Pakistan’s Men in Khaki: New Age Islam’s Selection, 26 May 2017
New
Age Islam Edit Bureau
26 May 2017
• Pakistan’s Men in Khaki
By Mehr Tarar
• Where the Ill Lies
By Zubeida Mustafa
• Saudis Need to Be Wary of Trump’s Intentions
By M. Ziauddin
• Trump and Circumstance
By Miranda Husain
• Failure of Our Foreign Policy
By Dr Ejaz Hussain
• A Diplomatic Snub We Shouldn’t Forget
By Ibrahim Pataudi
Compiled By New Age Islam Edit Bureau
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Pakistan’s Men in Khaki
By Mehr Tarar
26-May-17
‘Z A Bhutto hanged, buried in Naudero.’ This was the first sentence of my first-ever op-ed in December 2011. My elementary school mind in 1979 couldn’t grasp the enormity of the act that shadowed headlines in badly-printed newspapers and darkened screens of grainy, black and white television screens. All I remember feeling was a confusing sadness partly compounded by my mother’s huge grief at what later came to be uncomfortably addressed as the judicial murder of a much loved prime minister of Pakistan. To me Bhutto’s hanging had a context, a background, a face and a name. General Ziaul Haq. To my unformed mind, he stood for all that was wrong with my country that at that time contorted into wails of mourning for Bhutto all across Pakistan.
Pakistan and its war in 1965.Its cleaving into half in 1972. Its allying in the US’s war in Afghanistan in the early 1980s. Its strategic depth. Its forced ‘Islamisation.’ Its Kargil debacle. Its 1998 ouster of the elected prime minister. Its flawed foreign policies vis-à-vis its immediate neighbours. And in my mind there was one unifying factor contextualising the mess Pakistan was: the face of one army general replacing the other. A befuddling circle from General Ziaul Haq to General Pervez Musharraf, while bemoaning the ineptness of a series of elected prime ministers, it was always a man in uniform who could be blamed for the mess my beautiful but flawed homeland was.
I don’t represent a media house or a political party. My opinions are not agenda-based, my opinions are not to elicit a reaction of any form. I write merely as a Pakistani whose deep love for her country makes her wonder how despite being what it is — a land of promise, potential and plenty — Pakistan today stands at a crossroads with destination unknown. I wonder how we have reached this point of international irrelevance — the Riyadh Summit instead of working as an eye-opener will end up being a mere PML-N promotion headline and Maryam Nawaz Sharif’s tweeting delight — existing as a giant country sans any long term domestic, regional and international outlook and policies.
And then there is internal ‘dissent.’ And the efforts to ‘curb’ it. Social media is enraged at the FIA’s ‘questioning’ of social media ‘activists.’ The PTI is fighting the battle of freeing the activists while the PML-N glancing sideways hopes its virtual lions will be saved along with the hyaenas of other parties or those in search of a party to latch on to, or leech off of. And the usual bashing from angry whispers catapults into a cacophony of voices: twitterati, human rights organisations, talk show anchors, op-ed writers, smart alecs, perennial cynics, overseas critics and ordinary mortals have a new topic. How to save Pakistan’s freedom of expression from the civilian-hungry jaws of the big bad villain: the army of Pakistan. This time flexing its muscle through FIA.
To safeguard the “national security” the fundamental rights of people are being crushed. People are not allowed to express themselves. There is no denying the relevance, the significance, the urgency that comes with fighting this war. It has to be waged for Pakistan to keep its patina of democracy from peeling like layers of yellow paint on an old colonial bungalow.
No one should be banned for expressing an opinion no matter how distasteful. Barring incitement to violence though propagation of hate and bigotry, freedom of expression should remain subjective, not a tool the state could hurt you with.
But then... without much ado, the fight becomes uni-dimensional, its context losing track of its nobility of purpose as the “enemy” narrows into the one in uniform. The khaki of the army, without much effort, superimposes on the blue of FIA. The army becomes the usual bogeyman, the entity to hate, the punching bag to unleash bottled-up anger on. Shoved aside is the explanation that as long as opinions are merely opinion, their velocity and intensity is allowed to spread and affect. An organised campaign to undermine the office of the COAS — who accepts the supremacy of the office of the prime minister — and efforts to incite action against the armed forces is being monitored, and action has been taken against that. Primarily.
