Insurmountable odds

Pakistan is beleaguered with multiple problems in almost every sphere of activity. In politics, in the wake of Nawaz Sharif’s return from self-imposed exile, political activities have hastened in enormous proportions. Sharif, the wily politician, who had had three eventful innings as the country’s Prime Minister in the past, is cautiously watching the political chessboard. He has to maintain the delicate balance of keeping the all-powerful army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in good humour as the armed forces are equally wary in dealing with an astute politician and erstwhile Prime Minister, who had had the exposure of handing the notoriety of an army General like Pervez Musharraf in the late 1990s, more specifically in addressing the unsavoury situation and embarrassment arising out of Musharraf’s Kargil misadventure.

Sharif doesn’t seem to be in a hurry and is proceeding coolly — whether in his dealings with his political adversaries, especially with the Pakistan People’s Party’s (PPP)’s Zardari, or Maulana Fazlur Rahman and other stalwarts. His past hard-earned lessons so as not to irk his political allies ahead of the upcoming elections, is proving handy for him to exercise double safeguards to ensure his and his alliance’s victory at every cost. At the same time, he is circumspect in addressing the cadres of his own party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), particularly those afflicted with dissent.

Political challenges apart, Pakistan is also under a traumatic assault following a series of killings of its homegrown terrorists, and that too on its own soil. More worryingly, such assassinations are happening at regular intervals. It’s convenient for the Pakistani security establishment to blame India for such killings though they have not given evidence to substantiate their allegations. Such exterminations are adding major challenges to the Pakistan’s security and intelligence architecture. This is indeed a major setback to them.

Elaborating on these killings, Akram Khan alias Ghazi, a key recruiter for exporting terror and terrorists into J&K, was shot dead in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Bajaur district. Terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba's (LeT) Commander, Akram Khan alias Ghazi, had pushed the youth of J&K to rebel against the state. This killing comes within a week after Khwaja Shahid, one of the terrorists behind the 2018 Sunjwan terrorist attack in J&K, was abducted and later found beheaded in PoK. Coincidentally, in less than three months, this is the third significant elimination of a LeT terrorist.

Again, earlier on September 8, a notorious LeT terrorist Riaz Ahmad alias Abu Qasim was killed by unidentified assailants inside a mosque in PoK. According to reliable sources, this is the fourth such killing of a top terrorist commander. Riaz was directly complicit in the January 1 Dhangri in Rajouri terror attack killing seven people and injuring over a dozen. He was a close associate of Sajjad Jat, the LeT chief commander and was handling all the funding of this terror outfit. In March this year, another leading commander of the banned Hizbul Mujahedeen, Bashir Ahmad Peer alias Imtiaz Alam, was shot dead in Rawalpindi, sending shockwaves in Pakistan, especially in the ISI headquarters, as ISI is widely believed to be enlisting, training and tasking the terrorists to target Indian facilities.

The pattern in killings of such dreaded terrorists in Pakistan, who have been the monstrous creations of their own security establishment, shows that the all-powerful security system seems to be grappling with such mystery killings while a bunch of analysts feel that these are the handiwork of their Pakistan handlers as possibly these terrorists have outlived their utility, or most probably, the rival terror gangs or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)’s complicity cannot be altogether ruled out.

Besides these, on the external front, some erudite critics have started questioning Pakistan’s friendship with all-weather ally China. Khurram Husain, a well-known economist and columnist in a writeup (‘Dawn’ Nov 9) writes that China wants from Pakistan the same as what China wants from every other country, which is to endlessly run a trade surplus in their favour. There might be a few specific things beyond this, such as Gwadar for instance, but those are marginal and nowhere near as close to Chinese designs in Pakistan and the rest of the world. Since 2010, Pakistan has run a cumulative trade deficit with China equaling almost USD 90 billion. This means capital worth USD 90bn has flowed from Pakistan to China against goods and services coming the other way.

Interestingly, a glance at the decade between 2000 and 2010 shows that China would not factor as the top country with which Pakistan ran a trade deficit. It attained that position post-2010, and cemented it further with the second China Pakistan FTA agreed to in 2019. Pakistan, therefore, has not only gone deeper into this loss-making relationship with China, but has increased reliance on Chinese credit as well along the way. This fact looks noteworthy.

Significantly, since 2000, China has committed USD 70bn to Pakistan in the form of development finance, including emergency lending for budgetary support. Of this, USD 56bn was committed in the post-2013 period, when the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) began. The report provides data on commitments only, not actual disbursements, but in some categories, it is easy to see how commitments would equal disbursements. One of these categories is the general budget support. Of the USD 56bn committed by China to Pakistan in the post-BRI period, USD 16bn were for budget support. In the pre-BRI period, the years running from 2000 to 2012, budget support credits were USD 4.6bn.

It would therefore, seem in the foregoing that Pakistan remains saddled with numerous challenges as discussed in the preceding paragraphs. Also, such challenges seem insurmountable even in the economic segment.

The writer is a retired IPS officer, Adviser NatStrat, and a former National Security Advisor in Mauritius. Views expressed are personal