.) The supposedly chance meeting between Nawaz Sharif and Modi in Paris, during the UN climate conference in December, and Modi’s later “impromptu” visit to Pakistan were positive signs. Modi’s predecessor, Manmohan Singh, had failed to convince his entourage of the necessity of visiting Pakistan during a decade in office.

The terrorist attack at Pathankot in January halted the dialogue. Nawaz Sharif assured India of his determination to neutralise terrorist groups using information from Indian investigators; and members of Jeish-e-Muhammad, which India is suspicious of, have been arrested. But gestures of goodwill are unlikely to be enough, and a meeting between foreign ministries originally scheduled for mid-January was postponed. Yet, the principle of dialogue has not been abandoned. India has shown astonishing moderation, hoping to thwart the objective of the Pathankot attack – which was to prevent any high-level dialogue.

China and Pakistan have considered each other as “brothers” since the 1970s, and have close ties, initially motivated by strategic considerations: China sees Pakistan as a counterbalance to India. China aided Pakistan’s nuclear programme, and their defence industries have cooperated on the jointly developed JF-17 Thunder/FC-1 Xiaolong fighter-bomber. But under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, China’s geopolitical aims seem increasingly tied to its geoeconomic aims. India and China still have a border dispute, and India has strengthened its military presence in the Himalayas with a new 40,000-strong mountain strike corps and improved infrastructure. This does not prevent dialogue: their leaders visit each other, and the value of Sino-Indian trade ($65bn in 2014) is seven times greater than that of Sino-Pakistani trade.

Xi visited Pakistan in 2015, and announced the imminent implementation of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, an idea put forward during Pervez Musharraf’s presidency. This multi-route axis will link the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in western China, to Gwadar. China has set aside $46bn to finance the initiative, which includes industrial and energy projects. But the security of construction sites and the safety of Chinese workers will have to be guaranteed. China has suggested that it would be desirable to normalise the status of Gilgit-

Baltistan, in northern Pakistan, through which the corridor will pass (this Himalayan territory is claimed by India). The corridor will also have a branch to Afghanistan, whose mineral resources interest China.

Pakistan has so far refused to grant India most favoured nation status in trade. Since 2010 an agreement between Pakistan and Afghanistan has allowed Afghan lorries to pass through Pakistan on their way to India, but does not allow them to return, nor does it allow any trade shipments from India to Afghanistan (8). Nawaz Sharif, a former businessman, is said to favour normalising relations with India, and the Pakistani chambers of commerce agree with him. But while the military refuse to abandon their strategic position of “Kashmir first”, the civilian authorities can achieve little. And that is the key issue in any dialogue which may resume in 2016.

Many in Pakistan believe this policy has come at a high price, because it has encouraged terrorism and harmed the economy. Pakistan’s geographical position should be a major asset: it lies between the energy-rich and emerging giants of East Asia,

the Middle East and Central Asia, and between the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean, very near the Gulf. Sherry Rehman, chair of the thinktank Jinnah Institute and former ambassador to Washington, wrote in 2014: “Business, trade, economic integration are the future, and must drive the motor for game-change” (9). The growing fight against terrorism and the Pakistani Taliban is essential, but it is not enough.

A transformation of the national narrative is required, and therefore of the “Pakistan ideology”, the official doctrine taught to children and soldiers, which describes Pakistan as an “ideological state” created for the Muslims of South Asia. Any elected government will need to tackle this but will only be able to do so if the military do too. The army accepts resumption of the dialogue with India – or at least has decided not to obstruct it – though the outcome remains uncertain. But it has refrained from any discussion of the nature of Pakistan, its official ideology, and the relationship between Islam, state and nation. That is a debate the politicians are careful to avoid, too.

