Podcast: US choices, global consequences: Hina Khar on India, Pakistan, Afghanistan & broken democracy

TRANSCRIPT: US choices, global consequences: Hina Khar on India, Pakistan, Afghanistan & broken democracy

Hina Khar:

We clearly see a trend, perhaps more propagated by the Americans than the Chinese, where their world is being divided into two different affairs. And pretty much everybody's saying, "Which camp do you belong to?" I say, we belong to the Pakistani camp.

Ian Bremmer:

Hello and welcome to the GZERO World podcast. This is where you'll find extended versions of my interviews on public television. I'm Ian Bremmer, and today as the world focuses on Russia's invasion of Ukraine, we take you to another nation caught in the middle of great power politics. Since 9/11, Pakistan has played a key and often fraught role in America's global war on terror. But deepening economic ties between Islamabad and Beijing over the past few years, signals and shift eastward in Pakistan's foreign policy orientation. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan's visit to Moscow on the eve of Putin's invasion into Ukraine only serves to reinforce that. Recently at the Munich Security Conference, I sat down with Pakistan's former foreign minister, Hina Khar. She thinks her country should walk away from the global stage, turn its focus inward. Let's get to it.

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Ian Bremmer:

Hina Khar, wonderful to see you back at the Munich Security Conference.

Hina Khar:

Wonderful to be back at the Munich Security Conference.

Ian Bremmer:

So Russia, Ukraine is getting so much attention right now, but not so far away from that is Afghanistan. And a lot has transpired since the last time we've all met together. Talk to me; I mean now that it's all fallen apart, what's the state of play from your perspective with the Taliban government today?

Hina Khar:

Okay, so the state of play right now from my perspective, or should be from your perspective, also from everyone's perspective, is that things are not falling apart, but they have already fallen apart in many ways, right? And now we are put putting up, we are ensuring, I think the international community is setting the stage for an absolute failure. So you want a hundred and hundred guaranteed failure of the Afghan state in how we've reacted to this hasty, hurried catastrophic departure of international forces from Afghanistan. I'm just coming in out of the session on Afghanistan. And it's very interesting to see that we have selective amnesia. Actually we have long-term amnesia.

Ian Bremmer:

In terms of what, tell me, what was it that you were most struck by?

Hina Khar:

Okay, Ian, look, Pakistan has had a different perspective. My perspective may not be completely aligned with the state of Pakistan's perspective, right? But I can give you a perspective. Now in the history withdrawal, I think one thing that has made it very, very clear to me is that the US and allied forces or the international community came to Afghanistan because there was a domestic demand for a reaction to 9/11.

Ian Bremmer:

Of course. Of course.

Hina Khar:

Okay?

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah.

Hina Khar:

And they left-

Ian Bremmer:

Internationally, across in the entire coalition, yes.

Hina Khar:

And not because the Afghans invited them or the Afghans needed them, or they came to help out Afghans et cetera, right? And they left when the demand for the Afghan adventure just completely ceased to exist. So they were responding to demand before and they were responding to demand later, domestic demand. Now what happens is that you might be responding to the domestic demand for action and then no action. But in the process, the Costs of War study tells us that we lost 926,000 people altogether in the post 9/11 wars that the US conducted. Okay?

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah.

Hina Khar:

363,000, somewhere close to that were civilians. Now I ask you, because we propagate. Because many of the problems that we're seeing and we experience every year at Munich and conferences such as that about the grand question of international values, et cetera. I think we have to ask ourselves a question.

Are we really propagating international value system across the board for all nationalities? If it was the 363,000 American, British, European lives, would it still be fair game?

Ian Bremmer:

No.

Hina Khar:

It won't be. Right? And that is why interventions themselves, I feel, have broken or cast a deep shadow on the entire democratic sort of value system. Of course, people are talking about the starving Afghan people who need our help, but that's like the white man's burden, not accepting what you did wrong in creating the situation that is starving the Afghans right now. And not accepting that you are continuing to do something wrong, to setting the stage for more Afghans to die. Right? Now, for instance, if an American important person were to say that the Taliban must never be legitimized. I asked the question, who legitimized the Taliban in the 2020 document in which they were called the people? You know, there was this long nomenclature used to define the Taliban and which country decided to engage with the Taliban direct before the intra- Afghan dialogue, which was being-

Ian Bremmer:

You're talking about the Trump administration?

Hina Khar:

I'm talking about the US administration, right?

Ian Bremmer:

Yes, that's right.

Hina Khar:

So when you talk about Pakistan, you talk about Pakistan. Yeah. You don't talk about Imran Khan or Nawaz Sharif.

