Imran Khan’s Pakistan wants to call. But Modi’s status is, ‘Can’t talk, WhatsApp only’
There will never be an end to Pakistan’s Kashmir policy. Even if it means the only talks it can hold is with itself.
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Then there is the curious case of PM Khan who still hasn’t recovered from Modi snubbing him. “I couldn’t understand why Modi didn’t want to talk,” he perhaps thinks. But Khan understands that he wants to talk to Modi on Kashmir, the same Modi he wanted to see re-elected and solving the issue of Kashmir. So, in one speech you go on to compare the Modi government with ‘Nazis’, while in the next, you want Modi to be your ‘yaar’. How does that work? Nonstop rhetoric will win you hashtags, but that doesn’t take forward the bilateral discourse.
Then there is the dilemma of foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi. One day, he tells us Pakistan won’t talk to India till it rolls back the scrapping of Article 370. The next day, he asks why India fears talking to Pakistan? Consider this the modern version of Allama Iqbal’s “shikwa, jawab-e-shikwa (complaint, response to the complaint)”. Only making it more potent with Qureshi’s theatrics. Unlucky, Iqbal isn’t around to witness it. Lucky us, or not.
There was also special assistant to Imran Khan on national security division and strategic policy planning, Moeed Yusuf, who was the first to break the news that India desires to start talks with Pakistan. Yusuf seemed to imply that India was dying to talk to Pakistan, only that India was oblivious of its desires, as we later found out. “Pakistan will take two steps if India takes one,” he now tells us. All hangs in balance over the “if”."
The twists and convolutions by the powers that be in Pakistan is really comic.