TRANSLATED BY CHARLES GOULDEN

(1) He previously served 1990-3, and from 1997 until Pervez Musharraf’s coup in 1999.(2) “Pakistan will stand by Saudi Arabia if territorial integrity threatened: PM Nawaz”, The Express Tribune, Karachi, 10 January 2016.(3) Irfan Haider, “Grave dangers face Muslim world in light of Saudi-Iran standoff: Sartaj”, and editorial “A delicate balance”, Dawn, Islamabad, 5 and 6 January 2016.(4) The participating countries are: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and the United Arab Emirates. Countries and organisations supporting the initiative include Australia, Canada, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, the UK, the US, the EU, NATO and the UN.(5) “MoD blames ISI for Kunduz assault”, Tolo News, Kabul, 1 October 2015.(6) See Jean-Luc Racine, “My neighbour’s neighbour”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, November 2014.(7) India and Pakistan have clashed several times since Kashmir acceded to India in 1947, on the decision of its maharajah. Since 1949, Kashmir has been divided into two territories under Pakistani administration, Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, and one under Indian control, Jammu and Kashmir.(8) The official value of trade in 2014 was $2.6bn. Counting trade via intermediary countries (United Arab Emirates, Singapore) could double this figure.(9) Sherry Rehman, “The audacity of hope: Beyond photo-op, Modi and Sharif must move quickly and come up with a peace plan”, The Times of India, Mumbai, 27 May 2014.

AFGHANISTAN, INDIA, CHINA, THE GULF PRESS IN

Pakistan’s difficult neighbours

The power behind the throne

Pakistan will have to change its national self-definition if it wants to improve its economic future – and make relations across all its borders less fraught

BY JEAN-LUC RACINE

BY ASHRAF KHAN

7.0

9.8

5.750.0

9.6

80.822.8

9.5

8.5

22.6

15.9

84.5

216.410.2

CHINA

Tibet

Xinjiang

Aksai Chin

TAPI ArunachalPradesh

EGYPT

SOMALILAND

SOMALIA

KENYA

SRI LANKAI N D I A N O C E A N

G u l f o f B e n g a l

Straits of Malacca

G u l f o f O m a n

M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a

ETHIOPIA

ERITREA

DJIBOUTI

SUDAN

INDIA VIETNAM

NEPALBHUTAN

BANGLADESH

MYANMAR

THAILAND

CAMBODIA

MALAYSIA

INDONESIA

SINGAPORE

TAIWAN

SOUTH KOREA

LAOS

IRAN

KAZAKHSTAN

AZERBAIJAN UZBEKISTAN

TURKMENISTAN

AFGHANISTAN

PAKISTAN

TAJIKISTAN

KYRGYZSTAN

MONGOLIA

TURKEY

SYRIA

IRAQ

SAUDI ARABIA

YEMEN

OMAN

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

Gwadar

Chabahar

Kashgar

Gilgit

Karachi

New Delhi

Beijing

Dhaka

Colombo

Islamabad

Kabul

TehranBaghdad

Damascus

Ankara

Riyadh

Sanaa

Mumbai

BAHRAIN

QATAR

KUWAIT

JORDAN

LEBANON

CYPRUS

ISRAEL

PALESTINE

ARMENIAGEORGIA

RUSSIA

Kashm ir

Border dispute

Nuclear power

Major US military presence

Ongoing conflict Defence spending1 in 2014($ billion)

Accords and partnerships Discords and competing projects Conflicts and regional militarisation

Historical ideological ally Planned China-Pakistan Economic Corridor

Historical enemy

Unstable relations

Strategic and economic allyMajor Pakistani diaspora

Port financed by ChinaPort financed by India

Indian maritime routeIran-Pakistan gas pipeline (under construction)

Planned gas pipeline

Planned road axis

Sources: Sipri Yearbook 2015; “Géopolitique du Pakistan”, Hérodote, no 139, La Découverte, 2010; US Department of Defence; Le Monde; Reuters 1 Countries spending in excess of $5bn only

9.8

CÉCILE MARIN

Pakistan’s neighbourhood relations

I n June 2013, for the first time in 68 years of independence, an elected government handed power over to another elected government in Pakistan: until then, each

period of democratic rule had ended with a military coup. Nawaz Sharif, prime minister since this latest election, knew this only too well, having been overthrown twice. Fears of a fresh coup appeared well founded when Imran Khan, the cricketing legend turned iron-willed

politician, refused to accept the election results. His Movement for Justice (PTI) had just entered parliament after a spectacular election breakthrough. He called for the prime minister to stand down and submitted several complaints to the Supreme Court.

On 14 August 2014, Independence Day, thousands came from Lahore to protest against the government in Islamabad. Amid rumours of an alliance between Pakistan’s army generals and Imran Khan, he and his followers staged a 126-day sit-in in the capital – until a terrorist

attack that December on a military school in Peshawar, in the north of the country, killed over 140, including more than 130 children.

