WHAT UPHEAVAL IN PAKISTAN MEANS FOR THE NEIGHBOURHOOD
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan faces a no-confidence vote in parliament on Saturday which he is widely expected to lose.
The nation of more than 220 million people lies between Afghanistan to the west, China to the northeast and India to the east, making it of vital strategic importance. Since coming to power in 2018, Khan’s rhetoric has become more anti-American and he expressed a desire to move closer to China and, recently, Russia.
Ties between Pakistan’s military intelligence agency and the Islamist militant Taliban have loosened in recent years.
Now the Taliban are back in power in Afghanistan, and facing an economic and humanitarian crisis due to a lack of money and international isolation, Qatar is arguably their most important foreign partner.
“We (the United States) don’t need Pakistan as a conduit to the Taliban. Qatar is definitely playing that role now,” said Lisa Curtis, director of the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security think-tank.
Khan consistently emphasised China’s positive role in Pakistan and in the world at large. At the same time, the $60-billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which binds the neighbours together was actually conceptualised and launched under Pakistan’s two established political parties, both of which are set to share power once he is gone.
Potential successor Shehbaz Sharif struck deals with China directly as leader of the eastern province of Punjab, and his reputation for getting major infrastructure projects off the ground while avoiding political grandstanding could in fact be music to Beijing’s ears.
With India, there have been no formal diplomatic talks between the rivals for years because of deep distrust over a range of issues including Khan’s extreme criticism of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his handling of attacks on minority Muslims in India.
Pakistan’s powerful army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa said recently that his country was ready to move forward on Kashmir if India agrees.
The Sharif dynasty has been at the forefront of several dovish overtures towards India over the years.