An Indian TV channel excitedly reported unusual air traffic between Nur Khan Air Base, the high-security Pakistan Air Force facility in Chaklala near Rawalpindi, and a flurry of incoming flights from Turkey. The report did not name the source, but the innuendo linking it to the so-called Mecca Pact (Saudi Arabia-Türkiye-Pakistan) is unmistakable.
The plot thickens with US Ambassador Sergio Gor appearing in Srinagar and Leh within days of a meeting with National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. How much the ensuing spike in India-Pakistan tensions is a fallout of the developing matrix of inter-related events is too hard to tell at the moment. It is up to Gor to explain why he uttered the explosive word “Kashmir” at all so very publicly in Srinagar with Chief Minister Omar Abdullah by his side, and thereby raising dust in India-Pakistan relations. Gor wouldn’t be unaware of reports in mainstream American media that the family of US President Donald Trump made a cool profit of a billion dollars or more by trading in cryptocurrency with the Pakistani partners. Trump would certainly know it is idiotic to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Evidently, Gor did not speak for Trump.
That said, the Mecca Pact opens the gateway for Islamabad to leap out of the orbit of South Asian politics and top up its recent performance as a world-class player mediating US-Iran tensions. Equally, Pakistan is positioning itself as a factor of stability in the Persian Gulf region, which Indian strategists tend to call the “extended neighbourhood”. India has a big challenge going forward.
This overlaps a period when Trump has become more unpredictable than ever. Last week, he sprang a nasty surprise on South Korea, one of the US’s staunchest Cold War allies, by announcing he has ordered the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” participation in its annual joint military exercises with South Korea. Amazingly, Trump projected the shock therapy as “a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile to a country that, as long as Donald J Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful”. Of course, he was referring to North Korea! Trump has since hinted that he intended to resume contacts with Kim Jong-Un, Supreme Leader of North Korea.
Furthermore, Trump has demanded that South Korea pay $10 billion annually for the deployment and presence of roughly 28,500 American troops in the country. It represents a massive multiplier—nearly nine times Seoul’s current financial contribution toward hosting US forces under an existing five-year cost-sharing framework (Special Measures Agreement). It is entirely conceivable that Trump may order US troop withdrawal from South Korea—perhaps, as quid pro quo for the North Koreans ending their involvement in the Ukraine war.
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