Pakistan in International Politics
The second annual international conference on Pakistan hosted by the Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (CERI) took place in Paris on 7 December 1998. Based on the theme 'Pakistan in International Politics: Foreign Policy Making and Security Issues', it was organized by Christophe Jaffrelot (CERI/ Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique or CNRS).By Aminah Mohammad
Among the twelve participants, eight scholars (from France, Pakistan, England, and Switzerland) presented papers all in English, while three other researchers and a former diplomat chaired sessions or acted as discussants. The morning session, presided over by Christophe Jaffrelot and Pierre Lafrance (former French ambassador to Pakistan), focused on 'The Making of Pakistan's Foreign Policy'. Munir Ahmad Khan (former head of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission) justified the Pakistani nuclear programme as a self-defence reaction against what he considers to be the aggressive policy of India, which has been attempting to reach the status of a nuclear superpower.Ian Talbot (Coventry University) insisted upon the role of the army in shaping Pakistan's policy, this being the result of the country's 'strategic deficit' vis-à-vis India and the consequent emphasis on security issues rather than other aspects of foreign policy. He also recalled how politically suicidal it would have been for any popularly elected government to appear 'soft' on the Kashmir issue, given the emotional attachment to this cause displayed, in particular among Islamist groups and refugees from Kashmir and East Punjab. The paper presented by Mohammed Waseem (Oxford University) concentrated on the question of the dialectic between domestic politics and foreign policy. It was pointed out that the peculiar pattern of civil-military relations in Pakistan undermined the growth of political institutions, which inevitably kept public input in foreign policy limited. However, the underlying consensus in the society on Kashmir, Afghanistan, India, and the Middle East does furnish the decision makers with legitimacy.
The morning session ended with the paper by Amelie Blom (Institut d'Etudes Politiques, Paris). She underlined the difficulty of assessing the real coherence of the Kashmir politics on Pakistan, the various institutions and groups (army, intelligence services, government, public opinion, Kashmiri groups, etc.) each having their own perceptions and preferences. But, on the whole, even though hostility towards the idea of negotiations with India still predominates in Pakistan, a compromise between the two countries cannot yet be ruled out in the years to come. This will depend on a number of factors, in particular a change in the composition of the army (at a generational and ethnic level) and the economy (currently mired in a drastic crisis, Pakistan may not be able to afford to neglect a market like India).
The afternoon session, presided over by Gilles Kepel (CERI/CNRS) and Jean-Luc Racine (Centre d'Etudes de l'Inde et de l'Asie du Sud/CNRS), was devoted to 'Regional Security Issues: Strategies of the State and Transnational Actors'. Gilles Dorronsoro (Universite de Rennes) started the session with a paper on the Taliban factor in regional politics. He began by refuting the popular conception in which the Taliban phenomenon is merely perceived to be the resurgence of the traditional model of mobilization in Pathan areas, pointing out that the victory of the Taliban is the outcome of a long-term process that has changed the social position of the ulema in Afghan society. Moving on to deal then with the issue of their relations with the Pakistani state, Dorronsoro insisted on the fact that the Taliban are in no way ISI (Inter-Service Intelligence, the Pakistan secret services) puppets, illustrating his point with a few relevant examples. More importantly, the Taliban regime has even emerged as an obstacle to the Pakistani designs in Central Asia.
The regional dimension of sectarian conflicts in Pakistan was then addressed by Mariam Abou-Zahab (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris) who recalled that till the late 1970s, Sunni-Shia conflicts were virtually unknown in Pakistan. Since then however, Pakistan has become a primary battlefield for a proxy war with Iran pitted against Saudi Arabia. Pre-existent rivalries have been exacerbated by the Afghan war and, in particular by the rise of the Taliban, leading to the sectarian violence we are witnessing today. The next paper by Gurharpal Singh (De Montfort University, Leicester) underlined the necessity of going beyond the official rhetoric and conventional explanations concerning the question of the Pakistani interference in Indian Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab. The author listed the domestic compulsions making such intervention attractive, these imperatives derive essentially from indeterminate borders and a sense of state insecurity. The fault of India has been its failure to establish regional nationalisms in the border states. This produced the recourse to violence preventing the establishment of a genuine legitimacy. Finally Gurharpal Singh mentioned the role of ethno-nationalist movements on both the Indian and Pakistani sides which also seek to establish secure borders, the irony being that the realization of their claims implies the undermining of the 1947 (disputed) settlement.
The conference ended with Frederic Grare (Institut Universitaire des Hautes Etudes Internationales, Geneva), who presented a paper on the energy problems of Pakistan. Pointing out that energy supplies (oil and gas in particular) will be one of the major challenges facing South Asia in the next century, he then underlined that in the case of Pakistan, its delicate relationships with India, Afghanistan, and Iran, not to mention the increasing political instability in Central Asia, constitute serious obstacles to its energy supplies. However, the emergence of India as a future economic giant could offer Pakistan a chance, which could then negotiate with India on an equal basis thanks to its geographically strategic position.
Dr Aminah Mohammad is attached to the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) in Paris. She can be contacted at: arif@magic.fr