NSA Moeed Yusuf Spotlights Pakistan’s Security Outlook at Washington DC’s US Institute of Peace
By Elaine Pasquini
Washington, DC: During his weeklong visit to Washington, DC, Dr Moeed Yusuf, Pakistan’s National Security Advisor and Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on National Security and Strategic Policy Planning, was interviewed on August 5 by Richard Olson, former US Ambassador to Pakistan and Senior Advisor for the Asia Center at the United States Institute of Peace.
His trip to Washington, DC to meet with senior Biden administration officials, Yusuf said, was basically a continuation of Pakistan’s engagement with the US that began in May with the US National Security Advisor in Geneva. “It was the first physical high-level contact with the new administration where we discussed how a broad-based holistic relationship should move forward.”
The two countries’ relationship would not be issue-based but would be focused on substance, Yusuf said. “We do not want the relationship on both sides to be from any third lens – Afghanistan, China, India. We should have set goals and timelines on how we move forward…and there is a very concerted effort by the US administration to move forward.”
As US combat troops have mostly withdrawn from Afghanistan and the Taliban is gaining ground, Yusuf said Pakistan’s position is that “Peace in Afghanistan is non-negotiable.” Not only have the Afghans suffered for decades, but also Pakistanis, he added. “The war next door has spilled over and created serious societal distortions.” Pakistan still hosts over three million Afghan refugees at a time when many Western countries have taken strong nationalistic positions on refugees.
“We have fought very hard for the counterterrorism gains in Pakistan and we do not want to lose them under any circumstances,” Yusuf averred. “Most importantly, protracted conflict in Afghanistan undermines Pakistan’s transformed vision for itself which is a paradigm focused on geo-economics, which puts at its core regional connectivity and regional peace.”
Despite comments heard on the street “the US and Pakistan are working together,” Yusuf stated. “The methodology can be different…but the US has to lead or it will not go where we want it to. Of course, the US has to be in the room and Pakistan will continue to facilitate this conversation.” But urgency is of utmost importance, he stressed.
“We have been extremely disappointed as a country at the kind of rhetoric and attitude that has been coming out of Kabul towards Pakistan,” Yusuf lamented. “No other country has done more and people in Pakistan feel very disturbed when this happens. Everyone has to work together at this point.”
Ambassador Olson noted that Pakistan’s policy has shifted from a traditional geo-political strategy to a geo-economic strategy which leverages Pakistan’s geographic position for economic benefit as opposed to purely security.
“This is a clear statement by the Pakistani government as to where Pakistan wants to go,” Yusuf said in response to Olson. “Situated at the core is economic security.”
Turning to Pakistan’s relationship with India, Yusuf posited that Pakistan wants “to live like civilized neighbors with India. But the ideology that is being espoused in New Delhi right now…unfortunately is leaving no space for us to move forward on that.”
Noting that August 5 was the two-year anniversary of India’s illegal actions in Kashmir, Yusuf pointed out there is international law, international humanitarian law and United Nations resolutions. If the parties “just follow that…we will get to a solution,” he argued.
“There is every prospect of moving forward if India is serious and is willing to create the enabling environment that requires it to reverse what it has done in Kashmir,” Yusuf said. “Because for Pakistan, the issue of the disputed territory cannot be wished away or relegated to secondary importance. These are human beings we are talking about and…if this was happening anywhere else in the world where interests of other countries aligned better, you would have heard every single day what is happening in the occupied territory. We are not hearing that… so I think more needs to happen there just on humanitarian grounds.”
Regional peace underpins getting international investors –including the US and China, Yusuf stressed. “That takes me back to where I started – peace in Afghanistan is absolutely non-negotiable. We cannot afford instability which is why we are obsessed with helping everyone find a settlement in Afghanistan.”
Presently, creating a friendlier business environment is one of the top priorities for the Pakistani leadership, Yusuf stated. “We are one of the very few countries that have recorded a net positive growth during Covid and now international rating agencies are clearly saying…that Pakistan is moving in the right direction.”
Being the fifth-largest market in the world “we are confident that we are in a space where Pakistan will be lucrative for more investment,” he said. “Those American and multinational companies that work in Pakistan make astronomically higher profits than their global profits.”
Acknowledging that his country has challenges, he added that Pakistan is “working on them very diligently, but the profits and return on equity in Pakistan is higher than ever before and much higher than the comparable destinations for corporate America.”
Pakistan’s 70-year partnership with the United States should foment programs and conversations in the US on his country’s fast-growing digitization space, large consumer market and export potential, Yusuf said. “This trip has been good…we have a plan; we are moving forward; we are on the same side.”
(Elaine Pasquini is a freelance journalist. Her reports appear in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and Nuze.Ink.)
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