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Former Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar said it would be entirely incorrect if we said that the good will of Pakistan and the world has not diminished in the last few years, adding that this is because of certain circumstances and poor decisions.

She expressed these views at a session titled ‘Outside the American Prism’ at Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) on Sunday. Other speakers included European Council on Foreign Relations director Mark Leonard, foreign journalist Christopher de Bellaigue, analyst Zahid Husain, while Lyse Doucet moderated the session.

While commenting on incidents of mob lynching of Muslims in India and atrocities in Indian Occupied Kashmir, Khar added that India has left behind its secular values and turned into an extremist country after Narendra Modi’s election as prime minister.

The former foreign minister observed that three things what makes a super power, super power; include credibility, which the US has lost after a series of misleading statements by President Donald Trump. She said that aid given to Pakistan since 2001 including Camp David package is 4.3 billion dollars in terms of military assistance and 5.5 billion dollars for civilians.

Talking about foreign policy and recent developments, Khar said Pakistan should learn a lesson from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) episode. We should not entirely rely on diplomatic friends as Turkey was the only country supporting us, adding that Pakistan should keep in mind its own interests while dealing with the realignment of regional powers.

‘Time for Pakistan to realign foreign policy choices’

Mark Leonard said it is time for Pakistan to have similar recalibrations and realignments of the structures. He said that non-western countries are liberating themselves from western forces. Amid the current situation, China is playing an interesting role in today’s world by recalibrating their projects like One Belt One Road as part of their approach towards dealing with the emerging powers, he said. However, he added that Pakistan is ‘on the front’ despite the challenges.

Zahid Hussain said that a former CIA agent wrote a book saying the Americans fought several wars in Afghanistan at a time. In 2004, Americans did manage to overthrow the Taliban government but went into another war afterwards. This is why the situation in Afghanistan is worse than what we had in 2005,” he concluded.

Published in Daily Times, February 26^th 2018.