Pak’s quest for a mirage damns its present

With China increasingly wary of sinking money in a bottomless hole, a floundering Pakistan should be on suicide watch.

What ails Pakistan? No one cares about Pakistan. America is worried about Afghanistan, so it tolerates Pakistan. China is worried about India, so it tolerates Pakistan. Russia is worried about the Middle East, so it tolerates Pakistan. Its illiterate rabid clerics want to recreate the perceived ideal Islamic society of the Prophet’s times. Even Mohd Ali Jinnah boasted that Pakistan would be the new Medina. Pakistan’s establishment looks for its identity in a hoary past (after having been rebuffed by the Arabs and the Central Asians, the leadership now identifies as Turks). Those who wish to be the rulers of Pakistan, claim a non-Indian heritage, projecting their Persian lineage and Mughal ethnicity. Pakistan’s national anthem has heavy Persian influence, with a few Arab words thrown in. Neither language is widely understood in Pakistan. No wonder the Balochis, Sindhis, Mohajirs and tribals detest the Punjabi-dominated establishment. To keep them quiet, hatred of Hindu India has to be reinforced every second and the army projects itself as the defender of Islam and the bulwark against India’s “nefarious” designs to swallow Pakistan (despite the severe indigestion this would cause!). School textbooks in Pakistan denigrate Hindus and extol jihadis who kill infidels.

Pakistan has tried to be everything that India is not. India is a responsible nuclear power, Pakistan flaunts its (stolen) nuclear nuisance value and demands relevance in regional affairs.

As their situation deteriorates rapidly, many Pakistanis, encouraged by their government, find solace in religion, recalling Karl Marx’s famous comment in a rather obscure publication in 1843 that “religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature… the opium of the people”. Pakistanis have many good reasons for this opium. Freedom House put Pakistan on its “not free“list of countries in its 2020 assessment, a grouping that also contains Afghanistan, Angola, Belarus, Brunei, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Gabon, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Myanmar, North Korea, Nicaragua, Qatar, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. According to the World Justice Project, Pakistan ranks very low out of 128 countries on rule of law. As per Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom ranking, Pakistan scores worse than Congo, and Bangladesh. Anti-military posts are rewarded with persecution, arrest, torture and murder of the authors.

There is a growing feeling among Pakistani citizens that they do not even belong to their own country. A study by a leading Pakistani pollster revealed that almost half of educated Pakistanis felt uncomfortable in their own country and are ashamed of their country’s international reputation. They are horrified when Pakistani leaders boast openly of supporting terrorism in India and the world, and when their semiliterate Prime Minister calls Osama bin Laden a martyr. The research also found that most Pakistanis do not see a bright future for their children. When a young person feels alienated from his homeland, and anticipates an even gloomier future at home, he is likely to consider relocating. In the past decade, millions have left Pakistan to live abroad. Official data show that half of them were in their twenties and thirties. Marginalized overseas, they become easily radicalized. Youth unemployment and authoritarian tendencies in the country create a “violence of uncertainty” for young Pakistanis. Pakistan is a land of troubled people, led by a reported drug addict, perpetually in a stupor, who tries to run his country through the divinations of his “mystic” third wife.

The relationship between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia illustrates this delusion syndrome. During the oilfuelled years of explosive growth in the Middle East, Pakistan gave manpower to a growing Saudi Arabia that lacked its own human resource, while its mercenary military was paid to protect the House of Saud, with 20,000 Pakistani soldiers stationed in the Kingdom during the Iran-Iraq war. This cozy arrangement worked well, till “Im the Dim” fell off the wall. In 2015, Saudi Arabia (stuck in the Yemen imbroglio) ordered its Pakistani subordinate to help with troops. The Pakistani Parliament said “no”. The memory of fighting someone else’s war (in Afghanistan) and its devastating impact on Pakistan’s domestic situation was fresh. The UAE (also trapped in Yemen) issued a nasty statement that Pakistan was most ungrateful for all the handouts it had received over the years from the Arabs. In 2006, the Saudi King was the Chief Guest at India’s Republic Day parade and in 2017 Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed of the UAE. Pakistan, obsessed with Kashmir, failed to read these signals. Pakistan views everything through the prism of Kashmir while Saudi Arabia considers itself the natural leader of the Islamic World, with its King anointed as the guardian of the two mosques