Sacrifices of countless men in uniform are forgotten, turning their high command into a band of mercenaries for whom patriotism is self-advancement and national security a ploy to keep their cosy positions firewalled from any questioning But . . .
While a few social media activists are being eulogised, the bashing of the other entity is still in perpetuity. Millions of nameless, faceless soldiers and officers who devote their lives to protecting the borders keeping us safe narrow into the faces of a general or two who are targeted for everything that is bad in a Pakistan where corruption is rife, accountability nil, highest offices dynastic corporations, and politics a game to reach the top. Sacrifices of countless men in uniform are forgotten turning their high command into a band of mercenaries for whom patriotism is self-advancement and national security a ploy to keep their cosy positions firewalled from any questioning. To uphold the sanctity of freedom of speech — a fundamental right of all human beings — the virtual guns are turned towards men in khaki. The noble fight muddies into a personal unleashing of anger.Missing the bull’s-eye of healthy criticism the justified self-defence convolutes into an orgy of gratuitous fury.
Time and again, the fauj is caricatured as an ogre that feeds on the blood of aspirations of the civilians. Forgotten is the dedication of all those who patrol our borders, our streets, protect our mountains and glaciers, and oversee rescue operations in floods, earthquakes and terror attacks. Side-lined is the singular love of a soldier for his homeland. And trivialised are the years of single-minded hard work their commanders invest in strengthening of the security paradigm of a Pakistan that fights enemies within and without.
For how long will the men in khaki be our excuse for making a mess of everything that is glorious about my beautiful but flawed homeland, Pakistan? Until when?
Source: dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/26-May-17/pakistans-men-in-khaki
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Where the Ill Lies
By Zubeida Mustafa
May 26th, 2017
“THERE has been an enormous overproduction of uneducated and ill-trained medical practitioners ... due to the existence of a very large number of commercial (medical) schools ... which are profitable business.”
Does the above refer to Pakistan? It doesn’t but it could as it is an apt description of the conditions prevailing in the country. The words above are from Abraham Flexner’s 1910 report on the state of medical education in North America. It led to the closing down of 124 of the 155 medical schools operating in the US and Canada at the time.
Pakistan seems to be a century behind. It is bizarre that a country that cannot educate all its children — there are 23 million out-of-school youngsters — should have 125 medical colleges of which 76 are in the private sector. What is more, there are 16 medical universities in the public sector as well. A number of private medical universities have converted themselves into general universities with a medical college attached. With a few exceptions, the less said about the others the better.
Most of these medical teaching institutions are not equipped or qualified to produce doctors and surgeons to whom you would entrust your life. They do not even have a faculty that meets the required qualifications that are, as it is, most inadequate. Worse still, these qualifications are conveniently put aside when appointments are made for political or personal reasons.
It’s time to revamp our medical education system.
Yet these colleges and universities continue to multiply and churn out medicos by the dozens. They have emerged as moneymaking rackets that create jobs for their protégés and fetch resources that open the doors of corruption.
According to the Pakistan Economic Survey 2015-16, Pakistan is producing nearly 10,000 doctors/dentists every year while the support staff — nurses and technologists — is disproportionately small. The number of doctors in Pakistan is anyone’s guess. Different figures are bandied about. The Survey puts it at 201,363 registered doctors and dentists in 2015-16. The PMDC’s website is not user-friendly or up-to-date but whatever figures it has released are higher than what the Survey states.
Is this overproduction (although it amounts to a ridiculous ratio of one doctor for 1,000 people) feasible? Our health system continues to be rotten to the core while morbidity remains high. At the root is the quality of medical education in Pakistan where a free-for-all situation prevails. The government has abandoned its regulatory function altogether as most of those involved are busy making money. The appointment of the vice chancellors has been left to the whims of the powers that be when the fact is that a competent vice chancellor can play a vital role in upgrading the education and training of doctors.
