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Aizaz Ahmed Choudhry
WHEN it started its life as an independent country in 1947, India chose a foreign policy that would keep it ‘non-aligned’ in the polarised environment created by the US-USSR Cold War. India leaned towards the Soviet Union, maintained rather cold relations with the US, sought friendly ties with China premised on the Panchsheel (the five principles of peaceful coexistence), and saw itself as a member of the developing world. In South Asia, it embarked on a hostile relationship with Pakistan for separating from so-called ‘Mother India’.
Decades later, India’s foreign policy has undergone a paradigm shift, particularly since the dawn of the 21st century. With the US pivot to Asia, India has become the partner of choice for America’s Indo-Pacific Strategy that seeks to contain the further rise of China. India’s relations with China remain tension-ridden, even though both countries have flourishing economic and commercial ties. With Russia, India maintains a close relationship, notwithstanding the fact that the US-led West and Russia are at daggers drawn over the prospect of Ukraine joining Nato. India is, thus, playing a tight balancing act in its relations with the major powers. It describes its present foreign policy as the pursuit of national interests through ‘strategic autonomy’.
With UN-led universal multilateralism on the retreat, India has entered into several mutually incompatible multi-alignments, such as BRICS, SCO, and QUAD. It considers itself a leader of the Global South, and has deepened its ties with East Asia and Africa.
What has helped India maintain largely positive relations with all major powers is its growing economy and stable democracy. As the world’s fifth largest economy, it has sufficient buying power to purchase expensive military hardware from diverse sources, attract foreign investments for its growing economy, particularly its road and rail infrastructure, and enhance manifold its trade with the rest of the world. The Indian diaspora has been mobilised to project a positive image of the country. At the same time, however, divisive Hindutva nationalism, demonisation of minorities, and massive unemployment and high inflation have tarnished its stature.
While a lot has changed in India’s global profile, what has not is its foreign policy towards its South Asian neighbours. India continues with its hostile posture towards Pakistan, and pursues a competitive, even rival relationship with China. Its policy to engage only with non-Taliban Afghan groups has failed. It has also bullied Nepal through economic embargos and the occupation of part of its territory. In the south, Sri Lanka often faces tough choices in its relations with both India and China. Bangladesh, surrounded on three sides by India, has experienced suffocating Indian dominance, particularly under Sheikh Hasina Wajed who recently fled to India. The Maldives has often demonstrated its discontent with Indian interference. Consequently, India’s ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy is in the doldrums, undermining its global ambitions.
Central to India’s overbearing attitude towards its South Asian neighbours is the China factor. India is unhappy with China’s close ties with Pakistan and Chinese attempts to enter into cooperative relations with Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Maldives, and even Bhutan whose foreign policy is controlled by India. These countries find China’s BRI projects a lucrative option and wish to exercise their own ‘strategic autonomy’ to benefit from the investments regardless of the Sino-India competition. India needs to recognise the legitimate right of its neighbours to benefit from the investment opportunities that acc-ompany cooperative engagement with China.
Pakistan is one country that has never accepted Indian hegemony in South Asia. This has been reason enough for India to make every effort to isolate it. The Kashmir dispute is unresolved because of India’s refusal to let Kashmiris exercise their right to self-determination. India has suspended all contact with Pakistan, especially since 2016, and chosen to demonise the country by harping on the mantra of cross-border terrorism. In fact, it is Pakistan which now faces India-sponsored terrorism. However, since India’s economy has done well and is a large market, in contrast with Pakistan’s, the world tends to lend a more sympathetic ear to Indian narratives.
For South Asia, India is the elephant in the room. The entire region would benefit if India gave up its dominating posture, and let other South Asian countries exercise the same strategic autonomy vis-à-vis India that the latter wishes to have vis-à-vis the US, China, and Russia. Taking the region along would help India build up its global profile that it cherishes.
The writer is a former foreign secretary and chairman of Sanober Institute Islamabad.
Published in Dawn, August 18th, 2024
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Abbas Nasir
FORMER spymaster retired Lt-Gen Faiz Hameed’s arrest and the news that he may be facing a field general court martial for activities prejudicial to the military’s rules and regulations have understandably generated immense excitement in the media.
Lt-Gen Faiz Hameed occupied two of the most powerful positions in the country’s intelligence establishment after he was handpicked by the then COAS Gen Qamar Bajwa as DGC (the ‘C’ stands for counter-intelligence). It is reputedly the second-most important position in the ISI.
