Pakistan's Security Policy Echoes Manifestoes Of Its Leading Parties

Sameer Arshad Khatlani
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Pakistan's first-ever National Security Policy (NSP) has understandably hit the headlines in India. As The Indian Express pointed out, India has been mentioned more than any other nation—at least 16 times—in the 62-page document. Prepared after what has been described as a seven-year strategic thought, the NSP was adopted in late December. It cites a policy of peace at home and abroad and says Islamabad wishes to improve its relationship with New Delhi even as it acknowledges the rise of Hindutva-driven politics in India impacts Pakistan’s immediate security. The policy cautions against Indian leadership's political exploitation of a policy of belligerence towards Pakistan and says it threatens military adventurism and non-contact warfare.

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The reactions to NSP in India ranged from usual contempt towards Pakistan to surprise over the peace overtures. No matter what they were, the responses highlighted the skewed coverage of Pakistan in the Indian media including in the increasingly shrinking liberal press. Pakistan is largely covered in it to reinforce its negative image or now mostly to benefit the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is projected as the only bulwark against a belligerent neighbour and its alleged allies within. That the idea of improving ties with New Delhi in the NSP has been on the agenda of most political parties in Pakistan for years has hence gone virtually unreported in India. Three-time Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has articulated the idea most vigorously over the last three decades. 

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All major parties including Sharif's Muslim League (Nawaz) or PML (N) have since at least 2008 underlined their commitment for peace with India in their poll manifestos. Before it returned to power in 2008, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), in its manifesto, endorsed India's stand on reducing tensions between the two countries on the basis of the Simla Agreement. The PPP called for negotiations to resolve outstanding disputes and underlined that maintaining peaceful ties with India was imperative for achieving the goal of a prosperous Pakistan. It promised the PPP would not allow Pakistan's territory to be used for cross-border terrorism against its neighbours. The party pledged to dismantle militant groups seeking to take hostage Pakistan's foreign policy and impose their writ through force in the country and elsewhere. The PPP, whose leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in a terror attack in the run-up to the 2008 polls, said distinctions between, and amongst terrorist groups would not be maintained. PPP's 2008 manifesto also pledged to pursue a composite dialogue with India for the resolution of bilateral issues including Kashmir. 'PPP wouldn't allow lack of progress on one agenda [Kashmir] to impede progress on the other. The PPP supports open LoC [Line of Control or the de facto border between the two countries in the region] to unite the Kashmiris,' it said.

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In its 2008 manifesto, PML (N) denounced extremism and its manifestation in the form of terrorism and suicide bombing, calling it a lethal combination of nationalism and a mindset that believes in Islamic revival through force and coercion. It admitted to the presence of extremists in Pakistan and added the use of force is and will remain necessary against foreign and local terrorists who take innocent lives and also to prevent infiltration across the Pakistan border. PML (N) underlined its commitment to resolute 'steps to eradicate the menace of extremism and terrorism.' 'The party would accord special priority to a peaceful settlement of all outstanding issues with India.' 

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Even the then-military ruler Parvez Musharraf-backed Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid) or PML (Q)'s manifesto pledged to disallow the use of Pakistan's territory against neighbouring countries. It said Pakistan's first priority should be to bring peace to South Asia while underlining it was against terrorism, extremism, and violence in all its forms and manifestations.  The party promised to pursue the peace process with India with vigour, break the deadlock on Kashmir, and support all initiatives to its peaceful resolution. Pakistan's third-largest party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), in its manifesto, underlines its opposition to all types of terrorism and promised to launch a rigorous campaign and public awareness to exterminate it. 'MQM encourages confidence-building measures and dialogue process with India and wants to solve the Kashmir issue through dialogue,' it said.    

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Leading Pakistani political parties again pledged to promote peace with New Delhi in their manifestos ahead of the 2013 elections. PML (N), which returned to power that year for the third time with Nawaz Sharif as the Prime Minister, even proposed to link India with Afghanistan besides energy-rich Iran and Central Asian Republics (CAR) via Pakistan's territory. The proposal was significant as Pakistan has long refused to allow transit trade between India and Afghanistan blaming India for using Kabul to encircle it strategically. PML (N) argued Pakistan can also develop a flourishing transit economy because it provides the shortest land routes from Western China to the Arabian Sea, through the Gwadar Port, while linking India with Afghanistan and CAR and providing a land route from Iran to India and access to the Central Asian Republics to the Arabian sea and India for oil/gas pipelines.

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The manifesto of Prime Minister Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), which emerged as a major force in the 2013 polls before coming to power five years later, echoed the PML (N) in part. 'Progressive détente with India will benefit both countries if centered on conflict resolution and cooperation especially in the field of energy,’ the PTI said in its 2013 election manifesto. It listed the resolution of the Kashmir dispute as part of Pakistan’s core national interest. The Imran Khan-led party pledged against allowing the country’s territory or people, including its armed forces, to be used by any nation for the promotion of its political ideology or hegemony or promoting terrorism and for destabilising any state. It recognised terrorism as a growing internal problem and promised to move substantively on the bilateral strategic dialogue with India besides rationalising the defense spending.

