 Welcome to international relations capsule for the Shankar IAS Academy. Today, our topic is the latest developments in Pakistan. I am sure many of you must have been following the developments after a turmoil which lasted several months. An election was held on February 8th for the 16th National Assembly of Pakistan. Sometimes you may wonder why Pakistan has elections because whichever party comes to power and who controls the government, the party is always controlled by the army. The joke is about every other country has an army, but Pakistan army has a country. So that has been the tradition and even when there are democratically elected prime ministers and presidents, it is always the army which controls matters and if things go out of control, the army declares martial law and takes over the country. And this has happened in history several times contrary to the traditions in India where we have had democracy continuously and there has never been any attempt by the army to play politics. So Pakistan's whole history shows that they maintain a kind of democratic face, but an actual fact, it is the army which rules the country. And there is also the reason why whoever becomes prime minister, the policy of the Pakistan government remains firm, which is anti-India policy. Their core interest is to get Kashmir back because they think that we had taken Kashmir by military force and many politicians have come up with different ideas, but once they come to power, they have to follow the army's instructions and that has been the tradition then. So now what has happened is, you know possibly that it was Imran Khan, the famous Kerketeer who was the prime minister. Originally, when he contested for elections, he only got two seats in his party which is called Pakistan Tahrir Ke Insaf PTI, that is a party for political justice. This was established by Imran Khan and in the first election, he got only two seats in the parliament. And then you realize that his cricket popularity was not good enough for into many elections and therefore he requested the support of the army and also the fundamentalists. So Imran Khan who contested the second time was not the Imran Khan who was the prince charming of the cricket world with many friends in India, kind of idealistic person, but he had transformed himself into an army born in the hands of the army and also the terrorist and fundamentalists and he started speaking a language which is not very different from his predecessors about India. India was criticized by him several times that India is not democratic enough and India is pressurizing Pakistan to do the impossible things and Pakistan will continue to demand the plebiscite in Kashmir and possibly handing over Kashmir Valley to Pakistan. That has been the policy and he himself accepted that policy and that is how he was elected and after some time he fell out of the army. Apparently at the time of the war in Ukraine, he visited Russia just before the war and was a guest of Putin which the army did not like and from there they had started a difference of opinion and finally army sought to it that he was arrested. He had to resign from the prime minister's post. He was arrested and jailed even assassination attempts were made against him and his party was banned and he is still in jail. But when the elections came he did not contest or his party could not contest but a large number of supporters of PTI that is his political party won the elections. In fact, if you look at the figures you will find that though Imran Khan himself did not contest and his own party did not contest between him and the other party of the Butto's party, PPP between these two parties they had a majority and this was unexpected because they thought that since Imran Khan was in jail there was no chance of his being able to come out and win the elections. The army would not have allowed it but in between of course you know about Nawaz Sharif who was prime minister twice and when the election was declared it was his brother Shaba Sharif who was the prime minister and elections were done with leadership and at that time the expectation was that Mr. Nawaz Sharif was required to run the country in this difficult situation and so he was pardoned. He was originally disqualified but the supreme court pardoned him and allowed him to come back and contest elections. So the Nawaz Sharif contested in two constituencies. He won in one constituency and lost in the other so he lost a bit of his credibility but his still his party that is the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz won a number of seats. Pakistan Muslim League had over 75 seats and Imran Khan's party had 103 including 93 candidates from his party. Then there were other people's party that is Buttoh's party got 54 votes and then larger other parties also got some seats and in the end what happened was that no single party emerged as victorious even though Nawaz Sharif's party if you take it as a single party had more seats but in all the combinations that worked out eventually Nawaz Sharif decided not to be a candidate for the prime minister and nominated his brother and on 13th of February the Pakistan People's Party and the PPP that means Nawaz Sharif's party and Buttoh's party decided to create a coalition and form a government. But this has not happened yet because there are really disturbing factors other parties are not cooperating they don't have sufficient majority and even if the coalition is formed somehow with these two parties the popularity of Imran Khan is so much and the anger against the army is so much that they were not sure that they could hold that government for a long time. So everybody is waiting hoping that the government might be formed with maybe Nawaz Sharif's party plus Buttoh's party plus a smaller group and at the same time Imran Khan and his party and his supporters could make another group and therefore there is really clearly no majority in the assembly. So this is the situation today and lots of discussions are taking place trying to form a coalition but it will have to be basically between Nawaz Sharif and Buttoh because if these two parties are put together they are experienced parties and the army seems to like both of them and therefore everybody believes that this would be the final compromise with the Nawaz Sharif's brother as the prime minister. But as of today this has not happened and therefore we have to wait and see what kind of government will be formed in Pakistan. Of course Pakistan is not its own master it is very close relationship with China. It has had of course the closest relations to the United States but that has been diluted since the time of Trump because he stopped funding the Pakistan government in the name of terrorism and therefore Americans particularly after Afghanistan they had to leave and they are showing less interest in Pakistan but at the same time they are keeping an eye and the army is not acting, army is not taking over power because the Americans are advising them that the Pakistani economic situation is in a very sad state and they need the support of the IMF and the World Bank and if you need the IMF and World Bank support then you need army on your side but at the same time not