In view of the interest of the institution in Pakistani politics on what it says are national security grounds, the primary role of the position-holder is to be the guardian of the agency’s interests — with contending entities in the power structure such as elected governments and even the judiciary.
Gen Bajwa moved him from GOC Pano Akil to the DGC position with the task of delivering the exit of the then prime minister and his PML-N and ensuring ‘positive’ results in the 2018 elections. He delivered in no uncertain terms. In fact, insiders say that the seat count of the various parties he mentioned in institutional meetings ahead of the election was more or less what emerged after the polls.
While he served as chief of staff to Bajwa, and earned his confidence, when the latter was commanding a corps, he was also close to retired Lt-Gen Bilal Akbar who was a key member of the Bajwa team as CGS and one of the main initiators of the move against the PML-N government.
It isn’t as if the phenomenon is new or has ended. It continues unabated. From the days of Ayub Khan to prime minister Z.A. Bhutto and beyond, all military and civilian leaders have continued to rely on the office-holder to deliver whatever is asked of them without question.
The DGC’s ability to ‘deliver’ is a function of his immense power, which is immune to outside scrutiny. Some civilian leaders have been pretty open about how they used the office-holder to ensure their own members of parliament and the opposition remained in check.
Anyone with even a rudimentary interest in our history and politics will remember names such as Brig Imtiaz Ahmad in the Zia days who was then the boss of IS (internal security) in the ISI. He pursued the dictator’s opponents with vigour and also his own commercial interests, earning great infamy during Operation Midnight Jackal, which was aimed at the ouster of the then prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
Former DG ISI, the late Lt-Gen Hamid Gul was open in saying he was instrumental in the formation of the IJI alliance created ahead of the 1988 elections to stop the march of Benazir Bhutto to power as the military was suspicious of her motives and intentions. Later attempts to do the same are chronicled in the late Air Marshal Asghar Khan’s case before the Supreme Court.
Other known DGCs include retired Maj-Gen Ehtasham Zamir who birthed the Q League and found enough treasonous PPP MNAs to switch sides, form PPP Patriots and enable government formation. His interview is on record detailing how he managed to put in place a coalition sympathetic, in fact totally subservient, to his boss Gen Pervez Musharraf.
With the electronic media booming during Musharraf’s years in power and the military ruler taking on the judiciary in a move that would eventually trigger his downfall, all directors of news at private TV channels dreaded getting a call from the then DGC Maj-Gen Nusrat Naeem.
Relatively more recently, Pakistanis became familiar with another DGC who served his boss DG ISI Lt-Gen Shuja Pasha so well that he succeeded him in the top job. Retired Lt-Gen Zaheerul Islam followed in Pasha’s footsteps and shared his commitment to rooting out what they saw as corrupt politicians.
When the move against the then prime minister started, the DGI was Lt-Gen Naveed Mukhtar, who was related by marriage to Nawaz Sharif, and was chosen by the latter to head the agency possibly on account of his sterling track record as DG CT (counterterrorism).
Some sources say that the DGI was informed by Gen Bajwa of the decision to move Maj-Gen Faiz Hameed as DGC and was also told the latter would have complete freedom of action and report to the chief rather than the DGI. As DGC, he delivered in no uncertain terms, in the process earning the trust of the new prime minister. Promoted to three-star, he was appointed DGI.
He may have been an effective DGC and later DGI but he rode roughshod over one and all including respected figures in the media and went after media groups he saw as reluctant to play ball in the ouster of the PML-N government and ensuring a smooth, criticism-free passage of its replacement. It didn’t matter to him that the media group was not PML-N-leaning but merely doing its duty as an independent voice. He tried his best to destroy the media group.
This unbridled power clearly got to his head and he proceeded to rehire on contract retired officers personally loyal to him. He forgot that his predecessors had hardly been on a solo flight. They had always represented institutional interests. When he lost out in the race for the position of army chief following the naming of the senior-most three-star, Gen Asim Munir, to the top slot, he never recovered from what he saw as a setback.
Given the institution’s disdain for what it sees as ‘disloyalty’, Faiz Hameed is reported to have acted ‘irrationally’ since his retirement in trying to undermine the current leadership and is now in the dock reportedly facing serious charges, as are some of his intel minions. The question is: will this reality check make him reflect on his follies or prove a motivation for him to throw others under the bus to get off the hook himself or secure a better deal?
