Explaining Pakistan's Foreign Policy: Escaping India by Aparna Pande

Author:Aparna Pande [Pande, Aparna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Ethnic Studies, General, Human Geography, Social Science, Political Science, Regional Studies, Terrorism, Security (National & International)
ISBN: 9781136818943
Google: ceg-kSmft94C
Goodreads: 17551640
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2011-03-16T00:00:00+00:00

“Mujahidana dosti”58: security against India

In 1971, on the 20th anniversary of the start of diplomatic relations between Pakistan and China, a Pakistani newspaper put forward the key reason for the Pakistan-China friendship: China's “no-strings attached” “generous assistance at moments of our greatest need” when other countries “were unsympathetic or wished to appear uncommitted.”59 The inauguration in February 1971 of the 15,000-ft high all-weather road over the Khunjerab Pass in the Karakoram mountains linking Pakistan through Gilgit, Hunza and Misgar with Chinese Xinjiang reflected these sentiments. In the defense field, Chinese-supplied tanks comprised 25 percent of Pakistan's tank force, Chinese-supplied aircrafts 33 percent of Pakistan's 270 planes, 65 percent of all interceptor-bombers and 90 percent of Pakistan's modern fighter planes.60

At the start of the civil war in East Pakistan, Chou En-Lai let President Yahya Khan know that China treated the incident as “purely the internal affair of Pakistan.”61 In November 1971, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto then Prime Minister designate led a high-powered delegation to China and, on his return declared “the visit was a complete success, complete in the complete sense of the word.”62 The reason for this jubilation was that during Bhutto's trip the Acting Chinese Foreign Minister had stated that “should Pakistan be subjected to foreign aggression, the Chinese government and people will, as always, resolutely support the Pakistan government and people in their just struggle to defend their State sovereignty and national independence.”63

However, despite Pakistani expectations to the contrary, neither United States nor China came to Pakistan's aid to the extent that Pakistan's rulers anticipated. China did not give Pakistan the same support in 1971 as it did in 1965. With hindsight Pakistani policy-makers have come up with a rationale for China's perceived inability to help Pakistan. Pakistani strategists maintain that the key reason China was not able to help Pakistan to the extent that it would have liked was the Soviet threat to China. The Soviets had amassed troops on the Sino-Soviet border and China was worried the Soviet Union might preemptively strike its nuclear capability. Some analysts insist Pakistan's leaders, like Yahya and Bhutto, misinterpreted Chinese support. The Chinese pledge of “support for Pakistan's independence and state sovereignty” meant just that: preserving a “strong and independent West Wing” not both wings.64 What Pakistani policy-makers are hesitant to contemplate is that maybe China did not perceive it was in its interests to enter the India–Pakistan conflict! This is perhaps because accepting this possibility would mean that their (Pakistan's) image of a powerful neighbor (read China) who will protect them from “Hindu” India would not be valid and this is something they are not ready to admit.

Hence, after 1971, Pakistan's leaders continued to state that China had done all it could to help Pakistan. In February 1972, then President Bhutto declared that “within the limitations China did what she could” and that Pakistan had “not lost confidence in China's friendship or China's words.”65 Among Bhutto's first trips after taking over as President were his trip to China and trip to the Muslim Middle East.

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