Political conflicts were suspended and there was a unanimous call to fight terrorism. This led to an unprecedented rapprochement between Nawaz and the chief of the powerful Pakistan Army, General Raheel Sharif. A new government-military strategy was put in place, a National Action Plan (NAP) that set out to eradicate violent religious groups from the country.

The NAP eased the conflict between the two

centres of power. According to Syed Jaffar Ahmed, director of the Pakistan Study Centre at the University of Karachi, “after the events of 2014, a new trust has developed between the political class and the army’s senior ranks. There is every reason to believe the two are getting on really well.” However, many observers believe the military are preventing any government attempt to evade their supervision. Touseef Ahmed Khan, a political commentator, points out that Nawaz Sharif does not even have a full-time foreign minister, and says the army is pulling the

strings in all the country’s diplomatic relations – with neighbouring countries, regional powers and the US.

Sharif’s government also faces a persistent terrorist threat. As part of the NAP, the army has stepped up its large-scale operations in tribal zones where the Pakistani Taliban and other armed groups are hiding. According to the interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, who is close to the prime minister, there has been a “remarkable” improvement in the country’s security. Though suicide bombings, kidnappings and terrorist attacks against the police have not stopped, their numbers have fallen for the first time since 2001. Even so, Ali Khan admits there is still “a lot to do for the complete eradication of terrorism” (1).

Specialists warn against policies that cut off branches without digging up the roots. To Syed Jaffar Ahmed, targeting the madrasas (Quranic schools) alone makes no sense since “they no

longer have a monopoly on fundamentalism.” Alarmed by the “rise of religious extremism among the educated classes,” he cites as evidence the violent attack in May 2015 when a group of 45 Ismaili Muslims, men and women, were taken off a bus and shot in the neck. The killers, arrested several weeks later, were mostly well-off youths from the country’s best business and engineering schools: despite their prestigious degrees, they were putting out ISIS-inspired propaganda.

“Pakistan has changed over the last 40 years; the impact of fundamentalism is felt strongly,” says Syed Jaffar Ahmed. The 1977 coup by General Zia ul-Haq marked a key turning point. Two years later the country found itself right next door to the Soviet war in Afghanistan, and thousands of young people were given military training so they could join the jihad against the “infidels” across the border. “The students who took part in this war during the Zia regime have now become university professors, and are

indoctrinating the young in their turn,” says Touseef Ahmed Khan. “Changing attitudes and putting an end to teaching that promotes extremism in society is one of the government’s biggest challenges.”

Economic stagnation and administrative difficulties are another major challenge for the government, which came to power during the worst energy crisis the country had ever known. Sharif promised to put an end to power cuts, lasting for hours or even entire days, in less than 12 months. Two and a half years later, they still happen, though they are shorter.

To make up its budget deficit, the government had to take a loan of $6.6bn from the International Monetary Fund, granted on condition that Pakistan reformed its fiscal and energy sectors. The government’s deregulation and disinvestment policy left tens of thousands of Pakistanis below the poverty line – and they are now 35-45% of the population (2).

According to economist Tariq Yusuf, the country needs a decade of 6% annual growth to put this right. The IMF forecasts 4.5% growth for fiscal 2015-6. This projection is based on a fall in oil prices and improved energy supply from the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (see Pakistan’s difficult neighbours). Meanwhile, the literacy rate is among the lowest in the region (54.7%): columnist Wusatullah Khan says the country does not even have sufficient resources to raise the standard of primary education.

Despite these challenges, Nawaz Sharif will most likely see out his mandate; he has almost finished his third year at the head of the government – the longest he has held power as yet.

TRANSLATED BY MOLLY ASHBY

(1) Speech in parliament, 30 December 2015. (2) According to the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, a thinktank in Islamabad.

Islamabad does not want the Middle East chaos adding to its domestic problems, now that ISIS is beginning to threaten Afghanistan and even Pakistan’s own territory

Created by the partition of India along sectarian lines in 1947, Pakistan has fought several wars with India over the Kashmir region, to which both countries lay claim. Pakistan’s ideological and economic alliances with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and China stem from these clashes

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