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
abbas.nasir@hotmail.com
Published in Dawn, August 18th, 2024
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Muhammad Amir Rana
ON Independence Day this year, the custodians of power issued formal statements. As expected, the leaders praised the nation’s resilience in the face of economic hardships and pledged a brighter future. Army chief Gen Asim Munir distinguished between the country’s friends and foes. His narrative, likely to shape the national discourse until the next Independence Day, carries significant weight, and its impact will be revealed over time.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced the upcoming launch of a five-year programme to provide significant relief to domestic electricity consumers. The civilian leadership of the hybrid regime is grappling with the challenge of preserving its image while taking responsibility for tough economic reforms. All coalition partners, including the PPP, which has benefited mainly without direct accountability, share responsibility for the shrinking space for freedom and activism, both online and offline. The actual test lies in succeeding in their five-year plan and enhancing their public image.
The army chief has blamed foreign powers for a wave of ‘digital terrorism’, which aimed to create a gulf between state institutions and the people of Pakistan. In his annual address at a parade held to mark Independence Day at the Pakistan Military Academy in Kakul, he also spoke about the situation along the western border with Afghanistan, the threat posed by the outlawed TTP, and the developments in Balochistan.
His speech echoed that of COAS Gen Ashfaq Kayani in 2009 on the same occasion in which he had elaborated on who the terrorists, and what their objectives, are, declaring that the extremists were attempting to impose a distorted version of Islam through violence. Despite making a clear distinction, Gen Kayani had been reluctant to launch an operation against the terrorists in North Waziristan. Gen Raheel Sharif completed the task later. However, it took a decade and a half after Gen Kayani’s speech to put the good-and-bad terrorist idea into perspective. This happened when the ‘good’ Taliban captured power in Afghanistan and started supporting the enemies of Pakistan.
The army chief has referred to the TTP as ‘Fitna al-Khawarij’, a term that has historical overtones in relation to an identifiable sect in Islam, which fought against legitimate caliphates. It is now an official term for the TTP. This clarity should eliminate the distinction between good and bad terrorists if it still exists somewhere among the power elites.
The state institutions’ position on terrorist groups, mainly the TTP, is legitimate according to all international norms and the country’s Constitution. However, they need to review their approach towards rights movements like the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) and Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) and see the political polarisation in the country.
Tying together all security and political challenges into one mass, complicates the challenge. There is no doubt that both the BYC and PTM are the outcome of the state’s wrong policies. Spoilers within the power elites and beneficiaries of the hybrid system in the country are deepening the gulf between the state and marginalised citizens. The state has to review its approach of painting such movements as enemies and foreign-funded movements. The institutions mainly point fingers at the West when tagging someone as a foreign agent. The reality is that Europe and the US prioritise their relationship with the country’s powerful institutions to conduct smooth business with the power elites of the state.
Imagine if the state institutions’ perceptions changed about the PTM and BYC, and they were considered citizens of Pakistan who were resisting only a few policies and practices of the institutions — practices that had yet to yield the desired results even after applying them for decades. Imagine if such movements were no longer considered peripheral issues and outsourced to power-hungry sardars and other cronies. The whole context would change. Meaningful interaction between the right movements and the state would start, which would marginalise violent and radical actors. No foreign force could use them if the state was engaging with them.
However, our power elites firmly believe that this is an issue of controlling narratives and the mediums that spread these narratives. They do not look inside, neither do they want to change their perceptions, policies, and practices.
Perception management and narrative control are complicated phenomena, and only authoritarian systems can achieve them through the tools of oppression. The power elites are following the template of authoritarian states, and they believe that state-led propaganda will change the equation in their favour.
The power elites create narratives that blend fact with fiction, often dividing people into ‘us’ versus ‘them’. However, creating this divide weakens social and political cohesion, which religious-based nationalism cannot help strengthen. Paigham-i-Pakistan, a religious decree against extremism, may be a prime example of how the state-led narrative has not succeeded in changing the minds of the religious clergy in Pakistan.
The power elites need to do some soul-searching to find the solution, which lies in changing policies and practices, and not propaganda techniques. Counter-narratives are essential but it cannot cultivate trust between the power elites and the masses. It has been proven in many cases that people do not believe in state-run narratives, and they need to verify what they hear through independent sources — whatever is available, including reliable mainstream media, social media, and foreign media outlets. The reason is that state narratives are seen as overly controlled and biased; people often perceive them as propaganda designed to manipulate public opinion rather than the truth. People have also stopped believing in journalists who have changed their position and tried to come closer to the state narrative.
