Overcoming regional and international isolation

Two important meetings in Islamabad are quite crucial for us to possibly get out of both regional and international isolation – if we make the right policy decisions. These are: the consultative meeting of Pakistan’s ambassadors, and the Saarc home/interior ministers’ conference in Islamabad prior to the Saarc Summit to be held in November in Pakistan. Are we really serious, even though incrementally, about initiating some changes in our otherwise maximalist security and isolationist foreign policies?

The most pressing matter before the foreign-policy selling diplomats is whether they are prepared to frankly tell the political and military leadership in Islamabad and Rawalpindi how embarrassed they feel befooling a much more informed world which does not buy our half-baked lies or understand the difference between what we pose to be and what we actually are. After all, there is a limit to diplomacy of deception and double-speak.

The main challenge before the Foreign Office and its diplomatic stalwarts is how to sensitise the rulers about excessive security agendas, and how difficult it is to reconcile that with a foreign policy aimed at averting regional and international isolation – the consequence of adventurous and confrontationist security agendas.

Ironclad security inputs have baffled the most delicate and even hawkish diplomats too much to speak out the truth about the fragility of their thankless job of defending the defenceless. The problem lies with our national security paradigm, which is the exclusive domain of our valiant men-in-arms – not elected leaders, economists and diplomats.

Our national security paradigm, living on borrowed times, is based on keeping eternal enmity with India; keeping Afghanistan in one way or the other as our exclusive reserve; aligning with the Saudis at the cost of our potentially much more rewarding relationship with Iran; flirting with the US in a transitory and troubled relationship based on the wages of fighting terrorism; and compensating our all security and foreign policy deficits by our sole reliance on China.

We still live in a Subcontinent plagued by cold and subliminal wars, the unending menace of terrorism and the perpetual instability of Afghanistan and AF-Pak border regions – now sandwiched in a two-front enmity. If the national security vision and strategy tends to perpetuate this dangerous security environ, the result shall be regional and international isolation. And if we were to reverse this adverse environment in our favour, then domestic security, economic, political and consistently principled foreign policy imperatives must guide our security paradigm, which has to be based on Quaid-e-Azam’s view: “friendship with all, enmity with none”.

Indeed being a sovereign nation-state living next to two big powers – one of them to our east, another troubled neighbour in our north-west – and yet another neighbour potentially troubled with the rise of Deobandi/Wahabi/Salafi extremism, we cannot afford to be at ease about our security and integrity. However, Pakistan has been militarily secured by our well-groomed armed forces and nuclear deterrence.

Our sustainability depends upon economic viability, internal democratic cohesion and wider international acceptability. Extending national security agendas beyond legitimate national self-defence is self-defeating and has caused our current isolation. It is also pushing us towards becoming a state crumbling under its over-extended security burdens.

Like it or not, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s vision for south and western Asia for economic interdependence/cooperation and resolution of disputes through peaceful means is the best course available to take Pakistan out of its current predicaments. Diplomacy and political acumen can achieve even those miracles that cannot be imagined to be achieved by military means.

COAS General Raheel Sharif, who rejected Bonapartism and took on the terrorism threatening Pakistan, has taken the lead in ordering his forces not to let Pakistani territory be used against the legitimate government of Afghanistan. That needs reciprocity and can be ensured by the US-led coalition, China and other regional actors through reliable and solid mechanisms.

Gen Raheel Sharif has also given a most sensible call to bring an end to all proxy wars. Why not invite India to have a highest-level security dialogue to address respective security concerns and to bring to an end all kinds of proxy wars and ongoing subliminal warfare. And, in the meanwhile, both India and Pakistan can agree to start a comprehensive, uninterruptible and result-oriented dialogue without making progress in many areas hostage to respective ‘core issues’ – Kashmir and cross-border terrorism.

The Kashmir issue should be taken out of the trajectory of India-Pakistan inimical relations. It should not be treated as a territorial or communal dispute, but of people’s legitimate right to freedom and self-determination whenever, wherever and in whatever manner they like to exercise in a peaceful manner and without coercion. This aim should not be endangered at any costs and for any ends. The political leadership and establishments on both sides will have to rise above their bellicosity and start thinking on out-of-the-box solutions – and there are ample of these that are doable (for example, the Musharraf-Manmohan Singh Formula on Kashmir).

Defining the mood prior to the Saarc moot of interior/home ministers, both the home ministers of India and Pakistan have tried to alleviate the prevailing jingoist atmosphere by vowing to avoid meeting each other on the sidelines of one of the most important meetings of the regional grouping.

Hindu communalist Shiv Sena has burnt the effigy of Shri Rajnath in Delhi while asking him to cancel his visit. The LeT and other such forces have announced demonstrations against the Indian home minister’s visit to Islamabad – vowing to “break up” India.

If our governments are to be dictated by extremists on the fringe, then nothing can move on both bilateral and the Saarc fronts. For Saarc to move forward, both India and Pakistan will have to abandon the habit of holding it back at the altar of bilateral brinkmanship.

Saarc, a most needed regional grouping hamstrung by Indo-Pak bilateral enmity, requires its members to rise above their bilateral disputes to pursue its regional economic integration agenda, which includes a South Asian Economic Union. The home/interior ministers’ meeting in Islamabad is to focus on the Saarc Visa Exemption Scheme (SVEC) to relax one of the most prohibitive visa restrictions on people across the region, between India and Pakistan in particular. The member countries of Saarc, except India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, have an almost free entry visa regime.

For over 15 years the South Asia Free Media association (Safma), a media organisation recognised by Saarc as its associated body, has been trying for free movement of journalists, people and information across the border. But its efforts have been frustrated, despite the decisions of successive Council of Ministers’ meetings to grant Saarc multiple-entry visas to 150 journalists from each country. Pakistan and India are yet to implement it.

Let’s hope in this meeting they also include journalists in the special category of ‘relaxed visa’, if at all it is being relaxed. This is not how regional economic organisations are run. Learn from Asean and EU.

The writer is a senior journalist.

Email: imtiaz.safma@gmail.com

Twitter: @ImtiazAlamSAFMA