The games big people play Nadeem M. Qureshi (INSIGHT) / 13 September 2013 IN AN ARTICLE last week I argued that Pakistan could not be considered a sovereign state because we do not have the industrial base to produce modern military equipment. We depend on the US and China for most of our advanced military hardware. This privileged position gives both of these countries the power to pursue their own interests in Pakistan. Moving ahead from this reality, we need to understand precisely how the US and China exercise this influence. What are their respective objectives? And what does the pursuit of these objectives mean for Pakistan and its aspirations? Understanding how they exercise this influence is not hard. Both supply or support advanced defense systems to the Pakistani military. For example, the US has supplied F-16 warplanes to the air force. And so in any dealings with Pakistan there remains in the background an implied threat: If we don’t get what we want you don’t get any spare parts for these planes. And the same applies to China with regard to the programmes it supports. These defence systems and programmes are so crucially important to Pakistan that we cannot afford to see them compromised. So we give in. More interesting to understand is what their respective interests are and the corresponding implications for Pakistan. First the US. The primary US interest since September 11, 2001 is combating global ‘terror’. This has given us the widely reviled drone programme. And we have given leeway to US intelligence organisations to operate more freely inside Pakistan than most countries would consider reasonable or even respectable. Also important to the US is its impending withdrawal from Afghanistan. It wants to see this happen smoothly, without loss of life or property. And it wants to see a stable independent Afghanistan. And finally, it has its traditional geopolitical objectives of containing China and Russia. As far as the first objective is concerned — combating terror — it is broadly congruent with Pakistan’s interests. Terror is harming us more than the US. Our people die every day, not US citizens. But the way the US is going about fighting it is wrong. The drone strikes have killed hundreds of innocent people. The Pashtun have long memories. They always settle their scores, even if it means they have to wait a generation or two. The drones will ultimately put more US interests at risk not less. The fight against terror should be left to us in Pakistan. We may be incompetent and corrupt but in the end this is our war and we have to win it. Afghanistan is also an issue where both countries see eye to eye. A stable independent Afghanistan is good for Pakistan. It is in everyone’s interest to insulate Afghanistan from regional power grabs so that the country has a chance to rebuild. As far as US geopolitical ambitions are concerned, Pakistan should be strictly neutral. We are no one’s pawns. We should not get drawn into these big power games. Given the leverage some of them have over us this is easier said than done. But at least we should try. Chinese interests in regard to Pakistan are different from those of the US. They are not interested vis a vis Pakistan in containment of other powers. Nor is terror, despite recent events in Xinjiang, a high priority on their agenda. Their central concern, at least globally is, is to secure adequate energy and raw material for their rapidly expanding economy. But in Pakistan we have not yet seen them pursue these interests as aggressively as they have done in other parts of the world such as Africa. There is the suggestion that they would like a land route to an Arabian Sea port. And hence their involvement in building and now operating Gwadar port on the Mekran Coast. But any land route, from Gwadar to the nearest Chinese city Kashgar in Xinjiang, involves traversing 2000km of some of the most hostile terrain in the world both in terms of security and geography. No serious planner would dream of attempting it in the current political environment. So the interest in Gwadar may not be what it seems. Where the Chinese are very active in Pakistan is in the building of large construction projects — dams highways, chemical plants and power stations. These projects whose cumulative value runs into tens of billions of dollars are executed by Chinese companies with Chinese labour. This should be a concern for Pakistan for two reasons. First, aggressive bidding by Chinese companies pre-empts Pakistani companies from getting these contracts and hence from gaining experience in these important sectors. And, second, importing tens of thousands of Chinese workers deprives poor Pakistani workers the chance to earn a decent living in their own country. And finally there is the issue of a flood of low cost Chinese products which have all but smothered local industry. This has denied opportunities to our own investors, harmed our ability to industrialise and resulted in unacceptable employment transfers from Pakistan to China. Nadeem M. Qureshi is Chairman of Mustaqbil Pakistan
Posted on: Sat, 14 Sep 2013 19:21:40 +0000
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