GHQ Rawalpindi, with support from Beijing, has nurtured a stable of extremist groups that are now restless at the reduction in cash subsidies being given to them.
Mumbai: Since the 1960s, a shared antipathy towards India has brought GHQ Rawalpindi and the PLA together in what both sides describe as an “all-weather iron embrace”. The nature of the activity generated through this partnership of unequals has over the decades led to the “iron” in the relationship fashioning itself into a straitjacket that is squeezing vitality and viability out of the Pakistan economy and society. Often at the expense of the interests of the people of Pakistan, the armed forces in that military-ruled state have been busy in carrying out a substantial share of the joint GHQ-PLA asymmetric war against India. Over the years, the world’s most populous democracy has fashioned methods designed to muffle and blunt the effects of opaque and overt hostile operations of the Sino-Pakistan axis, especially since 2018-19. The stable of terror groups created and nurtured by the Pakistan military has had the benefit of substantial support from the PLA and the Central Military Commission in general. Chinese support has gone to the extent of protecting several of the most dangerous global terrorists resident in Pakistan from United Nations sanctions, a policy that remains substantially in place. In Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, notably in Gilgit-Baltistan, but for infrastructure, trained personnel, technology and resources from its “all-weather” partner across the Karakoram range, GHQ Rawalpindi would have found it much more difficult to forcibly damp down unrest among the local population. Across not just Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) but throughout Pakistan itself, local populations have turned hostile to the Communist Chinese who are using the territory of Pakistan to promote what the CMC (Central Military Commission) calculates to be the interests of the CCP. The objective is to make Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and Pakistan a reliable, docile rear area for the PLA and for other agencies of the Chinese Communist Party to operate with impunity.
Technically, only around 38% of the external debt owed by Pakistan can be sourced to China. However, over and above this comes expenditure by the Pakistan government and army on keeping secure and facilitating PRC projects in the country and in PoK. Although precise figures for such expenditure have not been made public, they are substantial enough to have roused the ire of local populations around each of the multiplying number of installations that the CCP has directed get made and operated in a country that is on the edge of a Sri Lanka-style default on its international financial obligations. Although pressured by China and to a lesser extent by the United States, the IMF has thus far refused to release additional funding to Pakistan in the absence of changes in governance practices and in modes of spending. The effort by the CCP and its friends in Washington is to try and get prepared paperwork that purports to show that enough of the reforms mandated by the IMF have been carried out, when they have not. In the next few days, it will be seen whether the IMF as an institution allows itself to be misled in this fashion, when the reality is that only a complete write-off by the PRC of the loans outstanding to Pakistan, added to a $100 billion grant to Pakistan from China, can stabilise the situation enough to permit a genuine effort at reform. As yet, in a pattern seen earlier with Sri Lanka, the CCP has shown itself unwilling to agree to such a debt write-off and a sufficiently large money grant to Pakistan. Clearly, the “all-weather iron friendship” is showing signs of stormy weather as well as a significant quantity of rust on the iron superstructure of the GHQ-PLA relationship.
PLA IN CIVILIAN GARB
Despite many within the still-ruling Rajapaksa clan being in the pocket of the CCP (or rather, having their own pockets taken care of by that entity), Prime Minister Narendra Modi stepped forward to give more assistance to Sri Lanka in its hour of extreme distress than the rest of the world combined. Rather than damaging the Ram Setu, creating an elevated land bridge across the waters separating India from Sri Lanka would be desirable. As yet, through signs such as the attempt to give PLA in civilian garb access to small islands belonging to Sri Lanka that are within shouting distance of Indian shores, the jury is still out as to whether the generosity shown by India is being reciprocated by adherence to the promise made by Gotabaya Rajapaksa after being sworn in as Lankan President. This was that Colombo would not allow any activity on its soil that would threaten the security interests of India. As yet, that commitment remains to be kept, given the intensification of activity by the Sino-Pakistan axis to convert Sri Lanka into as docile a follower of diktat from Beijing (acting on behalf of both the PLA as well as GHQ) as Nepal has been, especially under K.P. Oli. Given that those who break the crockery should pay for the repairs, the responsibility for getting Pakistan out of the financial (and therefore societal) pit that it finds itself in vests with the CCP leadership in Beijing as well as its partner in asymmetric operations, GHQ Rawalpindi.
