Net losers

Since Partition, our foreign policy has remained hostage to the status quo and the vagaries of ruling classes. Liaquat Ali Khan’s visit was diverted by the then bureaucracy from Moscow to Washington in 1949 and since then this state has dumped all its eggs in one basket. Successive civilian and military rulers followed the same pattern with uninterrupted loyalty to dictates from our so-called allies. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was an exception; he turned the direction of our one-basket foreign policy but his removal and assassination reverted us to the proverbial square one where our thinking has remained betrothed perennially.

Such a shorted-sighted foreign policy has given us nothing but corruption, terrorism, the Indian occupation of Kashmir and the dismemberment of the largest Muslim state. The most allied ally and a major non-Nato member has constantly remained at the receiving end. We were used as a frontline state against communism and now against terrorism at an enormous cost to the progress of our own stability and security. India, on the other hand, was a favourite of the major world powers during the cold war and benefitted from the generous assistance from the two nations till today. Our ruling elites have never, and will never, accept their mistakes – be it the 1971 tragedy, the failure to settle the Kashmir dispute or any other conflict wherein our country turned out to be the net loser. Our ruling narrative has been blaming stark failures on real or imagined foreign conspiracies. Where do we go from here?

B A Malik

Islamabad