Take the case of the Dow University of Health Sciences. The last vice chancellor, a blue-eyed boy of the former governor drawn from the MQM, remained entrenched in office for three terms. This was in blatant violation of the rules which allow only two terms to an individual. The process of his appointment was also questionable. The first time no search committee was constituted — the governor appointed the vice chancellor arbitrarily. The second time the vice chancellor was also a member of the search committee and appointed himself as the head. The third time he was simply given an extension.
There followed a fierce tussle when a non-medical person, a pro vice chancellor of Karachi University, became head of Dow University. The Pakistan Medical Association went to court. At one time, the wife of the long-time incumbent also joined the fray as she was being championed as a candidate.
Matters appear to have settled down with the appointment last month of a competent doctor of integrity who meets the merit criterion. Dr Saeed Qureshi, previously administrator of the Civil Hospital Karachi, was appointed by a legally constituted search committee. He was selected from a list of 32 applicants.
But Dr Qureshi faces many challenges since his predecessors messed up the whole system and corruption was rampant. Thus the Dow University senate and the syndicate cannot function as their membership is incomplete due to the fact that new appointments were not made when the terms of old members expired.
It is time to revamp the system of medical education in Pakistan. From my conversation with Dr Shershah Syed and Dr Mirza Ali Azhar, both ex-secretaries general of the PMA (Central), I concluded that we need an Abraham Flexner to investigate our medical colleges and universities. The time has come to rationalise and revamp medical education in the country if the quality of our health professionals is to improve. This alone can transform our health system.
It should also be remembered that the learning process begins from primary school. Even the best medical school cannot produce a high-calibre physician, surgeon, or dentist if the crisis in our school education is not addressed.
Source: dawn.com/news/1335409/where-the-ill-lies
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Saudis Need to Be Wary of Trump’s Intentions
By M. Ziauddin
May 26, 2017
For a number of reasons Pakistan could not have refused Saudi invitation to attend the so-called Arab Islamic American Summit in Riyadh on Sunday.
First, Pakistan is already a significant part of the Saudi sponsored military alliance of several Muslim countries, though nobody as yet knows the exact number and nobody has an authenticated list of the members of the alliance.
Second, the military alliance which was touted to have been put together to confront the ISIS terrorism, is being commanded by our own former Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General (retired) Raheel Sharif who is by far the most experienced general in the entire alliance as far as fighting terrorism is concerned and a successful one too at that as his Zarb-e-Azb campaign had almost completely routed the menace from Pakistan.
Third, millions of Pakistanis earn their livelihood in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. And the remittances that they send back home plays a crucial role in keeping our economy afloat.
Had we refused to join the Summit perhaps the brunt of the retaliatory anger would have fallen on these innocent jobbers and ultimately the consequent adverse impact would have cast our national economy into serious disarray.
Fourth, Pakistan has already declared that come what may it will defend the sovereignty of Saudi Arabia if ever the Kingdom was attacked and would protect the holy sites in Makka Mukarrama and Madina Munawwara with all its military might.
Fifth, Pakistan is highly obliged to Saudi Arabia for supplying us in the past the badly needed crude at concessional rates and that too on deferred payment arrangement which most of the time had remained deferred for good.
Lastly, but perhaps most importantly the decision was made for us by our running feud with India which lately has been trying to isolate Pakistan regionally as well as internationally.
New Delhi had successfully sabotaged the SAARC summit scheduled to be held in Islamabad late last year by boycotting it and taking along with it Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan.
Next, it snubbed our delegation to Heart of Asia Conference in New Delhi early this year which was being led by PM’s advisor on foreign affairs, Sartaj Aziz. Most of the speeches delivered on the occasion had castigated Pakistan for what most speakers said Islamabad’s policy of using non-state actors to wage terror war against its neighbors.
In view of the raging rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the best policy on our part should have been to keep out of the Saudi sponsored military alliance, not allow General Raheel Sharif to accept the Saudi offer to lead this military alliance and politely refuse to attend the Sunday summit in Riyadh.
But, one recalls the Saudi and Gulf countries’ animosity that we attracted when our Parliament openly ruled out Pakistan joining the Saudi aggression against Yemen.
