Some charming India-Pakistan bonhomie was on show this week: S M Krishna unexpectedly turned up at Hina Rabbani Khar’s party after another day at the United Nations General Assembly in New York while a delegation of Pakistani commerce officials were given a good time by Indian industry in Mumbai with promises to ramp up trade. But glowing smiles and warm hospitality are surface niceties. Like stray swallows they do not a summer make.
The very moment when leaders from both countries were donning party hats, noted Pakistani novelist Mohammed Hanif tweeted to say that he wouldn’t be attending litfests in Delhi and Kovalam because the Indian embassy claimed his visa application file had been lost. (For “lost file” read “political headache” in an age when everyone is instantly and constantly connected digitally.)
The Karachi-based author of A Case of Exploding Mangoes was due in India to launch his new novel Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, which is about the situation of Christians in his fractious city. He said on email: “I get an invite, I apply four weeks early, and they promise I’ll have my visa. Then two days before the flight they tell me my file is lost. They clear it 16 hours before I am supposed to fly. My passport is in Islamabad, I am in Karachi, and my flight is from Karachi. How to get the passport? Basically turning a simple procedure into a nightmare for everyone.”
Life at visa counters in both capitals is a precarious hit-or-miss exercise. A correspondent on my flight to Karachi earlier this year said she’d got hers in the very nick of time that morning; when we landed several of the expected Indian invitees were “no shows”. I presume they hadn’t.
The arbitrariness of simple procedures, casual or perfected into refined, reciprocal practice, is the tip of a bigger international nightmare where smiles swiftly dissolve into snarls. Ever since the night in May they got Osama bin Laden in an operation of incredible secrecy and daring in Abbottabad, Pakistan’s storyline is beginning to look like the harrowing pages of Mohammed Hanif’s fiction. As its uncontrollable neighbour acquires the notoriety of chief neighbourhood rogue and bully, Big Brother India is smirking.
The collective American pressure on Pakistan – public opinion funnelled through media and political outrage – has been building up relentlessly in recent months. Hard-pressed US taxpayers want to know where the billions of dollars of military and economic assistance they have poured into Pakistan for years has gone. Pakistan gets about $2 billion a year alone as “security assistance”. Why should they be supporting a war on terror in Afghanistan when Pakistan is proven as a duplicitous ally?
That is what the top outgoing military official Mike Mullen said, accusing ISI, Pakistan’s spy agency, of involvement in the attack on the US embassy in Kabul last month. The ISI’s support to insurgent Taliban groups such as the Haqqani network, known for years, is now officially confirmed. The agency stands accused of fomenting a series of terrorist actions, from the attack on the Indian mission in Kabul in 2008 to the murder of journalist Saleem Shahzad in June for his investigative stories. Some US political leaders are demanding sanctions against Pakistan. The administration is being forced to reconsider its old alliance with a double-faced ally.
The outcry in the West fits neatly into India’s scheme. It has been saying the same, from Pakistan’s sponsorship of terrorism in Kashmir to the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai. As the US snarls, India is smiling, graciously attending receptions and hosting trade delegations. It can lose visa application files of invited guests at its whim.
