 Hello everyone. Welcome to another IR capsule for the Shankar Academy. Today we discuss the most important developments in our neighborhood, Pakistan, which is in an extreme turbulent state. Until yesterday, most of us believed that there would be a no confidence vote in the assembly and Prime Minister Imran Khan might lose it. But surprisingly, he pulled the hair out of his hat and created a sensation by getting his deputy speaker to rule that the assembly meeting and the no confidence motion were unconstitutional because it was based on some initiative from a foreign country, which of course is United States. And surprising, the opposition which was ready to win the no confidence motion and oust the Prime Minister, he has got another lease of life. How long this lease of life is still unknown because the matter has been referred immediately to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has to decide whether the deputy speaker's decision was constitutional because according to the constitution of Pakistan, the no confidence motion if it is tabled has to be debated and voted upon immediately. There is no discretion for the speaker to postpone it or suspend the session of the assembly. So that is the question that the Parliament, the Supreme Court will decide. But at the same time, there is a provision in the constitution that decisions taken by the assembly cannot be challenged in the Supreme Court. So it's caught in this complex constitutional issue in a country where constitutional democracy etc. do not seem to have much importance. There are two cliches, in fact three cliches about Pakistan which we all know. Number one is that no Pakistani prime minister, they have had about 27 or 28 prime ministers. None of them has completed a five-year term. So it's nothing surprising that Imran Khan is unable to complete his five-year term. That is one. The second people say that every nation has an army but the Pakistan army has a nation in the sense that it is the army which owns Pakistan and not Pakistan, which owns the army. In other words, the omnipresent domination, omnipotent fracture in Pakistan politics is the army. The third is to become a prime minister or become an authority in Pakistan. You need three A's. One is Allah. Second is army and the third is America. So these are three cliches. All of them seem to have come to play in the present context. First, I already said that Imran Khan would not complete his five-year term. The second is very clear that the army which is deciding everything. Imran Khan originally was a great cricketer, pride of Pakistan, a popular figure all around the world, came into politics for the first time and contested for a clean politics, incorruptible person who does not need anything from the state. He has enough money, enough prestige, enough reputation. But he got only one seat that he did not win anything else. Then with his determination, he decided to come to power by aligning himself with the various forces, various powers in play in Pakistan. The first is the army, then the fundamentalists, then the political parties which are on the fringe, smaller parties, etc., etc. And he falls in a coalition and he came to power. But what we have to remember is that it was the army which brought him to power. And as far as the Americans are concerned, the Americans were pleased with him. He was very popular in the United States. He used to visit the United States regularly. He was like a second home and he was of course, even India was a second home for him. So the Americans thought that after Nawaz Sharif, the right person to be the prime minister of Pakistan should be Imran Khan. So all these three beliefs that have remained for years in Pakistan politics have proved right in this case also. But there are some new factors which have come about because relating to those three factors, but the attitude of America towards Imran Khan changed very slowly. But that's after the army started questioning. Because Imran Khan, after having been very close to the army and going by the guidance of the army, started acting independently, particularly in the case of appointments within the army. The chief of army staff, General Bajwa, was his friend and he gave him an extension and his term is ending later this year. And there was expectation that he may perhaps get another term. But certain appointments that he made, the ISI chief etc, gave the indication that he was not planning to give General Bajwa another year. So that there came the break with the army. The Americans started worrying about him at the time of the Afghanistan crisis because Taliban was installed in the power in Kabul by no less a person than the ISI chief of Pakistan with the blessings of Imran Khan. So blatantly anti-American action was taken by Imran Khan by enabling the Taliban to take power, removing whatever little obstacles there were and also allowing several terrorists to be in the Taliban government. So the person who actually put the Taliban on the throne of Afghanistan was Imran Khan. This was not something which would have pleased the Americans. After that, of course, he started leaning more and more towards China because the United States has good relations with China and they are keen to improve it, but they always suspect others who have good relations with China. Pakistan always had good relations with China and that had the blessings of the United States also to a certain extent. But the coming together of China and Russia at the time of the Beijing Olympics created a new situation where China and Russia agreed to have an unlimited coalition and unlimited alliance