Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has said once again what the Pakistani government has been saying for a long time; that foreign powers are trying to destabilise Pakistan. Of course he meant the government and clandestine agencies of our not-so-friendly neighbour India, and the few elements it has been able to recruit from the region to help carry out its dirty work inside Pakistan’s borders. Indeed, the foreign minister made a similar point as recently as January 18 when he said that India was bent upon destroying the peace in the whole region. Slowly but surely, as the Modi administration’s attitude has distanced Delhi from almost all of its immediate neighbours, more and more countries in the region are beginning to understand Pakistan’s long-held point of view.
Islamabad, for its part, has consistently been doing the right thing by warning the international community about India’s designs, especially its obsession with driving Pakistan against the wall, and what it has been up to in disputed Kashmir. It shouldn’t be too difficult for foreign powers to put two and two together considering that India’s national security advisor has built something of a fan following on social media by enlightening the whole world about just which elements of fourth- or fifth-generation warfare he plans to employ against Pakistan.
So far much of the advanced world has shied away from checking India directly out of fear of being blocked out of its large commercial market. But that trend seems to be changing now, especially with the shift in Washington’s position with the arrival of the Biden administration. Without mincing words, the state department spokesman said just the other day, after welcoming the ceasefire at the Line of Control (LoC), that America wants both Pakistan and India to sit down and settle all outstanding issues. This is a very visible, and welcome, departure from Washington’s previous position that always started by taking the issue a little seriously but then shrouded it in ambiguity. For now Pakistan can be expected to do little more than extend the hand of peace and remain vigilant at all times while urging powerful and respected nations to check India’s actions, which are not very far from triggering war in the subcontinent.