Also, in the US eyes we had been reduced meanwhile, to a nobody from being its Non-NATO ally, thanks largely to the Indian lobby in Washington which had barely missed consigning Pakistan into a pariah state allegedly sponsoring terrorism in neighbouring countries.
With no friends in Washington and India pressing ahead its campaign to isolate us using its expanding international economic clout it would have been only madness to annoy Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states who out of pique could have sent home our workers, called in all past loans and handed over the command of the military alliance to any retired general from Bangladesh, a country which today is more hostile towards Pakistan than India itself.
So, it was strategically the right decision to not only join the Saudi led military alliance, allow General Sharif to lead the alliance and also accept the invitation to attend the Sunday summit.
That Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was not allowed to speak at the forum and was not even offered a meeting with President Trump did appear more like an insult to Pakistan but the summit and its main protagonists—the Saudi King and the US President—actually escaped embarrassment that Nawaz Sharif, if he had been allowed to speak, would have caused by talking more moderately about Iran and by emphasizing extending a hand of friendship towards Tehran rather than pointing accusatory fingers at it.
Meanwhile, the Saudis need to be very careful with their dwindling finances as oil prices do not seem likely to rebound. Trump being a businessman would make all kinds of sales pitches to clinch orders for supplying arms and weapons to Saudi Arabia but is hardly likely to keep the promises he has made in return.
In late April, according to Yoel Guzansky and Sigurd Neubauer ( Why Trump will disappoint Saudis?—May 10, 2017—Foreign Affairs) the King of Saudi Arabia, Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, appointed one of his sons, Prince Khalid bin Salman, as the Kingdom’s new ambassador to the United States. The appointment was part of larger reshuffling at the top of the Saudi government. Khalid’s ascent was a sign of the growing power of his older brother, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, the Saudi minister of defense.
Khalid’s appointment is also largely seen as an attempt by King Salman to boost ties between the Saudi royal family and U.S. President Donald Trump, who himself has delegated significant foreign policy responsibilities to his son-in-law Jared Kushner.
After years of strained relations with former President Barack Obama, the Saudis appear to be optimistic about the new president. Trump has a well-established record of hostility toward the kingdom’s main rival, Iran, and in particular toward the Obama administration’s Iran deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA), which Saudi Arabia only reluctantly came to terms with.
The optimism is evident in the Saudi state media’s coverage: a March meeting between Trump and the deputy crown prince was hailed as “a historic turning point” in the U.S.–Saudi alliance, and after the first phone call between Trump and the King, in January, the Saudi news agency proclaimed that “the leaders see eye to eye on issues on the agenda.” In a second conversation, in April, King Salman praised Trump for his “brave” decision in April to launch missiles against the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria.
Yet despite Saudi optimism, U.S. policy toward the Middle East remains adrift. No coherent national security doctrine has been crafted, and Washington’s principal objectives in the region are unclear. Although Trump surely wants to differentiate himself from his predecessor, it is doubtful that he will significantly tilt U.S. policy in a pro-Riyadh direction, whether by pushing for the removal of Assad or by confronting Iran with anything more than rhetoric to ensure that Tehran complies with the JCPOA.
And other issues may provide further sources of friction: the U.S–Russian détente, which Trump promised to pursue on the campaign trail, could strengthen Assad and therefore Iran; and Trump’s quest to restart the Israeli–Palestinian peace process may require pressuring Riyadh to bring Ramallah to the negotiating table. In short, the Kingdom’s hopes for a full reset are likely to be dashed.
The JCPOA has been a major source of U.S.–Saudi tension over the past few years. Trump railed against it as a presidential candidate, and his running mate Mike Pence promised to “rip up the Iran deal” once they were in office. But at least for now, it appears that Washington has no intention of renegotiating, let alone terminating, the JCPOA.
This is in part because defeating the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) is Trump’s top regional priority, and the United States’ anti-ISIS efforts still depend on the support of Iraq’s various Shiite militias, many of which are closely linked to Iran. Washington is therefore limited in how much it can push Tehran without endangering its campaign against ISIS. Instead of abandoning the deal, it now appears that Trump will seek to meticulously enforce it while continuing to oppose Iran’s activities in the broader region—instead of tearing the deal up.
