Can he do it, is the question informing the collective genius of the people across the Great Divide.
“He”, of course, refers to Mian Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s new PM, who stepped into the august office for an unprecedented third time on June 5. Nawaz, as his devout followers prefer to call him, is a lucky man. In popular parlance, he is — to borrow from the title of a famous Bollywood film — Muqadar ka Sikandar, the man with the Midas’ touch: whatever he touches turns into gold.
Pakistanis aren’t known for being very charitable, or forgiving, to their political leaders, especially those fallen from the pedestal of power. They don’t, often, give a second chance to those who failed to live up to their expectations. However, Nawaz has already proved an exception to the rule of elimination from public grace.
Hounded out of office in October 1999 by Pakistan’s last soldier of fortune (hopefully forever) General Pervez Musharraf and forced into exile in Saudi Arabia, Nawaz was virtually written off from Pakistan’s macabre political script. Pundits, then and later, too, were at one that the Nawaz saga was over. Most expected him to vegetate in the Holy Land like, for instance, the idiosyncratic ex-Ugandan dictator Idi Amin and die a slow political demise.
But Nawaz has proved all such mealy-mouthed pundits wrong. Or, it would rather be more appropriate to say the people of Pakistan have caught them off balance by catapulting Nawaz back at the centre with the power of their vote. Nawaz is the man of the moment and the man of destiny, while his nemesis, Musharraf, is dying a slow death as a prisoner in his plush farmhouse outside Islamabad. The jubilation of Nawaz’s Pakistani acolytes and fans is easy to understand: their fallen hero has risen, phoenix-like, from the ashes and is poised to take off in glory.
But why are the Indians so full of beans, too, on Nawaz’s ascension, all over again?
Manmohan Singh was the first leader outside Pakistan to congratulate Nawaz on his sweeping electoral win. He didn’t even wait for the official results to come in and greeted Nawaz as soon as the story broke of his astounding success.
Foreign minister Salman Khurshid chipped in later to welcome Nawaz’s renewed affirmation of good ties with India as a top foreign policy priority of his and hoped the incoming Pakistani leader would “deliver” on his commitments.
What were the “commitments” Khurshid was alluding to?
The first commitment Nawaz undertook was to set up an independent and thorough enquiry into General Musharraf’s Kargil misadventure, which had brought the two neighbours so very close to a full-scale shooting war.
But the episode had greater tragedy woven into it for Nawaz. Kargil undermined the initiative Nawaz had begun with his then Indian counterpart, Vajpayee, and which had brought the latter on a bus to Lahore to jump-start a moribund relationship.
Nawaz’s second undertaking related to the 2008 Mumbai mayhem and its Pakistani perpetrators. He let the Indians know that he intended to share with them the findings of an ongoing probe into the alleged involvement of elements of the Pakistani state in Mumbai’s tragic event.
Sceptics and Jeremiahs in Pakistan are already casting doubts on how far, and how much, Nawaz would be able to deliver on what they see as a tough agenda in his undertaking to patch things up with India and infuse a new dynamism into a relationship that was, at best, a roller-coaster ride in the past five years. No serious student or observer of India-Pakistan relations would be so irresponsible as to ignore or minimise the obstacles and landmines of deep distrust of each other that litters the way with abandon.
And, yet, with all these trepidations and reservations — I would pass calling them mental fixations — Nawaz Sharif remains the best bet to pull this chestnut out of the fire.
As Punjab’s undisputed leader — and 65 per cent of Pakistanis live in Punjab — Nawaz carries the bulk of Pakistan behind him. Interestingly, conventional wisdom in Pakistan says that Punjab has been the traditional hotbed of enmity to India. But Punjab has changed and its most famous son is now eager to stand in the vanguard of a mindset transformation of ties with India.
As the scion of a merchant family, Nawaz understands better than other, run-of-the-mill, politicians tethered to their feudal roots that the 21st century world is a global marketplace where successful transactions can only be made on the age-old maxim of give and take.
Although he didn’t have much of a reputation for intellectual savvy he’d the 20-20 vision to know, earlier than any other Pakistani leader the dividends Pakistan could garner from good relations with India.
Now, more than ever before, when he’s going to inherit a bleeding Pakistani economy that many experts argue is on life support and hardly breathing, Nawaz needs no genius to tell him the paramount need for Pakistan to close the book on bad relations with India and turn the leaf for a new chapter of co-operation. Will the powerful Pakistan army allow him a free hand to forge ahead with India is a question agitating pundits and crystal ball gazers right across the intellectual spectrum. Will Nawaz not be looking over his shoulders, all the time, to make sure he doesn’t ruffle feathers at GHQ, or dare cross the red lines the brass and boots have long drawn for any civilian government in Pakistan?
Red lines — nuclear parity with India and Kashmir — they may insist on but Nawaz isn’t that naïve as to cross them to provoke the generals’ wrath. But he also knows that those lines are no longer impediments to harmony with India. Nawaz may take pride in being the architect of Pakistan’s entry into the nuclear club but nuclear parity — or the balance of terror, as realists would articulate it — is precisely the motive for him to seek good relations with India on a footing of equality, and with confidence.
And of Kashmiri pedigree himself, he knows better than others the Kashmir dispute shouldn’t be allowed to become a drag on his quest to have ties of normal neighbours with India. So, the signs are all good from Pakistan. It’s India’s call to make Nawaz’s journey smooth and meet him halfway. Or, I may dare say, more than halfway, being the more resourceful and firm-footed partner in a potential partnership? Take your bet.
Karamatullah K Ghori is a former Pakistani diplomat. Email:k_k_ghori@yahoo.com
