March 27, 2008	Thursday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 18, 1429

KARACHI, March 26: The two-day conference on “The State of International Relations in Pakistan” opened at the University of Karachi on Wednesday.

Organised by the Department of International Relations, University of Karachi, in collaboration with the Higher Education Commission (HEC) and the Hanns Seidel Foundation, the moot was inaugurated by KU Vice-Chancellor Prof Pirzada Qasim Raza Siddiqui.

In his keynote address, Dr Imtiaz Ahmed, Chairman of the IR Department of Dhaka University, said that International Relations (IR) in South Asia had come a long way since its birth in undivided Bengal, more precisely at Dhaka University, in July 1947, incidentally just a month before the British left the Indian subcontinent. This fact itself, he said, was significant from at least three standpoints.

“Firstly, the colonisers probably did not want to wholly detach themselves from their colonies and the hope was that such a discipline would provide for intellectual interactions long after decolonisation of South Asia. “Secondly, the colonised subjects probably pleaded for a discipline of this kind while convincing themselves that replicating the colonial power is not a bad thing and a discipline of this kind will prove handy if such a goal is ever contemplated by the post-colonial state.

“Finally, the colonisers and the colonised both probably had reconciled themselves to the view that interactions between the two can no longer take place in its old ‘colonial’ form but only in the context of a mutually beneficial relationship between the two, and therefore a discipline of this kind will help subside colonial animosity and empower the respective sovereign entities.”

In the light of the above, he said, it was not surprising that the understanding of IR came to dominate the discipline in the early phase of its birth.

Dr Akhlaq Ahmad referred to the series of developments in Afghanistan, Iraq and other parts of the Islamic world which, according to him, were the consequence of neo-colonialism and lust for the control of oil and other mineral resources.

Dr Shamsuddin, Dean of the Faculty of Arts at KU, said the interference by the US and its allies in these countries on the pretext of the “war on terror” warranted greater understanding of the issues and advancement of the cause of IR in the country.

Earlier, Dr Moonis Ahmar, Chairman of the KU’s IR Department, said the conference would seek to fill the void in research in the discipline and try to reach a consensus on bringing out an IR journal of international repute.

Dr Tahir Amin and Mr Zafar Nawaz Jaspal of the Quaid-i-Azam University, Dr Farhan Siddiqui, Prof Mehtab Ali Shah of the Sindh University and Prof Adnan Sarwar Khan of the Peshawar University also spoke at the conference.