Source: pakobserver.net/saudis-need-wary-trumps-intentions/
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Trump And Circumstance
By Miranda Husain
26-May-17
It was a scene that would not be out of place on the Real Housewives of ISIS, the satirical BBC sketch show aired at the beginning of the year. Picture this: amid the snide comments about who wears a suicide vest the best — the camera flips to zoom in on an American president’s meeting with a couple of Moscow reps looking to buy some goodies on the black market. The president, in a bid to impress his homeboy who is well . . . back home . . . starts boasting, in true Goodness Gracious Me fashion, about where he picks up the best freebies. Yet there is no cheque to be paid. Just payback.
For the whole world knows what happened next. President Trump leaked the identity of an intelligence source to those whom the NATO war machine — under the unofficial stewardship of his hawkish dove predecessor — has long been trying to recast as enemies of the state. Oh, those Russians.
Trump’s response was to play the field, packing his bags to head off to far-flung lands to charm other world leaders. What ensued was a farcical comedy of errors. Yet all the doubters who said he wouldn’t be able to bounce back were proved wrong. For the unquiet American isn’t known to do things by half.
No sooner had he sashayed on to the Riyadh red carpet with a First Lady flaunting her uncovered hair than social media went into clickbait frenzy at the notion of a recast Lady Liberty. Yet it was Trump who remained the one firmly stealing the show. He also pocketed loadsamoney when the Saudis whopped their wad on the counter. And yet, he still pulled out all the stops, making sure everyone got a little airtime. Or not. He found occasion to warmonger against Iran, refer to the elected representatives of the Palestinian people as a terrorist organisation, while fabulously guaranteeing that Pakistan was the talk of the summit by taking the unilateral decision not to tag it, not once. Though quite possibly this was more to do with confusion about which of the world’s two ideologically-founded states he was not supposed to mention by name to anyone. Understandably so, to be fair, given that neither of them is apparently in the Middle East. At least in the world according to Trump.
As Trump hops over to the NATO summit, the looming fear remains that he will once again threaten to take America out of the Alliance. If this were to happen — we would, perhaps, have to tune into an episode of the Real Allies of NATO to see how this goes down
And then he was off to the country that is not Pakistan. Given that this is America’s BFF in the region – the apprentice-president must have felt rather thwarted over that party pooping Netanyahu who saw fit to dash his hopes of a Mission Impossible-esque landing atop a particular UNESCO heritage site that has, among its ruins, King Herod’s palace. It really was a bit much. Even the Queen got herself a bit of helicopter action with James Bond at the London Games and neither emerged looking shaken or stirred. Still, all was not lost. Trump did manage to go out with quite the bang. Never, he theatrically claimed, did he name the Jewish state as the intelligent source he disclosed to those guys who like to go Putin’ on the Ritz. And so good did he think this line was — that he named Israel twice. Hai Bibi. Yet not once did he refer to the notion of a Palestinian statehood. Someone must have mixed up his cue cards. Damn those White House aides that he never goes anywhere without.
And as the president and his vagabond shoes now stray towards Europe, as they were always wont to do — it seems that this will be the continent hit hardest by the Trump maelstrom. For as he hops over to Brussels for a security summit the looming fear is that he will once again threaten to take America out of the Alliance. If this were to happen, it can only mean one thing: the bromance with the man from Moscow was anything but a summer jam. But we will, perhaps, have to tune into an episode of the Real Allies of NATO to see how that goes down. Anyone from the BBC listening?
Source: dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/26-May-17/trump-and-circumstance
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Failure of Our Foreign Policy
By Dr Ejaz Hussain
26-May-17
Foreign policy analysis has emerged as a sub-discipline within International Relations, where scholars of the field conduct theory-guided empirical analysis of the subject at different levels, ie state, group, individual. The core area of focus and analysis is human behaviour which probably is the most difficult and challenging entity on account of its oscillatory characteristics. Nevertheless, foreign policy experts develop models to measure policy behaviour at a given unit of analysis. The point I am trying to make is foreign policy making and analysis is taken as a scientific inquiry in the developed societies where the only expert of the field — after years of research — comments on different aspects of foreign policy. In the US, for instance, one sees scholars like Joseph Nye or Matthew Bunn appearing on CNN, MSNBC and even local radio to share their scholarly opinion on, for example, Iran-US nuclear deal or the recent visit of President Donald Trump to the Middle East. Journalists generally in the US or Germany ask questions, not answer questions of mass significance. Importantly, there are examples of top journalists in the United States who got PhDs in international relations and public policy and, out of sheer choice, preferred journalism as a profession.
