Pakistan in a Geopolitical Jigsaw
Pakistan’s strategic choices will most certainly bring it economic and military rewards, but will also significantly impact global geopolitics
For the first time in a decade, Pakistan’s civilian government and its army will be completely aligned on domestic and foreign policy. Imran Khan, the new Prime Minister, owes much of his success in the 2018 general elections to the Pakistan Army, which helpfully tilted the electoral field to favor his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) party.
Khan assumes his role as Prime Minister at a time when his country is in the throes of a balance-of-payments crisis, with dwindling foreign exchange reserves barely enough to cover two months’ worth of imports. Nonetheless, Pakistan can mitigate its dire economic situation if it can deftly leverage the opportunities presented to it by a favorable geopolitical climate.
An Emerging Pax-Sinica: China’s Geopolitical Long Game
The post-war international rules-based order, underwritten by a concert of liberal democracies is now under severe strain. President Donald Trump has on several occasions publicly undermined NATO, walked out of multilateral trade and climate change pacts, and has publicly rejected America’s historical role in upholding the international order. With Brexit, the EU will lose one of its two serious military powers. It will continue to confront internal disputes over the euro, migration, and the rule of law in its eastern members. This will hamper its efforts to develop a common front against Russia.
Meanwhile, a Russia under President Vladimir Putin will continue its efforts to delegitimize liberal democracy by interfering in European and American elections, and more generally test Western military alliances through hybrid warfare in some cases (e.g., Crimea) and open intervention in others (e.g., Syria).
Yet it is China that appears to be playing the geopolitical long game through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI is a massive $8 trillion infrastructure investment plan of improving global connectivity by building roads, railways, pipelines and ports across 68 countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe. BRI projects are funded by Chinese loans to developing countries often given on unsustainable and opaque terms. BRI’s critics point out that China practices “debt-trap” diplomacy under the guise of infrastructure development, i.e., Chinese state-backed companies assume control of BRI assets in participating countries when their governments are unable to service their debts. This has already happened with Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port; when the government in Colombo failed to service its port-related debt, the port was handed over to a Chinese state-backed company. This has raised the alarm in India — which does not participate in the BRI — that the port could be used to station Chinese naval vessels and give China a naval base in the Indian Ocean. In this manner, state-supported Chinese companies involved in BRI projects could acquire control over several ports through such debt-for-equity swaps, thus giving China control over strategic chokepoints globally, in effect establishing a new Pax Sinica.
Pakistan — The Belt and Road Initiative’s Lynchpin State
The most important component of the BRI is the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a $62 billion infrastructure plan to build highways, railways, dams, and power plants in Pakistan financed by Chinese loans. CPEC will link Pakistan’s cities to China’s western Xinjiang province by extending its railroads and highways to the Chinese border. The Gwadar port in Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province, set for massive development and expansion, will be CPEC’s showpiece project. The port will link China to the Arabian Sea, giving it quicker access to energy imports from the Middle East, as well as allowing it to station naval vessels to protect its energy supplies and ensure dominance over the strategic Straits of Hormuz, through which 30 percent of all global sea-borne crude oil is currently traded. Gwadar will likely be China’s second overseas naval base after its first was operationalized in Djibouti in 2017.
China will expect Pakistan to take steps to remove both political and security-related challenges in the path of CPEC projects. This will involve clamping down on transnational Islamist groups within Pakistan that could threaten regional stability, specifically in Xinjiang and Central Asia. Pakistan has already bifurcated the part of Kashmir it administers, devolving provincial-level powers to Gilgit-Baltistan, a region through which CPEC enters the country. This has been done to separate Gilgit-Baltistan administratively from Pakistan-administered Kashmir in the face of Indian protests over CPEC’s passage through contested territory. Pakistan is also likely to act against Islamist militant groups like the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which operates in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and which China blames for terrorist attacks in Xinjiang.
