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Pakistan PM Shahbaz Sharif with President and Mrs Biden - White House |
Why Efforts to Isolate Pakistan Internationally Did Not Succeed
By Riaz Haq
CA
A prominent Indian journalist Shekhar Gupta has recently summarized the reasons for the Modi government's failure to achieve its objectives of isolating Pakistan internationally. Gupta argues that Pakistan is too important to be ignored or isolated by the international community. He says, "Pakistan is too big in terms of population, too powerful militarily, too Muslim, too nuclear and too well located to be isolated".
Here are some of the key points Shekhar Gupta makes in episode 1093 of his show Cut the Clutter :
1.Pakistan is our most important neighbor. We must focus on Pakistan.
2, We cannot ignore Pakistan in India because the world cannot ignore Pakistan
3. The Western world has an intrinsic relationship with Pakistan which does not go away
4. The West does not see Pakistan as so useful to them today and yet Pakistan cannot be isolated.
5. You can see all the indications that Pakistan is not isolated.
6. A lot of (Indian) TV channels say Pakistan is isolated, but the evidence doesn't support it.
7. Pakistan Foreign Minister visited Washington and met his counterpart Tony Blinken.
8. Pakistan Army Chief has received a warm welcome at the US Defense Dept and met US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Bajwa matters more than the Pakistan Defense Minister. Nobody knows his name.
9. US Ambassador to Pakistan Donald Blome, a career diplomat, has visited Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and called it Azad Kashmir...Azad means free.
10. When the chips are down in the region Pakistan is the ally Americans reach out to.
11. The US does not want Pakistan to drift to China .
12. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has spoken about Kashmir...the K word. She has asked for the UN to help solve the Kashmir issue.
13. Pakistan Army Chief General Bajwa is not a warmonger. He wants to normalize ties with India. He wants to trade with India. He doesn't want Faiz Hameed to succeed him. He used to be the ISI chief and took credit for the Taliban victory in Afghanistan. Do the Americans have leverage here?
14. Where does Pakistan's unique power come from? Why can't Pakistan be ignored? Why can't Pakistan be isolated?
15. The Indian public needs to understand it.
16. Pakistan is too big in terms of population, too powerful militarily, too Muslim, too nuclear, and too well located to be isolated.
17. Pakistan has the 5th largest population and its population is growing fast. It could soon exceed Indonesia to become the largest Muslim nation in the world.
18. Pakistan has the 5th strongest military in the world.
19. In terms of nuclear weapons, Pakistan has the 4th largest nuclear arsenal in the world.
20. Pakistan is too well located to be isolated. It has a geo-strategic location. Pakistan is the western gateway to China. Pakistan opened China's ties with the US. And then helped the US defeat the Soviet Union.
21. The factors that made Pakistan such a strong ally to the US still exist. Don't blame the Pakistanis for it.
22. India is not willing to commit to an alliance with the US .
23. Imran Khan tried to change Pakistan's foreign policy to be more like India's, but he failed.
Prime Minister Modi is getting similar inputs and advice from retired Indian diplomat Sharat Sabharwal. In his recently published book "India's Pakistan Conundrum", Sabharwal disabuses his fellow Indians of the notion that Pakistan is about to collapse . He also writes that "Pakistan has shown remarkable resilience in the face of adversity". "Pakistan is neither a failed state nor one about to fail", he adds. He sees "limitations on India’s ability to inflict a decisive blow on Pakistan through military means". The best option for New Delhi, he argues, is to engage with Pakistan diplomatically . In an obvious message to India's hawkish Hindu Nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he warns: "Absence of dialogue and diplomacy between the two countries carries the risk of an unintended flare-up". Ambassador Sabharwal served as Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan from 2009 to 2013. Prior to that, he was Deputy High Commissioner in Islamabad in the 1990s.
Here's Shekhar Gupta's video titled "Gen Bajwa in DC, US envoy, German FM statements on Kashmir, show why Pakistan can’t be isolated."
https://youtu.be/NuXd4d_clf4
(Riaz Haq is a Silicon Valley-based Pakistani-American analyst and writer. He blogs at www.riazhaq.com )