Quite to the contrary, the foreign policy discourse is overwhelmingly controlled by non-experts in the Pakistan’s case where a battery of TV hosts and guests, who lack the basics of training and theoretical knowledge of the field, are seen every night, fighting with each other over different aspects of our foreign policy. The majority of the televangelists comprise of politicians, whose majority lacks basic know-how of the complexities of the subject; ex-servicemen, the majority of which only carries some inner information on how our power elite work; and a few so called analysts whose terminal qualifications, on average, is an MA in strategic studies from a local university. Most of them who appear on public and private TV channels carry a pro-state, often biased and uncritical appraisal of the contours of the foreign policy of the country.
Resultantly, though the hosts and the guests do make a name and earn money, it is the masses that are misled, and the policy makers that are poorly fed with an often third rate opinion based mostly on emotive jargon skewed understating of the complex structure of regional and international relations and institutional and ideological biases. To understand the preceding clearly, let us take the example of the most recent case of Pakistan joining the Saudi Arabia led 41-member alliance against international terrorism which is supposedly led by former Pakistani COAS, General Raheel Sharif. Our televangelists, with a minuscule exception, yelled day and night to consistently urge the government, both civil and military, to join the Saudi-led alliance.
Joining the alliance was deemed super beneficial for Pakistan. Firstly, it will be means to counter India that has calibrated cordial relations with the Arab states such as the UAE. Secondly, it will place Pakistan at the centre of the Islamic world in particular and the non-Islamic world in general. Thirdly, it will help Pakistani economy as the country receives billions of dollars in remittances, and Saudi Arabia will fund our bills, too as it did with 1.5 billion US$ largesse in 2014. Moreover, the ex-servicemen took institutional pride to see a former chief with experience in counter-terrorism to lead such as large and prestigious alliance. So far, the picture looks beautiful. Now, take a glimpse of the ugly side too.
Since Pakistan has shifted its client status to China and is busy calibrating Russia, which is still viewed as an enemy by the security establishment in the US — it was but natural to be ignored by the US at the summit
During the recently held Arab-Islamic-American summit on terrorism in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, contradictions and shortcomings in our foreign policy discourse became evident to which I pointed to in these pages already. I was not surprised to see the way Pakistan was humiliated at the summit: it was to be the way it happened. Firstly, our policy makers miserably failed to take into account the shifting contours of the US foreign policy under the Trump administration. The US, even before the summit, started preferring Saudi Aria once more in the turbulent Middle East. Since Pakistan has shifted its clientele to China and is busy calibrating Russia, which is still viewed as an enemy by the security establishment in the US, it was but natural to be ignored by the US at the summit. Secondly, our policymakers and the public could not take a dispassionate view of Pakistani-Saudi relations. Indeed, Dr Ayesha Siddiqa had drawn timely attention to it. What we failed to understand is the fact that the alliance is a brainchild of Saudi Arabia in an effort to control the Middle East. It will be naïve on the part of the Saudis to let Pakistan lead and cash it on. Thirdly, our policy makers could not see above and beyond India. The latter has projected itself quite successfully, courtesy its scholars in the US and Europe, as a major power in the region. To add insult to injury, neither Nawaz Sharif, with a history of close ties with the Saudis, nor much hyped Raheel Sharif was invited to address the audience for a minute or so. It is apologia on the part of some analysts to argue Pakistan faced this all because on non-clarity at home. Alternatively, Pakistan did commit to side with the Saudis logistically two years ago and taking it to parliament was and is of no effect as power lies somewhere else in this country.
In a nutshell, this case should suffice to bemoan the failure of our foreign policy, if any. Perhaps this is time to revisit its discourse by preferring to keep it indoors and with scholars than televangelists.
