Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri was Pakistan’s foreign minister between 2002 and 2007, under the military dictatorship of General Pervez Musharraf. Kasuri was in New Delhi this week to promote his new book Neither a Hawk, Nor a Dove. He gave BLink an exclusive interview, which has been lightly edited and condensed:

In a long political career, you have worked with the Bhuttos, the Sharifs and now with Imran Khan. And you were Pakistan’s foreign minister under the military dictatorship of President Musharraf. Does that make you an adaptable politician or someone lacking ideological conviction?

There is no real ideological difference between different parties in Pakistan. Someone like Musharraf, even though he was from a military background, was more democratic than the civilian parties. When I disagreed with Nawaz Sharif I had to resign, whereas Musharraf was much more open-minded, and had better administrative skills. Musharraf also held much more modern views on women, on minorities.

The inheritance culture in our “democratic parties” brings about a different sort of dictatorial tendency. That is the great paradox of our politics. Ironically, the one party which is most democratic internally right now is the Jamaat-e-Islami. But then, I do not come from that mindset. I had also refused to join Zia-ul-Haq, though I had offers. I protested against him and was even arrested for it.

In India, your current party leader Imran Khan is seen as a bit of a populist who plays to the Islamist gallery.

You know, Imran once told me that it was strange that liberal Pakistani friends want us to go to war in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP), against our own people, while liberals in London and Paris are protesting against the war. You also have to look at the psychological aspect of it: Imran is a Pathan, though he grew up in Lahore. He will have a soft corner for Pathans who are suffering in KP. All my Pathan friends, regardless of their background, oppose the army’s actions in KP. I do have my disagreements with Imran, but on India and Kashmir, we are on the same page.

In your book, you write that after the 2008 Mumbai attacks, US Senator John McCain told you India might be considering a strike in Muridke, the headquarters of Jamaat-ud-Dawa outside Lahore.

Well, John McCain came with Lindsay Graham and Richard Holbrooke, who was President Obama’s man. It was a bipartisan group, who came from India after meeting people at the highest level, and McCain told me that there was a lot of anger in India. He said a war could take place, but it could still be averted. And he asked me what the Pakistani reaction would be, if there was a limited strike in Muridke. I could not believe my ears. I told him that the Pakistani army would be under tremendous public pressure to respond, it would be delegitimised in people’s eyes if it did not respond. So the army would give a commensurate response to the Indian action. I said the Pakistani army would perhaps go after an airfield in India, maybe one in Jammu and Kashmir. And from then on, the war could escalate as Indians may respond to that, and no one could predict how far it would go, particularly with both countries armed with nuclear weapons.

We know that Pakistan’s army plays a big role in deciding foreign policy towards India and Afghanistan in particular. Isn’t that a big hindrance to the peace process?

It doesn’t really matter who is running the foreign policy in Islamabad or Delhi, the bilateral relations are far too important for that. You don’t really have a choice in who you want to talk to. Look, the military plays a role in foreign policy in India too, and friction between the military and the civilian leadership has been seen in the US and India as well. Pakistan has gone through decades of political turmoil, we house more than 4.5 million refugees, and when you have chaos, the army ends up playing a bigger role. The civilian government can control the relationship more when there is peace.

Do you see Narendra Modi being able to make a substantial difference in the peace process or does he have to play Hindutva champion by being hawkish on Pakistan?

On Modi, I would say that a man who has risen from a humble background like he has would have a sense of destiny. He would want to do something to put the relationship back into place. But if another Mumbai were to happen, all hell could break loose.

What Modi must do is appoint a back-channel negotiator on Kashmir, someone whom he trusts, without telling anyone. If the talks make any progress after five or six months, that is when he should announce it. That is his best chance of making any progress on the peace process.

Also, most of the time, perceiving someone as hawk or dove depends on the person who is judging. For example, most Pakistanis think I’m a dove, while most Indians probably think I’m a hawk.

You’ve been part of the Pakistani ruling elite for long. Do you and other Pakistani policymakers now regret using non-state actors as foreign policy tool?

Non-state actors have been a disaster, no question about that, and we are paying a heavy price for that. We did not anticipate what has happened in terms of extremism in our own country. No one is safe in Pakistan today, including women and children. I feel the current military operation in KP will be taken to its logical conclusion, because now people in Pakistan don’t want to put up with this anymore. We don’t want to become one more Iraq, Libya or Syria.

Sambuddha Mitra Mustafi is the founder of The Political Indian, @some_buddha

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