A PHONE conversation will not change foreign policy. Nor will strong statements in favour of a foreign government. Nevertheless, now that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has returned to Pakistan, there is some semblance of leadership being displayed by the political class once again. The telephone call from Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to Prime Minister Sharif was officially about confirmation of the killing in eastern Afghanistan of the mastermind of the APS Peshawar tragedy. Yet, it was also an opportunity to further a fresh attempt at stabilising ties between the countries after a period of turmoil. Likewise, the official government response to the failed mutiny and coup in Turkey carried the unmistakable voice of the PML-N government, which has long cultivated close ties, especially in Punjab, with the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.Perhaps the two greatest disappointments, even among a litany of other compromises and setbacks, has been the PML-N’s marginalisation in key foreign policy decisions. Some of this has clearly been because of the forceful intervention of the national security and foreign policy establishment. Yet, a great deal of it has been self-inflicted by the PML-N.
The decision by Mr Sharif to not have a full-time foreign minister and, instead, to divide the job between two advisers who are rivals has created confusion and dysfunction in the foreign ministry. More fundamentally, the present government has appeared to have no real strategy on Afghanistan, India or the US. The dominance of the security establishment does not mean the automatic irrelevance of the political government. At least it should not. Consider the case of Afghanistan, where recent statements of the military leadership suggest that the reluctance to squeeze the space inside Pakistan enjoyed by anti-Afghan militants has finally been overcome. Now is the time for the political government to add its voice to the debate, especially since recent developments chime with the PML-N’s overall approach to Afghanistan.
Ultimately, however, ad hoc and piecemeal interventions and additions by the government will not lead to it recovering the overall space it has ceded and lost to the military establishment. Prime Minister Sharif’s huddles with his political aides will not change direction. The Cabinet Committee on National Security needs to be convened and the secretariat asked to contribute to the agenda items beforehand. The world over, the only realistic option for deciding policy matters is through detailed and informed discussions. Pakistan is surely no different.http://www.dawn.com/news/1271417/governments-missing-strategy
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