have a military government because Americans always want a democratic front in order to support governments. If partnerships they are not supposed to support but if there is a democratic looking prime minister they can do so. So therefore army will not take over and it will be at least initial stages next couple of months. It will be Sharif that is the brother Sharif and Bhutto that is Sardari is also in power together with Sardari and his son Bilal and Bhutto they have considerable strength and so this is likely to be the formula after the elections but the most important thing is the party which has lost is the army because never has army been hated so much as in these last few months before the elections and therefore they will not take any action in order to stop the democratic process and so people say other political parties may not have won but the army has lost but at the same time army may allow anybody to come and form a government but they will strictly control the economy they will strictly control the politics they will particularly control their policy to ensure. So you cannot expect much from all this the Chinese are keeping a very close eye and the Chinese are of course the closest friends of Pakistan these days they are in the in the Belt and Road Initiative as huge sum of money has been allocated for Pakistan the Belt and Road Initiative but they have realized that what like it happened in Sri Lanka Pakistan might also get into a debt trap so they are a bit careful with China. China of course China's interest is basically to see that India and Pakistan do not normalize relations because their interest is to see that Pakistan is a is a pain for India continuously so that China can dominate Asia and even control Asia first. So as far as India is concerned we have concern about the army coming back we may have concern about some individuals who have been prejudicial to India but we are keeping very quiet and we like China saying that we do not interfere the internal affairs of other countries because they interview all the time but they say they don't do that and therefore China is very interested United States is interested India's interest is in stability of Pakistan Russia is of course QBC fighting the war and Iran has had some trouble with Pakistan at one stage but they seem to have normalized it so generally the external atmosphere is cut stable there is no real problem and therefore a coalition may come about and the army may stay back but eventually this will not be the formula which will be worthwhile because there could be other comrades that are about five or six political parties who may join any side because they don't believe in any principles the only principle that they have is to be anti-India. So as usual it is a chaotic situation in Pakistan but the more chaotic it is the worse for us because all kinds of external forces will intervene and internally there could be problems in Balochistan there could be problems in other parts of Pakistan and economic situation being so bad people say it is a basket case in the sense that they cannot survive without western assistance. So since the government of US assistance is not there and still they want to keep the democratic face go on naturally they will not do anything at this point in time but everybody is watching and wondering whether Pakistan's transition to democracy will be effective and whether Imran Khan will continue to hold power for some time and what will happen to him because of his court cases and others whether he'll continue whether the other smaller parties will support him all this that happens in Pakistan after an election and this is a difference between India and Pakistan our elections are maybe violent maybe not democratic in certain booths and constituencies but basically nobody challenges the Indian election process but in the case of Pakistan the most recent news is that somebody an election commissioner of one of the provinces openly admitted on live television that he rigged the ports he made sure that Imran Khan's party did not win in crucial provinces by Punjab. Punjab is the most important province and whoever is chief minister in Punjab generally becomes prime minister of Pakistan and therefore the majority there has gone to Nawaz Sharif and Buttoh's party in which case Nawaz Sharif's daughter would be the chief minister in Punjab. The Punjab Chief Minister is a very powerful person and PPP has considerable influence there so Nawaz Sharif probably sees his daughter as his successor and that may be also in the office. So as far as India is concerned we have no concern at the moment of major conflict in Pakistan but in an extreme case when the army feels that they are losing control it is quite possible that the army may take over in which case they will have a justification for it and they may point their fingers at India and say that we took over because otherwise India would have taken over Pakistan and with that kind of fear instilled in the people they may be able to do something and they may say that something has happened in the border they can instigate a problem there and create an infusing situation where they will ask the people to rally around Pakistan in order to deal with India. So India is not particularly safe in the situation but as of now just as we are not party to any of this we have Nawaz Sharif had a good relationship with India but at the time of Kargil he misled us in fact he was aware that the Pakistani army was invading Kargil while he was saying he did not know anything about it later the truth came out and also in 1999 when Clinton invited Nawaz Sharif to Washington to ask him to leave Kargil it is true that we fought the battle very well and won the war but it was President Clinton who forced Nawaz Sharif to withdraw from the line of control so on a July 4th national day of the United States Clinton spent a whole day with Nawaz Sharif insisting that Pakistan should withdraw from the line of control and finally Nawaz Sharif told him that yes I do that provided you will mediate between India and Pakistan in the Kashmish so that Clinton knows it is a non-starter so he did not agree to that but in the final community a reference was made to the fact that President Clinton will now make his best efforts in order to bring about reconciliation between India and Pakistan and that is not serious it was just a formality so Sharif used that excuse to say okay we are withdrawing and Clinton has promised to sort out this issue with India but that was just an act wash so there was nothing in it Clinton did not do anything and things went on with the Pakistani out of Kargil so these are all the various ramifications for the present situation when it comes to Pakistan it is never clear it's always confused the army is always there Americans and the Chinese put a lot of pressure and all this the government's whatever government comes to power will have to win the favor of the army the Americans and the Chinese in order to survive in Pakistan so it's not good news democratic elections have not brought a clear result and all the parties which were in action earlier will continue to be in play and then we're going to expect some unexpected changes in Pakistan thank you