Zardari's damp squib
diplomacy By Karamatullah K
Ghori
ISLAMABAD - What started with a bang
ended with a whimper. Pakistani President Asif Ali
Zardari's much-hyped foray into "foil diplomacy"
with arch-rival India, turned out to be a damp
squib.
The air between India and Pakistan
had been hot with expectancy ever since Hina
Rabbani Kher, Pakistan's callow foreign minister,
went on a charm-offensive to Delhi last summer.
Pakistan's recent decision to grant India the
status of Most Favored Nation (MFN) in commerce
and trade is being seen by pundits as a major
impetus to both to quickly move on from the bog
engulfing them since the carnage of the November
2008 attacks in Mumbai, in which at least 166
people were killed, and for which some jihadi
outfits in Pakistan enjoying patronage of the
country's intelligence services were blamed.
Zardari couldn't be faulted on April 8 for
making a diplomatic foray
into the tangled woods
of relations with India that had been used
routinely by other Pakistani leaders. The practice
of high-visibility and media-savvy "foil
diplomacy" vis-a-vis India originated with the
much-maligned military dictator, General Zia
ul-Haq in the 1980s.
He used the game of
cricket - a passion common to both India and
Pakistan - for informal, agenda-less, parleys with
his Indian counterpart in the cover of witnessing
a cricket match in Rajasthan's "pink city",
Jaipur. General Pervez Musharraf kept that
tradition alive when he visited Delhi for same
reason in 2005.
Even Zardari's sidekick in
the civilian cabal now ruling the roost in
Islamabad, the effete Prime Minister Yusuf Raza
Gilani, couldn't resist the temptation of cricket
diplomacy when invited by his Indian counterpart,
Manmohan Singh, to the 2010 World Cup semi-final
between India and Pakistan. Zardari may have
reckoned he could outplay his predecessors by
using religion as the foil rather than cricket,
and the Indian leadership played along.
Pakistan's cricketing fortunes have been
under a cloud since 2009, when the Sri Lankan team
was attacked by terrorists in Lahore. No foreign
cricket team has since visited Pakistan. But
religion is unlikely to go out of fashion any time
soon in either of the two estranged neighbors;
it's a common passion for the peoples of South
Asia.
Visiting shrines is a popular trait
and a pastime for rich and poor alike. So Zardari
couldn't have thought of a more befitting and
marketable foil for informal diplomacy in Delhi
than a visit to the Dargah (shrine) in Anjmer,
Rajasthan, of Khwaja Moin Chishti, patron-saint to
Muslims and to millions of Hindus, Sikhs and
Christians in India and Pakistan, and revered as
Gharib-Nawaz (benefactor of the poor).
This scribe, on a recent visit to India,
was told that the Indians were ready to meet
Pakistan more than half-way to usher in a "South
Asian Spring" and put paid to the nagging legacy
of mistrust between them. Some pundits were quite
enthusiastic that India wouldn't be averse to
making a grand gesture of its own to reciprocate
Pakistan's favor of MFN status. Zardari would
receive similar vibes pointing to the prospect of
a major "break-through" if only he would dive into
the arcane world of foil diplomacy (see US
playing cat and mouse with Pakistan, Asia
Times Online, April 5. 2012).
For Zardani,
the Dargah visit was like a god-send.
Hobbled by the rising anger of the Pakistani
people over his government's dismal track-record
in power and harassed by an assertive judiciary
over allegations of the wholesale plunder of
national wealth stashed away in Swiss banks,
Zardari welcomed any diversion. The temptation of
success, through Dargah diplomacy, with
India may have also been seen as excellent
homework for the next general elections, just
around the corner.
But, then, it was his
American friends and mentors in Washington who
doomed this foray. Their resurrection of the ghost
of Hafiz Saeed - accused by India as being the
principal culprit and mastermind of the gory
episode of Mumbai, 2008 - queered the pitch in
Delhi. Washington's US$10 million bounty on
Saeed's head was as good as a death warrant for
any glimmer of success for Zardari's
"put-the-past-behind-us" mission to Delhi. It
became still-born undertaking from the word go.
Hafiz Saeed is a classic example of one
people's hero being another's villain.
In
Pakistan, the jihadi zealot is eulogized, if not
venerated, as a social reformer and philanthropist
whose service for the poor stands out in marked
contrast to the ruling elite's disdain. He walks
tall and free because the country's top court has
given him a free chit; there's no case against him
in Pakistan.
To the Indians, Saeed is a
murderer with Indian blood on his hands. India's
recurring grouse against Pakistan is that the
government hasn't lifted a finger against Saeed,
much less held him accountable for his crime.
The typical Pakistani response to this
Indian lamentation is that they, the Indians,
haven't given them any concrete evidence of
Saeed's culpability, much less a smoking gun that
should be enough to convict him as charged.
So as far as the Indians were concerned,
Zardari wasn't bearing any gifts. India doesn't
feel itself under any obligation to pay back
Pakistan for the granting of MFN to India in trade
because India took the initiative way back in the
80s; Pakistan has only just returned the favor.
Zardari did the cosmetic thing by taking
his Interior (Home) Minister, Rahman Malik, to
Delhi with him. Malik is the man to deal with and
keep tabs on the likes of Saeed. But those who
know are aware of the fact that Malik, or any
other civilian for that matter, doesn't have the
power to rein in the jihadis. That privilege and
power is vested, solely, in Pakistan's military
brass.
More perceptive observers could
read the tea leaves with great clarity - and fret
over the looming failure of Zardari's pilgrimage
to India - from the fact that the Zardari's last
meeting on the eve of his day-long safari to India
was with the Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq
Kiani. That produced the vision of Zardari going
to India with one hand tied behind his back.
As courteous hosts, the Indians went
through the rituals impeccably. Manmohan Singh was
gracious in his hospitality, laying out a
sumptuous feast, but the catalyst for unlocking
the genie of genuine change between the two
countries was missing.
So there was no
break-through, no grand standing. Zardari made the
headlines at the saint's shrine in Ajmer, but as
far as his Dargah diplomacy in Delhi was
concerned, the pilgrim-president returned home
empty-handed. One can hope he has learned the
limitations of "foil" diplomacy. The real world's
mystique is different from that of saints'
shrines.
Karamatullah K Ghori is
a retired Pakistani ambassador, now a free-lance
columnist and commentator. He can be reached at
K_K_ghori@yahoo.com
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