where nothing is impossible and they even classified it as stronger than the old alliances like NATO and Warsaw Pact. So this created a problem because Imran Khan was not particularly close to Russians, but the Russians also started making some gestures to Imran Khan and on the day the war started in Moscow, Imran Khan was there but nobody else could have visited, it was a very heightened situation, but it looked as though Imran Khan was in Moscow at the behest of Beijing and this angered the Americans even more and after that of course he has been taking the position of the Chinese, but there again there was a difference of opinion between him and the general because general Baajwal started criticizing Russia for invading Ukraine differently from Imran Khan. Internally also a lot of these, once these three things fall apart then everything else falls apart and that is what we have always seen in the history of Pakistan. So smaller parties were supporting him, started defecting, other alliances began to take shape and it became very clear by yesterday that Imran Khan did not have the 172 seats required to defeat the no confidence solution, but in a mysterious manner he was very confident, he says I will fight till the end, I get cricket here, so everybody was sure that he will lose, but at the same time there was apprehension that he might do something and there is exactly what he did when the deputy speaker announced that this was unconstitutional. So he immediately asked the president to suspend the assembly and he presumed that he will take over as the interim prime minister and the elections will be declared very soon. And so the president went by that provision and he announced even so that some confusion there was an order from the Pakistan government that he is no more interim prime minister, but that has been denied by the president. President said that he is in fact the interim prime minister at the moment, but he has also said that within three days the opposition and the government that is Imran Khan and Sharif, the two leaders must come to an agreement on who the interim prime minister will be. So it is quite possible that the new lease of life that Imran Khan has gained maybe only for three days and what happens if that does not happen, that they are not able to appeal, then both of them are supposed to submit two names to the president, two names each and the president will choose one among them and that will be the president's delegate. That is the present situation as it stands today, that is Monday. The Supreme Court held a session, of course everybody expected the Supreme Court might go into an emergency session yesterday itself and make a ruling. They did not do that, they took it rather easy even though the opposition was staying inside the assembly demanding that the Supreme Court take a decision, but that did not happen and in any case the Supreme Court postponed the discussion and today on Monday they have adjourned till Tuesday and in the next three days will be decisive as well as well as Imran Khan is concerned. What will happen in Pakistan after this is not at all known because it can go either way that he may continue as the interim prime minister and will lead the country to the election. In which case he will have an advantage because he'll be the ruling government going into an election and there are certain advantages and within these three months he may be able to work out various arrangements with the army, the Americans and the opposition to probably win the election, but that is no certainty at all. The opposition seems to be equally optimistic that the election will go forward and the opposition will win the election, but that is never here not there. So by his manipulation of the assembly yesterday he simply saved himself from a defeat on the floor of the house. So whatever else may happen he will not be accused of having lost power because of the election and who is with whom is still uncertain. So though Imran Khan does not have the kind of charisma and the support that he had in the past, he's still not finished in that sense because he has another chance of contesting the election and anything can happen because 90 days are very long in a political situation like in Pakistan and therefore that remains uncertain. But generally the feeling is that Imran Khan has lost his support generally and maybe his innings to use the cricket word, his innings has ended. We know that there have been many prime ministers in Pakistan, but the change of prime minister did not mean any difference to the policies of that country. And this is very clear even those who won the elections on a different platform assumes the role and assumes the policy of the army. Things like relations with America, relations with China and hatred for India and these are factors which have remained without change. So if people are asking us to watch this would mean to India, my own feeling is that it will not mean anything different to us. In fact we have been able to do business more with army leaders than with political leaders. With Parvez Musharraf we were able to do business, we came very close to some kind of a settlement on Kashmir while when there are political leaders which were fairly friendly to India nothing much happened. Terrorism went on as usual and there was no meeting. So the decision by India not to have any dialogue with Pakistan till terrorism ended was a policy which was already in place in Pakistan in India. India and Pakistan it was already in place that India will not have any kind of dialogue with Pakistan unless terrorism ends. And Inbrank Khan