Comment: Cameron must tone down his blunderbuss diplomacy
Pakistan will always “look both ways”, whatever David Cameron says. If he had realised that fundamental truth perhaps his first major diplomatic gaffe as prime minister could have been avoided.
It must have seemed so straightforward. After all, India is the world’s premium destination for voicing concerns about terrorism emanating from its post-partition rival. As head of a trade delegation seeking to establish a new special relationship, Cameron’s mind was firmly focused on saying the right thing.
So it must have seemed like there was only one option when news that Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service had maintained links with the Taliban filtered through the wires. Surely this deserved the greatest condemnation. Cameron gave it: “We cannot tolerate in any sense the idea that this country is allowed to look both ways and is able, in any way, to promote the export of terror, whether to India or whether to Afghanistan or anywhere else in the world.”
This was short-term diplomacy at its worst. Had Cameron forgotten he would be hosting Pakistan’s president the following week? Asif Ali Zardari, leading the charge against Cameron’s stinging criticisms, has already said Cameron’s comments were “uncalled for”. The Pakistani government is plotting the precise tones in which he will express his seething indignation when he confronts Cameron at Chequers this Friday.
Cameron’s comments would have ruffled the feathers of any nation with troops fighting the Taliban. This nation, on the frontline of the struggle against extremism, is unsurprisingly appalled.
Pakistan has suffered more than all other countries in its struggle against the Taliban. When its establishment began to make moves against the Pakistani Taliban the response was decisive – and deadly. Starting with the attack on the military headquarters in Islamabad, a series of daily bombings brought devastating retaliation.
“The Pakistani civilian population has been caught between a rock and a hard place,” Marie Lall, of the University of London’s Institute of Education and the Chatham House thinktank, explains.
“There’s nowhere to go. It’s such a highly complex situation. It’s not that the Pakistani establishment hasn’t done anything – it has, at great civilian cost.”
There is likely to be a domestic political backlash as a result. British Pakistanis understand the attitude on the ground in Islamabad, Lahore and Swat even better, apparently, than they do in No 10. Community leaders have told politics.co.uk they expect support for the Conservatives to fall as a result of the spat.
“Cameron hasn’t seemed to have reflected on the thousands of Pakistani soldiers that have died,” Qassim Afzal, the head of the Liberal Democrat Friends of Pakistan group, told politics.co.uk.
“At one point he was gaining support from the British Pakistanis but people I’ve spoken to at every level – community leaders, those who are just interested in politics – feel Cameron’s really damaged the relationship with Pakistan.”
So there will be a very real negative fallout for the prime minister’s domestic support, as well as a decline in his international standing. If Cameron is to mature as a statesman he must understand the consequences of blindly pursuing a black-and-white view of the world. Pakistan proves the point.
As always, the key to understanding its present position lies in the past. Pakistan’s intelligence services first established links with the Taliban in post-Soviet Afghanistan, after tribal fighters helped oust Russian forces in the 1980s. After international troops withdraw from Afghanistan it’s likely at least some elements of the Taliban will be in power. So it makes sense for Pakistan to maintain some of those links with the shady powers of its regional neighbour.
Yes, this is a “double-edged game”, as Dr Lall puts it. But it is a reality which fiery rhetoric from Cameron is unlikely to change.
International diplomacy is not a zero-sum game. Cameron must learn that in the highly complex world things are never quite as straightforward as black and white.
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