One of the major achievements of the recently deposed Hasina Wajed government in Bangladesh was digitising the country, but when the erstwhile prime minister tightened the cyber regime and let the police arrest people by just linking or sharing posts that criticised her government on social media, her decline started, even though mainstream media and social media had become the government’s mouthpiece.
The writer is a security analyst.
Published in Dawn, August 18th, 2024
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Muna Khan
I HAD to join Facebook, Twitter and Slack when I started graduate school in 2016 — for different messaging purposes. I thought all of this could be done on WhatsApp but then, it was not a popular app in the US. My Chinese classmates, meanwhile, found all the apps ‘primitive’ as they could do so much more back home on WeChat — from messaging to gaming to paying utilities to live streaming.
But you don’t have internet freedoms like we do, American students would say, oblivious to Mark Zuckerberg’s attempts to chip away at their privacy or how platforms were acquiescing in authoritarian governments’ requests to take content down. The few discussions I witnessed in class came off as some sort of nationalism, years of being taught their country was the good guy keeping the bad guy out.
In case you didn’t know, the US military paved the way for the internet to be built when the US defence department set up Advanced Research Projects Agency, which created Arpanet in the late 1960s, to allow research institutes to communicate with armed institutes’ agencies through a large-scale computer network. That was born from a fear of Soviet attack. The Soviets were attempting to create what we now refer to as the internet, roughly a year after Arpanet, but could not.
Technology has long been used to keep ‘enemies’ out. Someone or something is always trying to be the gatekeeper of information but the internet has disrupted everything since its birth in 1983. The more it has evolved, the more the attempts to clamp down on it, almost always in the name of security.
Techno-nationalism — how countries link innovations to identity, stability and national interests — aims to influence global power. Donald Trump, for example, blacklisted Huawei Technology over spying concerns in 2019 but thanks to Chinese government support, the company made a remarkable comeback. The US is reportedly thinking of co-opting US allies in a “broader containment campaign” and exploring additional sanctions, reports Bloomberg.
When China created the great firewall in 2000 that is being referenced in conversations about the reported Rs30 billion firewall in place here, it did so to keep foreign influence out, it says. Its techno-nationalism led it to hold an advantage over others (though at the cost of civil liberties). Technological innovations, for example, increase job opportunities, investment and economic growth, maybe even exports if other countries become reliant on your country’s technology. This can also lead to global competition as we’re witnessing in the China-US rivalry.
In the decade since it created the Made in China 2025 plan, the country may just be able to achieve what it set out to do: reduce dependency on foreign supply chains in industries like AI, robotics and self-driving cars. China’s plan is viewed as a threat by, and to, the West.
I’m sure it led to Joe Biden passing the Chips and Science Act, 2022, which gave $280bn in new funding to boost domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors in the US. It also gave billions in subsidies for chip manufacturing, billions to public sector research in the sciences, and many incentives aimed at strengthening the country’s supply chain with the aim of countering China.
And now, onto our techno-nationalism which, in a word, is ‘cringe’, irrespective of who is in charge. It aims to globally isolate us, without giving us tools to enable us to build or empower. We don’t have a Chinese superapp like Weibo. We have Vigos and we all know their purpose.
An entire country is being made to pay for the so-called sins of one political party. This is essentially what this firewall is about. This wall’s creators, implementers and defenders have never had to worry about making ends meet.
At the time of writing, the Pakistan Software Housing Association warned the country could lose at least $300 million due to disruptions caused by the firewall. Businessmen are warning of dire consequences. Freelancers have complained of lost opportunities on sites like Fiverr. My friend Mohsin, a fashion designer, told me he has not received an order online in 10 days which is highly unusual. I won’t even bother about civil liberties because they have never mattered in the country but I hope they will matter now that the internet has slowed for everyone.
Anything grounded in nationalism produces greater harm because it prioritises security over civil liberties, and favours the wealthy (corporates) who influence policymaking to suit their interests. It clashes with Pakistan’s diverse population. Another solution is needed, one grounded in sense and sensibilities. We can’t afford the isolation and chaos this firewall is going to bring. Someone explain this to the men in charge, who have much to lose if they go ahead with this firewall.
The writer is a journalism instructor.
X: LedeingLady
Published in Dawn, August 18th, 2024
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