Daily Times

The Prime Minister (PM), Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, has arrived in Washington, DC on his second official visit in as many years. Halfway through his third term in office, an incumbent may exhibit a level of confidence if not outright swagger but it was a bit distressing to see the PM fumble with a question asked of him at a short press briefing during his London sojourn on his way to Washington. The PM was asked, in Urdu, by a journalist whether he “anticipated a breakthrough in the strategic relations between the US and Pakistan”. The PM went on to explain, “The strategic (nuclear) weapons have a deterrence value and are Pakistan’s requirement over which there cannot be a compromise.” Perhaps the PM misunderstood the question but, more disconcertingly, he appeared defensive about the nuclear weapons and national security issues. It was painful to see a duly elected PM taking pains to point out that he has already issued statements that he will protect the national interest (during his US visit).

A third-term elected leader having to explain himself in this manner speaks volumes about the pressure brought to bear on him through the jingoistic media forcing civilians to play on the ‘patriotism’ pitch, which only the security establishment gets to define. Why would an elected PM talk anything but national security on a foreign visit? Does it even require reiteration by the PM that he would uphold the national interest? In the Pakistani context it surely does. The late and much lamented Benazir Bhutto was painted as a ‘security risk’ during her lifetime, especially before the 1988 elections, and apparently it has never ended since. That PM Nawaz Sharif’s Washington visit is being bookended by the Director General (DG) Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Chief of Army Staff’s (COAS’) visits to the US, before and after the PM’s tour, respectively, indicates that he is expected not to veer from the line drawn by the brass and the visit is all about security issues.

The irony is not that the military establishment is jostling its way back to a nearly complete hold over state affairs but that the intelligentsia, including quasi-liberal analysts, is also piling on the civilians. Sections of the PPP, for example the then ambassador the US, Professor Husain Haqqani, had tried with some success to set the agenda for Pakistan-US relations much to the chagrin of the security establishment. The PPP, labouring under the weight of its real and perceived poor governance, could not see it through but PM Sharif’s stint has been largely free of such charges and yet he has become a lame duck as far as national security issues go. It is often said that PM Nawaz Sharif reached out to his Indian counterpart overriding the security establishment’s advice/objection and when the Indian side did not reciprocate the brass was irked. Conveniently forgotten is the fact that the Pakistani high commission in Delhi invited the Kashmiri separatist leaders without the explicit approval of the PM. Who came up with that guaranteed way of scuttling the process that PM Sharif had initiated is not known but eventually he was the one left holding the bag while the security establishment came out smelling like roses. The fact remains that dismissing General Pervez Musharraf in 1999 cost PM Nawaz Sharif both his government and power while prosecuting the former dictator this time has cost him just the power.

The net effect is that in Washington PM Sharif will be sticking to the talking points of the brass’ choosing: a) the US should support a political role — read a seat in the Kabul government — for the Afghan Taliban as Pakistan is doing its best to bring them to the negotiation table; b) the US should help ‘defreeze’ the Kashmir issue with India; c) a US-Pak civil nuclear deal without any caps or curtailment of tactical nuclear weaponry, and d) if he is lucky, the Pakistani PM may be able to sneak in an economic agenda item such as assistance with his country’s crippling energy crisis. The overarching theme of the visit will remain security and not economic development, which was the buzzword when PM Nawaz Sharif came to Washington two years ago. During the announcement last week that he is halting US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, President Barack Obama already said that he would talk to PM Sharif about Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan and separately mentioned jihadist safe havens also. Mr Obama must, however, state the specifics of what exactly he wants Pakistan to do.

Days before PM Sharif’s departure for the US, the Taliban, as if on cue, expressed willingness to talk to all sides! This is their time-tested ploy that the jihadist thugs have deployed to buy time. Getting the Taliban to talk is not the problem; their ongoing terrorism in Afghanistan and consistent sanctuary in Pakistan is. Mr Obama’s focus should be on getting Pakistan to eliminate the safe havens located well within its borders, as widely reported by the US press. Afghans should be responsible for fighting the Taliban in places like Kunduz and this is not Pakistan’s business. Talking to the Taliban is the Afghan government’s prerogative and the US should desist pushing Kabul to do so on Pakistan’s whims. The US expectation from Pakistan should be that it shuts down the Taliban shop in Quetta and its Kuchlak outskirt, which, according to The New York Times, is still flourishing. Whether the Afghans fight those Taliban or crown them is not for Islamabad to decide. The US’s nuclear concessions to Pakistan in return for the purported support to ‘solve’ the Afghan imbroglio should absolutely not be on the table unless the jihadist sanctuaries have been verifiably dismantled.

A thaw over the Kashmir issue under US auspices seems absolutely unlikely, especially given the street mood turning absolutely nasty in India. And while there will be discussion over nuclear arsenal safeguards and numbers, including tactical nukes, it would be a shocker if even a joint statement, let alone an actual deal, came out of PM Sharif’s current visit. While Pakistan presents its nuclear armaments as “weapons for peace”, the surge and deployment of tactical nukes is simply a bridge to nuclear Armageddon. A nuclear device, no matter how low its yield, deployed at brigade level is the surefire way of moving crisis to catastrophe on the futurist Herman Kahn’s proverbial escalatory ladder. What Mr Obama may wish to consider when listening to the Pakistani perspective on tactical nukes, which abundantly cites the NATO deployment of such weapons, is that both NATO and the communist Warsaw Pact forces may have been ready to kill for their beliefs but neither was quite ready to die for them. NATO and the Warsaw Pact were not imbued with the jihadist martyrdom wish, which is the wild card that can skew the best of algorithms. The civil nuclear deal if and when it comes up in the future has to be tied to curtailing the jihadist head count, not just nuclear warheads.

The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com and he tweets @mazdaki