By Sushil Kutty
One good thing coming out of India’s “4-Day War”, aka ‘Operation Sindoor’, is the thaw in relations between Pakistan and Iran, two Islamic countries which share a border and often end up trading fire across the same border. Iran is a country worth cultivating or left to its own devices. Pakistan, on the other hand, can be left to its own devices only at India’s peril.
India and Pakistan can be neighbours but Indian ‘netas’ should stop parroting that Indians and Pakistanis share the same dna. It’s an insult even if politicians from both sides of the Wagah share traits.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif carried with him several sheafs of olive leaves, including one for Iran. It’s been a year since Iran and Pakistan conducted cross-border airstrikes and Shehbaz Sharif wanted to bury the hatchet deep in Iran soil.
Watching Shehbaz Sharif appease Iranians was Field Marshal Asim Munir, newly promoted and hailed as Pakistan’s saviour in the “4-Day War”. Shehbaz Sharif’s mistake is carting Munir to wherever he travels to in the world.
The only world leader who sees promise in Field Marshal Asim Munir is United States President Donald Trump whose enduring interest is ‘cryptocurrency” and he thinks Pakistan is a promising country for ‘trade in crypto.’
India’s decisive victory over Pakistan didn’t impress Trump and he has started hyphenating India with Pakistan, almost like a child delighted at getting the spellings and pronunciations of ‘but’ and ‘put’ right!
And Iran is neither Turkiye nor China, which Pakistan should not forget when engaging with Iranian leadership and Donald Trump. It wasn’t surprising when Iran made the Iran-Sharif meeting look like thanksgiving for Pakistan remaining on Gaza’s side and not on the Israeli bandwagon like so many in the OIC.
Fact is, in a battle between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, Pakistan will always choose to be with Iran. And Gaza remains Iran’s top concern even if ‘Kashmir’ is Pakistan’s eternal muse. In a tradeoff between Gaza and Kashmir, Pakistan will dump Gaza without a stray thought.
The ‘Pahalgam terror attack’ happened even as Israel upped its children-killing “brutal strikes” on Gaza. But, unconcerned by the mayhem in Gaza, Pakistan chose to up its conflict with India over Kashmir. Pakistan’s teary-eyed concern for Gaza’s children is crocodilish!
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif mentioned ‘Kashmir’ in Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei’s ear but Khamenei let it out the other ear, saying Iran hoped India and Pakistan would resolve their disputes. If that isn’t ‘Mr. Cool’, Shehbaz Sharif is ‘Superman’!
Khamenei knows Pakistan is an untrustworthy ally if at all an ally! That said, Shehbaz Sharif will not ask for sustenance money from Iran. For that Sharif, or for that matter, even Asim Munir, will have to traipse across to Saudi Arabia!
But whether or not Khamenei agrees with Pakistan, for Shehbaz Sharif, talks with India will be something to crow about. He said so much in Teheran, eager like one of those fancy poodles ladies carry in their tote-bags at Cannes!
But is Prime Minister Narendra Modi listening? Of course, not. Sharif is not the only politician from the subcontinent out to impress the rest of the world. Dozens of Indian MPs are on a similar recce to expose Pakistan And one of them is AIMIM Chief Asaduddin Owaisi, who has opened a second front against Pakistan.
The first, of course, is the one Prime Minister Modi is manning. Modi on Monday sent out a message to Pakistan’s children, asking them to unlearn what their parents had told them about Pakistan! Remember Gen. Asim Munir’s speech to overseas Pakistanis, where he asked Pakistani parents to teach their children the “reality of Hindu-Muslim”?
On Tuesday, PM Modi went about systematically dismantling Pakistan’s “proxy war”, saying there was no proxy war to begin with and that it was always a full-fledged war. Modi said ‘Operation Sindoor’ didn’t need “proof” as all the action was “recorded on camera”, including that of the destroyed Pakistani air bases.
This despite the Pakistani belligerence to accept the reality in front of their eyes. Monday night Pakistan’s super-hack Hamid Mir released a video in which he claimed that Pakistan Air Force had no equal in the world and that talk of “Chinese technology being superior to Pakistani technology is a big lie Indians are spreading.”
Fact is, Pakistan didn’t like an American study’s conclusion that China was India’s Enemy No.1 while Pakistan was only an “ancillary”, a choice of word which didn’t sit well with Pakistan’s journalistic community at all.
Pakistan’s “defence expert” Dr. Qamar Cheema is angry for another reason, India and Indians for forever taunting Pakistan as “Bhikaristan”. Dr. Cheema says if that’s so, where does India stand in the league of top nations, the United Kingdom and Germany?
Modi, meanwhile, is bent on reminding Pakistan of its “third defeat” and why “post-May 6, “we can no longer make the mistake of calling it a proxy war.” Modi rested his case on “nine terrorist hideouts were identified and destroyed within just 22 minutes”, calling the outcome “decisive action done in front of the cameras, so that no one back home would ask for proof.”
In Modi’s book, terrorists killed and buried with full state honours, draped in national flags and saluted by the Pakistani army, is not “proxy war”, but using terrorism as part of a “deliberate and organised military strategy”.
And while Prime Minister Modi threw the book on terrorism at his counterpart Shehbaz Sharif, Asaduddin Owaisi stood firm and told the Bahrain leadership that Pakistan should be “brought back to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) as it might use the $2 billion IMF loan to fan terrorism against India.
Owaisi said Pakistan was not a “victim of terrorism”. The AIMIM Chief’s criticism of Pakistan’s “financial practices” is the standout performance in India’s outreach to the world.
This must be the first time in nearly eight decades that Pakistan must be regretting leaving behind tens of thousands of Muslims in India after Partition. That the ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ did not take hold in India must be a setback to Pakistan and Field Marshal Asim Munir might have to go back to the drafting board. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and AIMIM Chief Asaduddin Owaisi have a thing or two to discuss when they meet next. (IPA Service)
Financial Stress Of Poor Worsening, Loan Delinquencies Jumped 163 Per Cent 