The Putin-Dempsey factors

In a week where Putin and Dempsey postponed their visits, Pakistan was left clutching few straws of MoUs.

“Putin visit put off due to lack of progress on economic issue”, read a headline at the end of last month. Well, economic issues did not stand in the way of one Russian delegation that signed Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) in Islamabad last week. Not that MoUs are any great shakes as they are merely instruments of intent. The intent has to mature and turn into hard facts and that often does not happen — as we know from floods of past, MoUs have been trumpeted triumphantly by our various governments as great achievements. Nevertheless, good for Pakistan should Russia turn up trumps and come to the partial rescue of the white elephant that is the steel mills, the shattered railways and the ubiquitous energy problem that affects all 180 million inhabitants.

Nor was the visit of Sergey Lavrov affected by the alleged Putin cancellation — it came as a sop to the civilian leadership which is in dire need of a bit of good cheer. And then there was General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani’s visit to Moscow to pow-wow with the Russian military brass, presumably to shore up Pakistani-Russian common interests in the murky future of Afghanistan. Russia is aware, as all are, that it is from General Kayani and his GHQ that all major foreign and internal security issues flow and are regulated.

As for President Vladimir Putin, apparently, reported sources in Moscow have stated that his visit to Pakistan was not really on the cards; it was never announced and the news was Pakistan-generated for whatever reasons. A president is not needed for mundane MoUs and a foreign minister is good enough as a placatory gesture. And, of course, Pakistan must always bear in mind that it is Russia’s national interest that is the prime mover of this latest surge in relations. Pakistan is forever willing to grasp at any straws offered to it, given the precarious condition of its foreign and internal standing.

A second headline read: “General Dempsey puts off visit because of violence”. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey’s statement in response was: “I originally planned to go to Pakistan to meet General Kayani but because of some of the issues related to that film, he and I discussed postponing that visit — mostly so that I would give him time to deal with the issues he was dealing with internally.”

Exactly how General Kayani ‘dealt’ with the issues is not glaringly evident. No one seemed to be dealing with anything related to ‘that film’. If anything, a member of the government, a sitting minister, chose to stoke the temperature rather than lower it. Minister for Railways Ghulam Ahmed Bilour, a failure if ever there was one, offered $100,000 (whether it is his money or the government’s is not clear) for the murder of the fourth-rate video producer. This price was boosted some days later by Ikramullah Shahid of the JUI-S at a Difa-e-Pakistan Council rally who put up a $200,000 bounty for the killing of the video-maker. These offers were treated by the international media in the manner they deserve to be treated. Relevant words from William Saletan, posted in Slate on September 14:

“Dear Muslims, Christians, Hindus and Jews, you’re living in the age of the internet. Your religion will be mocked, and the mockery will find its way to you. Get over it.

“If you don’t, what’s happening this week will happen again and again. A couple of idiots with a video camera and an internet connection will trigger riots across the globe. They’ll bait you into killing one another. Stop it. Stop following their script.

“Today, fury, violence, and bloodshed are consuming the Muslim world. Why? Because a bank fraud artist in California offered people $75 a day to come to his house and act out scenes that ostensibly had nothing to do with Islam. Then he replaced the audio, putting words in the actors’ mouths, and stitched together the scenes to make an absurdly bad movie … ”.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 6^th, 2012.