Pakistan can leverage its criticality to the success of BRI by re-negotiating Chinese loans on more favorable terms and in ways that make it politically palatable within Pakistan. Imran Khan has already announced a review and renegotiation of CPEC projects as the critical agenda of his upcoming trip to China in November. Islamabad can also secure additional military support from China, over and above what it already receives. Indeed, Pakistan’s nuclear program is largely dependent on Chinese technology and raw materials. As of 2016, Pakistan sourced 63 percent of its military equipment from China. China will also continue to provide Pakistan crucial diplomatic cover in multilateral fora, particularly on issues related to India. For example, China has repeatedly vetoed Indian efforts at the UN to list Masood Azhar, chief of Pakistan-based terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM), as a global terrorist. Groups like the JEM and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET), which organize, train and fundraise in Pakistan, often with state backing, have been by blamed by India for major terrorist attacks on its territory. China’s diplomatic support will let Pakistan continue to use these groups as coercive instruments of state policy against India.
Pakistan will also take steps to quell an insurgency in Balochistan, the province in which the critical Gwadar port is situated. Doing so will require better security measures, greater political engagement with disaffected Baloch movements, and better relations with Afghanistan and India, which Pakistan has often accused of aiding Baloch rebels. Imran Khan’s recent statement in Quetta, Balochistan’s capital, in which he assured the province’s government and people that CPEC projects would be reviewed to ensure greater benefits flow to Balochistan, has to be seen in this light.
It also helps that Khan’s PTI party and Balochistan’s ruling Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) are allies at the provincial and federal level. China for its part has also opened direct talks with Baloch rebels to secure its CPEC projects in the province.
The Islamic State (IS) in Afghanistan: An Opportunity for Pakistan
The emergence of Islamic State (IS) in Afghanistan has led to a unique situation where almost all regional states, as well as the US, are now open to negotiating with the Afghan Taliban and bringing it into a power-sharing government in Kabul. An Afghanistan in the grip of IS mayhem could radiate instability in all directions, towards the Central Asian republics, Kashmir, Xinjiang, and the Middle East. Even as terrorist groups that attack Pakistan, like the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (more commonly known as the Pakistani Taliban), have been assiduously targeted by the Pakistan Army, the Afghan Taliban and its affiliated Haqqani Network (HQN) have continued to maintain safe havens inside Pakistan from which they continue to launch cross-border attacks against Afghanistan. Nonetheless, there is a consensus amongst all regional actors that Afghanistan needs to be stabilized lest it becomes a hub for Islamic State. China has not only opened direct negotiations with the Afghan Taliban but has also stationed troops at its newly-opened base in Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor, a region that borders Xinjiang.
Similarly, there are reports that Iran and Russia, both hitherto sworn enemies of the Taliban, have supplied small arms to the Afghan Taliban, with the dual objective of combating Islamic State and weakening the NATO presence in the country. In August this year, Russia extended an invitation to the Taliban to participate in peace talks. The U.S. has also opened peace talks with the Taliban, with the last round concluding in Qatar in July.
This confluence of factors, where all regional states are eager to see the Taliban as part of a power-sharing government in Kabul, will mark a strategic victory for Pakistan. For decades, Pakistan has attempted to ensure a government in Kabul over which it maintains considerable influence. It has done this to achieve “strategic depth” in any possible war with India, as well as to prevent Afghan governments from making revanchist claims to Pakistani territory. India has largely stayed out of regional efforts to negotiate with the Taliban and could end up losing influence in Afghanistan to Pakistan and China should the Taliban join the government in Kabul.
Pakistan is likely to be courted by all sides due to its role in ensuring a stable Afghanistan. Even as the US has canceled US$ 800 million in annual military aid to Pakistan, it will continue to remain engaged with Pakistan to ensure supply routes to NATO in Afghanistan remain open. America will also likely agree to an IMF bailout of up to $12 billion for Pakistan to prevent it from further sliding into China’s orbit.
