Ahsan Waheed
Extraordinary! The tirade against Pakistan persists with the West not
able to make the desired headway in the Middle East region. It’s as if
Pakistan were responsible for all the woes that beset the world. The
fact is that it is not. It simply struggles to survive in the face of
great power rivalry.
Pakistan is a poor country that is strategically located in the
struggle for control, at this juncture, of oil and gas. And, it is
only too aware of this. But rather than obstructing, it is seeks to
smooth the passage of the energy supply chain both by sea and land to
areas where there is rising demand.
The deep water port at Gwadur has been constructed for this express
purpose, as is the portended Iran-Pakistan-India (and China) the
Turkmenistan- Afghanistan- Pakistan (India and China) pipelines, each
of which promotes the complementary economy paradigm, rather than
detracting from it.
Equally apparent by its membership of the World Trade Organization is
that Pakistan is committed to becoming a responsible member of the
international community, albeit it has serious reservations, as does
nearly every developing country, on the issue of first world
agricultural subsidies.
Like other developing countries, Pakistan has fault lines it is
working to bridge, despite the untiring efforts of those inimically
inclined towards the country for having developed a nuclear deterrent.
But this is managed by a competent military and civil authority, a
truth visible to all but the blind.
That Pakistan deliberately harbours Taliban terrorists is another area
where the West’s blame-game is to be faulted. It bears repetition the
Taliban are the offshoots the Mujahidin promoted by the West to
counter the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan in the last episode of
“The Great Game”.
Pakistan suffers the ultimate consequences, and thus is more vitally
concerned than those of extraneous extraction. In other words NATO
must now raise the white flag of a truce on Afghanistan -Pakistan
tribal operations and look to trusting Pakistan to bell the cat if
there is to be a sustainable solution.
NATO’s victory can only come from making war reparations, backed by a
multi-national Peace Corps to win hearts and minds. ****-bashing does
no more than aggravate the already highly inflamed situation.
