IN a written reply to a question in the National Assembly, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar has highlighted challenges faced by Pakistan both on its eastern and western borders and sincere efforts being made by the country to maintain good neighbourly relations with all neighbours. He declared that Pakistan consistently advocated constructive engagement and result-oriented dialogue to resolve all outstanding issues, including the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir but India’s intransigence and retrogressive actions have vitiated the atmosphere and impeded the prospects of peace and cooperation. Similarly, Pakistan has consistently remained engaged with the interim Afghan government, neighbouring countries and the international community to achieve the objective of peace and stability in Afghanistan but terrorism from across the western border has emerged as a major challenge for Pakistan.
In the backdrop of its economic and financial woes, Pakistan has embarked upon an ambitious economic agenda aimed at spurring growth and moving towards self-reliance in critical areas. This requires peaceful conditions both internally and externally and that is why the country carried out an all-encompassing operation against all sorts of terrorism. It is universally acknowledged that Pakistan succeeded in breaking the back of almost all terrorist outfits that were present on its soil but the anti-terror campaign could not be taken to its logical conclusion due to state-sponsored terrorism by India and tacit support of the Afghan Government to anti-Pakistan terrorist groups that are operating freely from Afghan soil. As for India, Pakistan has, throughout, made concerted and sincere endeavours to engage India in a constructive and meaningful dialogue to address the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir that has bedevilled relations between the two countries since partition. In fact, for the sake of peace, different Pakistani governments offered concessions to India but New Delhi never showed sincerity to resolve the issue through peaceful means and instead took a combination of measures to change legal status of the disputed territory and suppress the legitimate freedom struggle of Kashmiri people through draconian laws and military action. Contrary to the mainstreaming thinking in Pakistan, some governments in the past tried to normalize relations with India despite the intransigent attitude of New Delhi vis-à-vis resolution of the Kashmir issue. They agreed with India on so-called confidence building measures like bus service and trade but these moves too could not prove mutually beneficial because of the tendency on the part of New Delhi to dictate terms and exploit the understanding to its own advantage. India used different incidents like Mumbai, Parliament and Pulwama attacks to sever relations with Pakistan on cooked up charges of its involvement in acts of terrorism in India despite the fact that such incidents turned out to be handiwork of its own intelligence agencies. A number of terror attacks in India were engineered to put blame on Pakistan as part of India’s consistent policy to tarnish image of the country in the comity of nations. India also continued its efforts to consolidate its occupation of held Kashmir and unleashed a wave of oppression on hapless Kashmiris. A cursory glance on trade relations between the two countries would also reveal that India only paid lip service to the need for promotion of trade ties. This became evident on different occasions when New Delhi unilaterally suspended trade or imposed heavy duties on imports from Pakistan as it did after Pulwama incident and as a result bilateral trade remains suspended since 2019. Indian designs against Pakistan became crystal clear when it declared its intentions to sabotage the purely economic initiative of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and evidence showed involvement of its agencies in carrying out attacks against manpower working on CPEC-related projects. It is also a reality that the non-cooperative posture of the Kabul Government is the main stumbling block in the way of elimination of terror from this region. It has closed its eyes to the anti-Pakistan activities being carried out by TTP elements based in Afghan areas bordering Pakistan. The region faces similar issues of poverty and backwardness and its fate can change for the better if India and Afghanistan respond positively to goodwill gestures of Pakistan.
