‘External’ policymaking

Former Foreign Office spokesperson Tasneem Aslam threw both caution and diplomacy to the wind in a recent interview in which she accused Nawaz Sharif of barring the FO from criticising India and saying anything against Kulbhushan Jadhav. The retired diplomat also claimed Nawaz had business interests in India and that the “instructions did not benefit the country, but I don’t know whether they benefited his own interests or not”. Tasneem also oddly accused the three-time former PM of not making any anti-India statements in his UN speech, even though she admitted he did speak on Kashmir. Given that, officially at least, Pakistan’s only major issue with India is over the status of Kashmir, this is a surprising point to be critical of.

What is unsurprising is that like many bureaucrats, the former diplomat seems to have had no trouble being a mouthpiece for the Nawaz government for years. Speaking out after the fact is not courageous, but whistleblowing is. If she felt the government was doing something wrong, she could have easily made it known at the time, rather than literally being the one espousing those same talking points that she now finds so offensive. Even Human Right Minister Shireen Mazari, while claiming Tasneem was only ‘confirming’ what they always knew, and praising her courage, also raised this point when she asked why “at that time did MOFA go along?”

Meanwhile, Khawaja Asif, who was defence and foreign minister under Nawaz, rubbished the claim and countered by saying that PM Imran Khan has also barely spoken about Jadhav, and that the accusation of Nawaz having business ties across the border is just political propaganda. Similarly, Kamran Shafi, an ex-military officer appointed ambassador to Cuba by Nawaz, called Tasneem’s interview a ‘pack of lies’, and claimed the undue influence on the Foreign Office actually came from elsewhere. And on that, all sides can agree — foreign policy decisions are not being made by the Foreign Office, but are imposed on them.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 18^th, 2020.

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