With the US approving career-diplomat-turned-politician Masood Khan (70) as Pakistan’s new envoy, the curtain came down on the vetting process by the host nation. Though Pakistan proposed his name in November last, the Biden administration took an inordinately long time, leading to speculation. American Congressman Scott Perry’s letter to Biden seeking to extend the pause on Khan’s approval citing his soft spot for jihadi terrorists, Pakistan subsequently accusing India of pressuring the State Department, and the Indian foreign office’s riposte had built up the whole drama.
Khan’s positions mirror his country’s powerful military, such as demanding the release of Pakistani neuroscientist Afiya Siddiqui, jailed in the US for 86 years for plotting the mass murder of American soldiers in Afghanistan in 2010. With a hostage taker at a Jewish centre in Texas making the same demand recently, the jihadist echo couldn’t be missed. She is also known as ‘lady al-Qaeda’, and over 50 people have been killed so far globally in attempts to free Siddiqui or avenge the arrest.
Khan’s appointment comes at a time when redrawing of constituencies to facilitate elections in Jammu and Kashmir is about to be wrapped up. A delimitation panel has proposed bunching of 18 Assembly seats in each parliamentary constituency while treating the Union territory as one unit instead of the existing watertight Jammu and Srinagar compartments. One fallout is that the Anantnag parliamentary seat will have Assembly seats from both South Kashmir as well as Poonch and Rajouri in Jammu region. National Conference patron Farooq Abdullah has already trashed the proposals.
Be that as it may, Khan would try to ratchet up a storm in the US against J&K elections whenever they are held. Since he was PoK President for five years till August 2021, he can be expected to be particularly shrill. But a country that is a basket case and seen as the epicentre of global terror does not have any credibility. He could perhaps channelise his vast diplomatic skills in persuading President Biden to take a phone call from Prime Minister Imran Khan. If he could pull that off, it would be a balm on one bruised ego, as the two haven’t spoken ever since Biden’s inauguration as President in January last year.