In 1979, Egypt was suspended from the OIC for cozying up to Israel in the

Camp David Accords. It was readmitted in 1984 (Libya, Syria, Southern Yemen walked out). Riyadh did not forget this insult. Yemen has faced its wrath while Syria remains suspended from the OIC. Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi paid with his life. In November 2018, Saudi Arabia announced a US$6.2 bn package for Pakistan as the latter struggled with a growing trade deficit and declining reserves and in the early part of 2019, during the Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s visit, Riyadh said it would establish a US$10 billion refinery in Gwadar. In return, the prince wanted Imran Khan Niazi to tell Recep Erdogan of Turkey to go easy on the October 2018 assassination of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi security officers at the Saudi Consulate General in Istanbul. And then things started to fall apart.

Following his meetings with the leaders of Malaysia and Turkey on the sidelines of the UNGA in September 2019, the brain-dead Niazi tweeted that the three nations would set up a BBC type English language TV channel that, apart from highlighting Muslim issues, would also fight Islamophobia. Who had the money to pay? No one. The all-powerful Crown Prince, already furious with Malaysia’s senile nonagenarian Prime Minister (who soon after booted himself out of office) and Turkey’s self-anointed Ottoman Sultan, for trying to usurp Riyadh’s leadership of the Islamic world, reacted angrily. Khan was returning to Islamabad from New York on 28 September 2019 on Mohammad bin Salman’s private plane (loaned to Khan). According to Pakistan’s Friday Times weekly: “The Saudi Crown Prince was so alienated by the Pakistani Prime Minister’s diplomacy in New York—he couldn’t have been happy at the prospect of Imran Khan, (Turkish President) Recep Tayyip Erdogan and (Malaysian Prime Minister) Mahathir Mohammad planning to jointly represent the Islamic bloc, nor with Pakistan’s interlocution with Iran without his explicit approval... he visibly snubbed Imran by ordering his private jet to disembowel the Pakistani delegation.” The three woebegone Islamic has-beens decided to call a special meeting of Muslim leaders in Kuala Lumpur in December 2019, Niazi agreed to attend, then backed off when Saudi Arabia rapped him on the knuckles. The OIC, based in Saudi Arabia, called for shunning the meet. The absence of Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies, and the participation of Turkey, Qatar (then under a Gulf Cooperation Council blockade) and Iran at the Kuala Lumpur summit indicated an attempt to challenge Riyadh’s leadership of the Islamic world.

In recent months, several Muslim nations have established direct relations with Israel (underpinned by their mutual hostility to Iran), Qatar’s isolation has ended, Iran is far too preoccupied with Syria and Iraq, and Turkey is struggling with a collapsed economy. The parallel Organization of Islamic Cooperation is deader than the dodo. Totally disoriented, in June 2020 Imran Khan declared himself the self-appointed Ambassador of the Kashmiri people.

There is a very eloquent Urdu expression: begani shaadi mein Abdullah diwana. What does the Arab world gain by becoming entangled in China-Pak efforts to hurt India? Similarly, what would the US gain by getting involved in the Kashmir issue? The time for effective mediation is long gone. The OIC’s reluctance to hold a special meeting on Kashmir prompted the clownish Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi to cross the line in August 2020 when he threatened to hold a special meeting outside the OIC platform. Saudi Arabia reacted with predictable rage, sent back 50,000 Pakistanis, and banned visas for Pakistani workers. Its allies followed suit.

The two million Pakistanis in the Gulf region remit US$10 billion annually to keep Pakistan’s coffers from becoming totally empty. An angry Riyadh demanded ontime repayment of its US$3 bn soft loan to Pakistan and cancelled the US$3.2 bn deferred-payment oil facility. Pakistan’s army chief sprinted to Riyadh in August 2020, hoping to mend fences. He was denied a meeting with the Crown Prince and came back with egg all over his already sour face. Imran Khan (who should be out this year) sadly commented that China was Pakistan’s only friend that had supported it politically during good and bad times, adding that “it should be clear that our future is connected with China… China also needs Pakistan very much”. His Foreign Minister scurried to China for help, which gave US$2 bn to partly repay the overdue Saudi loan.

