Summary Expect a surprise entrance from Masood Khan, Azad Jammu & Kashmir’s new president, old FoPo hand
NEW YORK: (Dunya News, Wajahat Saeed Khan) - Last year, it was about the K-word. Pakistan was going to start building up a new, improved case at the UN for its Kashmir cause. The uber articulate Permanent Representative, Maleeha Lodhi, was going to dig the trenches and work the press. PM Nawaz Sharif, spinning post-Dharna in a post-APS Pakistan - in a bid to reestablish his national security credentials - would snipe on Indian positions with his much vaunted UNGA speech. On the sidelines, the OIC working groups would send in some supplies. Dossiers would be presented to Ban Ki Moon. Claims of Indian forces building Israel-style apartheid walls in the occupied territory would be floated. The much expected bilat with Indian PM Narendra Modi – both the Gujarati and the Lahori premiers were staying at the Waldorf Astoria, so the hype of a potential huddle was electric – wouldn’t happen at the last minute. It wasn’t a diplomatic offensive by Pakistan, but it was a buildup. It was going to go somewhere.
It did, and more. Modi’s Christmas Day trip to Jatti Umra, which shocked many establishments, was followed by the Pathankot attack. With that wintry breakdown came a summer of discontent in Kashmir, and then Modi did what no other Indian leader has done in almost seven decades: Use the B-word, Balochistan, in an Independence Day speech that still resonates over tea break in the spotless corridors of Aabpara and the Military Operations Directorate. Coupled with the stunt to consider giving an Indian resident status to Brahmdagh Bugti, the new game is on: If Pakistan goes for Kashmir, the Indians will go for Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan, maybe even Karachi. A senior FO source tells me it’s just “desperate vitriol”, but the Army isn’t taking India’s new plan to “Balochize Kashmir” lightly.
But back in New York, this year, the game is re-imagined – more business and less pomp, for one. Firstly, it’s the 71st UNGA, and Pakistan been here before. Secondly, diplomacy is less ideological (of course, Kashmir will feature, considering it’s burning, and now in its third month of curfews, protests) and more practical, with Pakistan’s recent diplomatic coup setting the template for the next few days: As thwarting Indian attempts to get a free ride at the Nuclear Suppliers Group by evoking a Chinese veto may probably be Pakistan’s only recent diplomatic coup of late, the Foreign Office – battered and bruised by local media for being inefficient and archaic under Messers Aziz and Fatemi – is going to make the same play that worked earlier this year: keep building up a case against India’s NSG membership.
Thus, there are a lot of bilats, with old pals and new. The Americans, the Brits, the Chinese, the Turks and the Saudis are going to feature. Sharif will huddle with John Kerry today morning, starting at nine, and then head into a back-to-back bilat game starring Theresa May of the UK, Prince Mohammad bin Naif of the Saudi and even John Key of New Zealand.
Why New Zealand? Because of the NSG. The hunt for new allies continues. Expect some South American countries Pakistan’s never really engaged with to come up too.
Meanwhile, expect Kashmir to keep on popping up. After highlighting that he huddled with the Kashmir community as soon as he arrived in New York yesterday, the FO has released a letter stating the same old – a letter to the Permanent 5 to look long and hard at the Kashmir dispute, written just today morning by the PM – but more relevant because Uri has happened, and the warmongers are on the loose again.
Also expect a surprise entrance from Masood Khan, Azad Jammu & Kashmir’s new president, old FoPo hand, and probably the most nuanced voice Pakistan can offer to internationalise the conflict from Muzaffarabad. He’s here in New York, too.
Finally, expect a healthy mention of the refugee crisis (this UNGA is all about that now increasingly global issue), but in reference to context that is Pakistan’s experience with the Afghans.
And pray like hell that Ahmad Khan Rahami, the alleged Chelsea Bomber, doesn t have a Pakistan connection. He’s dominating the news here, so far.
That’s the Day 1 situationer from New York. Now, the hunt for a coffee and bagel continues.
The story has been filed by Dunya News Chief National Security Correspondent Wajahat S. Khan from New York.
