Daily Times

Last week witnessed some extraordinary events on the domestic as well as international scene. On May 8, President Trump’s administration walked out on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran and subsequently announced June 12 for the summit meeting with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore.

Both these events may impact by reshaping the international as well as regional geo-political and geo-strategic environment in the coming days. The volatile Middle East has already begun to transmit renewed dangerous signals increasing the probability of a direct Iran-Israel engagement in Syria.

Probably, Trump would opt for spadework against Iran through Israel till he shifts full focus to Middle East, particularly Iran. Its nature and degree will depend on the results achieved by the June 12 summit.

The recent diplomatic debacle between the US and Pakistan, after an accident involving a US diplomat allegedly violating a traffic signal killing a motorcyclist in Islamabad, should not be seen as a small move either. Though a developing event as yet, in terms of producing consequences its significance cannot be downplayed in the diplomatic history of the two countries, especially when the incident has brought tit for tat clamping of restrictions on each other’s diplomats.

The recent US-Pakistan diplomatic debacle after an American diplomat ran over a Pakistani motorcyclist should not be seen as insignificant

But the summit meeting between Trump and Kim is itself a major breakthrough between the two hostile states with a history of belligerency against each other for more than six decades. The upcoming summit was preceded by the meeting between North and South Korean presidents in the last week of April. Subsequent announcements were interpreted as a positive development ahead of the Trump Kim summit, dropping hints for its agenda.

In the aftermath of the meeting Kim Jong-un declared the end of six and half decades war with South Korea, nuclear tests, closure of ballistic missiles and nuclear test sites. Last week the media reported that North Korea had announced to destroy those sites. This leaves less to indulge in wild guessing regarding the summit agenda and tentative results.

North Korea, one of the most secretive, Isolated, totalitarian and repressive states of the 21st century has an ideologically tamed and brain washed population.

It is a state ruling with an iron fist where not using the title of great leader for Kim is tantamount to blasphemy, watching Hollywood films and making unauthorised oversea calls are a crime. Listing to or subscribing to sources of information other than the state’s is almost equal to treason and therefore it is mandatory to keep the radio switch on at all times for keeping the state ideology inflamed in the mind of the populous. Turning citizens into zombies in the name of ideology inevitably becomes a liability at the end, and often, the worst enemy when the iron fist crumbles.

North Korea was the ideological comrade of the former USSR and China and to some extent still getting support from both the states. Hardly, two months ago the regime was in a full belligerent mood boasting to destroy both South Korea and the US. However, reality is always bitter at times forcing one to drink the chalice of poison when it becomes unavoidable.

China and Russia are still supporting the regime in one way or the other but is not willing to accompany it on a suicidal path. North Korea was neither saved by allies from the crippling sanctions that almost forced its population to live in destitution as the regime did not compromise on investing in its war machine by diverting all the available resources in the endless preparation for imagery war.

If Trump succeeds to crack this hard nut, it will not only be a great political boast for him domestically but he will use it as a precedent in international politics, particularly in Iran and Pakistan’s case. Iran, though, a well knitted homogenous society with extreme pride in its history and cultural norms, is headed by the repressive and regressive regime of Mullahs causing deprivation and suffocation with concomitant political and economic decay resulting in intermittent political unrests. Internal dissatisfaction and increasing international isolation and hostilities can in time trigger the domestic volcano incinerating the theocratic regime.

These developments warrant more caution for Pakistan domestically as well as internationally. If one takes the last 18 years of the 21st century as a reference point, repressive regimes collapsed like house of cards to external pressure and intervention. Ironically, the dissatisfied population either could not or cared not to stand with the regimes after external intervention. In fact, internal unrest was taken as one of justifiable reasons of intervention. If there were robust democracies and in Iraq, Libya and Syria, perhaps they would not face destruction.

In the face of gloomy situation, the mightiest deep state in Pakistan is galloping towards a blind spot with a misleading sense of overconfidence by weakening and trampling every sign of democracy, civilian supremacy and constitutionalism. Almost in the last four years, it is constantly exposed to the world that there is a deep state other than the de-jure which is bound by no law or de-jure supervision and not ready to surrender to the will of people.

Stamped with corruption charges the way an elected prime minister had been thrown out through the Supreme Court and contrived to attend court proceedings five days a week for the past eight months allude to blatant motives. On October 2, 2017, the incumbent interior minister’s orders were defied by a subordinated paramilitary force and last week a fanatic of TLY (Tehreek-i-Labaik-i-Ya Rasool Allah) tried to assistant him, was a lesson in enforced dysfunctionality of a democratically elected government.

The recent accusations of money laundering by the NAB chairman against the former prime minister, made public on media before investigation, indicate that instead of the lawful authority the state machinery is getting its orders from the deep state. It seems that the deep state is at war with every non-conformist voice who dares to demand the rule of constitution, supremacy of elected institutions and opposes its destructive policies endangering the state day by day by increasing international isolation.

If Trump comes out with flying colours from Far East summit, the might will turn toward us. If Kim Jong-un could not bear the pressure, how can the deep state at war with its own people as well as with regional and international powers face him? Instead of collapsing once again like Musharraf, the deep state should appreciate its limits, undo its political engineering and let people elect their representatives through free and fair elections to steer the state out of the mounting storm.

The writer is a political analyst hailing from Swat. Tweets @MirSwat

Published in Daily Times, May 14^th 2018.