did not give any indication that he will be able to end terrorism. So Kashmir was a core issue for him and that was the army position. And now that he is fallen out of the army he cannot immediately change it back. But on the other hand very recently he started talking about India's foreign policy in glowing jumps which he has never done before. When he came to become Prime Minister there were some rumors in India that now we may have a friendly Prime Minister in Pakistan. But if we had tried that he would have failed then itself and therefore he maintained the anti-India posture of Pakistan to a great extent. Of course we should not forget that there have been diplomacy between the two countries though formally there were no talks. It was more or less confirmed that the national security advisers were talking somewhere some country and coming to certain understandings. The most important that them was that the ceasefire agreement would be maintained. So in the last five or six months we have seen that the ceasefire has been maintained but have not been major violations of the ceasefire. And we have a fairly peaceful border of the situation. And also there have been talks of discussions with Pakistan on Afghanistan. And also there were indications that probably India was getting some support from Pakistan to build a dialogue with Taliban. But all these are rumors. There is no concrete evidence of this. And in any case India's purposes in Afghanistan were never served during this period. We only moved further and further away from the Taliban. We have not gone back as an embassy and there is really nothing except humanitarian assistance which is flowing from India to Afghanistan for which Taliban has expressed some support. But that is a policy that the Taliban is following. They are not seeking recognition or they are not seeking country to country support. And they are just maintaining that they are receiving humanitarian support which actually sustains Taliban in Afghanistan. So in all this whether it is the border, whether it is Kashmir, whether it is terrorism, whether it is Afghanistan, we have really not got anything wrong in Afghanistan and they have. So for India it does not matter who the Prime Minister of Pakistan will be after this. Whether it is Imran Khan or somebody else. As long as the army's position is clear and they maintain this. But the danger for us in my view is the new alliance between Russia and China which is very new. And there is an understanding that China will support Russia on Ukraine while Russia will support China and Taiwan. And that is a very serious matter. And it is believed by 2027 China would like to reincorporate Taiwan into Chinese territory. But unlike in the case of Ukraine, there are treaty obligations for United States to intervene if something happens to Taiwan. And that is where we have to look at a very serious situation involving Russia, China and the United States. But that's somewhat further away. And what is going to determine the state of affairs of the world is basically what happens to Ukraine. There are reports that Russia has been rebuffed. They have not been able to achieve their objectives with regard to Ukraine. They have not been able to hold Kiev. Even in Mariupol there is still fighting going on. And Russian army seems to have been treated according to Ukraine because they were defeated. But according to Russia they feel that they have accomplished or achieved their objectives in Ukraine. And they are now willing to withdraw slowly and then keep insisting on the guarantee of security with NATO and United States. But there is no evidence on the ground that the Russians have lessened the force of their attack. They seem to be still struggling to keep a foothold, gain a foothold in Kiev and have some kind of a control of the whole country. So this is something which is continuing and there is really no hope there. Until that happens, the situation in the world, particularly in Europe, will remain flexible in a flux. Of course, the sanctions regime imposed by the American Sandy NATO is taking effect and in some ways India is helping Russia by buying oil from them in order to in a sense counter the sanctions. But we are justifying it on the ground that when the oil prices are going up so high everywhere, wherever we can get oil cheaper, we'll buy them. And this is not an anti-American act. And then we have also pointed out that US has imported more oil from Russia after the war has started in Ukraine. So there are all these contradictions. So each country will act according to its own interests and Pakistan will do the same whoever is in control in Pakistan. But the next three months we can find a considerable turbulence in Pakistan. And unless the army is tempted to step in directly, there will be a lot of uncertainty. But as I said earlier, that would not make any difference as far as we are concerned with Pakistan because it's the army which holds the shots. So we have no particular anxiety as to who will be the Prime Minister of Pakistan because democracy is not in operation there. So we cannot expect that an elected Prime Minister would be more friendly to India or will be more against India. That calculation does not exist. But what we are seeing today is India becoming some kind of an island of peace and even relative prosperity in South Asia and Southwest Asia. Because India is in a position to hold the economic development. We are even able to support Sri Lanka by giving them assistance to buy food, etc. And we seem to be also supporting the Rajapaksha government in its fight against poverty and hunger in