by M.K. BHADRAKUMAR
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (on left) with President Vladimir Putin of Russia (center) and Viktor Ivanov (right), Director of The Federal Narcotics Service of Russia. PHOTO/Sputnik
There is delightful irony that on the very same day that the United States Vice-President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry received the Pakistani army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif in Washington, Islamabad was also the venue of a hugely symbolic meeting between the Pakistani Prime Minister and a top Kremlin official – Viktor Ivanov, who holds the official position of the head of the anti-narcotic body in Moscow and is also concurrently the long-time deputy head of the presidential administration.
Anyone who knows the Orwellian farm would know that the army chief in Rawalpindi is ‘more equal than others’ in the country’s leadership hierarchy. The Americans definitely know, which was why they quietly encouraged Gen. Sharif to have a stopover in the US when they heard he was due to travel to the Western hemisphere to visit Brazil.
That was a smart move, because the Americans didn’t send Gen. Sharif a formal invite for a second visit within the year, while at the same time they seize the opportunity to interact with the general through a 6-day sojourn on US soil (en route to Brazil) at a time when from all recent accounts the Pakistani military has staged a ‘soft coup’ in the country.
In the event, Gen. Sharif not only met the top brass of the US military across the board, but was also received by the secretaries of state and defence as well as the vice-president – apart from meeting key lawmakers in the armed services and intelligence committees of the US Congress. The itinerary would have made military chiefs from elsewhere in the world go green with envy.
However, back in Islamabad, the civilian leadership of Prime Minister Sharif (who had visited the US on an official visit hardly two months ago) saw things differently. In a major foreign policy chief in Islamabad on Tuesday, Sartaj Aziz, Pakistan’s advisor on foreign affairs (de facto foreign minister), underscored that in the backdrop of the “geopolitical realignment” in Asian and global politics, Pakistan is no longer America’s exclusive ally.
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