Source: dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/26-May-17/failure-of-our-foreign-policy
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A Diplomatic Snub We Shouldn’t Forget
By Ibrahim Pataudi
May 25, 2017
The bruises from the diplomatic spanking Pakistan got in Riyadh are unlikely to heal soon. It made all Pakistanis cringe in despair, regardless of their political affiliation. The way we were treated as a nation by our Saudi brothers (and others) should be an eye-opener: Pakistan’s foreign policy is in tatters and it needs a fundamental realignment that is based on regional cooperation, trade and non-alignment from a sectarian point of view. That this leaning towards the Saudis — both in terms of Nawaz Sharif’s closeness to the royal family and General Raheel Sharif’s appointment to the grand military alliance is extremely dangerous.
Nawaz’s failure to appoint an actual foreign minister and empower a foreign ministry — a needless and ultimately detrimental move — is coming back to bite him, and this will be a particularly nasty bite. Ironic that had he just appointed a foreign minister to begin with, he would have now had a scapegoat to offer up to the angry mob of domestic blowback that’s headed his way. Kind of like what he did with Pervaiz Rashid.
But he didn’t. And now he will be remembered by historians as the thrice-elected PM of Pakistan that was treated like a nobody in the country, and by the family that he held so dear to his heart. It’s actually quite tragic on a personal level and I would feel bad for our prime minister in less humiliating times.
The fact is that if a prime minister believes that he has the energy and intellect to be both the premier of a country and its chief foreign emissary and decides to take on both roles, then he stands to be judged by his performance in both capacities. The fact is that the large delegation and legion of aides that the PM takes with him had no clue this was going to happen. Since they couldn’t anticipate it, they had no way of pulling a last minute face-saving manoeuvre, ultimately resulting in a comedy of tragic errors that led to the worst diplomatic moment of Nawaz’s entire political career.
Intelligence failure doesn’t even begin to describe what a snafu this was. One would be tempted to blame the sheer incompetence of the Foreign Office and the PM’s aides but since the premier is also the de facto foreign minister, the buck stops with him. It is ultimately his responsibility to recruit competent aides and build competent teams to act in the best interests of the nation. A well-oiled diplomatic machine should ideally have built a bank of diplomatic capital and personal relationships to draw on in every country to prevent against situations exactly like this. Clearly, this wasn’t the case.
The fact that Pakistan’s fight against terrorism went unacknowledged in Riyadh was insulting to the memory of thousands of Pakistanis who were either killed and maimed in this war. This warrants a grand reckoning and rethink of our foreign policy. In many ways it could be an opportunity to course correct and reset. It is also yet another opportunity to open our eyes and remind ourselves as to how our alignment with Saudi Arabia is flawed and how the Saudis view Pakistan from a religious, strategic and sociopolitical point of view; as mere guns for hire, as a dumping ground for their brand of conservativism and as a subservient little puppet state.
And why shouldn’t they view us this way? Pakistanis, generally, view Saudis with a degree of deference.
When we don’t have much respect for our own identity, why should the Saudis give us any? We can’t even stand up for the thousands of Pakistani labourers that enter into state sanctioned bonded labour in the Kingdom.
From the Saudi perspective this was a calculated move: nothing to gain by giving Pakistan and Nawaz airtime when there were bigger games afoot, and comparatively not much to lose by snubbing us. It’s not like Nawaz will now suddenly sever his cozy relationship with the Saudi royal family. It’s not like General Raheel will resign in protest from his post presiding over the grand alliance. This was a message and a reminder — that we’re not that important to them and that they expected compliance with the request for Pakistani troops in Yemen. Outlive your usefulness and this is what happens — don’t do it again, is the message being sent out.
The Saudis may be many things, but you can hardly accuse them of not being pragmatic and unversed in realpolitik. They know a few million dollars in grants will smooth things out if we get too sentimental about this affront to our pride. We’ll come running back like we always have.
Source: tribune.com.pk/story/1418265/diplomatic-snub-shouldnt-forget/
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URL: https://www.newageislam.com/pakistan-press/pakistans-men-khaki-new-age/d/111288