PM’s visit to Sri Lanka

Almost 35 years ago, Imran Khan sparked a diplomatic incident when he led the Pakistan cricket team off the field to protest atrocious umpiring during a tour of Sri Lanka. It took the intervention of the presidents of both countries to finish the tour, but it also led Imran to go on a successful mission to introduce neutral umpires, arguably his greatest international-level contribution to the game. Last Thursday, Imran concluded his maiden visit to Sri Lanka as the Prime Minister of Pakistan. While the two-day tour seems unlikely to result in world-changing events, it has been significantly more pleasant than that tumultuous 80s trip.

Among the major developments of the trip were agreements to enhance bilateral trade and investment, increase cooperation in science and technology, and promote tourism and cultural exchanges. Imran also invited Sri Lanka to see what it could gain by through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and the wider Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, noting that this would open several Central Asian markets to the island nation. Imran also noted that Pakistan is home to several important Buddhist sites, which would be of great interest to the people of Sri Lanka, which is a Buddhist-majority country.

On the business-to-business side, PM Imran proposes establishing trade links between the two countries on the pattern of EU members. Regardless, Sri Lanka remains a large potential market for several Pakistani goods, and could be an alternative import source. Interestingly, potential defence cooperation was underplayed. Imran reportedly offered Sri Lanka a line of credit for defence purchases, countering a similar offer from India.

This, combined with the offer to benefit from CPEC, has not gone down well in New Delhi, which reportedly pressured allies in the Sri Lankan parliament to keep Imran from delivering an address there.

That address, apart from invariably strengthening Islamabad’s ties with Colombo, would also invariably have included direct references to Indian atrocities in Kashmir. Imran may well have also used the opportunity to remind of India’s history of terrorist financing — New Delhi funded and trained the Tamil Tigers in their early years, making the country at least partially responsible for the decades-long civil war that ravaged Sri Lanka.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 28^th, 2021.

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