We stand isolated today from the
world and even our own old dear friends are not coming forward to help us. We
have seen recently that even China and Saudi Arabia did not vote for us in FATF
which is a big setback for us
.
I think we are victims of our own
defective foreign policies and non-serious approach towards International
community and lack of timely actions to maintain our meaningful diplomatic
ties. Our inconsistent attitude has annoyed many of our friends and we have not
yet learned the lesson.
Here are few glaring diplomatic
blunders which have adversely affected our bilateral relations with many
countries and one has to see if it happened due to collective mistakes or faults
made at an individual level.
We got UAE annoyed on Expo-2020
event support in 2013 which was declined by Pakistan bluntly by not voting in
favor of UAE. Later, we faced embarrassment when the Bureau International des
Expositions (BIE) general assembly in Paris awarded Dubai as the host on November
27, 2013. Despite being aware of the fact that UAE is one of the biggest
investors in Pakistan and has the second largest concentration of overseas
Pakistanis yet we chose to vote for Turkey despite an earlier commitment to
UAE. In fact, UAE stood with us in the most difficult situations and helped us
in every sector. I am a witness to the earlier commitment conveyed through me
to the UAE Government of Pakistan’s support and vote for UAE but the PML N did
not oblige UAE by not honoring the commitment of PPP Government. This adversely
dented our diplomatic ties with UAE. Pakistan suffered big setbacks in
maintaining diplomatic relations with UAE and fault was totally on our part.
We annoyed Iran authorities as well
when on 25th March 2015, Indian spy Kulbhushan Jhadav was arrested near
Baluchistan and Pakistani investigators found that the arrested Indian spy was
running a terrorist financing and training network that used to operate from
Chabahar in Iran and in the visit of president of Iran he was questioned in
most unbefitting manners and proper diplomatic norms were not followed to deal
with the visiting head of State.
The previous Government also
mishandled the diplomatic terms with Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as well in 2015
when the support was requested for their “Determination Storm” operation. Saudi
Arabia formally requested defense support in 2015 when the country announced
the formation of a 34-state Islamic military coalition to combat terrorism and
asked for Pakistan’s military support, Nawaz Sharif first assured HRH King
Salman Bin Abdul Aziz of their support but later on, Pakistan’s joint
Parliament session unanimously rejected this Saudi request for Pakistani troops
to support its Yemen campaign. The reason to why and how it got rejected is another
story and will reveal sometimes later.
Truly speaking’ Saudi Arabia helped
us in 1965 with the planes and spare parts but we failed to give the requisite
support to Saudi Arabia at the time of need. We took few steps later but it was
too late as the damage was already done and Saudi Arabia had already lost
confidence in us and dependence on Pakistan was shifted to the USA.
Saudi Arabia paid us in the same
coins by not supporting us in FATF and we lost the crucial brotherly support of
an elder brother. We noticed Saudi Arabia gracing with the highest protocol to
Indian PM and India did create space there both in Saudi Arabia and UAE.
Moreover, the increasing
Sino-Indian ties are detrimental to Pakistan. There is deliberate anti-CPEC
propaganda which may create some miscommunications between Pak and China and
Pakistan needs to counter this anti - CPEC propaganda.
The western anti mindset against
Chinese International Economic policies has already attributed to the
consecutive failures of Chinese Investments in Venezuela, African countries,
Sri Lanka. It is western bid to block the rising strong economy of China which
is quite evident from the recent statements of the USA on the Chinese fiscal
policies.
The CPEC will give a strong boost
to the export of Chinese finished goods and raw material via Gwadar which will
also benefit Pakistan if both follow and protect each other’s Economic
interest. The recent propaganda engineered against CPEC both abroad and at home
is to dent this initiative.
Ministry of Foreign affairs and
other stakeholders need to formulate a workable policy to counter these
negative vibes against our Sino Pak Economic bond. Let us be grateful to China
as we have witnessed in the recent past Pak history that it was China which in
fact continued its development projects here even when terrorism was at its
peak in Pakistan.
Let us continue to enhance our
friendship and level of cooperation with China and our policy towards China
should be friendlier. Also, we should not ignore the USA as it has its own
importance in this region and it is equally important for us too.
Let us not forget that the USA
bases its Foreign policies to fulfill its own geopolitical targets.
The US has been giving significant
and weapon only when the USA needed Pak help and hence we also need to watch
our national interest through our balanced Foreign policy towards the USA.
Our relations with the USA need to
be restored and we need to objectively analyze those factors which are creating
negativity and how can the misunderstanding between Pak and the USA be cleared.
“War on terror” slogan of USA is
dying now with the passage of time whereas the war on terror has already
entered like a virus in the entire Muslim world. This virus called “war on
terror” is spreading among the Muslims and virus of Daesh is drastically damaging
the fiber of unity of Muslim Ummah.
Pakistan needs to handle these
issues by improving relations with fellow Muslim countries and USA at the same
time.
The Article has been Published in ``The Nation’’ on
September 17th, 2018
The Link to Article is: https://nation.com.pk/17-Sep-2018/review-of-foreign-policy
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