China does not believe in charity. It extracts several pounds of flesh. When Sri Lanka and Tajikistan were unable to repay Chinese loans, they gave away their land. Pakistan is doing the same. Realizing Pakistan’s desperate financial position, China has asked for international bank guarantees for the US$6 bn mainline Karachi-Peshawar railway project.

Facing mounting internal dissension and total economic collapse, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister announced in Abu Dhabi in December 2020 that India was planning another surgical strike against Pakistan and was seeking “tacit approval” from its partners.

Please connect the dots. There have been consistent reports since the 1990s of the financially stressed Pakistani

military wanting to sell atom bombs for money to finance the “jihad” in Kashmir and elsewhere. The infamous A.Q. Khan ran the world’s first nuclear supermarket. Pakistan continues to build bombs at a frenetic pace. Top clients could be Turkey and Iran, but neither has the money to pay as of now. Saudi Arabia is unlikely to risk its patron-client relationship with the US by purchasing an atom bomb made in Pakistan. And the Islamic terrorist groups that Pakistan nurtures are broke.

To compound Pakistan’s financial woes, in July 2019 an international arbitration tribunal of the World Bank’s Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), awarded almost US$6 bn to Tethyan Copper Company (TCC) Pty Limited, an Australian joint venture, following Balochistan’s 2011 cancellation of a lease) given in 2006 to TCC for the Reko Diq copper/gold mines. There was strong suspicion that Pakistan cancelled the lease as China was interested in the project. The damages, as large as the latest IMF loan package approved for Pakistan, shocked the country. The Pakistani press termed it a fiasco and Niazi formed a commission to fix responsibility. When Pakistan sobbed that it was unable to pay the penalty, in December 2020 the British Virgin Islands high court ordered it to offer its overseas assets as guarantees to an international arbitrator. After spending over US$10 mn on legal fees in the case, and since iron brother China is unlikely to foot the bill, Pakistan wants an out of court settlement with TCC.

Pakistan Airlines hotels in Paris (Scribe) and New York (Roosevelt) have been seized. It is believed that the New York property was being offered to the Trump family before it was attached (it had shuttered a month before the attachment order). In January 2021, British Virgin Islands registered Pakistan

International Airlines paid US$7 mn to Dublin-based AerCap when (Muslimbrother) Malaysia seized a leased PIA Boeing plane over non-payment of dues, a most rare action in international civil aviation (remember the pilot licences scandal last year when a quarter of Pakistani civil pilots were found to have fake licences?).

And even as this goes to press, Broadsheet LLC based in the British Isle of Man (hired by the National Accountability Bureau during Pervez Musharraf’s regime to sniff out foreign assets of Pakistani citizens) has initiated asset-seizure proceedings since Pakistan has not paid US$2.2 mn due as interest on a July 2019 London Court of International Arbitration award of US$20 mn.

Pakistan’s kleptocratic top leadership, military and civil, has lost its marbles. Hoping to mend fences with the Arab world, in January 2021 Islamabad issued permits to the UAE royal family to hunt the internationally protected and highly vulnerable houbara bustard in Balochistan, whose meat is supposedly an aphrodisiac.

With China increasingly wary of sinking money in a bottomless Islamic hole, a floundering Pakistan should be on suicide watch.

Can Pakistan redeem itself? The US has changed, the Gulf nations have changed and made their peace with Israel, the world has changed. The longer it descends into absolute chaos, Pakistan will find it more difficult to change. Now is the time for the people of Pakistan to be at peace with themselves. The world does not wish to fight the people of Pakistan, it wants to help them boot out the kleptocrats who rule them. Ambassador Dr Deepak Vohra is Special Advisor to Prime Minister, Lesotho, South Sudan and Guinea-Bissau; and Special Advisor to Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Councils, Leh and Kargil.