A better conceived foreign policy

The great writer and veteran diplomat Pitras Bukhari, wielding his characteristic wit, once said, "Pakistan has no foreign policy. She has foreign relations." Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani blazed no new trail during his visit to the US. It remains dyed-in-the-wool that Pakistan's foreign policy revolves around competition with India, cultivating China as a longstanding ally, seeking a security relationship with the US, and a desultory cultural and economic relationship with the rest of the world. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the UK are sometimes mentioned in the same breath but relations with India and the US remain primordial to Pakistan. They are intertwined with a deep cascading effect on anything it does with anybody anywhere else in the world. This is perhaps the first time that all countries that matter to Pakistan agree on how Pakistan should act in the war on terror. But we need to see if the war on terror has brought changes only in Pakistan's tactics or really impacted its thinking in terms of new foreign policy imperatives.

Since the country's birth, the Pakistani establishment is paranoid about Indian designs of hegemony. Obsession with dominating Afghanistan for strategic depth is an offshoot of the same belief. Indians have done far less than they should to remove the feeling of inherent insecurity among their neighbours. Although it owed to Pakistan's own serious shortcomings, India's active involvement in the break-up of Pakistan in 1971 sealed distrust between New Delhi and Islamabad. Accords and agreements in the later years did little to remove deep-seated misgivings. A lot more has to be done, consistently, from people-to-people contact and cultural exchanges to the building of solid economic and political relationships. The Kashmir issue should be resolved rather than being put on the side-burner, leaving a chance to be exploited by someone in future. Emerging water disputes must be pre-empted and addressed justly. The premise for partitioning India was based on creating peace in the subcontinent, not perpetuating violence. Once a relationship of trust is established between the two countries, Pakistan will be able to focus on more important issues.

In the aftermath of the Cold War, Pakistan benefited much less from the transformed global economy and polity compared to other partners of the US. Pakistan could neither capture new markets nor exert any political or military influence anywhere for more economic gains. This has been continuously argued that if Pakistan becomes strong from within, both economically and politically, we would be able to define new ways of engagement with global economic and military powers, based on equality, respect and understanding of each other's culture.

Only through building a strong economy and giving democratic rights to its citizens, can terms of partnership with everyone, including the US, be revised. Anti-imperialism does not make me see the American society as a whole an enemy of the aspirations of the Pakistani people. The progressive sections of Western societies are fast realising that neo-colonialism and establishing new order through military might is not only inhumane, unjust and destructive at a moral level, it is self-defeating and exacerbates resistance.

We all live in a far more insecure and unhappy world than ever before. Concentrated intellectual and social investment is needed in building alliances with progressive sections of American and British societies and their institutions, rather than coercive state administrations. The same applies to the policy towards other important global players like China, Japan, Russia and the European Union.

Pakistan has gained substantially from China in terms of effective and economically beneficial projects of power generation and physical infrastructure. However, more technology transfer and access to Chinese markets should be sought rather than Pakistan being turned into a dumping ground for Chinese consumables. Besides, Pakistan needs to deepen existing relations with the European countries to learn from them and to invite both financial and technical investment from countries like the UK, Germany and France. Once again I argue that like in all other areas essential for national survival and prosperity of its people, Pakistan needs a different and better conceived foreign policy paradigm.



The writer is an Islamabad-based poet and rights campaigner. Email: harris@spopk.org