Ian Bremmer:

No, that's fair. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely

Hina Khar:

Absolutely. So the choices you make, fortunately or unfortunately have consequences that you don't have to live through. But I have to live through because I belong to that region. And the whole interventions of the last two decades I think have had such unintended consequences that we are going to live through the consequences of those for decades to come, is because of the fact that the value system that you want, that you espouse domestically, you do not espouse internationally when you do these interventions.

Ian Bremmer:

Well, that seems pretty clear. That, if you're talking about are the Americans consistent in applying values everywhere, are the Americans consistent in wanting to be sort of an equivalent sheriff globally all over the world. We can come up with many examples with that is not the case. The issue in particular is that Afghanistan has been that. It has been the poster child of that for decades, at spectacular cost with enormous failure and also a breadth of an enormous coalition that's been involved. But here we are, it's been done. The Americans are out, nobody's really in. It's not like the Chinese and Russians are saying, "Okay, now we want it." So what do you think is the path forward? I mean, when you say that there won't be a functioning state in Afghanistan, what does that mean? When does that mean? Who does it mean it to?

Hina Khar:

Okay, so we didn't choose, or you and I did not get to choose what has happened in the Afghanistan, right? But there were elements which enabled the situation in Afghanistan to become what it was. So the situation is what it is right now. Okay? I am no spokesperson for the Taliban. I do not espouse to any of the value system that they bring. I think that the biggest threat, their coming to power in Afghanistan is the biggest threat to my country. In the symbol, in the messages that it sends to the extremists and at the security level. However, if they are the reality that they are right now, then isn't it better to engage with them to make sure that there is, to give, to incentivize them to come up with an inclusive government? Perhaps give the rudimentary necessary civil rights and services?

Ian Bremmer:

Do you think that's possible?

Hina Khar:

Enable them to that.

Ian Bremmer:

To do that with this group? Is that possible?

Hina Khar:

Can I just end? Because when you said the US is out, well the US is out, but the US continues to not really be out because if you hold back their reserves, you're not really out. You're taking some action.

Ian Bremmer:

There's a role.

Hina Khar:

There there's a role that you have a role, which may be a negative role. So I'm saying that if everybody was out, completely out and they were left to their own devices, I think loved ones would pretty much sit around the table and say, "Okay. I think they would've always done that." I think the international community, all of us together combined, my country too maybe, came in the way of the Afghan being able to have that intra-Afghan dialogue, right? Because we were all giving our own solutions and the only solution we didn't care about was the Afghan solution, perhaps. Okay?

Ian Bremmer:

You said so if the Taliban are there, we need to figure out how to work with them. Because there is this sense in the United States that there's no Taliban 2.0. That in reality this is a group that is beyond the pale, that you can't work with them, you can't engage with them. Is your view that that's not the case and why?

Hina Khar:

No. Absolutely not, I am no spokesperson for them. I don't espouse to any of the values that they bring in. I don't espouse to their governmental system or their values for women. And the fact that it's not inclusive, the fact that schools for girls are still not open, none of that. However, we have the luxury to have an ask. I mean they are there right now. So for you to say, "Oh, we don't want to engage with them." is basically, if you are becoming an enabler of 35 million Afghani starving, I will judge you on that and I have a right to judge you on that, right? Because those Afghans starving will have an impact, at least on my country, and certainly on the Afghans. And forget my country's impact or your country's impact. What about the fact that these are lives and weren't we propagators of human rights and value of human life? So where does it all go? Do we have the luxury to have grand positions that we can hold when, especially when in the last 20 years or 30 years, we have done a pretty shoddy job?

Ian Bremmer:

So I take it that at a minimum, listening as opposed to just hearing would mean that all of the reserves that are now the Taliban's reserves as the government, even though no one voted for them, you would suggest should be unfrozen, they should be made available to the Afghan people?

Hina Khar:

Of course they should be made available to the Afghan people, but to the Afghan people, as I'm saying. So I'm not talking about recognizing the Taliban. All I'm saying is that you tried to create Alice in Wonderland in the Afghanistan for three decades. You failed miserably.

Ian Bremmer:

So let's talk a little bit about your country and where you see Pakistan's role in international affairs right now. How is it changing?

Hina Khar:

Okay, so Ian, I'm a very different person than typically you would find an ex-foreign minister or a current foreign minister. I do not look for a Pakistan or a Pakistani role in international affairs. I pretty much want Pakistan to take time out and concentrate in on its own within domestically.

