A hawk takes wing

Gohar Ayub Khan, as the son of the late General Ayub Khan, is heir to an impressive political heritage. Now in his late fifties, he has worked hard at building up the constituency of Haripur which his father, who was the president of Pakistan for nearly a decade, left him. While he spends most of his time at his palatial residence in Islamabad, Gohar Ayub has always made it a point to visit his constituency every week without fail. Here he listens to people who come to his one-room office in Ghazi town, onthe banks of the mighty Indus, a few kilometers from the Tarbela dam, one of the world’s largest earth-filled dams.

To the people of Ghazi and its adjoining areas, the biggest problem is not Pakistan’s policy in Afghanistan or whatever — matters that have preoccupied Gohar Ayub Khan thus far — but bread and butter issues like employment and inflation. He has, to give him due credit, been a good legislator — always listening patiently to his voters and signing numerous photocopied letters of recommendation without tiring. Some manage to get a job on the basis of these letters, while others simply turn up at the office for some further help the next week.

Gohar Ayub Khan has also successfully managed to champion the cause of people affected by another project coming up in his area: the Ghazi Barotha Dam Project. In fact, while he was in opposition, he had managed to stir up a hornet’s nest on the issue, as the local people clamoured for compensation for the land they would lose to the project. Notsurprisingly, he was voted with a resounding majority in the elections that followed.

Being in government has its downside as well. For one, voters’ expectations soar. "Now he can’t give us the excuses of being helpless," says Jawaid Iqbal who has a government job in Topi town and is now seeking Khan’s help for getting a promotion.

The Ghazi area is a part of what is known as the Hazara belt in the Northwest Frontier Province. While most parts of the province speak Pashto, the language here is Hindko — a sing-song tongue that is a mixture of several dialects. The Hazaras, as the people here are known, have no love for Pashto speakers and vice versa. This face-off between these two parties has always caused problems for the ruling party.

Only two months ago, the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) party broke its alliance with the Awami National Party of Wali Khan, a prominent force in the politics of the North West Frontier Province. Now there is a scramble for power in the province. While thePML-N has managed to retain its hold on local politics thanks to its hair-line majority, there is a major battle going on between the two parties. Gohar Ayub Khan helps to re-inforce the PML-N presence in the province.

Since he also has to cater to constituents, he is tipped to take over the more lucrative Communications ministry where the potential to dispense jobs and privileges is great. After all, if the ruling party has to retain its grip on the region, it will have to take its role as a patron seriously.

It’s not entirely surprising, therefore, that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has ostensibly agreed to reassign some other portfolio to Khan. As the latter himself pointed out in a public statement, all foreign ministers (in Pakistan) have lost elections because they had been unavailable to the electorate. But this argument doesn’t wash with some. Commented one Islamabad journalist, "This comes from the son of a president who was unseated thanks to the efforts of his own foreign minister, Zulfikar AliBhutto. How can he now deny the power of this position?"

Clearly, the exigencies of provincial politics is only one aspect of the resignation riddle. In fact, policy analysts in Islamabad tend to dismiss the suggestion that Gohar Ayub Khan had left to cater to his constituency’s needs. "This should be taken with a pinch of salt," says one.

What is quite obvious to even the most casual political observer is that Gohar Ayub Khan had become a problem for the Sharif government because of his tendency to shoot straight from the hip and end up giving contradictory signals to what the PM himself is trying to convey. In the case of both India and America, Gohar Ayub Khan came across as a hawk.

After the recent Ghauri launch, he publicly gloated that in the subcontinental missile race "we have overtaken them". Observers in Islamabad also point to an interview he gave a few weeks prior to resigning in which he was openly critical of the United States. It is believed that this interview did not go down well withthe political establishment. One newspaper even commented that Gohar Aub Khan’s remarks against America may have been the reason for the Prime Minister’s prompt acceptance of his resignation. As the newspaper put it, "The US extends considerable aid to Pakistan. That it remains a dominant player in decisions taken by all international donor agencies. That the Pakistani economy is extremely vulnerable and cannot afford to alienate a dominant power. All this may explain why Pakistan cannot alienate the US."

Gohar Ayub Khan’s departure from the Pakistan foreign affairs ministry may well signal the beginning of a change in Pakistan’s overall foreign policy vis a vis the USA. But the foreign office is intent on downplaying his departure. A briefing by the foreign office on the day that the foreign minister’s resignation was announced did not touch on the subject. Subsequent statements have been very tight-lipped. Some analysts point towards Ayub’s growing rift with the state minister in the foreign affairsministry, Siddiq Kanju, who is very close to the Sharif family. The fact that Khan’s resignation did not feature prominently on Pakistan Television’s news may also indicate that he has, in fact, fallen out of favour. But the question that is exercising many political observers is this: what does Gohar Ayub Khan’s exit mean in terms of Pakistan’s foreign policy?

An editorial in the widely-read daily, The News, comments that Gohar Ayub Khan’s exit comes at a time when there was mounting speculation that the Prime Minister was unhappy with Ayub’s performance "even as it remained clear that such unhappiness did not reflect any policy difference."

But who will Pakistan’s new foreign minister be? The issue assumes great importance at a time when the ship of Pakistan’s foreign policy is adrift in troubled waters.