It would help a great deal if leaders were honest with people. On the matter of importing affordable Russian gas, for example, it turns out that while the previous administration did try to go down that route, the Russians never replied to their letter and there was never any deal for 30 per cent cheaper gas. But that’s not what Imran Khan and his lieutenants have been saying since his trip to Moscow. They would rather have us believe that it was because Imran was going to buy gas from Putin that Biden planned and bankrolled a grand conspiracy to unseat the Pakistani PM in Islamabad.
The 30 per cent figure most likely came from India, because that is about how much cheaper they get their gas from Russia. But these comparisons are extremely misplaced. Delhi’s relations with Moscow go back to the depths of the cold war, to the early days after partition, and have constantly improved to the point that the Russian Federation inherited the bilateral relationship and now the two countries are well on their way towards finalising a Free Trade Agreement. That is why Delhi abstained at the UN after Russia invaded Ukraine, not because it let one man’s ideological beliefs overrode the country’s diplomatic protocols. There’s also the fact that Russia now sells its oil and gas only in Rubles, and Pakistan has none of them, so there are more layers in this matter than meets the eye.
And let’s not forget the sanctions, of course. It’s true, as Shireen Mazari pointed out in her own inimitable style the other evening, that the US is not sanctioning gas imports from the Russian Federation at the moment. But perhaps, the former human rights minister overlooked the fact that Washington does have an elaborate scheme of second-round sanctions for some countries that fall into that category and is not employing it too readily because of the complications caused by Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and gas. But that does not mean in any way that sanctions are altogether off the table.
So while the finance minister remained understandably ambiguous about Russian gas, he was pretty straightforward about importing wheat, whether from Russia or Ukraine, because nobody’s going to sanction it and it can be paid for in dollars. That, not gas, is just about the only quantifiable element in the whole thing right now. *