Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan announcing the release of the captured Indian air force pilot Abhinandan Varthaman in parliament. (Photo: A screen grab from PTV)
This morning I woke up to the news that Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has decided to release the captured Indian Air Force pilot Abhinandan Varthaman as “a peace gesture.”
I am going to pretend without any basis at all that the following passage from my blog yesterday has had its effect on Khan. After all, the least a journalist can get is some vindication.
"Varthaman has the potential to become a bargaining chip for Pakistan and its new Prime Minister Imran Khan but at the same time it presents Islamabad with a powerful opportunity to calm things down. Khan could unilaterally decide to return the wing commander to India without any conditions to reinforce his rhetoric of wanting genuine peace with India."
There is no next to no chance that anyone in Khan’s orbit read my blog. More to the point, there was nothing even remotely path-breaking about what I had suggested because any reasonable person who likes peace would see every merit in making that gesture. And finally, it is a strategically and diplomatically smart move to order the release without any conditions. Khan has earned some bragging rights even though in the overall scheme of things between India and Pakistan they may not buy much.
Khan may or may not brag about this but I am doing a bit of this today even though, like I said at the outset, I have no basis to other than suggesting something that would have crossed anyone’s mind.
Although tempting in this season of electioneering in India, it would be imprudent, not to mention graceless, for India generally and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party particularly to spin this gesture as an act of submission by a rattled neighbor. It behooves a civilization of India’s greatness to recognize Khan’s gesture for what it is and look for ways to resolve this unnervingly bloody conflict once and for all.
At a news conference in Hanoi, US President Donald Trump spoke about “reasonably attractive news” emanating from the subcontinent.
“We have been involved in trying to help them (India and Pakistan) stop and we have some reasonably decent news,” he said. “I think hopefully that (tensions) could be coming to an end, it has been going on for a long time,” Trump said.
As of this morning here in America, I have not seen any comment from India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Khan’s gesture. It is safe to assume that he would welcome it although a more expeditious response would have been useful.
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi had said earlier that his government had offered a deal to India to deescalate tensions in exchange for return of Varthaman. He said India rejected the offer and insisted on his release. India is also standing its ground on the resumption of dialogue by demanding that Islamabad take “concrete” steps terrorist outfits operating on its soil before that can happen.
There has been some concern about whether this gesture would weaken Khan’s position domestically with Pakistan’s all-powerful military. I seriously doubt that because I am fairly certain Khan has the military’s concurrence. For the sake of argument, even if he does not it is entirely possible for any one, including a political leader, to evolve and discover new strengths and self-assurance.
It would be interesting to see if Khan chooses to hand over Jaish-e-Mohammad leader Masood Azhar to India or at least severely circumscribes his freedom to an extent that he becomes of no consequence pending legal action against him. After all, he is the cause of the current tensions with one of his supposed followers having carried out a suicide bombing with an explosive-laden vehicle that killed 40 personnel of India’s Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) on February 14.
I am not holding my breath on that happening any time soon.