WASHINGTON: Pakistan is fighting one of the largest inland wars on terrorism alone, says Senator Sherry Rehman.

“I don’t see anyone else stepping up to resource this battle, although this is hardly strategic justice,” she said at a seminar here at the School of Advanced International Studies, John Hopkins University.

Senator Rehman, who is also a former Pakistani ambassador to the US said that after the bloodbath in Peshawar and Charsadda where students were targeted, the international community “cannot just watch as terrorists continue to kill” innocent Pakistanis.

Speaking on “Building Pakistan’s Peace and Security,” she said, “We are not laying the blame on other countries, nor do we get into finger-pointing about whose ungoverned spaces provide sanctuary for which high-value target”.

“But terrorism is now a global epidemic, and the international community needs to build a lasting multi-lateral coalition against it,” she said.

Ms Rehman said violent extremism was not something that could be contained by “kinetic means alone. It must be addressed as a hearts-and-mind challenge”.

She said this meant facing up to the reality that had caused policy miscalculations both at home and abroad.

“Pakistan is now in a serious long-haul battle pitched between Jinnah’s Pakistan and Zia’s Pakistan,” said the PPP leader while pointing out that the mainstream Pakistan still “votes for Jinnah and his vision”.

‘We do not vote in religious parties to the PM’s office, and we are now looking to reverse the extremism that has crept into society at the hands of a dictator we neither chose nor coddled,” she said.

Her host, Dean Vali Nasr, who is also a former adviser to the US State Department, appreciated Pakistan parliament’s decision to stay out of the Middle East’s sectarian conflict.

Noting China’s enhanced role in the region which Ms Rehman saw as a net positive for economic stability, especially with the growing need for jobs in a large youth cohort.

“I hope a political settlement for Afghanistan is not just a bumper sticker, and that Pakistan will not be left with the fallout of this long war next door again,” she said.

She noted that 30 years ago the US-led coalition won the war in Afghanistan, but lost the peace.

“This time it looks like nobody is winning the war or the peace, which is unsettling for all stakeholders in inclusive, progressive societies,” she said.

Ms Rehman said Pakistan was not treating Afghanistan as its strategic backyard anymore, but its “refugee issue always becomes a niche conversation, while the rest of the globe closes its borders, we have kept our border and our cities open for all those ravaged by wars.”

Published in Dawn, February 13th, 2016