President commends book on peacekeeping

Islamabad : President Alvi on Friday appreciated Brigadier (r) Dr. Tughral Yamin, senior research fellow, Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) and former director and associate dean, Centre for International Peace & Stability (CIPS), National University of Science and Technology (NUST), for writing a book about Pakistan's perspectives on global peacekeeping.

In a meeting with the author at the presidency, Dr. Alvi said the book titled International Peacekeeping: Perspectives from Pakistan and published by IPS Press was a piece of distinctive and much-needed scholarly work that would go a long way in emphasising the country’s commitment to the cause of global peace and would highlight its efforts towards the realisation of the same goal.

Brigadier (r) Dr. Tughral Yamin said ever since Pakistan started participating in the UN peacekeeping operations in 1960, it had earned the reputation of being one of the largest and most professional troop-contributing countries among the UN member states.

He regretted that very little has been written by Pakistani scholars on the subject so far.

"This drought in this field has done great injustice to the accomplishments of Pakistani peacekeepers as well as to the national peacekeeping philosophy. This edited volume attempts to cover this obvious gap in the existing corpus of UN peacekeeping literature and gives voice to Pakistani scholars and practitioners on this subject," he said.

The author said the book covered a wide array of topics ranging from foreign policy motivations to modern trends in peacekeeping and how Pakistan is adapting to these emerging challenges and bought out the lessons learned from various operations.

He said the book also presented the ideas and thoughts of veteran peacekeepers, professors, and research students of CIPS, and was a must-read for those studying peacekeeping.