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The PML (Q), which ruled Pakistan between 2002 and 2007, cited the threat to national security 'from unconventional sources' and said it is no longer 'an issue of defending the country against foreign military aggression from across the border (India).' In the backdrop of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which derailed the India-Pakistan peace process, the PML (Q) called for a zero-tolerance policy against any non-state actors planning, organising, training, or launching military attacks against any of Pakistan’s neighbours. It underlined Pakistan can no longer use the argument of 'absence of the writ of the state in ungoverned spaced parts of Pakistan' as an excuse as this means 'abdication of a fundamental responsibility for happenings within our territorial jurisdiction.'

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In its 2013 manifesto, PPP took credit for initiating a policy of sustained dialogue with neighbours including India. It pledged to pursue stability and peace-building in the region as a policy priority. PPP counted normalisation of trade with India, which Islamabad resisted for years because of its Kashmir-first policy, among the important achievements of its government replacing old templates that 'hinged strategic ties on narrow definitions of national security.'

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When Musharraf championed the peace process with India before the restoration of democracy in 2008, he even dropped the traditional insistence on the implementation of the UN resolutions on a referendum in Kashmir to decide the region's political future. He instead proposed a four-point formula to resolve the dispute in a reversal of Pakistan’s policy on it for five decades. Musharraf’s handpicked successor, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, called the Taliban insurgency before it was crushed the biggest threat to Pakistan’s national security and not India. 

Sharif has consistently since the 1990s maintained a conciliatory approach towards India, which led to the Lahore Declaration for a peaceful co-existence he was signed when Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee travelled to Pakistan in 1999. He maintained his approach in the noughties even as he was trying to return to Pakistan from Britain, where he lived in exile after the military removed him from power. Ahead of the 2013 polls, he called for unilateral visa-free travel for Indians and demilitarization of the strategic Siachen Glacier, the world’s highest battlefield. He promised peace with India and linked it with Pakistan’s prosperity. 

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Sharif called his victory in the 2013 polls an endorsement for his bridge-building promises with India and insisted he will even visit Delhi uninvited. In his 2014 Independence Day, Sharif described the promotion of peaceful relations with India as‘ the cardinal principle of his foreign policy.' Sharif earlier that year visited India to attend Prime Minister Modi’s inauguration. Unlike most visiting Pakistani leaders, he avoided meeting Kashmiri separatists. The gesture was not lost on his hosts, who have routinely linked their political opponents to Pakistan to undermine them when they have not anything remotely to do with the country.

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Sharif even developed a good rapport with Modi, who made an unannounced stopover to meet him in Lahore in 2015. The two walked hand in hand after embracing each other as Modi touched down in Lahore. The warmth in their body language was extraordinary given how Modi even used anti-Pakistan rhetoric to win provincial elections in Gujarat, which he helmed for over a decade before becoming the Prime Minister in 2014. It was a stunning turnaround in the bilateral ties. Modi, who has stigmatized his political opponents over imaginary association with Pakistan, was until two years earlier banned from entering the US on religious-freedom grounds based on the allegations of his complicity in the violence against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002. Despite the baggage, the two risked meeting each other. Sharif took a greater risk of hosting Modi without the presence of his national security advisor and foreign office officials. India's default cold-shouldering despite the risks has undermined the overtures and prevented them from developing into something more substantive for a better future for 24.89% of the world's population that lives in South Asia.   

Sameer Arshad Khatlani is an author-journalist based in New Delhi. He has been a Senior Assistant Editor with Hindustan Times, India’s second-biggest English newspaper. Khatlani worked in a similar capacity with The Indian Express, India's most influential newspaper known for its investigative journalism, until June 2018. Born and raised in Kashmir, he began his career with the now-defunct Bangalore-based Vijay Times in 2005 as its national affairs correspondent. He joined Times of India, one of the world's largest selling broadsheets, in 2007. Over the next nine years, he was a part of the paper's national and international newsgathering team as an Assistant Editor. Khatlani has reported from Iraq and Pakistan and covered elections and national disasters. He received a master’s degree in History from the prestigious Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi. Kaylani is a fellow with Hawaii-based American East-West Center established by the US Congress in 1960 to promote better relations and understanding with Asian, and Pacific countries through cooperative study, research, and dialogue. Penguin published Khatlani’s first book The Other Side of the Divide: A Journey into the Heart of Pakistan in February 2020. Eminent academic and King’s college professor, Christophe Jaffrelot, has called the book ‘an erudite historical account... [that] offers a comprehensive portrait of Pakistan, including the role of the army and religion—not only Islam.'