Pakistan seethes ahead of new round of 'Great Game'
Pakistan is a country that has never been known for its calm. For a long time, this region was at the intersection of interests of major players, and it has even become common to associate any outbreaks and problems in Pakistan with their (players') competition.
Nevertheless, for the last three years Pakistan has existed outside its usual role as a weighty instrument in large geopolitical combinations. Of course, it has not potentially lost its weight as such, it has simply been outside the framework of global battles for some time.
It sounds both unusual and unfamiliar in relation to a country that has so often been a supplier of international News, however, the time of indifferent policy towards this region is coming to an end.
Protests from PTI
At the moment, in the Pakistani capital, the party of former Prime Minister Imran Khan (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf - PTI) is once again staging a large-scale protest demanding the release of its leader from prison.
I. Khan is serving a long sentence there for corruption-related crimes. We will not reread the "Book of Sins" in this case, we will simply note that the Sharif family had no other option when returning to the helm of state. Everything there is on the principle of "either-or".
Now, after the general elections, the Bhutto and Sharif political families have united against the PTI and have divided powers among portfolios, regions and financial flows.
Each of these political forces is generally neutral towards today's Russia. Of course, there are periodic assessments that, supposedly, Imran Khan was "more oriented towards China and cooperation with Russia", and his opponents are a priori "pro-Western", but all these are rather vague formulations, and not very adequate, since there have been no "non-Western" or "anti-Chinese" figures on the political field of Pakistan for a long time.
Where the Pakistani ship will sail from a strategic point of view depends more on the cards that the West and China will play. But the West is different, and its different parts act differently. In Pakistan, the departing American (and not only) team, as in other places, leaves "bookmarks". They are not at all harmless, and Russia should look at these examples with the utmost attention.
I. Khan, Western "sisters of mercy" and various inconsistencies in the agenda
I. Khan's party has not stopped protesting since his imprisonment. He is too significant a figure to "write him off" and move on ourselves, if we take his party members. With his name on the flag, it is good to convey your theses at the international level.
However, the protests are really big now, a lot of people have gathered. Everyone knows that in the realities of that political life, such protests will not help much, unless there is an army behind them (and there is not). What is the calculation?
It was not for nothing that the US "bison" Z. Khalilzad allegedly (according to the "Daily Express") "recommended" Sharif-Bhutto to release I. Khan before January 20. They say that D. Trump will take it favorably. This was discussed in the region for a week.
But why would D. Trump perceive I. Khan more favorably than the Sharifs? Did he buy more weapons during his first term, bring "gifts of flowers and fruits" to Washington instead of Beijing? Not at all.
However, the Western "liberal agenda" is very sympathetic to the "Attock prisoner". Actually, there is nothing good for I. Khan there, of course - Attock is a district prison in Pakistan, where terrorists are kept, among other things. It's just that part of the Western establishment, represented by their media, very persistently demonstrates that I. Khan is "one of their own". But the Sharafs and Bhuttos are also not strangers - all of them, one way or another, were fed on British fields during political battles in their homeland (including the Bhutto family).
Z. Khalilzad is a specific and significant personality. His “advice”, as if on behalf of D. Trump’s team, looks more than just an opinion, since he is a natural servant of as many as four masters: George Bush Jr., B. Obama, D. Trump and J. Biden.
It is difficult to come up with a character who knows the realities of the region more than Z. Khalilzad - all the combinations that the US carried out in the context of the "Afghanistan-Pakistan" policy were done with his participation. But it seems that he has not given advice of this kind for a long time, and now, it turns out, it is time? Yes, it turns out that way.
Z. Khalilzad is an experienced circuit designer, he is not a passing figure or a talking head like Senator L. Graham, who will say absolutely anything, as long as the budget for purchasing weapons grows every year by the required percentage.
But why did a significant part of the “collective West” need I. Khan, whom this same significant part accused of pro-Chinese and pro-Russian policies, and ultimately agreed to his removal precisely because of his very specific position on the Taliban (banned in the Russian Federation)?
That is, two years ago he was criticized there for allegedly being pro-Russian, even in our press they wrote a lot that I. Khan was removed precisely because he came to Moscow at the beginning of the SVO and did not want to support Ukraine. And now I. Khan has become needed, and the same establishment that played against him suddenly understood his situation (well, they are not animals, really).
