The Man India Could Not Reach Was Publicly Shaping Pakistan's Energy Debate

In July 2013, Hafiz Saeed, the Lashkar-e-Taiba chief and principal accused in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, publicly urged the Pakistani government not to purchase electricity from India. At the time, Islamabad was exploring power imports from India as a practical response to severe electricity shortages across the country.

The episode illustrated an uncomfortable feature of the bilateral landscape. Saeed, wanted by India and carrying a ten-million-dollar American bounty, continued to operate openly in Pakistan, address the press, lead public rallies, and pronounce upon matters of state policy. The Pakistani establishment's response to his interventions was, at the very least, accommodating.

For the UPA government in New Delhi, which had invested years in dialogue and maintained that continued engagement would eventually yield strategic returns, Saeed's visibility and influence represented a persistent contradiction at the centre of its Pakistan policy. The case for sustained dialogue rested, in part, on the assumption that Pakistan's civilian leadership was both willing and able to restrain such actors. Saeed's public prominence made that assumption increasingly difficult to defend.

Discussions on electricity trade proceeded in limited form nevertheless. Saeed, for his part, remained free.