As Pakistan goes through a major political convulsion, India must resist the temptation to see the changes across our western frontiers through the narrow prism of bilateral relations. Delhi must focus instead on the potential shifts in Pakistan’s strategic orientation triggered by the current crisis. An India that gets an accurate sense of Pakistan’s changing geopolitics will be able to better deal with Islamabad.
The unfolding battle for Pakistan is not just another internal power struggle next door. Pakistan is an important regional piece in the power play between the US, China and Russia. Given its location at the crossroads of the Subcontinent, Middle East, Eurasia, and China, Pakistan has always been a vital piece of real estate that was actively sought by contending geopolitical blocs. The internal and external have always been tightly linked in Pakistan. Today, Pakistan’s internal battles are tied to external geopolitical rivalry.
Engaging India is unlikely to be a high priority for the new government in Islamabad. Today, Pakistan has many other things to worry about — reviving its flagging economic fortunes, stabilising the Durand Line with Afghanistan, and rebalancing its ties with the major actors in the Middle East, including Iran, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
Every one of these tasks is a challenging one for Islamabad. Even more daunting is the need to reset Pakistan’s relations with the US and China at a time when Washington and Beijing are at each other’s throat. The sharpening geopolitical contest between the US and Europe on the one hand and China and Russia on the other will severely test the new rulers of Pakistan. India’s difficulties in navigating between the US and Russia in the Ukraine crisis might look rather tame in comparison.
Any Indian strategy in dealing with the new government in Islamabad would depend on an assessment of Pakistan’s post-Imran political trajectory. Two important factors stand out.
First is the changing nature of civil military relations in Pakistan. For many Indian observers of Pakistan, Imran’s ouster is a repeat of the familiar story of the army stepping in to throw out a prime minister who had become a problem. The fall of Imran Khan, however, must be seen as something more. It is part of a serious intra-elite struggle that transcends the well-known military dominance over Pakistan’s polity.
Imran Khan has certainly failed to build the “new Pakistan” that he had promised. The current episode suggests that it might not be easy to simply return to the “old Pakistan” where the army sets the ground rules and punishes those who choose to violate those rules.
One of the more interesting questions to come out of the current episode is whether the army’s famed internal coherence and unity of command might endure the crisis. The trouble between Imran Khan and the army chief, Qamar Javed Bajwa, came out in the open when the former refused to let go the ISI chief, Lt General Faiz Hameed, as part of the routine army transfers.
Although General Bajwa eventually prevailed, there was much speculation about the deepening relationship between Imran Khan and General Hameed and the apparent interest of the former in appointing the latter as the next army chief. Making any assessment more complicated are reports that Khan tried, unsuccessfully, to sack General Bajwa very late in the crisis.
That a large section of retired army officers were publicly backing Imran Khan through the crisis is not a secret. Equally true is the genuine empathy for him among the ranks of the Pakistan army. This mirrors the expansive following that Khan enjoys in the broader population. That was visible in Sunday’s massive protests against his ouster.
It is not clear if Imran Khan has the political skill and the organisational capability to turn his cult-like following into a force that can continue to challenge the establishment. But there is no doubt that he has thrown down the gauntlet. It remains to be seen if the army can handle Imran Khan’s challenge effectively and decisively in the coming days.
Second is the growing fragility of Pakistan’s polity triggered by the deepening economic crisis and sharpening social contradictions. This is not easily overcome by a celebration of constitutionalism that has prevailed last week against Imran Khan’s attempt to hold onto power. An important precondition for democratic stability in a developing society is the need for an elite consensus on the rules of political contestation and the distribution of economic benefits.
Imran Khan has broken that consensus within Pakistan’s political class on deference to the Pakistan army and has demonised his political opponents. There is no sign that Khan is about to change his ways and behave like the leader of a responsible opposition. And as the new government backed by the army seeks to stabilise the economy by turning to the IMF, the society will have to endure much pain in the near term. That in turn would open continuous political opportunities for Khan to attack the next government.
There is no guarantee that the army’s ties with new civilian rulers will be smooth nor can we assume that the civilian coalition against Imran Khan will survive the many challenges ahead as it confronts difficult policy challenges on multiple fronts.
These internal challenges are feeding into Pakistan’s geopolitics. The intra-elite confrontation in Pakistan is taking place amidst a global contest between the US and Europe on the one hand and Russia and China on the other. Pakistan, which traditionally enjoyed good relations with the West as well as China, is finding it hard to maintain a balance in its great power relations.
While the army and the new government are eager to restore ties with the US, Imran Khan has made it hard for them, by calling the new rulers “foreign imports”. By tapping into the deep reservoir of anti-American and anti-Western resentments in Pakistan, Khan has positioned himself as a true nationalist while painting the army as an American collaborator.
Imran Khan’s repeated praise for India’s independent foreign policy was in essence a critique of the Pakistan army that has long steered Islamabad’s international relations. Even in opposition, he might serve a useful purpose for China and Russia who want to prevent Pakistan from getting too close to the US.
In the past, China rarely objected to Pakistan’s relations with the US. Compare Beijing’s current anti-Quad rants with its deafening silence on Pakistan’s status as a “major non-NATO ally”. As it now locks horns with Washington, Beijing has high stakes in preventing renewed strategic warmth between the US and Pakistan. So does Russia. The potential geopolitical equations emerging out of the crisis in Pakistan are likely to be very different from the patterns so familiar to us.
The good news from Pakistan is that India is not part of the argument between the political classes or between Imran Khan and the “deep state” represented by the army. The bad news, however, is that India can’t simply stand by as the major powers seek to define the future of Pakistan. Can Delhi influence that contestation in its own favour? This is a very different question than the usual one on “how to improve ties” with Pakistan.
This column first appeared in the print edition on April 12, 2022 under the title ‘The larger battle for Pakistan’. The writer is a Senior Fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, Delhi and a contributing editor on international affairs for The Indian Express