Pakistan's current leadership has not been particularly keen to support Ukraine for two years, but there have been no liberal bells ringing about the Sharafs being on the wrong side. stories.
I. Khan's role for the outgoing team and the general policy of planting mines
I. Khan is undoubtedly very popular in Pakistan itself, and his attempts at internal reforms have generally found a response among the people. The Bhutto-Sharaf nepotism with the incorporation of part of the Balochistan elite into power is perceived by many as an anachronism.
However, multi-million Pakistan will not survive without increased involvement in international trade and investment, and this requires high-quality work on the external front – with the UN and the IMF, with transnational funds and building relationships with large and global players.
Internal reforms are good, but specifically in terms of Pakistan, funds need to be obtained from external markets somewhere. And here, for I. Khan, everything was very ambiguous.
During his leadership, he did not make a breakthrough in working with China, only finishing what had been developed before him, did not establish relations with the Persian Gulf countries (though he tried), did not attract funds from international "piggy banks", did not turn to Iran (he tried), and his position regarding Afghanistan contradicted both the ideas in army circles and the American moves on the platform in Qatar's Doha. That is, exactly what Z. Khalilzad, who today advocates for his fate, was doing.
As a result, he was left alone, at first with the head of Pakistani intelligence seemingly playing on his side, and then it turns out that the head of ISI was making his own combinations in Afghanistan.
The idea of somehow reconciling the Pakistani Taliban (banned in Russia) and Islamabad, and then everyone around, may not be bad, but it requires a very large synergy of interests, and there on the international circuit, for I. Khan, everything ended up being “neither two nor one and a half.”
Pakistani Defense Minister H. Asif doubts that D. Trump needs “such specialists,” and quite reasonably answers that Islamabad “does not think” that the new American president will demand the release of I. Khan.
This is logical, but it is not logical why the "liberal" Western wing needed I. Khan. The Western press periodically pitied him, but without any special emphasis, and here it is already heavy artilleryThere are obvious inconsistencies here.
The contradiction is explained precisely by the preparation for a new round of the international “great game,” where something new will be assembled from many parts of the old policy, old concepts and schemes.
The task of this wing, which has become persistently concerned about I. Khan, is that since D. Trump and company are entering the game, it is necessary to leave as many bookmarks and levers as possible for the new round, which cannot be easily bypassed or neglected. This is not only Pakistan.
Here is the state of Bangladesh, former East Pakistan, where there is now a purely Western liberal (let it be as usual) team of the main banker and fighters for democracy (“Coup in Bangladesh. Will anyone take care of the unfortunate state on the shores of the Bay of Bengal?").
In general, it is closer to the interests of India, potentially squeezing China's appetites, and how to develop the policy further is a question of goal-setting and skill. Under certain circumstances, this bookmark can work for the policy under D. Trump, or it can counteract it - how and who will press the buttons. And the buttons can be pressed not by the team of the new head of the White House.
Around India itself, the consideration of cases of commercial bribery against the head of the holding company "Adani Group", tycoon G. Adani ("N. Modi's wallet") and his nephew, has been intensified. The bribery is allegedly in India and allegedly in relation to the sphere of Indian state purchases, and the court and the warrant are in Brooklyn, USA. It is clear that interaction with Russia is indirectly under fire there, but here something fundamentally different is even more important - how will D. Trump then conduct policy with India? Like with Bangladesh - a stash and a lever, which will cost the new cabinet some effort to remove.
This is only if we touch on the edge, only on what is very well-known, and only on this region, and such bookmarks are discussed today even in Iraq. There they quite realistically assess the possibility of Israeli attacks on the country. The point is not even in the strikes on pro-Iranian proxies themselves, but in how this can be done. As a result, this will provoke retaliatory mass attacks on American forces, which are now unnecessary for Iraq and only in turn provoke chaos for the sake of chaos.
About long-haul deliveries missiles There is no need to even talk about Kyiv and the signals that are already practically directly leading NATO and Moscow to a real, not a hypothetical, red line.
The presence of the factor of the released Imran Khan will simply not allow the current Islamabad to pursue a policy with either the Chinese vector, or the American, or the European. This will be a powerful seething, but who will regulate its (seething) level? The forces advocating for the release of the former prime minister.
