Man Behind Border Beheading

Miffed at Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ignoring him, Pakistan army chief has many reasons to play fast and loose on the LoC and scuttle any peace initiative

- Namrata Biji Ahuja

General Qamar Javed Bajwa had been upset with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for a while, but hadn’t bothered much about what the latter was doing. For, Sharif had his own personal problems to sort out over the Panama papers, and had little time for diplomacy or such other affairs of the state which he had by and large left to the army.

But, when a private jet carrying an Indian, and flying in from Kabul landed in Pakistan on April 26, the general realised that the civilian prime minister was again growing too large for his shoes. The general had not been told about the visitor, and he had to act.

The jet was flying Indian steel tycoon Sajjan Jindal as a guest of Sharif and his mission was to act as a track-two emissary between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Sharif.

Jindal was received by the members of Sharif’s family, and was driven to Murree, a picturesque hill station 40km off Islamabad, where Sharif received him with all warmth in his private residence. Hardly had the meeting got over when, much to Sharif’s embarrassment, the details of the visit were leaked to the media, apparently by the army’s media cell, forcing Sharif’s daughter Maryam to put out a defensive tweet: “Mr Jindal is an old friend of the prime minister. Nothing ‘secret’ about the meeting and should not be blown out of proportion. Thank you.”

That was Bajwa’s second rebuff to Sharif in a week. Only a few days earlier had Sharif been questioned by the army over the conduct of his foreign policy adviser Tariq Fatemi, who was suspected to have been behind certain antiarmy leaks to the media. “Already, Sharif had to sacrifice his adviser Tariq Fatemi, and, yet, the Pakistan army felt Sharif should have taken stronger action against Fatemi,” said Bharat Karnad, research professor at Centre for Policy Research in Delhi.