Ian Bremmer:

You know, that doesn't sound like a foreign affairs minister. Usually that's not what you get.

Hina Khar:

Because I think Pakistan has suffered from wanting a role. Pakistan has suffered for the last four decades for having a role perhaps pushed on it because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. And then from then onwards, Pakistan has never really had breathing space. And economically we have weakened ourselves in that process. We have been a dependent in that process, by the way, I believe the aid architecture. So when we are, we'll talk about humanitarian crisis and developmental spending, the aid architecture both on the humanitarian side and on the development side, it's pretty much broken as a recipient country. I managed that portfolio for Pakistan for seven years. I can tell you it is broken. Whether it's US aid, the European Union, any and each one of them.

So there are many international goods that we need to fix within the international architecture. But from Pakistan's perspective, I would not want Pakistan to have any role. I would want Pakistan to concentrate inward. I would want Pakistan to secure its borders, not allow threat to emanate from a very, very revisionist India, if you allow me to say this. From Afghanistan,

Ian Bremmer:

I'll push you on that later.

Hina Khar:

Yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

But that's okay.

Hina Khar:

You're more than welcome to. I take the bait on that one.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah. Okay.

Hina Khar:

And Afghanistan, the instability from Afghanistan, we have owned too much instability. So we've been larger than life and we said, "Oh, all the refugees, 3 million come over, we'll take care of you, et cetera." Our first responsibility to take care of our own.

Ian Bremmer:

So what I'm kind of hearing from you is a little bit more of, I mean, India now part of the Quad, it's engaged more with the United States, but India's more traditional role in foreign policy has been non-aligned.

Hina Khar:

Absolutely.

Ian Bremmer:

We want to work with everyone. We don't want to do geopolitics.

Hina Khar:

Yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

Are you suggesting that actually what Pakistan needs is the traditional Indian foreign policy?

Hina Khar:

They only benefited from it and we didn't really benefit from being overly aligned with one country or the other. I don't believe. What is-

Ian Bremmer:

You can say it. You can say, "Pakistan needs India's traditional foreign policy."

Hina Khar:

No, I don't think so.

Ian Bremmer:

You're not going to go there. You don't want that quote?

Hina Khar:

No, because India was not really non-aligned. It said it was non-aligned, but it was aligned in many ways. But what I'm saying is that look, India had its successes. I think India is now going to a trajectory where it'll not be able to come back to seeing a positive trajectory anymore. I think the whole concept extremism being propagated at the state level. You know, The Economist did a very good article where it said that it is ticking all the boxes on democratic system, but the democratic pillars in India are being eroded.

Ian Bremmer:

I mean given the enormous importance of China's economy in the region, Belt and Road, the investments. I mean, how does one say "Actually Beijing, I mean the Pakistan was invited to the Biden democracy summit and said no." And there was much said and much written about the fact that well, the Chinese told you not to attend.

Hina Khar:

Not really. I don't think the Chinese did. I think maybe some of the wrong choices we make are on our own. Give us that much credit.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah.

Hina Khar:

Okay. So I say this because I think Pakistan has suffered from over attention rather than lack thereof. And the whole concept of a sovereign state is a state which can make its own decisions on what works for it in which situation. So where we are now, we clearly see a trend, perhaps more propagated by the Americans than the Chinese, where the world is being wanted to be divided into two different affairs.

And pretty much everybody's saying, which camp do you belong to? I say, no camp. I say, we belong to the Pakistani camp. And I say, we are very set on remaining and we should remain within the Pakistani camp. And it is exceptionally important that Pakistan is able to build on its strengths. A country which is dependent on IMF largest cannot really want to have an over-projected role in the world. Our first role should be to our own people. Our first responsibility should be to our own. I think we've ignored that too much. And I think that's what fractured democracies are looking like. And therefore democracies are supposed to be means to an end. I think we've gotten so warped up and involved in the means that we have stopped looking at what the end of what democracies were, for the people.

Ian Bremmer:

Human development, civil society, social contract, that works.

Hina Khar:

And may I add over here that I feel that the West is feeling so threatened right now, not because of many other things, but because it feels that now there's an alternate model perhaps? Which is giving the end through means, which are not democratic, perhaps. Entirely democratic as in Western democracies. And that is perhaps leading to the fear and that is leading to all of this restlessness and the helplessness.

Ian Bremmer:

And you said you'll take the bait. I believe you, when you mentioned to me about the democratic erosion in India. Because you referred to India under Modi as a "rogue state", which is a strong statement. Do you still feel that way? He's very popular today in India, he's about to win a whole bunch of state elections. Do you still feel that way?

