On Pakistan, India And Afghanistan Interviews 29/04/2014 Ahmed Rashid is a Pakistani journalist based in Lahore, who writes for The Daily Telegraph (London), The Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune, The New York Review of Books, BBC Online, and The Nation. He appears regularly on NPR, CNN, and the BBC World Service. He is the author of several books including Taliban, Descent Into Chaos and Pakistan On The Brink. We spoke to him about the geopolitics of South Asia, relations between India and Pakistan, as well as the future of Afghanistan after the withdrawal of American forces in 2014. In November 2013 Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif appointed Raheel Sharif as the new Chief of Staff of the Pakistani Army. What is your understanding of the current state of relations between the civilian government and the military? Both sides have approached this issue very cautiously and carefully because of the bad blood between the military and the former government of Asif Ali Zardari. There seems to be a rift developing as the military is increasingly frustrated with the civilian governments desire to open talks with the Taliban, while the military would like to go in and punish them much more severely. We have now a ceasefire, which was recently ordered by the Taliban, but has since been broken following an attack in Islamabad. As long as these attacks continue, the military’s position is that they want to go in and punish these extremists and I think they are very frustrated - a marked difference from when the former Army chief, General Kayani, was in power and he took very little action against the extremists. He saw his enemy more as the US than with the militants. For about two years, at the end of his tenure, he did nothing. This chief looks much more committed to make sure that militancy does not spread. Do you believe that Prime Minister Sharif is interested in coming to a negotiated solution with the Pakistani Taliban? Ideally yes, but the big question is what would he negotiate? What is negotiable with a group that wants to overthrow the system? There is very little to negotiate. On the other front, the military keeps a veto on policy towards India. Prime Minister Sharif came in very adamantly wanting to improve relations with India immediately, and I think the Army vetoed that. Relations are improving with India, but very slowly. The Army also has a veto, and more direct control over Pakistani policy with respect to Afghanistan. How would a victory for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the upcoming Indian elections affect the future of Indo-Pakistani relations? Pakistanis are quite concerned about the BJPs rise in India because of the BJPs traditional hard line against Pakistan, and particularly Narenda Modis (the party’s prime ministerial candidate) attitude towards Indian Muslims. On the other hand, it has to be said that the big breakthrough with India in 2003 under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee did occur during a BJP government. So, it is not entirely doom and gloom. It all depends on how Modi wants to deal with Pakistan and the Indian Muslim population. If this election campaign is going to involve a lot of Pakistan-bashing and candidates trying to score points by being[..] To read the complete article, please follow the link below pakistan - interviews | Ahmed Rashid ahmedrashid/publications/pakistan/interviews/ Ahmed Rashid ahmedrashid
Posted on: Tue, 29 Apr 2014 12:49:24 +0000
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