New friends, old foes
Pakistan courts Russia and receives a diplomatic snub from India, writes Iffat Idris from Islamabad
Pakistan's foreign relations last week witnessed an upturn on one front and a sharp deterioration on another. The improvement came with Russia, the worsening -- no surprise -- with India.
Taking Russia first, President Pervez Musharraf paid a three-day visit to the country last week. The significance of that trip was immense. For a start, it was the first visit by a Pakistani leader to Moscow since Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto went there in the early 1970s. No Russian leader has ever visited Pakistan. This dearth of bilateral exchanges reflects the strained relations between the two countries.
During the Cold War, Pakistan allied itself with the United States. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 Pakistan became a front- line state in the US effort to oust the Soviets. That experience obviously caused great bitterness on both sides. Things did not improve after the Soviets withdrew: Afghanistan plunged into bitter civil war from which the Taliban eventually emerged triumphant. Pakistan was one of the handful of countries to recognise the Taliban government. Moscow, in sharp contrast, backed the opposition Northern Alliance's efforts to defeat the Taliban. Pakistan and Russia were thus once again on opposing sides of a conflict.
The other factor inhibiting friendly relations is India. Just as Pakistan sided with America in the Cold War, so India -- while maintaining a stance of neutrality -- moved close to the Soviet Union. In 1971 the two countries signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation, which paved the way for massive arms supplies to India. Relations between New Delhi and Moscow cooled somewhat in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet Union's break-up (due to Russia not being able to sell arms at the old subsidised prices), but have since picked up. The two countries recently signed a $3 billion arms procurement agreement. Given that the most likely target of Indian military power is Pakistan, it is little wonder that Pakistan viewed Russia with suspicion.
No more, though. President Musharraf's three-day trip was characterised by mutual cordiality and a determination to put the "bad things" of the past behind them, and forge a new cooperative relationship. As the Pakistani president told reporters, "we must bury the past because the past was not much to look at." In the case of Islamabad, this change in attitude was brought about by the altered situation in Afghanistan, the need for an alternate source of arms (other than the US), and the desire to improve the current paltry bilateral trade figure of $83 million. In the case of Moscow, again the triumph of the Northern Alliance was a factor; so too, Pakistan's cooperation in the US-led war against terrorism.
The actual concrete outputs from the visit did not amount to much: agreements to improve collaboration between Russian and Pakistani Foreign Service Academies, on visa and immigration issues, and cultural exchanges. A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) worth $100 million was signed for the expansion and modernisation of Pakistan's steel industry. The joint communiqué issued at the end of the visit also urged collaboration in other sectors, including investment, banking, narcotics control and debt restructuring.
Pakistan would have liked Russia to become more involved in mediating the long-running Kashmir conflict with India. As President Musharraf said in a press conference, "we believe the president is the best placed person to play a role in resolving disputes between India and Pakistan." Russian willingness to mediate, however, is severely tempered by its close relationship with India, something Putin made clear would not be prejudiced by the warming of relations with Pakistan. Putin phoned Prime Minister Vajpayee hours before Musharraf arrived, to reassure the Indian leader of that fact. On the Kashmir issue, President Putin confined himself to urging the two South Asian neighbours to settle all "bilateral disputes bilaterally".
Ironically, his statement was followed by another eruption in the simmering hostility between India and Pakistan. New Delhi police announced on Thursday that they had arrested two Kashmiris, Shabbir Dar and Zamrooda Habib, under anti-terrorist laws. The two were alleged to have received thousands of dollars from the Acting Pakistani High Commissioner, Jaleel Abbas Jilani, to pass onto Kashmiri militants. Jilani strongly refuted the charges, which he attributed to the Bhartiya Janata Party's (BJP) desire to boost its domestic support. "It is absolutely incredible that any head of mission would be personally involved in handling this kind of thing, particularly now, when our relations are so tense."
The Indians, however, stuck to their allegations. On Friday they ordered the departure from India of the Acting High Commissioner and four other Pakistani diplomats. An Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman said Jilani had been "found indulging in activities incompatible with his official status. His withdrawal from India is sought within the next 48 hours". In Islamabad, the Indian chargé d'affaires was called in to the Foreign Ministry to hear Pakistan voice its strong objections to the charges and expulsions. That was followed -- in the best tradition of tit-for-tat -- by the expulsion from Pakistan of the Indian Acting High Commissioner and four other officials.
The reason for there being Acting High Commissioners in both New Delhi and Islamabad, is that the High Commissioners were withdrawn in a previous round of tit-for-tat last year. The diplomatic crisis followed an attack by suspected Kashmiri militants on the Lok Sabha (Indian parliament) in December 2001. 2002 saw a massive troop build-up along the Line of Control (LoC) -- the de facto border between India and Pakistan -- in Kashmir. At one point war seemed inevitable.
In recent months tensions had abated, and both sides had started the process of troop withdrawal. But as this latest bitter diplomatic exchange shows, improving relations between India and Pakistan is a painful process of 'two steps forward, one step back'.