JOE BIDEN’S ILLUSIONS
The reawakening of the impulse within the dauntless Pashtun community for a unified Pashtun state, now that the period specified in the Durand Line is long over, has accelerated after the Taliban was handed back control of Afghanistan by US President Joe Biden, who did not even stop to secure tens of billions of USD worth of military equipment (which the TTP, among other groups, is now finding uses for within Pakistan) or even hold on to the Bagram air base in the manner done in Diego Garcia and Guantanamo. Joe Biden, known to be a sunny, charming and well-meaning individual, is even more of a pacifist than his former boss Barack Obama was while in the White House. The only exception is Ukraine, whose plight has let loose the impulse for war in Biden to an extent that is raising the risk that the US may enter into the first direct kinetic confrontation with Russia that it has ever had in its history. Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians and Libyans are not Ukrainian, neither are Indians or Taiwanese, so clearly different standards apply in the White House, including where there has been armed aggression against the latter two by the PLA. What the difference is between Ukrainians and these other nationalities is difficult to discern in a mind that considers all human beings to be equal irrespective of ethnicity.
President Biden had the impression that there was a Taliban Mark II that was completely different in outlook from Taliban Mark I. So far there are no visible signs of such a change, including in its summary executions of any Afghan national unfortunate enough to have sided with Coalition forces during 2001-21. Or in the continuing refusal to give Afghan women and girls access to education and opportunities, except temporarily to a few working with international NGOs so that the goodies sent by well-meaning philanthropists abroad continue to come into the hands of the Taliban. Or in enforcing such punishments as the chopping off of hands and stoning to death, not to mention a merry go round of quickie divorces in the manner that was until recently even permitted in India, and in a less extreme form will continue until a Uniform Civil Code gets established in the way this is present in the US or in Germany, not to forget Egypt or Turkey, in the latter presumably until President R.T. Erdogan wins the 2023 elections and can further alter the chemistry of that once Kemalist state. GHQ Rawalpindi is now discovering the truth behind what this columnist said and wrote years past, that the Taliban had six groups, of which the most numerous (and by now the most assertive) are the three groups of Free Taliban, i.e., those not under the tutelage of either Pakistan or China.
CHINA MUST RESCUE
Money from the Chinese side to Pakistan has come in the form of interest-bearing loans rather than what they ought to have been to an “iron friend”, an outright grant. These loans ahould all be written off by China. Over the years, GHQ Rawalpindi with support from Beijing has nourished a stable of extremist groups, many of which are now restless at the reduction in cash subsidies being given to them. PRC loans and GHQ terror factories are among the most significant reasons why Pakistan is at the cliff edge of a financial default. The IMF ought not to buckle under pressure from the CCP and pro-CCP elements in Washington and increase funding to Pakistan without ensuring that the key conditions that have been stipulated by it as a precondition are verifiably kept. Otherwise, that money will fall into the present bottomless pit that is public finance in Pakistan, while critics of the IMF raise the issue of the institution in effect acting as an accessory to the terror machine that is housed in Rawalpindi, and over which the civilian government in Islamabad accepting such conditions on paper has no control. Only GHQ Rawalpindi and the CMC led by Xi Jinping can give Pakistan the breathing space needed to try and reform its way out of a mess far worse than what India found itself in during 1990-91. Xi has to write off the debt owed by Pakistan and give a $100 billion grant to be monitored by the IMF and used entirely for civilian needs. GHQ Rawalpindi has to dismantle its terror machine as well as subsequently vacate the Indian land occupied by it together with the PLA. Such actions have blocked the flow of the domestic and external capital needed for Pakistan to grow enough to give jobs to its youth. In addition, they have bred a culture of tolerance and indeed encouragement for violence, besides choking off the cooperation with India that is needed for the economy to grow. Hence, unless these conditions are met, handing over money to Pakistan by either the IMF, the GCC or any other entity will remain a blatant exercise in futility. The GHQ-PLA combo has the responsibility of rescuing Pakistan from the meltdown that they themselves have created.