ISLAMABAD: Former foreign secretary Salman Bashir said on Thursday that Pakistan did not have any option for strategic partnership, except China, and now it was looking towards Russia too.
Speaking at roundtable titled “Troubled Neighbourhood: Pakistan’s Options” organised by the Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS), he said that Pakistan’s civil service structure had collapsed. Indian bureaucracy was working efficiently, but Pakistan’s top bureaucrats had rotten. Pakistani politicians have not even thought about this issue, he said.
About the Kashmir issue, Bashir said that Pakistani politicians and Foreign Office were talking the same old things. He said that Pakistan should highlight the human rights violations and the use of pellet guns by the Indian security forces in the Indian-Occupied Kashmir. This is a violation of Geneva Conventions as well.
“Pakistan has been unable to unlock geo-economics because it has acted as a security state, but that is true for India as well. They keep spending enormous amounts on defence,” he said.
“We as Pakistanis have done a lot, suffered a lot. Pakistan has tried to match external expectations, but it’s time to get out of that schoolboy mindset and be on our own,” he added.
Dr Moeed Yusuf, associate vice president at the Asia Centre, earlier said that strategic location had only brought conflict to Pakistan.
He said that Pakistan had done only a few things to broaden its alliances. It did a fantastic job to strike a balance in relations with Iran and Saudi Arabia.
He said that Pakistan did feel wronged and worried about the world tilting in favour of India.
He said that information revolution had made the soft power much more important than ever. He said that Pakistan’s image remained smeared by negative things despite being a front-line ally of the United States. He said that Pakistan’s policy was reactive. He said that India was far better than Pakistan in terms of narrative, geo-economics, realpolitik, and substitute alliance building.
He said that status quo was weakening Pakistan and the differential between Pakistan and India was growing. Evidence of weakness comes from not unlocking geo-economics again because of geo-political fears. Pakistan’s neighbours don’t make it easy either, he said. He said it was becoming harder for Pakistan to stay relevant.
He said the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was a Cold War model of inter-state relations. Every time Pakistan does something, it is seen on the wrong side of the global narrative, he said. If Pakistan denies India the route, India-Pakistan-Afghanistan trade becomes expensive, but Pakistan loses out much more in real terms, he said.
Yusuf said there was no decrease in Pakistan’s defence spending over the last 25 years and Pakistan had grown stronger, but the world had switched to geo-economics as a means of strength.
He said that economic diversification allowed India to transition from security to geo-economics. He said that commercial interests did upstage security interests.
“We seem to worry the world more than any other country and we don’t enjoy respect.
We waste time on responding to the criticism of the United States and the United Kingdom instead of fixing what prompted that criticism,” he said.
Yusuf said Pakistan and the United States had been unable to create a strategic partnership and Pakistan’s perception in Washington was negative. “Understanding about each other is very poor on both sides.”
He said that Pakistan’s situation had improved because of better internal security compared to 2008 when bombs were exploding every day. “Pakistan has actually turned itself around as the world is imploding.”
Prominent analyst Talat Masood said democracy and political parties should be strengthened to bring Pakistan out of troubles.
He was of the view that foreign and security policies of Pakistan would not change unless there was an internal change. He said it was not right to blame others for Pakistan’s woes. “Our policies affected Afghanistan’s trust in us,” he said.
CRSS Executive Director Imtiaz Gul moderated the discussion.