Hina Khar:

You know, Ian, everyone who's doing the wrong thing is popular in their own countries. So this whole theme of helplessness, and we talked about it in the main session, that helplessness felt by people, by the electorate, creates this demand for someone coming in with an alternate system. So India is a secular developing country with strong democratic credentials. And here comes this person who gives an alternate route to India, which is non-secular for sure. India, since we talked, by the way, there has been the Citizen Amendment Act. Okay? I think after that was the Kashmir or just around the same time. So it-

Ian Bremmer:

Taking away of the autonomy?

Hina Khar:

Taking away of the autonomy, taking away of the autonomy and the Citizenship Act is not a small thing, right? Basically you're saying everybody who's Hindu has a right to be an Indian citizen. Anyone who's Muslim has the least right? And anyone in the middle, we'll think about it. And after that there have been attacks on universities, there have been the attacks on people covering their head. So that is not a liberal India where you're propagating a certain person or certain set of people who are Indians and the rest are not. If you don't follow the right religion, if you don't follow the right ethnicity, you may not be as Indian as the others. That is very, very dangerous. Because India is a large country. India has a regional presence. And I will connect this to the Quad because India is in Quad. Why? Suddenly why has the Quad come up? Because everything that is happening in the world, or at least our part of the world, has to do with containment of China.

Ian Bremmer:

A reaction to China. That's a reaction.

Hina Khar:

I'm going to stick to that position because pretty much everything that is happening around our region, where the West is involved, where the US particularly is involved, all of it is coming in from an affair of China, from a containment of China policy. And India today can get away with murder and the West would look away because they look at India as the only alternative to containing China within the region. Embroiling China, in some ways. I think it's very, very dangerous. The trends in the world right now are supremely dangerous.

Ian Bremmer:

How can Pakistan avoid taking side with that level of investment and alignment of the Indians heading towards the containment sphere and China only becoming more and more powerful economically, militarily, technologically? I mean, it doesn't feel... I understand why you would want to be able to hedge. It feels harder. Especially, we're not talking Singapore here. We're not talking the UAE.

Hina Khar:

Yeah, yeah.

Ian Bremmer:

Pakistan is a country that's in desperate need of investment development. It's got to come from somewhere.

Hina Khar:

So it's coming from whoever is willing to give it to us.

Ian Bremmer:

That sounds mostly like China.

Hina Khar:

That is China. And that is also the countries whoever is willing to. So you see, the thing with China also is now we have a lot of Western countries telling us, "Oh, you're taking too much." Not assistance. It's border-

Ian Bremmer:

It's investment, debt.

Hina Khar:

It's investments from China. And as someone who has Pakistan's investment portfolio and aid portfolio for almost seven years, from 2002 till about 2010, so quite long time. We pretty much begged every country for the same level of investments in hard loan, in stock loan. We begged the World Bank for those type of infrastructure investments. It was not forthcoming. So then China comes up with this initiative and it's exactly what we've been asking for. Of course we're going to take it. That's what I call sovereign decisions, Ian. So when I say we are not aligning with anyone-

Ian Bremmer:

But there are consequences to taking money.

Hina Khar:

Might consequences, but you see the consequences are for you to figure out and for me not to care about.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah.

Hina Khar:

Because I will do what is right for my country. I should do what is right for my country. I should make choices which are aligned with my country's interest. Right now, my country's foremost, only interest should be the betterment of its people. We have ignored that for far too long. Okay? We've been too embroiled Afghans' problem and this problem and that problem and how bad India is and how good someone else is to really concentrate on our people and our people have suffered. We are 220 million people. That's a lot of people. It's a lot of youth. I think mostly, pretty much every country will do much better if they were to focus inward. We have lots of issues, I think, each one of us within our own countries.

Ian Bremmer:

Hina Khar, thank you very much.

That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World podcast. Like what you've heard? Come check us out at gzeromedia.com and sign up for our newsletter signal.

Announcer:

The GZERO World Podcast is brought to you by our founding sponsor, First Republic. First Republic, a private bank and wealth management company understands the value of service, safety, and stability in today's uncertain world. Visit firstrepublic.com to learn more. GZERO World would also like to share a message from our friends at foreign policy. Could empowering women in the workplace be the simplest way to boost the global economy? In a word, yes, but how? 'The Hidden Economics of Remarkable Women' is a new limited series podcast from foreign policy featured on Apple Podcasts' 'New and Noteworthy'. Listen to 'The Hidden Economics of Remarkable Women' wherever you get your podcasts.

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