The politics of style

Accessories and style have media swooning, but the same question is asked of Hina Rabbani Khar as of all Pakistan foreign ministers - who is really in charge of policy? Rarely has a Birkin brought so much attention. When Pakistan’s new foreign minister, 34-year-old Hina Rabbani Khar, landed in India for talks this week, a media frenzy erupted around her style: the pearl necklaces, elegant costumes, Cavalli sunglasses and a stylish Hermes-made Birkin bag worth at least $9,000. Khar’s glamorous turn triggered a media swoon and became the buzz of the subcontinental chattering class. “Pakistan puts on its best face,” read the Times of India headline. The minister entered the lexicon of celebrity initials: “HRK” started to trend on Twitter - one letter off Bollywood’s leading heart-throb SRK, or Shah Rukh Khan. Back in Pakistan, though, opinion was divided amid arguments about sexism, dynastic politics and the propriety of carrying a pricey handbag. On her return flight to Islamabad on July 29, Khar flicked through a stack of newspapers filled with her picture. “You don’t want the attention to focus on the frivolous,” she said. “A guy in my place would never get such attention; nobody would be talking about his suit. I refuse to be apologetic about it; I will continue to be who I am.” For all the frivolity, the trip was an auspicious start to a notoriously tricky job. Claims of a “new era” in relations seemed premature, but Khar broke the ice with her elderly Indian counterpart, SM Krishna, and negotiated several concrete measures to boost cross-border trade in Kashmir.   Baby steps, perhaps, but significant ones three years after the Mumbai attacks that threatened to tip the nuclear-armed neighbours into war.   “This is a new engagement,” she said, as the plane lifted into the sky. “I told Mr Krishna I would like to reach a point where if an issue comes up, I should be able to pick up the phone and say, ‘this really isn’t working.’ And he agreed.” Khar is used to scrutiny of her money, lineage and looks. The scion of a wealthy landowning family from southern Punjab - often called “feudals” in Pakistan - her uncle Mustafa was the subject of a best-selling but uncomplimentary book, written by an ex-wife, titled My Feudal Lord. After graduating from university in America she entered politics at 25, winning a seat in her conservative rural constituency through unorthodox means.   In deference to local sensibilities about the place of women, her landlord father Noor addressed rallies and glad-handed voters; Hina stayed largely at home, with not even her photo on the posters.   She has since displayed a deft political touch. After rising through the ranks of President Pervez Musharraf’s party, Khar abandoned the general just before the 2008 election in favour of the Bhutto-led Pakistan People’s party, which swept the poll. Now, after a series of junior positions, she has hit the major leagues, at a time of great import.   With Western troops inching towards the exit in Afghanistan, and relations with the US still reeling from the death of Osama bin Laden, Pakistan’s foreign policy is in dizzy flux.   Khar, measuring her words carefully, describes the spat with Washington as “operational difficulties”. She said: “We are in reset mode. Both sides are reassessing where there is convergence and where there is not. The challenge is to go through the process without intimidating each other.” Not so easily done. A vicious spy war between the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI has spilled into politics and the courts. Over the past fortnight, the FBI has arrested a prominent Kashmiri lobbyist in Washington, Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai, accusing him of being a front for the ISI. Pakistan has stopped CIA visas and limited movement of US personnel inside the country.   The bigger question about Khar - and every foreign minister in Pakistan - is whether she is really in charge. The army is acknowledged to control the main levers of policy, directly or indirectly: nuclear weapons, India, Afghanistan and America. Critics derided Khar’s predecessor, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, as the “army’s man”. Will Khar be any different? “We have many stakeholders, and all their views are taken into consideration,” she says, measuring her words carefully. “But at the end of the day, you have to create the space to get things done ... our job is to guide them and say ‘let’s be clear on what we can do’.” As the plane landed in Islamabad, Khar chatted about guarding the privacy of her husband, a textile mill owner, and her two young children. To critics she is emblematic of Pakistan’s over-privileged ruling class; the term “Birkin” is set to enter the local political lexicon. Yet her arrival has undoubtedly injected freshness into a tired cabinet, carrying a whiff of the early Benazir Bhutto.   It is early days yet in a job studded with pitfalls for the unwary. And as Bhutto’s death in 2007 demonstrated, power in Pakistan is dangerous too.