Date: Saturday, October 29th, 2016.
And so it begins
With Sheikh Rashid taking a cigar from its tube at Committee Chowk in Rawalpindi and calling on the police to arrest him, and the firing of tear gas by the police in Rawalpindi seeking to enforce Section 144 — the overture to the main event on November 2nd 2016 is being played live to a national audience. On the evening of 27th October police had broken up a rally by young PTI supporters who they beat with batons, arresting 38. The gathering was peaceful until the police intervened.
For the authorities it appears that they are ready and willing to take a hard line from the outset, determined to enforce Section 144, and none too fussy about donning kid gloves to do just that. For the protesters there appears to be a determination to see through, perhaps to the bitterest of ends, the decision by Imran Khan to close down government in the capital city of Pakistan. Neither side is in a position where compromise is an option and they are all firmly painted into their respective corners. The time for negotiation and compromise may have passed although we hope not and there has to be doubt as to whether it was ever a serious option anyway.
As events play out on the streets it is already evident that there is collateral damage. On the night of Wednesday 26th October the government began impounding hundreds of containers across Punjab and centralising them in and around Islamabad and Rawalpindi in order to block access points and prevent demonstrators entering Islamabad. The majority of containers were loaded and destined for Karachi, some with perishable goods, others with export orders. This directly penalises parties that are wholly innocent of anything beyond going about their lawful business, and is in marked contrast to the situation in Sindh which has purchased 200 containers to use as barricades. There can be no justification for this lack of preparedness and it is unlikely that the transporters are going to be compensated for their losses. It is reported that the government needs 400 containers to block access routes.
In another development, the Pakistan Stock Exchange in Karachi came under heavy selling pressure because of the political difficulties surrounding the government. The benchmark KSE 100 index declined on Thursday 27th by 539.50 points to close at 39,987.31 points. This hardly constitutes a collapse of the stock market but it is an indicator that there are collateral effects that are a response to events in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. It is estimated that the events in the KSE last Thursday have wiped $3.35 billion off the stock market.
Taken together these events are not mere ‘blips’ that are transient. Large sums of money have been lost by many with no political connections whatsoever. The government handling of a situation that looks like it is only going to get worse before it gets better already points to a ham-fistedness that is a harbinger of more of the same in the very near future.
By late on Friday afternoon it also became clear that the government had decided to confine Imran Khan to the pavilion by not allowing him to leave his Bani Galla residence and join his supporters in Rawalpindi. At a press conference held there he posed a pertinent question — ‘Is this a kingdom or a democracy?’ he asked — a question that under the circumstances he has every right to ask as he is effectively under house arrest. The confrontation between the government and the PTI has now enveloped the judiciary that has made an order in favour of the PTI right to protest. Failure to comply places the government in direct conflict with the judiciary with potentially serious consequences. Even at this eleventh hour it is possible to shelve the egos and compromise, because nothing is worth bringing the system tumbling around the ears of all of us.
Diplomatic reciprocals
As is ever the case reports that the Indians are expelling a consular official based in Delhi require considerably more detail before the full facts of the case are known. It is alleged that he was engaged in ‘espionage activities’ and the Indian Foreign Secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar summoned the Pakistan high commissioner to tell him so, adding that the man had 48 hours to leave the country. He is named as Mehmood Akhtar and he was briefly detained by Indian security agencies on Wednesday 26th October. He is said to work in the visa section of the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi and at the time of his detention outside the Delhi zoo he is alleged to have been in possession of forged documents, defence related maps, deployment charts and lists of officers deployed along India’s border with Pakistan. It is alleged that Mehmood Akhtar was arrested as he met two men who he had allegedly recruited to spy for him. Within 24 hours Pakistan announced the expulsion of an Indian diplomat for activities ‘contrary to diplomatic norms.’
Both countries have a long history of reciprocal mutual expulsions and the entire incident is strongly reminiscent of the days of the Cold War between western nations and the Soviet Union, when both sides played one another off in terms of espionage.
The difference today is that the conflict between India and Pakistan is currently set to a high heat, with exchanges of fire across the Line of Control and the Working Boundary. Indian soldiers have recently allegedly died in the conflict, as have Pakistani troops and civilians in the near past. Fatalities and live firing were exceedingly rare in the Cold War, but increasingly common in the protracted hostilities currently playing out on our eastern borders. This latest diplomatic incident must not be used by India to up the ante, and Pakistan would be well advised to stick to its line of constructive restraint. Cool heads must prevail and pragmatic statesmanship be to the fore on the part of both our leaders and the diplomatic services.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 29th, 2016.