A Trump solution

Donald Trump says he is ‘willing to play any role that Pakistan wants…to find solutions to outstanding problems’

Pakistan has any number of problems great and small, with the rift created at Independence being the greatest and the most impervious to solution. Over the decades there have been many attempts to broker peace. All have failed. The two countries have gone to war thrice. Currently there is an elevated — and escalating — level of tension revolving around the core dispute of Kashmir. The Kashmir issue is a colonial legacy that has proved poisonous in the extreme and continues to do so, but a new player has come to the stage and from an unexpected direction. Donald Trump, President Elect of the United States said on Wednesday November 30 that he is ‘willing to play any role that Pakistan wants…to find solutions to outstanding problems.’ The remark was made in a ‘phone conversation with PM Nawaz Sharif occasioned by the PM calling Mr Trump to congratulate him on his recent victory in the Presidential race. The President-elect went on to say that it would be an honour for him to be thus engaged and that he personally would do what is needed.



Perhaps we should not be surprised as Mr Trump is after all a man of surprises. During the campaign he had referred to a desire to mediate between India and Pakistan saying that the unresolved dispute was ‘a tinderbox’ — in which he is correct, but as ever there are caveats. Thus far none of the Trump team at cabinet level has much — or any — regional diplomatic experience and as far as is known Mr Trump himself has none. Paradoxically this may be no bad thing. No backstory, no taint of colonialism could play well for Mr Trump and his team. Conversely a failure to understand the heavily nuanced relationship could be disastrous, and anyway India would have to be a willing party to any new attempts to resolve the issues as would the people of Kashmir, and there is no suggestion that either has been consulted prior to Mr Trump making his offer. At first sight the Trump offer is outrageous, almost ridiculous, at second look perhaps not much of either after all.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 2^nd, 2016.

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