Sri Lanka. And today one saw even appeal directly to government of India from many sources in Sri Lanka to come and save Sri Lanka. And that call has not gone to China but to India. And the IMF is about to extend some support and the necessary political changes are being made in Sri Lanka. But one also has noted that a large number of high level delegations have been visiting India the last one week. The most prominent of them being the Chinese foreign minister and the Russian foreign minister. So both with different results. The Chinese foreign minister was not very much welcomed and he was not able to meet the Prime Minister because what the foreign minister had to say was not particularly pleasing to us there was nothing. Nothing in the visit to indicate the disengagement on the border. Things were still the same and the talks have not progressed. And therefore we had to tell the Chinese foreign minister in plain terms that unless there is improvement on the border the relationship will not improve. And that was a very cold blunt message which was given to the Chinese. On the other hand the Russian foreign minister was received may be more warmly even though there was this feeling among many people in India that we should have even stronger support to Russia. And some others were saying that we should have condemned Russia in the middle of that. Even in the middle of that the Russian foreign minister Lavrov got a better welcome in India and also some indications like the sanctions will help out Russia. Because on the other hand we had two or three visits from the United States all of the morning India against being too friendly to the Russians. Particularly the Deputy National Security Advisor spoke rather harshly about sanctions, almost threatening sanctions against India which has not been appreciated. In India there was an Indian origin person that made it worse that he spoke a language which is normally not permitted in diplomatic discourse. And so there has been a minus point with the Americans. But the Americans are very keen to keep India in the loop on Quad. And therefore the moves on Quad are proceeding and the summit is about to come about. And by then it is not very certain where whether the war in Ukraine would have ended and the situation would have stabilized. So while there are so many uncertainties in our neighborhood there are these good signs that more and more countries are coming to India may not be to ask for mediation or arbitration or anything like that. But to sound out India as to where India is going. And our position is fairly clear and that message has been delivered to each one of them all these visitors quite objectively. And so one feels a little bit comfortable that Indian foreign policy is rising to the occasion. And that is the feeling that one gets. And this is for collaborated by new agreement with Nepal and our relations with Nepal had deteriorated sometime. And generally India's views are heard and we are part of the overall debate even though our position is simply that the two sides sit together, discuss the issues and end the war and end the suffering. And also move towards some sort of security arrangement which satisfy Russia without destroying this sovereignty and integrity of Ukraine. So generally we have no great concern about either Sri Lanka or Pakistan. But we are playing a constructive role everywhere in Pakistan. We have not commented on what's happening in Pakistan. The Prime Minister has got quite about this because this is an internal matter and India is not involved in any way. And that correct position we are maintaining. But we are not unduly concerned because we know how that country behaves and Prime Ministers do not really matter very much. And then Imran Khan was not particularly close to India for us to feel that his departure will make a difference to India, Pakistan relations. So this is the situation as I see today and tomorrow it can change in Pakistan if another interim Prime Minister is appointed and Imran Khan completely loses his position as the interim Prime Minister. But till then I think the situation will remain and elections as always will be very unpredictable. So I thought I would share my assessment of the situation with you today. Well this is true in the sense that the Americans have an interest in out hosting Imran Khan. No doubt about that. But whether his charge that arose in fact a letter from the Pakistani ambassador in Washington informing the Pakistan government that the US has conveyed a message to the ambassador that India-US relations will improve only if Imran Khan ceases to be primised. So this is a message, a letter Prime Minister claims to have received from his ambassador in Washington. And this has been denied by the Americans that there is no such message. But that also is normal even if there is such a message it will not be confirmed. But he used that very effectively. What he lost was his majority support in parliament. But he went on to this letter by arguing that according to Article 5 of the Pakistani constitution, loyalty to the country is important and therefore this no confidence motion has come out of this loyalty because this has been inspired by the United States. So it is true that the Americans were interested in ousting him. But it may not be true that such a letter may have been issued or received. But this is now immaterial because Imran Khan does not have the majority support and his fight in the future will be inside Pakistan and not outside. But America's American help is always helpful in any election because they have such pervasive influence in Pakistan.