Pakistan needs to safeguard sovereignty, interests

LAHORE

The world’s chessboard is half a move away from World War III and Pakistan needs to be extremely cautious and extraordinarily smart in its actions to ensure its sovereignty and safety of its interests and people especially considering the country’s tripartite alliances, historically with the US, exclusively with China and its recent warming up to Russia. 

These concerns were shared by accomplished international affairs consultant and The Diplomatic Council’s Ambassador and United Nations Commissioner Qaiser Jamal, in an exclusive interview with The News, on his brief visit to Pakistan from his permanent residence in Germany.

Known in the global community for his expertise on security and economic affairs, Qaiser Jamal is a graduate from the most prestigious University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School and Harvard Business School. He has advised international non-government organisations, political parties and government figures which include Hans-Joachim Otto, Germany’s State Secretary of Ministry of Economics and Technology and Hans-Jürgen Beerfeltz, the late Secretary General of Westerwelle Foundation and a member of Germany’s Free Democratic Party.

“The world after a span of predominant uni-polarity has once again become a battlefield for global stronghold between America, Russia and China. There are lessons to be learnt from the past something like this happened and Pakistan surely does not want to be in the position Turkey was after WW II”, he said, explaining the current fragile state of global affairs.

He was of the view that Pakistan cannot afford to turn its back on the US right now robustly or even subtly. However, it would not be wise to disengage from Russia’s recent diplomatic advances. “The policy-makers in Pakistan need to understand that there are as such no red lines or set of rules written in stone. Diplomacy if done right has a way of testing a number of possibilities, striking the right balance is the key”, he commented.

Jamal, who has published a book on the Syrian crisis, while talking about the entire debate regarding political isolation of Pakistan, said the factors spinning this situation into action are multi-fold. “While the global pressure on Pakistan regarding eliminating terrorism and its spill-over cannot be discounted, Pakistan needs to understand that much of it could be because of its exclusive relationship with China and its project OBOR (One Belt One Road, CPEC) and the global inertia to this project”, said Jamal Qaiser. 

All this skepticism about the country being economically overrun by Chinese, the fears of economic isolation should be seen as challenges, because this project just might be Pakistan’s best bet to economic progress and fiscal stability in the longer run, he believed. 

Being accomplished in the field of economics, Jamal saw the global economic market share as the battlefront of all diplomatic ties and was of the view that laws, regulations and global treaties apparently shape the rules of engagement; however, economics might trump all this, mostly with little or no consequence. “I am the UN Commissioner of the Diplomatic Council, and I know the US has blatantly violated countless UN regulations. From the invasion of Iraq, the breach of sovereignty of many countries through drones, to funding rebel groups against elected governments. But because of its economic enormity the UN has failed to take action. My point is not the inability of the UN but highlighting the importance of economics”, he pointed out. 

He was of the view that Pakistan’s global image problems were not exclusive to terrorism in the form of Taliban. “The real problem that dents the image of Pakistan globally is its discriminatory behaviour towards religious and sectarian minorities”, Jamal shared. 

“As someone who deals with policy matters, I believe that legislating to rewrite the Constitution in a way that it is more progressive and less ambiguous regarding what “supporting propagation of religion” means, should not be such a taboo”, he proposed. 

Calling for a more empirical understanding of the nomenclature of power in Pakistan and the delicate balance between civil-military relationships, Jamal said unintelligent copy-paste of western democracy should be a thing of the past now. Pakistan should mature enough to understand its multi-cultural, multi-ethnic polity and the undeniable role of the military due to Pakistan’s geostrategic positioning and it should devise its customised form of truly representative democracy.