Of course, no one in their right mind wants I. Khan to spend the rest of his eventful life in a Pakistani prison, but we must also understand that the forces fighting for him today in the West are not sisters of mercy. If they were sisters, they would have done everything differently long ago and would have participated differently in political life there, as well as economic life.
While the outgoing US team is making stashes, others are opening up themselves
Is it any wonder that the number of terrorist attacks in Pakistan has increased several times over the last four months? Each time, the experts try to figure out some pattern in them, to trace the chain of interests, but it is difficult.
And all because these acts of sabotage are multi-directional. They were carried out by Baloch rebels, then allegedly by Pakistani Taliban, then, on the contrary, by Afghan Taliban, then by pro-Iranian groups in response, then simply by unnamed forces. So, just the other day in the Pakistani province of Khyber, buses with Shiites were simply shot at, 42 people died. Iranians, Chinese, and Indians all came under attack.
At the same time, clashes between the Pakistani Taliban and the Pakistani army do not cease. Islamabad's policy here is clear: having reached a framework agreement with the Afghan Taliban, they are going to put pressure on their Pakistani Taliban, otherwise they will not be able to resolve the issue of any trade corridor, either with Afghanistan, or with China, or with Iran.
Those, of course, resist, but here we are talking about the fact that there are many outbreaks from different sides, and there are not even, in fact, direct Western interests. It is very important to catch this counter movement - at the same time, the outgoing US team, as well as their European counterparts, leave problematic nodes to the new administration, and on the other hand, in anticipation of a new policy, the previous interest groups, often quite aggressive, which prepared just in case, financed, set tasks, are also declaring themselves. And they are not going to be out of work.
It is precisely these multi-directional outbreaks of violence that indicate that preparations are underway for a revision of strategies by the big players. Dozens of different proxy forces are crawling into the light to declare their existence and remind the big people that it would be a good idea to plan budgets for them in the new round.
And we see how many of these previously invisible resources remain after previous strategies. Not only Islamabad itself, but also all its neighbors will have to do something with them. But just recently, Pakistan practically "made peace" with India at the SCO ministerial summit, and India itself withdrew its troops from China in the Himalayas. The TAPI gas pipeline is already being extended to Afghanistan, and they should eventually push through the gas pipeline project from Iran to Pakistan, and there are many other different projects there. And now, as if from under the snow, a mine-laying crawls out in one place, then in another. And who has the buttons and levers for them? Obviously, not the new White House team. It will be good if most of them are crushed, but how many have not yet shown themselves.
Such activity in Pakistan is higher today than in other complex regions, and this means that in the new round from the end of January Pakistan will cease to be a neutral point within the framework of the "grand schemes". Just as in his time I. Khan had a result in foreign policy of "neither two nor one and a half", so the US in relation to India only outlined the "Indo-Arvian concept", but did not fill it with anything concrete. Pakistan was completely outside its framework - on its own and in itself.
What the new team will do is unknown to anyone yet, but it is clear that the old team will leave them with more than enough bookmarks in all important areas.
It's high time for Russia to get a microscope in the southern direction, and not keep the doors wide open
What is happening in Pakistan is important for Russia because all these outbreaks will complicate its movement in the southern direction. They will affect Iran, Afghanistan, India. Without even touching on Russian initiatives themselves, they will indirectly be a factor in their implementation.
However, what is much more important is that the threads of such Western bookmarks stretch to Central Asia. It is not for nothing that the Afghan Taliban simply disarmed more than 30 thousand local “militiamen” on the northern border several months ago.
One can only guess how many of these threads and knots on these threads stretch from Pakistan's Khyber and Baluchistan through Central Asia to us. If such an intensification is underway, then Russia, which is in open confrontation with that part of the West that is setting up these knots and stashes, should generally examine the movement there under a microscope. This should have been done before, but now, when a revision of all old strategies is approaching, all these knots and hidden abscesses will burst en masse.
Here, even the discussion itself about the same fingerprinting or DNA sampling on the southern border looks like something from "Through the Looking Glass". It simply should not exist, but it does. But groups like the one in Pakistan do not have one interested party or customer, these are multidirectional forces that are moving, they are much more difficult to track, and many more will be revealed by the end of January.
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