Moeed Yusuf Sparks Global Conversation on New Digital Platform
By Elaine Pasquini
Photo by Phil Pasquini

Washington: Former Pakistan National Security Advisor Dr Moeed Yusuf discussed a wide range of topics in the December 5 debut episode of InferTalks, a new digital platform he co-founded earlier this year.

Yusuf, who served as Pakistan’s national security advisor to former Prime Minister Imran Khan from May 17, 2021, to April 10, 2022, called the experience “priceless in terms of better understanding some of the things one can do when you are out of public office.” An admitted workaholic, Yusuf said what excites him about his work now – whether teaching, policymaking or with the online platform Infer – is change. “You’ll always find me picking up new things, broken things, to remake, to make, to shape,” he said. “Infer is new and I think is very much the need of the hour. The digital space is the future.”

Presently, Yusuf wants to go beyond talking about Pakistan. “I want to have a conversation about the world, with the world, with the youth of the world and the youth of this country about the issues that really matter,” he stated, explaining the importance of Infer which was created for a global audience, specifically the younger generation who is “craving for intellectual discourse rather than simply a media that chases ratings.”

Through Infer “we want a conversation which is critical, which is objective, nuanced…which talks to the world as global citizens about issues that are global,” he added.

The former national security advisor also discussed Pakistan’s National Security Policy (NSP), created in January 2022 during his term in the position. “It’s a national document that needs a lot of time to implement so my hope is that it is implemented in earnest because it has a consensus around it and it gives Pakistan a fundamentally new direction of where we’re going,” he explained.

“Our National Security Policy is a statement of intent that lays out the vision of where we want to go,” he continued. “You need to take decisions to implement things and you’ll start moving in that direction. If you don’t want to do that... if we are willing to close our eyes to the painful decisions that we, like many other countries in the world today, need to take, we’ll be in a fairly bad place, worse than we are today.”

Noting that security and poverty are worldwide problems, “if any country wants to focus on human security, and every country in the world would, we have a template,” Yusuf said, referring to the NSP. “Let’s start talking about it…and it is a conversation that should be picked up by the world.”

The “template” is very simple, he stressed. “You’ve got to focus on economic security – whatever endowments you have in a country – to shift all of the resources to ensure human welfare. That’s a universal principle at this point.”

Climate change is another issue to be tackled, Yusuf pointed out. “Look at the commentary the youth of the world have on climate change and where countries stand on climate change and there is a huge gap,” he observed. “There are national interests that are pulling people or countries away from taking up responsibility and there are millions of minds in the world who are saying…you are leaving us with a planet that we can’t inhabit.”

While the world is struggling and finite resources are actually disappearing, “this is the time to think about how there could be cross-national coordination and cooperation to find ways to connect for the benefit of the poor of the world,” he suggested.

In South Asia, alone, millions of people are languishing in poverty. “We want to pull them up,” he insisted. “People who are poor are human.”

With other serious global issues to be addressed including energy supply shortages, skyrocketing prices and inflation, “suddenly you’ve got a real economic crisis,” he lamented. “The world is so interconnected and globalized that if the problems are connected, the solutions must be connected as well.”  

Those are the conversations that are important to discuss on the Infer platform, Yusuf stressed. “I think we need to get to…start thinking through how do we move forward as a global community…and have a conversation where we learn from others and others learn about us.”

Yusuf believes the younger generation deserves more credit for their desire to have real conversations. “They do want to hear positive stories about who they are and where they are going,” he said. “They do want to hear objective views but most importantly they want to hear how to fix things.”

Platforms like Infer, he insisted, can provide these opportunities. “You will not get overnight change, but I guarantee that you will start getting a conversation going which millions in this world and in this country are craving but are not getting.”

Infer will attract a global audience because they will find the information credible, he said. “Even if they disagree with it, they cannot say that this is biased in a particular direction or is propaganda or is poor quality information. I want young men and women of Pakistan and the world to come and listen to this platform because they gain new knowledge. They can then determine where they stand on any issue and what their views are,” he noted hopefully.

(Elaine Pasquini is a freelance journalist. Her reports appear in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and Nuze.Ink.)