Trading with the enemy

Recent commentary by international experts suggests that the world has changed inalterably on three counts, almost to the level of revolutions — politics, economics and technology. In each there is no return to how the world has mostly existed as a community. Politics is the means to manage newer economics and technology. The new imperatives demand a leadership well versed in the nuances and understanding of requirements for enablement of these newer determinants. Older ways and century-old disposition and thought processes are dislocated in time and space to only result in a country like Pakistan to, sadly, belong to the last century. Pakistan’s principal ailment is its nincompoop leadership.

The international economic model authored and implemented in Bretton Woods and redefined through Washington Consensus is creaking under its own weight. Distortions and imbalances arising out of it are now impinging on the social compact between the state and the society. Meant to give its authors perennial global eminence it has instead forced an introspection as neither economy nor politics are anymore constrained by physical borders and artificial controls. Trade is liberalised to the almost extreme sense of laissez faire. Free market is unrestrained. The WTO exists but is barely the vehicle of control. Sanctions don’t work and are blatantly disregarded — both Russia and Iran come to mind. China and India virtually dictate their own rules. The essence and strength of international trade and interdependence is now its own lord. Only weaker nations remain apprehensive of the fallout of breaking conventions and losing space and favour.

Similarly, technology is the new master. Taiwan can tell off both China and the US of what level of nanotechnology can it share with them. True there remains critical interdependence especially between the US and Taiwan on microprocessors but manufacturing in the order of nano-microprocessors remains Taiwan’s exclusive domain. The three are also belligerents in the most touted likely conflict in eastern Pacific. Nations need politicians and politics which can span such distortions in a very complex and complicated world.

This brings me to the realities and inherent complications of offering trade to India. How might India react is the next chapter in the series but even considering it implies serious challenges. An unsure, uncertain and insecure political government cannot anyway suggest a break from what is the convention sowed in the average mind in this country. But to be as vulnerable to economic shocks and threat of going under financially experienced in the last decade begs reflection. Political and nationalistic fervour has had us declare that unless India reneges from its abrogation of Article 370 of its constitution Pakistan will not entertain any thought of trade or normalising relations with India.

We live under self-imposed constraints and deny ourselves trading with world’s most rapidly growing economy in the neighbourhood with an expanding middle class. We will accept apples from New Zealand but not those from J&K or onions from east Punjab. This would have looked good if we were seen to be a burgeoning, self-respecting economy but with a begging bowl now an essential accompaniment on every executive visit abroad common-sense is aghast. With an over 100-billion trade between them India and China remain sworn enemies over Ladakh, Himachal, Arunachal and Assam. Relationships between nations in the post-modern world are multi-layered and need the nimbleness and suaveness in the leadership to negotiate the multiplexity. Heck, we will permit Afghans to trade with India using our soil and means while we remain straitjacketed in sworn estrangement.

Here is the truth about Article 370: the article was first introduced in the Indian constitution as a special favour to Shaikh Abdullah by Jawahar Lal Nehru to soothe agitated Kashmiri feathers and to implicitly help him keep a revolutionary face in J&K as a leader who still meant to win Kashmiris their freedom. Pakistan, wary of Abdullah and seized of his insider acquiescence to India’s virtual sovereignty over the state, rejected the article which it held was in violation of UNSC Resolutions on J&K. This has been Pakistan’s consistent position even after Abdullah had visited Pakistan in later years and christened Sher-e-Kashmir. The Kashmiris themselves have spurned the article as India’s insidious effort to incorporate Kashmir as a territory in its control through legislative inclusion while denying Kashmiris their right to self-determination and freedom. Gulzari Lal Nanda, India’s Home Minister, declared in the parliament that the article in essence ‘was a shell only which over time has been so hollowed out that it provides for the center a perfect tunnel to access and control J&K as a regular territory’.

When Pakistan reacted to Indian abrogation of the article on August 5, 2019, per BJP’s longstanding position of rescinding Kashmir’s special status, Pakistan was taken in by its own rhetoric without relating to the logic and legacy of Pakistan’s principled position on it. Pakistan is guided by the provisions of the UNSC Resolutions which it holds sacrosanct not on what goes into or out of the Indian constitution. But to pour sense into stale minds even if it be on Kashmir is heretical in a charged social and political environment where rhetoric and blind nationalism trumps all. This when the world has moved on to relations between nations on multiple levels in simultaneity of which economic logic alone determines the trade plank of interdependence. In fact, economic interdependence tempers conflict and evens distortions in inter-state relations.

There are other reasons why Pakistan must retain its longstanding wariness with India of which four wars between the two are enough evidence of the animosity and resident distrust, but the rationale of economic feasibility should dictate its own norm in establishing trade relations which are not only logical but sustainable. Staples, food commodities and perishables are more easily traded between the two to fill in for unexpected shortages now more so with vagaries of climate change. Colocation must turn into coexistence and co-sustenance. Without it we will remain mired in debilitating poverty of the already impoverished. It is time to plan policies around the centrality of the common man. Misplaced dictates of wrongly understood and assumed rhetoric should not come in the way of prudence. Nationalistic fervour will have its place but let that be a force of positivity and growth, and enablement, not of denial and deprivation.

Next chapter: Even if we change our stance overnight and offer India open trade it is probable that India will spurn, ridicule and rejoice in jest. We are from such a stock. So no, nothing is coming out of it except perhaps signaling greater prudence and statesmanship while the dominant sense in India will continue to be, ‘we have them in the dumps, why give a hand’. Truly sub-continental. It may still be worth a try. Some time we can surprise us.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 29^th, 2024.

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