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| Edited By: |Source: DNA |Updated: Jul 24, 2018, 07:05 AM IST
Imran Khan’s recent advocacy of India-Pakistan friendship is inspired by domestic and international compulsions. Pakistan’s economy is still in tatters despite China’s large doses of financial aid. And its inclusion on the grey-list drawn up by the Financial Action Task Force complicates matters further. Forget, attracting fresh investments, no international business house of repute will want to continue its trade relations with Pakistan.
On the other hand, India has moved closer to the US, which was once Islamabad’s strong ally. In some ways, New Delhi has been influencing Donald Trump’s engagement with Islamabad. If days before Pakistani general elections, Imran is talking about the need to increase the volume of trade with India, it means that the Pakistani army is thinking of building bridges with New Delhi.
However, when it comes to Pakistan no gesture or words must be taken on face value. The hawks in Indian foreign policy would say this could be the Pakistani army’s diversionary tactics, a ploy to send mixed signals through politicians like Imran while upping the ante in Kashmir. Regardless of what Imran says, he has the blessings of the headquarters in Rawalpindi. The army is using him to get even with Nawaz Sharif.
Khan’s relentless campaign against corruption had a single-point agenda: to destabilise the civilian government. There is not an iota of doubt that this would be an Army-controlled election. Whoever sits on the PM’s chair will be a puppet in the hands of the army and the Chinese leadership in Beijing. But this manner of running the show cannot last for long. Pakistani Army’s vice-like grip on all matters of consequence has squeezed the lifeblood out of the country’s economy.
