Pakistan must sign no-war pact with India: Former diplomat

Dubbing the economic and political crisis now enveloping Pakistan as a “listless gloom”, a former senior Pakistani diplomat wants Islamabad to seek a rapprochement and sign a no-war treaty with India.

Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, who has also served in the United Nations, has also said that the hijacking of Pakistan’s foreign policy by the military had led to a disaster in Afghanistan and that “Pakistan’s Afghanistan policy has been a gift to India.”

“The reality of Pakistan, shaped by its wayward masters and bureaucrats, manifests itself each day,” Qazi wrote in an opinion piece in the Dawn, a widely circulated English language newspaper published from Islamabad.

Worse than 1971

“Not even December 1971 compares with the listless gloom that engulfs the country today,” said the former envoy to the US, India and China.

“Ever since the loss of our eastern wing and the judicial murder of our first elected prime minister, our story has degenerated from the tragic to the pathetic to the absurd,” he said.

He accused every major institution and influential group of people of failing Pakistan including the government, the army and intelligence apparatus, the judiciary, parliament, political leaders, the media, civil services and elites.

“Together, they have ensured a failed state,” he said.

Saying peace was a prerequisite, Qazi said that while Kashmir “is a matter of principle, it is also a human rights challenge”.

Also read: India slams Pakistan’s ‘mischievous provocations’ for raking up J&K at UNGA

No-war pact

Further, he said, “Pakistan has a responsibility to seek a rapprochement with a very difficult India, in order to increase the prospects for justice in Kashmir and to render multifaceted cooperation with India politically feasible.”

“Principled compromise approaches can increase the probability of reciprocity, transform zero-sum confrontation into positive sum cooperation, reduce security expenditures, and with greater interactions allow less mutually hostile narratives to emerge,” he wrote.

“There is no reason why Pakistan should not be willing to negotiate a no-war agreement with India. Reaching a principled understanding on Kashmir could greatly help such an endeavour. Accordingly, playing to the gallery on Kashmir in these circumstances is of no help to the Kashmiris.”

Afghan policy

The diplomat also urged Islamabad to bring about major changes in Pakistan’s Afghan policy.

Also read: Pakistan needs to take steps to avoid an economic crash: IMF

“Respecting Afghanistan’s independence and gaining its confidence is the way towards developing the closest of ties with it and accessing the massive potential for regional cooperation with Central Asia and Iran,” he said.

Qazi said that no enemy of Pakistan today matches the enmity of its own rulers.

“They laugh all the way to their foreign banks and talk of national security and economic stability while the ruled sink below the poverty line to wither and die,” he added. He warned that Pakistan desperately needed “decent governance” now.  “Without it, elections will only mimic and insult democracy and existential threats will end our existence,” he pointed out.