[A key objective for Pakistan in reaching out to India is to open barriers to trade between the countries, which would give Pakistan more access to regional markets. Any eventual peace talks over Kashmir are likely to involve an increase in bilateral trade as a confidence-building measure.]
By
Maria Abi-Habib
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The
Pakistani Army’s top commander, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, center right, is
more moderate
toward India than his predecessors were. Credit Aamir Qureshi/
Agence
France-Presse — Getty Images
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ISLAMABAD,
Pakistan — Concerned about
Pakistan’s international isolation and faltering economy, the country’s
powerful military has quietly reached out to its archrival India about resuming
peace talks, but the response was tepid, according to Western diplomats and a
senior Pakistani official.
The outreach, initiated by the army’s top
commander, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, began months before Pakistan’s national
elections. Pakistan offered to resume on-and-off talks with India over their
border dispute in the Kashmir region, which stalled in 2015 as violence flared
up there.
A key objective for Pakistan in reaching out
to India is to open barriers to trade between the countries, which would give
Pakistan more access to regional markets. Any eventual peace talks over Kashmir
are likely to involve an increase in bilateral trade as a confidence-building
measure.
Increasingly, Pakistan’s military sees the
country’s battered economy as a security threat, because it aggravates the
insurgencies that plague the country. Pakistan is expected to ask the
International Monetary Fund for $9 billion in the coming weeks, after receiving
several billions of dollars in loans from China earlier this year to pay its
bills.
“We want to move forward and we are trying
our best to have good ties with all our neighbors, including India,”
Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said. “As General Bajwa says, regions
prosper, countries don’t. India cannot prosper by weakening Pakistan.”
General Bajwa linked Pakistan’s economy to
the region’s security in a hallmark speech last October, and the idea that the
two are inseparable has since become known as the Bajwa doctrine. The army
chief is also seen as more moderate than his predecessors were on India, which
has been Pakistan’s bitter rival since the bloody partition that came with
independence in 1947.
The Pakistani general and his Indian
counterpart, Gen. Bipin Rawat, served together in a United Nations peacekeeping
mission in Congo about a decade ago and get along well, diplomats say. Earlier
this year, General Bajwa said the only way to solve the two countries’ conflict
was through dialogue, a rare statement from the military.
Diplomats say General Bajwa has tried to
reach out to General Rawat to initiate talks. But the effort has been stymied
by what one diplomat called a “system mismatch.”
The army is Pakistan’s most powerful
institution, but India’s military is much weaker and could not agree to a peace
deal without the civilian government’s approval. Diplomats in New Delhi say
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is preoccupied with elections
expected early next year and does not want talks before then, fearing that if
talks collapse — as they have many times before — it could cost them at the
polls.
“Till the Indian elections, there cannot be
an immediate betterment in bilateral relations,” Mr. Chaudhry said. India’s
military and its foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment.
The new Pakistani government led by Prime
Minister Imran Khan has been sending strong signals in favor of talks, though
it is the military that ultimately controls foreign and defense policy. “If you
take one step forward, we will take two steps forward,” Mr. Khan said in his
victory speech, addressing India. “We need to move ahead.”
With Mr. Khan in office, talks may have a better
chance because he is seen as the army’s man, diplomats in both Islamabad and
New Delhi say. India sees Mr. Khan’s outreach as sanctioned by the military and
believes he will clearly present General Bajwa’s demands and red lines.
That the military would initiate such a major
foreign policy decision unilaterally, and before the elections, suggests it was
confident that its preferred candidate, Mr. Khan, would win. Mr. Khan was sworn
in as prime minister last month, in the wake of accusations that the army had
intervened to back his candidacy.
Diplomats in Islamabad say Pakistan’s
outreach may also be driven in part by the country’s Chinese allies. Beijing
has prodded Pakistan to stabilize its border with India, hoping for greater
stability as it pursues its regional economic ambitions. China is investing
some $62 billion in Pakistan, mostly in large infrastructure projects through
what is being called the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, part of China’s
global Belt and Road initiative.
The plan would give Beijing more direct
access to important Western markets by building a series of highways through
Pakistan, connecting China’s western border to Pakistan’s Gwadar Port on the
Arabian Sea. If Pakistani troops are freed up along the border with India, the
thinking goes, they could be diverted to secure the country’s western flank,
where China’s trade routes would be.
Chinese Muslim insurgents who oppose
Beijing’s rule have been active in Afghanistan and western Pakistan, and other
Pakistani insurgents, including Baloch separatists, have opposed the Chinese
infrastructure projects. Last month, a Baloch separatist group attacked a bus
carrying Chinese workers, wounding five.
Pakistan may also be realizing that it can no
longer withstand its growing international isolation and its worsening ties
with the United States, which was once its closest Western ally. The United
States cut more than $1 billion of aid to Pakistan in January for not doing
enough to curb terror groups, which it accuses the army of supporting.
Tensions with Washington were further
aggravated this week when the American military said it would withhold $300
million in aid to Pakistan, just days before the Trump administration’s first
meeting with Mr. Khan’s new government. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is
scheduled to meet Mr. Khan on Wednesday in Islamabad, and Pakistani lawmakers
enraged over the aid cut have been calling for Mr. Khan to scrap the meeting.
In the past, military and government
officials in Pakistan have said they could withstand American aid cuts,
pointing to their growing ties with China. But Pakistan was stunned this year
when China went along with putting Islamabad on a terror-financing watch list,
which will make it harder and more expensive for Pakistan to raise badly needed
funding on international debt markets.
Salman Masood contributed reporting from
Islamabad, and Hari Kumar from New Delhi.
