Sharif’s presence at Modi’s inauguration was widely perceived by the media as a positive sign for India-Pakistan relations. But Matthew J. Nelson argues that although Sharif might be well-disposed to India’s new administration, increased trade and better relations will rely on India’s support for Sharif’s efforts to persuade the Pakistan Army of the benefits

Nelson, Matthew J.

LSE Research Online

blogs.lse.ac.ukhttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/southasia/2014/09/01/the-india-pakistan-relationship-from-delhi-to-islamabad-via-rawalpindi/The India-Pakistan relationship: From Delhi to Islamabad viaRawalpindiSharif’s presence at Modi’s inauguration was widely perceived by the media as a positive sign for India-Pakistanrelations. But Matthew J. Nelson argues that although Sharif might be well-disposed to India’s newadministration, increased trade and better relations will rely on India’s support for Sharif’s efforts to persuade thePakistan Army of the benefits.This post forms part of a new series on the India At LSE blog, India’s Foreign Relations Under Modi.Click here to see more posts.Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif recognise that expanding economic opportunities via increased trade couldpay enormous political dividends—for their countries and their parties. The economic and political landscape ofSouth Asia is shifting rapidly. During the past 20-25 years, labour migration, urbanization, and an entrepreneurialspirit have fuelled a rapid expansion of opportunity (and, some would say, insecurity) across the informal sector.Today, tech-savvy young people rail against old-school forms of corruption tying South Asia’s self-servingbureaucrats to its notoriously venal politicians.Prime Minister Modi has this young tiger by the tail, at least for the moment, stitching India’s lower castes,business leaders, and urban youth together with his traditional Hindu-middle-class supporters. But, in Pakistan,Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is struggling. He continues to enjoy the support of most Punjabis—in the Punjabitself as well as in Balochistan and Karachi—but beyond this his outlook is uncertain. In the Punjab, urban youthare toying with the idea of shifting their support to Imran Khan; Karachi and Balochistan remain violently splitalong ethnic lines; and, across Pakistan, the PML-N’s traditional ties to right-of-centre voters are becomingtangled up with militants bent on tearing the country apart one sect at a time. Modi and Sharif are business-oriented politicians. Each sees the value of increased trade. Each believes that the benefits of trade ‘trickledown’. Each understands that economic optimism (however precarious) equals votes. They want to worktogether. But can they?Image credit: flickr/Narendra ModiModi and the foreign policy community in Delhi have much in common with Sharif. Both know that the road fromMumbai to Karachi does not pass through Delhi or Islamabad. Instead, it passes through Rawalpindi. In fact, en1/3route to the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the Pakistan Army in Rawalpindi, it almost certainly passes throughsmall towns like Muridke, the headquarters of Jama’at-ud-Dawa and its militant offshoot, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba(implicated in numerous terrorist attacks, including the 2008 attack in Mumbai that killed more than 280 people).Indeed, the challenge for elected politicians like Modi and Sharif does not lie in improving relations betweenpoliticians like themselves. The challenge lies in developing proposals that advance the possibility of cross-border trade while, at the same time, soothing the nerves of those in Rawalpindi.The generals sitting in Rawalpindi are a twitchy group. They are suspicious of Sharif and his civilian NationalSecurity Policy (seeking to engage the military in a more ‘collaborative’ approach to strategic and foreign affairs).They are distrustful of New Delhi (with a particular anxiety about Indian ‘encirclement’ via Delhi’s involvement inAfghanistan). And of course they are concerned about the penetration of Pakistan itself by an avalanche ofIndian capital (with particular concerns about the superiority of Indian manufacturing and IT). Their concernsregarding Indian capital are not tied to any specific military calculation; instead they are tied to the economiccalculations of the Army—economic calculations within which the Army benefits enormously from anenvironment sustained by American military assistance and global financial institutions worried about thecollapse of a nuclear-armed state bristling with jihadi militants. For the generals in Rawalpindi, the benefits of ashift ‘from aid to trade’ are not always intrinsically obvious. On the contrary,, Sharif and Modi are often seen as adeeply threatening pair.When Modi invited Sharif to attend his post-election inauguration in Delhi, much was made of Modi’s effort toshore up closer ties with Pakistan. A closer look, however, suggests that Indian officials did not attach muchimportance to Nawaz Sharif. On the contrary, Sharif was invited as something of an empty vessel—a vessel forcarrying India’s core concerns back to Pakistan’s corps commanders. Of course officials in Delhi understandthat Sharif is largely powerless to rein in militant proxies like Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. But, even so, there is a generalsense that Prime Minister Sharif’s political appreciation for matters of the pocketbook might prompt him topressure the Pakistan Army on its proxies. In fact, with almost no independent access to Pakistan’s GHQ—not tomention an allergic reaction to working through officials in Beijing or Washington (where the possibility of someinfluence might be greater)—foreign policy strategists in Delhi have sought to recalibrate their relationship withRawalpindi via civilians like Nawaz Sharif.When Sharif pushes Pakistan’s generals to consider Non-Discriminatory Market Access (NDMA) with India, onecould be forgiven for asking whether he is acting on his own impulse or that of his civilian counterparts in Delhi.The answer may be ‘both’. As Sharif begins to lean more heavily on the military—after all, General PervezMusharraf is still facing trial for treason in a special civilian court—some fear that the Army may opt to intervenein matters of governance more directly. But Sharif is sanguine. In fact, courting his civilian counterparts in Delhi,he could almost be seen as a champion of the democratic peace!One often hears that Pakistan’s foreign policy community remains completely set apart from the pressures ofelectoral accountability. But, again, this view is somewhat misleading. Pakistan is not yet a democracy when itcomes to matters of foreign policy, but Nawaz Sharif understands that the Army is not detached from anappreciation for the importance of public opinion. His task simply lies in encouraging the Army to see increasedtrade with India as ‘win-win’. Few will be surprised if, in this push to transform Pakistani guns into butter, some ofthe earliest ‘wins’ accrue to dairy farms owned by the soldiers based in Rawalpindi.In so many ways, the future of India-Pakistan relations lies in the subtle effectiveness of Narendra Modi’ssupport for Pakistan via Nawaz Sharif. Specifically, it lies in Sharif’s ability to satisfy the demands of two differentconstituencies simultaneously: voters and soldiers. Sharif’s primary loyalty lies, as it should, with his voters. Buthis ties with Rawalpindi come with enormous geostrategic implications. The struggle to expand cross-bordertrade between India and Pakistan is, in the end, a domestic struggle shaped by civil-military relations inPakistan. These relations have as much to do with the livelihoods (and the loyalties) of the Pakistani public asthey do with the interests of soldiers based in Rawalpindi. It is surprising that, so far, Delhi’s foreign policycommunity has such a limited understanding of the economic and political trends prevailing in Pakistan today.About the Author2/3Dr Matthew J. Nelson is a Reader in Politics at the Department of Politics at SOAS. Copyright © 2016 London School of Economics3/3

The India-Pakistan relationship: From Delhi to Islamabad via Rawalpindi

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