As a further sign of ongoing geopolitical changes, Russia recently concluded a military training contract with Pakistan which would see Pakistani army officers getting trained in Russia. Both countries have conducted joint military training exercises on each other’s territory, and Russia has also sold four MI-35M combat helicopters to the country. This has been viewed by pundits as a direct consequence of America and India straying from their historical alliances with Pakistan and Russia respectively. Pakistan has also been invited to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a loose security grouping founded by China and Russia as a potential future alternative to NATO. In this way, Russia and China are seeking to gradually prise Pakistan out of its historical pro-American orientation and integrate it further into Russia-China military and economic frameworks.
Pakistan’s Near Abroad: Challenges with Iran and India
Despite being the historical hub of political Islam, the world’s first Islamic republic, and a nuclear-armed country with more than 200 million Muslims, Pakistan has continued to punch far below its weight in terms of exerting influence in the Islamic world. Pakistan has hitherto walked the proverbial diplomatic tightrope between Saudi Arabia and Iran in the Middle East. Having a 15–20 percent Shia population and with Iran as its proximate neighbor, with which it shares a 909 km (565 miles) border, Pakistan can ill afford to antagonize an already besieged Iranian regime. It also needs Iran’s support to bring stability to Balochistan, as Baloch rebels have been known to seek shelter with their co-ethnics across the border with Iran.
Despite this, its dire financial situation and the need to offset its dependence on China and the IMF will mean that Pakistan will tilt further towards Saudi Arabia, heightening tensions with Iran. During his recent trip to Riyadh, Imran Khan secured Saudi investment of $10 billion in the Gwadar port, with Riyadh announcing plans to build an oil refinery and maintain strategic oil reserves at the port. This is likely to infuriate Iran which, with its own Chabahar port a mere 120 km (75 miles) away from Gwadar, will look at the Saudi investment plans as an attempt to undercut its already struggling economy. Pakistan will continue to rely on Saudi Arabia for the bulk of its oil imports, as well as the remittances flowing from the more than 3 million Pakistanis that work in the Gulf region. Even as its formal policy is not to participate in the Saudi-led coalition battling the Shia Houthi rebels in Yemen, many retired Pakistani generals have been working with the coalition in their private capacity. This has happened with the tacit approval of the Pakistani state. Prime Minister Khan will most likely make a trip to Tehran soon to soothe Iran’s misgivings about the Pakistan tilt towards Saudi Arabia. However, with Saudi Arabia increasingly following an aggressive zero-sum approach towards all its regional rivalries, Pakistan will find it difficult to maintain a balance between both countries.
As India approaches general elections in 2019, Pakistan will play an oversized role in domestic Indian politics, with both the ruling nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and opposition Congress using Pakistan as a political football to level charges against each other. Neither side is likely to be seen to call for better relations with Pakistan in the resultant jingoistic atmosphere. In September this year, the Indian federal government in an unprecedented move released a video of surgical strikes carried out by the Indian army against what it said were terrorist camps in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Ruling BJP politicians, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have deployed a frequent political trope, where they have accused the opposition Congress Party of being in cahoots with Pakistan to ensure a defeat for the BJP in 2019. Kashmir, the root of the dispute between both countries, is today directly governed from New Delhi via “governor’s rule.” Here too, protests by disaffected Kashmiris are painted by federal government ministers as the result of Pakistan’s machinations. In this environment, it is difficult to see any chance of improved relations between both countries before the conclusion of the Indian general elections by May 2019.
As a pivotal state in today’s fast-changing geopolitical environment, Pakistan finds itself in an advantageous position, its current financial woes notwithstanding. Whatever strategic choices Pakistan’s government and army make is likely to bring it significant economic and military benefits. However, a lot of its choices will have a far more significant impact — on the Iran-Saudi Arabia proxy war in the Middle East, on China’s superpower ambitions, as well as the spread of transnational Islamist terrorism in the world. Needless to say, these choices could also end up significantly impacting Pakistan’s economy, politics, and its strategic autonomy for decades to come.
