Regional tensions

IT is sensible advice at a time when common sense is in short supply in many parts of the region. Three former foreign secretaries and a former national security adviser have jointly framed a foreign policy and national security road map that ought to put this country and the region itself on a path towards stability and security. Their advice, as published in this newspaper yesterday: Pakistan must, for its own sake and for the sake of the region, act to end the international perception that it shields the Afghan Taliban and anti-India militants on its soil. Clearly, there is no panacea to the region’s security troubles, no single action that can cure its ills. Just as clearly, much will depend on sensible policies being adopted by Afghanistan and India, not least their penchant for externalising blame for many problems of their own making. Yet, Pakistan’s distancing itself from all non-state actors and insurgents — a comprehensive, obvious and irreversible distancing — is a sine qua non for domestic and regional stability.

“We must reflect why is it that Pakistan has ended up always siding with the most regressive elements in Afghanistan, some of whom we falsely regarded as assets, why most educated Afghans have become alienated from us and why we allowed our policy to fall in the insidious Afghan ethnic divide,” the former foreign secretaries and national security adviser have written. In recent times, even asking the right question tends to attract criticism from certain nationalistic quarters of seditious intent and aiding the perceived enemy. The US and Afghanistan have erred in many areas and in many of their policies over the last decade and a half and, most egregiously from a Pakistani perspective, have often blamed Pakistan for their own failings in Afghanistan. Yet, what did not make sense in the 1990s cannot be good policy today; policymakers here have helped to craft an environment in Afghanistan where radical Islamists among that country’s Pakhtuns are the only semi-allies that this country has. What future for Afghanistan can that possibly envisage that will redound to Pakistan’s interest?

On India, the equation can appear murky because of a bellicose government in New Delhi. But the terrorism problem between India and Pakistan existed long before Narendra Modi became prime minister. More to the point, Islamabad’s sensible and rightful diplomatic position on the Kashmir dispute has been internationally diminished by the perception that Pakistan nurtures anti-India militants on its soil. Where, after all, is the promised action against those involved in 2008 Mumbai attacks? Contrast also the negligible attention that India’s recent atrocities in held Kashmir have received internationally versus the grim coverage of the Uri attack. If India will not budge and the world will not listen, how does it help Pakistan to give them reason for continuing to do so?

Source: Regional tensions
Published in Dawn, September 21st, 2016