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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2021-04-02 14:59:30

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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.

On Wednesday, Pakistan announced the decision to import from India despite relations between the two countries at all-time low. On Thursday, it did a U-turn and announced that there will be no imports from India unless the country restored J&K to pre-August 5, 2019 status. Obviously, the first announcement was a government decision that must have been taken after considering various things like product quality, price, availability and logistics. Obviously, too, the second announcement was a decision forced on the government by the hawkish generals, other hardliners and the fundamentalists in that nation who do not want the government to have any truck with India. J&K is just an excuse, they will not allow the Pakistani government to either talk to or do business with India under any circumstances.

Just a couple of days ago, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan had made an appeal to Prime Minister Modi seeking 'result oriented dialogue' through 'creation of enabling environment'. Maybe Imran was taking the first step by creating an enabling environment by allowing imports. That would have broken the ice. But Imran had not reckoned with opposition from the generals. Or maybe he knew but wanted to test the waters. Now that he has not been allowed to have his way, it has once again been proved that the Pakistani government is just for namesake, the real strings are pulled by the generals and when it comes to India they will always have the last word.

There were many indications recently that Pakistan, for whatever reasons, was trying its best to mend its ways. Maybe it is because of the FATF sword that is hanging over its head, but Pakistan has moved against certain terrorist outfits in its country. Then the armies of the two nations jointly re-committed to the 2003 ceasefire declaration and agreed to "strictly observe" truce along the Line of Control and all other sectors "in the interest of achieving mutually beneficial and sustainable peace along the borders". But these are small issues and unless the generals allow the Pakistani government to really go for peace talks, the enabling environment which Imran Khan talks about will never be created.