Of economy, foreign policy and terror threat

Shehbaz Sharif's maiden speech in the parliament after becoming Pakistan's 24th Prime Minister could be divided into three parts. The first part talked about the economic disasters the country has accumulated over the decades, largely due to elite capture. The second was related to the foreign policy that lacks complete substance since all the significant relations Pakistan has cultivated are built not on a two-way investment street but a one-way debt-extracting mechanism. The speech's third part was about the government's eagerness to implement the National Action Plan to handle terrorism. According to reliable reports, terrorist attacks rose by 70 per cent in 2023, mainly carried out by Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) from Afghanistan.

Talking about Pakistan's debt reliance, the PM said that even the salaries of the armed forces are paid from the borrowed money. Of course, he also mentioned that the expenses of all government departments are met from the same source. What makes his mention of the armed forces stand out is what he said about his government's Kashmir or India policy later in the speech. The PM said that if the issues of East Timor and Sudan could be resolved on religious lines, why could the Kashmir issue not be resolved? He further asked his fraternity in the house to bring about a resolution on the issue. The question is: can a country that does not have the wherewithal to pay salaries to its armed forces; whose budget that includes the defence part of it, is made from the instruction of the IMF; and whose foreign exchange reserve depends on the rolled over debt from China and Saudi Arabia; sustain a mayhem of the likes of East Timor and Sudan against a country i.e. India which is one of the fifth largest economies of the world and the third country with the highest military expenditure? Former caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar made a similar hollow statement of fighting against India for 300 years. This typical war mindset vis a vis our neighbours, particularly India and Afghanistan, has only fuelled extremism among Pakistanis, a spectacle of which was once again seen in the harassment of women at Lahore's busy downtown market on February 25.

Not only was this a bad start with India, but it also explains the capacity of our leaders to fabricate lies. The Kashmir issue has had nothing to do with Islam. It was a pure territorial issue, given a deliberate overtone of religion by Pakistan's intelligence agencies to build a narrative that a hostile neighbour encircled the country. The security paradigm built subsequently worked exceptionally well in favour of the establishment that has since taken an imperial role in defence of Pakistan's broken political and economic structure.

Kashmiris rightly blame Pakistan for making their fight for an independent Kashmir irrelevant with the infusion of religion. Some experts go as far as claiming that both ISI and RAW used the 'engagement' and 'dialogue' trap to disillusion the Kashmiri leadership. Those who resisted were either killed or incarcerated for life. A part of this dirty game of noble lie --- a term coined by Plato for a myth told by the elite to maintain social cohesion --- was put to rest by India in August 2019, when the autonomous status of Kashmir was abrogated to annex it with India. The Pakistani leadership, unfortunately, prefer living in a state of hallucination.

It is in the pursuit of this very lie that we have not been able to get rid of terrorism, no matter how hard we try and no matter how many lives of our soldiers we sacrifice every passing day. That brings us to the third part of the PM’s speech, the reinvigoration of the National Action Plan.

This plan was borne from the Army Public School Peshawar mayhem, in which the TTP killed nearly 150 people, including 132 schoolchildren. It was a revenge taken from the Pakistan Army against the military operation, Zarb-e-Azb, which started in 2014 in North Waziristan. In short, the purpose of building NAP was to combat terrorism, and the accompanying extremism manifested in the rising intolerance in society. While the establishment has been able to implement its part of NAP, the civilians fail to even start the plan in earnest. For example, take point four of the plan about strengthening NACTA, the anti-terrorism coordination body. Over the years, despite all the pledges, fresh appointments and strategies to revive NACTA, it failed to penetrate the country's security paradigm, which operated outside the civilian command. The refusal of the various arms of security and intelligence apparatuses to cooperate with NACTA has rendered it useless. It is incomprehensible how the Prime Minister, who has come to power with the backing of the powers-that-be, envisions reviving NACTA.

The foreign policy tone set by his maiden speech confirms that the PM will shadow the power holding the reins from behind. It also confirms that it will not be a PML-N government which has been eager to build relations with India and other neighbourly countries. It also confirms that the dream of civilian supremacy has further been ditched.