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Can ignoring Imran Khan get Pakistan to deliver on terror or should Modi resume engagement?

PM Narendra Modi and Pakistan PM Imran Khan appear unlikely to engage with each other at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Bishkek.

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PM Narendra Modi and Pakistan PM Imran Khan appear unlikely to engage with each other at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Bishkek. PM Modi raised the issue of state-sponsored terrorism at the summit Friday, without taking Pakistan’s name.

ThePrint asks: Can ignoring Imran Khan get Pakistan to deliver on terror or should Modi resume engagement?


India knows it’s futile to engage with Pakistan’s civilian govt when it’s the army that has the controls

Talmiz Ahmad
Former Indian Ambassador 

PM Narendra Modi’s stand to not engage with the Pakistan establishment at the SCO summit in Bishkek is in line with the position the Indian government has taken since the attacks in Uri and Pathankot, and intensifying that position after the attack in Pulwama. New Delhi’s considered view has been that interaction with the government in Pakistan serves no useful purpose.

Let’s not forget, terrorist activities against India are sponsored by the Pakistani armed forces, and particularly by the ISI. All the Pakistani groups that have attacked India were trained by Pakistan and sent across by the Pakistani armed forces. Then, what is the purpose served in talking to a civilian govt that has no authority whatsoever to control this important aspect of bilateral relationship.

If Imran khan is the elected prime minister of Pakistan, the first thing I imagine he should do is end this use of terror as a state policy. If he is unable to do so, why should India engage with him? Such a meaningless engagement will only bolster his own standing and prestige in Pakistan, but won’t serve any purpose for India.

Today, there is a global revulsion against the sponsorship of extremism and violence by the Pakistani armed forces. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation was founded due to legitimate concerns relating to extremism. But here, they have a member who is an active sponsor of extremism and uses it as an instrument of state policy.


By abandoning even the pretense of creative diplomacy, India does no good to itself or the region

Salman Bashir
Former high commissioner of Pakistan to India

The SCO summit in Bishkek brings together Pakistan and India on weighty matters relating to directions of future cooperation in Eurasia. A positive subset could have been a bilateral meeting between Prime Ministers Imran Khan and Narendra Modi. A chance encounter or a handshake would be good for the optics. India’s refusal to engage substantively does not bode well for South Asia.

Pakistan’s attempts to reach out to India has been rebuffed effectively. Unfortunately, tendency to score brownie points is rife – such as Modi’s refusal to use Pakistani airspace on way to Bishkek, after seeking and receiving the permission from Pakistan. This reflects the absence of domestic political space in India for a creative Pakistan policy.

In geometrical term, there is the core and periphery analogy. It means that Prime Minister Modi feels handicapped even to play at the periphery. Engagement does not connote comprising on core interests. Pakistan will protect its core and not bend to the Indian will. But it has no hesitation in using the abundant space in the outer ring.

India’s policy of ‘no engagement’ with Pakistan has reached its limits. The Indian electorate has on a grand scale stamped India-Pakistan hyphenation. Indian foreign policy establishment can do little to obviate this fact. By abandoning even the pretense of creative diplomacy, India does no good to itself or the region. A rethink is certainly warranted.


Also read: Beyond cold silences between Modi & Imran Khan in Bishkek, India needs to make nice with US


Engaging with Imran Khan without making Pakistan act against terror outfits will be similar to repeating past mistakes

Kanwal Sibal
Executive council member, VIF, and former foreign secretary

What has Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan done that opens the door to any serious engagement? Just engaging with him without Pakistan acting against terror outfits will be similar to repeating past mistakes, which is to take our eyes off the principal cause of disengagement and allow Pakistan to reserve space for itself in continuing to promote terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir behind the facade of dialogue that gives it a platform to raise the Kashmir issue.

It has always linked the issue of terrorism to a resolution of the Kashmir issue and will not resile from this position. Even now, while seeking dialogue, Imran Khan refers to a solution to the outstanding issue of Kashmir. What solution does he have in view? That India accept its territorial claims on Jammu and Kashmir or Pakistan hands over Pakistan Occupied Kashmir back to India?

Pakistan’s financial situation is dire; it desperately needs an IMF bail-out. It is under great pressure over the issue of terrorism by the FATF. The semblance of a dialogue with India will allow it to showcase to the US/FATF that India is ready to accept Pakistan’s bona fides under Imran Khan to suppress terrorism and that it should obtain the relief it seeks. And all this without any irreversible and verifiable steps on the ground to cease using terrorism as state policy. And what about his military masters?


Also read: India can get a lot out of Bishkek — if PM Modi can remember lessons China taught Nehru


India should engage with Pakistan and see how serious Imran Khan is in having a meaningful dialogue

Taha Siddiqui
Pakistani journalist living in exile in France

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan is repeatedly offering to hold talks while Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi appears to be ignoring him. This maybe because Modi knows Khan is not the real decision-maker, given it is widely understood that he was brought into power, rather than elected into office, with the help of Pakistan Army generals in the 2018 elections.

However, PM Modi must call out PM Khan’s offer for dialogue, which is more of a bluff, because it seems those behind Khan are calculating that Modi may not do so, given his anti-Pakistan rhetoric in recent elections. But now that elections are over and Modi has come back to power, the election posturing does not need to continue.

India should initiate engagement with Pakistan and see how serious Islamabad, or rather Rawalpindi, where the military is headquartered, is in initiating a meaningful dialogue, which will require Khan’s government to tackle the terrorism issue and take decisive action against India and Kashmir-focused militant groups who continue to operate freely in Pakistan.

Given that the military appears to be only wanting to do cosmetic action when it comes to dismantling the militant infrastructure in Pakistan, the dialogue is most likely to go nowhere but the world needs to be reminded of all this, and how the Pakistani military continues to sabotage peace in the region.


By Fatima Khan, journalist at ThePrint. 

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6 COMMENTS

  1. you are nut job seriously civilian govt knows and realization dawn upon nawaz shariff too you nut job imran is his master’s voice that reside in rawalpindi . a dog’s tails never straighten up keep that in mind

  2. Watched last night’s Cut the Clutter. All Indians – not just the South Blockists – feel a little sceptical about Pakistan. There is a feeling that it makes an insincere outreach, either to earn brownie points with the rest of the world or to buy temporary reprieve, and then does something mischievous to set things back once again. 2. Pakistan faces a difficult economic situation, one that goes beyond occasional balance of payments crises. It cannot be sustained by periodic IMF packages and friendly gestures like supply of oil on deferred payment by KSA / UAE. Twenty one crore citizens, doing a little more badly than sub Saharan Africa. Successive civilian governments have understood the need to normalise relations with India. Perhaps a time has come – if we take at face value the squeezing of the defence budget – when even the military leadership realises that the country is on an unsustainable path. 3. This effort to isolate Pakistan diplomatically, name and shame it in every available forum for its support for terror, not talking to it, has run its course. Pulwama / Balakot were a reminder that there is no military solution below a threshold where things can spin out of control. Closure of air space, troubling of diplomatic personnel, we are caught in a quagmire. Sacrilegious as it sounds to Indian ears, some form of well intentioned assistance by common friends is probably necessary. I don’t remember how the story of Sisyphus ended, but we should keep pushing the boulder up the hill.

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