Will Asim Munir fall in line this weekend

THIS weekend, as Russia celebrated the 80th anniversary of the culmination of the Great Patriotic War, which it basically helped the Allies win back in 1945 but allowed Churchill to take credit for, the world got a bit more curiouser.

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping pumped each other’s hands over a red carpet in Moscow, but each represented unusual friendships — China’s intimate tie with Pakistan is well-known, as is Russia’s defence relationship with India, especially via the S-400 air defence system that has helped shield a number of India’s towns from Pakistani missiles and drones in the current standoff with its western neighbour.

In the US, meanwhile, US Vice-President JD Vance’s comment that it is “fundamentally none of our business” to get involved in the India-Pakistan imbroglio raised several eyebrows. What did Vance mean by that, anyway?

One view is that the US is washing its hands of a messy entanglement that natives occasionally indulge in — unfortunately, both have largish nuclear weapons arsenals. Another is that Trump is inclined to leave South Asia to the charms of Narendra Modi, primarily because he believes India’s 1.4-billion population is a large market for American goods and a good, potential replacement for his current mortal enemy, China.

But a third player has recently insinuated itself into this India-Pakistan bilateral and converted it into a trilateral — Saudi Arabia. If Pakistan’s most powerful man, army chief Gen Asim Munir believes that India and Pakistan must forever be guided by the “two-nation theory” — and who is widely believed to have motivated, if not orchestrated, the heinous attack in Pahalgam — according to which Hindus and Muslims must forever be condemned to live in separate nations, then the rapidly growing friendship between Modi and Mohammed bin Salman could be the perfect riposte to Munir.

As the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques in Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia has played an oversized role in the development of Pakistan — from bankrolling it over the decades, to supporting it in the 1971 war against India to being a frontline partner in supporting Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in giving Osama bin Laden shelter — and later turning a blind eye when Osama moved to Pakistan. In return for the largesse, Pakistani generals trained the Saudi military for decades.

In fact, the very special and intimate Pakistan-Saudi relationship was so special that the Balochistan desert was for decades especially thrown open to Arab sheikhs who sought the thrill of hunting the endangered houbara bustard — such a delicate bird that no self-respecting Pakistani was allowed within shouting distance.

It bears thinking that Pakistan’s Hafiz-e-Quran army chief, a man who can recite the Holy Quran by heart, has no alternative but to pay heed to the message brought by Saudi junior foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir, who landed in Islamabad on Friday evening after a day-long trip to New Delhi.

Certainly, Asim Munir must make some tough choices this weekend. Is Kashmir the jannat that he craves, once and forever eloquently described by Amir Khusrau, or is he in hock to the home of the Holy Ka’aba? Moreover, the Saudis are still rolling in oil wealth — they have rolled over a $3-billion loan to Pakistan from a year ago, plus $1.2 billion in oil imports. Pakistan, whose economy is deteriorating every day, is hoping to extract another $5 billion from the Saudis this year.

And then there’s the IMF review meeting on Pakistan in DC that has been called to discuss its $7-billion bailout programme, plus a $1.3-billion dole under a climate resilience loan programme — if all goes well, Pakistan will immediately receive $2 billion.

The question is, will the US, the most powerful country with 16 per cent voting stakes in the IMF, listen to India, which has openly stated that the IMF shouldn’t give any money to Pakistan because the money doesn’t reach Pakistan’s poor, which it is intended to do, but finds its way into the pockets of the Pakistan army? Or will it lightly reprimand Pakistan for its bad management of IMF money, but essentially let it have its way?

India will invoke its own history, perhaps. How, back in 1991, it borrowed $5 billion from the IMF to fix its own broke economy, but returned the money much before it even needed to. And how Pakistan has frittered away billions over the years because the Pakistan army, not its civilian government, controls all decision-making.

If the IMF lets Pakistan have its way, it would mean the US is largely disinterested in taking sides in the messy India-Pakistan affair, as both Trump and Vance have indicated. Perhaps the Americans need the IMF money as leverage over Pakistan? Perhaps, they don’t want the Chinese to have full sway over Asim Munir?

That, then, is where the India-Pakistan standoff stands this weekend. Will it escalate, as some fear, before it gets better, or will there be a Saudi-brokered compromise? Most importantly, will Asim Munir fall in line? Will he be persuaded by the hard facts on the ground — which is that India’s GDP is 11 times larger than that of Pakistan, its purchasing power parity is 70 per cent larger at $10,200 compared to Pakistan’s $6,000 and that the market cap of its richest private company, Reliance Industries, at $225 billion is more than four times larger than that of the Karachi Stock Exchange?

Will Asim Munir understand that it’s all very well to keep Muslims and Hindus separate — and if the sullen resentment of the Kashmiris in the wake of the Pahalgam massacre is to be believed, they aren’t really interested in joining Pakistan — he has to keep his country at least, more or less, solvent? That a war with India will only take the needle in exactly the opposite direction?

As the sounds of sirens mix with birdsong this weekend morning in Chandigarh, or as the drones are repulsed in Ferozepur the night before, or as mortar shells pound Poonch, or as tracers colour the sky over Jammu and loud explosions are heard all over the city again, the questions seem far away.

In Moscow and in Washington, the big powers may be playing big games, but here on the India-Pakistan battlefront, for the moment, it only seems as if all bets are off.

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