Can Nawaz Shariff Be Trusted : क्या नवाज शरीफ विश्वास किया का सकता है – जी पार्थ सारथी

I first met Nawaz Sharif personally in 1982 when he hosted what he had earlier said a “small lunch” for the visiting Indian cricket team. There were an estimated 2000 guests at his “small” lunch in his palatial mansion in Raiwind near Lahore. Nawaz, son of an industrial magnate, was then the Finance Minister of Punjab. He belonged to a group of young politicians being groomed by the country’s military ruler, Gen Zia-ul-Haq, to give a civilian façade to military rule and confront Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples’ Party. Sharif showed early promise as a political organiser and able administrator, to rise to the higher rungs of the army backed the Pakistan Muslim League. He became Prime Minister in 1990, after the army destabilised the PPP government led by Benazir Bhutto.

Sharif’s honeymoon with the army was short-lived. The army acted to remove two of its erstwhile protégés in 1993 — the then President Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Nawaz Sharif — after mutual bickering between the President and the Prime Minister paralysed the government. Returning to power with a massive mandate in 1997, Sharif gained immense popularity when he matched India’s nuclear tests in 1998. But there was an authoritarian streak in Sharif, which led to an ugly confrontation with the Supreme Court and his efforts to introduce Sharia Law in Pakistan, undermining the democratic foundations of the country. Given his fondness for high living and Bollywood music and films of the 1950s, Sharif could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be labelled a religious fundamentalist, or a bigot. He has also been an ardent cricket fan and played club-level cricket quite proficiently.

Despite these attributes, Sharif has a propensity for supporting Islamist causes within Pakistan and beyond its borders. He is deeply distrusted in the US. He was reluctant to meet US demands to act against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, prompting the US to launch cruise missile strikes on Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in 1998 after US diplomatic missions had been targeted in Kenya and Tanzania and a US naval vessel attacked in Yemen by Al-Qaeda, operating from Afghan soil. It is well known that Sharif was in the loop when his handpicked ISI chief Lt-General Javed Nasir organised the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts in collusion with Dawood Ebrahim. Within Pakistan, Sharif bought insurance from being targeted, while campaigning during the recent elections, from the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, by colluding with Taliban-affiliated groups like the Sipah-e-Sahaba and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. He enjoys a close family relationship with Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafez Mohammed Saeed. It is doubtful if the perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist outrage will be brought to justice despite the glib talk of a “joint investigation”.

It will be difficult for Sharif’s party and for him personally to discard their erstwhile Jihadi assets which they have patronised for years. A factor playing on their minds could well be that if they discard assets like Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, they could well drive erstwhile allies and assets into the arms of the military establishment and political rivals like army-backed Imran Khan. Sharif knows that while the Indian border will remain tension-free if he halts cross-border terrorist attacks on India, the same cannot be said of Pakistan’s porous western borders with Afghanistan. It is not going to be possible for his government to halt infiltration into Afghanistan by the Taliban, the Haqqani network, Al-Qaeda and its affiliates, especially given the strength of the ISI-Taliban-Haqqani-Al-Qaeda nexus. Moreover, with Imran Khan becoming politically influential in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, the challenge that the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan poses to the writ of the Sharif government will be formidable.

While both General Kayani and Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhury would be out of office by the end of this year, the real challenge that Sharif will face is from a Pakistan army leadership tutored in an era of Pakistan-sponsored “jihad” in Afghanistan and India. Sharif will have to deliver on his promises to set the economy right and promote growth if he is to consolidate his position. For this, he will need goodwill of and assistance from Western donors, the World Bank, and the IMF. Saudi Arabia’s rulers will, however, be friendlier toward Sharif than they have been towards Zardari, regarded as an Iranian inclined Shia. It remains to be seen if he can moderate the army’s ambitions to establish a compliant Taliban-dominated government in Afghanistan if he is to get the Americans end cross-border drone strikes and open their purse strings for enhanced economic and military assistance. Thus, it is likely that Sharif will attempt to ensure that 26/11 style terrorist strikes are avoided while a “low-intensity conflict” continues in Jammu and Kashmir and elsewhere, in a calibrated manner that inconveniences, but does not infuriate India.

While ill-prepared and hastily organised summits are best avoided, New Delhi should respond positively if Sharif chooses to seek Indian cooperation in areas like extending its power grid to the Pakistan border in Punjab and providing the power-starved Punjab province of Pakistan with much-needed electrical power. Moreover, if Pakistan so chooses, India could quite easily extend its existing oil pipelines to the Pakistan border for the supply of petroleum products. Oil pipelines and electric transmission towers, across borders, provide more abiding security than tanks and artillery! It would likewise serve us well to relax restrictions on pilgrims and other bona fide visitors from Pakistan. But, at the same time, India cannot afford to lower its guard on terrorism, given the continuing links of the Pakistani military establishment with terrorist groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba.

American journalist Max Boot perceptively remarked after the recent elections in Pakistan: “In Pakistan itself, we should work to bolster civil society and the power of civilians in government, but we should not delude ourselves that such efforts will have much impact in the short run-and possibly not even in the long run. Pakistan’s state apparatus is deeply dysfunctional and is unlikely to fundamentally change for the better under Nawaz Sharif.” This is an assessment we would do well to bear in mind while hoping that Nawaz Sharif will fulfil the promises he has made.