Several years ago a former Indian naval officer, Commander Kulbhusan Jadhav, on a visit to the Iranian province of Baluchistan, inadvertently strayed into Pakistani Baluchistan, currently in the grip of a local insurgency. Commander Jadhav was picked up by the Pakistan Army, arrested and tried by a military court and sentenced to death for aiding and abetting terrorism against the state. The trial was held in camera, and the prisoner denied Indian consular access. Such are the bald facts which prompted the Government of India to lodge an appeal to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the Hague, Netherlands.
The Court, consisting 16 Judges, including a Chinese Judge, (with Pakistan’s Justice Jilani dissenting) delivered a unanimous judgement last week, vindicating the Indian case by directing the Pakistan authorities to grant India consular access to the prisoner in accordance with the Vienna Convention to which Pakistan was a signatory.
It also held that the death sentence by military court was a violation of International Law, and hence Pakistan should refrain from carrying out the sentence of execution. A stay of execution constitutes an indispensable condition for review and reconsideration of the sentence, presumably by a civil court in public and not by a military court in secret.
The Court said Pakistan was remiss in not informing Jadhav of his rights, and by failing to inform India, Pakistan had breached its obligation under due process.
The India government and all shades of Indian opinion have hailed the judgement as a victory for the rule of law. The Pakistan government has claimed a victory of sorts, pointing out that that the Court had not accepted India’s submission to annul the Pakistani death sentence on Mr Jadhav.
‘Commander Jadhav shall remain in Pakistan. He shall be treated in accordance with the laws of Pakistan’, tweeted Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi.
In the circumstances, his note of defiance is understandable, but the story will not end there. Prime Minister Imran Khan, on his visit to Washington to reset ties with the United States, will have a hard time convincing a recalcitrant President Trump that Pakistani laws conform to the grammar and spirit of the standard legal systems of the West and the rest of the civilized world. Under what law did Pakistani governments secretly harbour the jihadi fugitive Osma bin Laden or give protection and succour to Hafiz Saeed, the jihadi mastermind behind the terrorist assault on Mumbai in November 2008, in which some 167 innocent people perished. There will, for sure, be some blistering talk emanating from President Trump, not noted for pussyfooting with those he views, fairly or unfairly, as adversaries who have taken America for a ride in years gone by, defrauding its exchequer of billions of dollars with nothing in return. In this instance, at least, President Trump will respresent the voice of his nation, for Pakistan and its works have been conspicuously short of committed allies in Congress, indeed it is generally loathed across the aisle.
Whither Pakistan? Seriously short of cash , almost bankrupt, desperately in need of loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
There is, of course, all-weather friend, China. But all is not well there either. Beijing and Washington have locked horns in an expensive trade war. China’s current debt is 303 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to the Institute of International Finance. The figures may be contested, but not the slowdown of the Chinese economy.
Pakistan’s bloated military corners most of the nation’s wealth, leaving little for education, healthcare and infrastructure development. With the population at large averse to birth control measures and vaccination, its numbers are galloping towards doomsday levels. The Pakistan project of its founding father and his close associates may have been seeded in utopia, but has since descended into a fearful dystopia.
Imran Khan was once one of his country’s and the world’s all-time cricket greats. If he can rescue Pakistan from its plight, he will surely rank among history’s grandest and greatest statesmen. It’s an awesome challenge.
US-Turkey ties: Lessons for India
US-Turkey ties are fraught, and becoming fraughter by the week. Turkey’s acquisition of Russia’s S-400f anti-ballistic missile system has deeply upset the Trump administration. Turkey has been a close NATO ally of the United States for the past 7o years. Key US military bases have been, and are, based on Turkish territory; Turkey has by far NATO’s largest army and air force on the European continent; without Turkey NATO will have lost much of its sharpest teeth.
Turkey has security interests along the Syrian border; it perceives Kurdish nationalists as an existential threat; these issues were subsumed by an attempted coup by units of its armed forces to overthrow the Erdogan government. Many hundreds of lives lives were lost during this episode. The Obama administration was slow to respond to the crisis, presumably because the entire exercise was one of America’s attempts at regime change, for long a staple of American statecraft across party lines to maintain its global hegemony. Such attempts are too well documented to need further elucidation. It has been part of the country’s self-perceived ‘exceptionalism’ and Manifest Destiny.
In this instance, regime change might have succeeded but for the Russian President Vladimir Putin’s timely tipoff to President Erdogan on what was afoot. A shift in the geo-political tectonic plates followed, Turkish-Russian moved into a higher trajectory of mutual understanding. Turkey’s purchase of Russia’s S-400 missile system duly followed, much to Washington’s annoyance and discomfiture.
The Trump administration responded by aborting the sale of US advanced F-35 stealth fighter aircraft, to which around 100 Turkish companies have contributed with critical components. Turkey has lodged a protest with the United States on its disregard of the norms and spirit of the NATO alliance, refusing also to bow down to US diktat. Should the breach continue, Turkey will turn to deepen military ties with Russia, undermining NATO itself. The subject with its many imponderables is best left here.
What are the lessons for India? India has never been a member of NATO, although the US Congress favours according it NATO status similar to that of South Korea and Israel, both registered military allies of the United States. India has had a decades-old, time-tested relationship with Moscow to their mutual benefit. It fits in with the cardinal principal of Indian foreign policy, viz, to maintain its strategic autonomy.
International relations are not a zero sum game. Each relationship has its special dynamic based on shared national interests. Thus India and the United States are in close dialogue on China’s rise and its possible consequences for the Asia Pacific region. It has similar concerns with Japan on the subject.
However, like Turkey, India has refused to abort its acquisition of Russia’s S-400f anti-ballistic missile system or other Russian weaponry - of which Moscow has been a trusted supplier, when the US banned high technology exports to India – and these time-tested arrangements and understandings are unlikely to change going forward. As the writer Harold Nicolson remarked, the most effective diplomacy is based on proven trust. No short-term expedients can replace it as insurance of desired patnership.
Inspirational Kane Williamson
New Zealand cricket captain and star batsman Kane William won the plaudits of every cricketer past as an exemplar of true sportsmanship in facing up to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in the ODI World Cup final at lord’s, which, alas, his side lost. The tie with England was one neither side deserved to lose, so close was the result. But England prevailed and carried the day.
India’s over indulged stars, some of whom believe they are bigger than the game, have lessons to learn. Most owe their bogus reputation to mass hysteria brought on by media hype.
Think of the modest media exposure of PV Sindhu, India’s women badminton champion, and of the remarkable 19 year-old woman Hima Das from a humble Assamese background, who has won a series of gold medals in 200 and 400 metre races across Europe in testing international athletic meetings. Hima has donated half her prize money to the victims of Assam’s floods. Her grace and modesty and talent put to shame the pretentious posturing of India’s cricketing mediocrities, with their glib one-liners and tutored responses – hollow men indebted to partially sighted selectors. India pays more deserves more from its principal national sport.
