Winds of change?
The author served as Executive Editor of The Express Tribune from 2009 to 2014
The invitation extended to India final month, clearly out of a blue, by Commander of Southern Command, Lt General Aamir Riaz to join a China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was after all, not an unintended off-the-cuff offer. In the framework of what has been made open after the security huddle early this week at a Prime Minister House a entice seems to have been cleared during a top level and was released in all seriousness. The huddle in doubt also redoubles the stress of a telephonic contact between Pakistan’s new Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. This was followed immediately with a transparent summary to all concerned especially to Kabul that Pakistan had finally cut off completely its relationship with a Haqqani network.
The press recover that was released after the security assembly was too brief though what it pronounced and on whose interest it was said gives one a feeling that maybe Pakistan is well poised to take a demeanour at new foreign process options other than a 70-year-old ones that had brought a nation to its current contemptible pass.
The assembly presided over by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and attended by a 7 that matter in a energy corridors of our civil and troops hierarchy talked of ‘shared objective’ indicating that a two known to have pursued differing objectives all these seven decades have during final motionless to be on one page while formulating the country’s foreign policy.
‘Peaceful coexistence, mutual honour and economically integrated region’ seems now to be this ‘shared objective’ of a polite and troops establishments and this design according to a preference taken during a assembly would aim at establishing ‘strong and jointly profitable family with countries in a region’.
Those who attended the meeting included, in sequence of protocol: Finance Minister Shaq Dar, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, DG Inter-Services Intelligence Lt General Naveed Mukhtar, PM’s Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz and his Special Assistant Tariq Fatemi and National Security Advisor Lt General (retd) Nasser Khan Janjua.
The fact that a PM during a meeting had described the CPEC as a cornerstone of a country’s query for informal connectivity and common prosperity hints during Beijing carrying some wilful contend in Pakistan’s hunt for new unfamiliar process options in a region.
For too long the country’s foreign policy had been forcibly done to serve the objectives of a GHQ but a suspicion to its impact on a country’s geopolitical interests and its socio-economic being. And attempts by successive municipal governments to normalise relations with neighbours would mostly be painted by secret hands as unpatriotic moves and would abruptly be wrecked by possibly unleashing stage-managed public wrath on a streets against these policies or some discontented elements would instigate the so-called non-state actors into pulling a country on to the margin of a fight with a really neighbour with that Islamabad was perplexing to mend fences.
Now that China and Russia have thrown their weight behind Pakistan’s pull for Afghan assent understanding one would perhaps find the Ghani administration some-more peaceful to speak to Pakistan. And as a goodwill gesture, Pakistan could also offer Afghanistan a land track connectivity to India for over-land trading. China and Russia would certainly support this gesture, quite China, the initiator of One Road One Belt project.
On a face of it a timing to strech out to India appears rather inappropriate as New Delhi seems hell-bent on isolating Pakistan globally and its new Army Chief is publicly talking of ‘more’ surgical strikes. But afterwards one should not forget that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, against a run of events in 2015, had first publicly approached our PM in Paris on a side-lines of Climate limit and then made a warn stopover in Lahore to attend a marriage rite of PM’s grand-daughter. Had a Uri occurrence that is blamed on Pakistan not happened maybe things would have been most opposite from what they are today. So, maybe reactivation of Mumbai massacre case and resumption of joint investigations into a Pathankot eventuality would emanate a required mood for India to retaliate Pakistan’s attempts to strech out to New Delhi anew.
Published in The Express Tribune, Jan 7th, 2017.
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Article source: http://tribune.com.pk/story/1286694/winds-of-change-3/