ISLAMABAD, May 18: South Asian countries need to institutionalize co-operative security for the sake of peace, development and mutual defence. This was the outcome of a seminar on, “Defence, Technology and Co-operative Security in South Asia: Vision 2020”, arranged by Regional Centre for Strategic Studies, Colombo, Sri Lanka, for Pakistani strategists and intellectual here on Saturday.

Speaking on the occasion, former foreign secretary Ayaz A. Nayak said the notion of linking peace to military factors must be replaced by the anchoring of broader paradigms on political rights, economic prosperity and technological advancement while emphasizing the necessity for a regional mechanism to work out contentious security issues.

“If South Asia is to move ahead and fulfil peace-oriented vision 2020, then longstanding dispute over Himalayan territory has to be resolved,” he added.

According to the observation made by Brig Shaukat Qadir, former president of IPRI, an asymmetrical equation exists in terms of possession of conventional and unconventional weapons by India and Pakistan. He ruled out doctrine of ‘mutually assured destruction’ being operationalized in South Asian context. He added that given the prevalence of self-fulfilling prophecies among India and Pakistan the ‘unilateralist assured destruction’ might take place as, to his assessment, threshold of tolerance hangs in the balance characterizing our adversarial relationship.

Presenting his thoughts, an expert on international relations Dr Tahir Amin from Quaid-i-Azam University called for reappraisal of foreign policy, economic plans and political reform agendas which, in his view, are being impinged upon by process of global changes unleashed by competing pulls of liberal Western, Islamic and Hindu world orders. “World has changed, therefore strategic lenses put on during cold war must be removed”, he added.

He warned serious implications of Western theories like Fukiyama’s ‘End of History’, Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’, Robert Kaplan’s ‘Coming Anarchy’, Joseph Nye’s ‘Complex Interdependence’. If Muslim world wants to undo the Western projection of Islam as a ‘bloody phenomenon’ or ‘fascist code’ then serious efforts must be made to summon up the collective courage to defeat all attempts at institutionalization of the hegemony of the West over the rest, he exhorted. If Muslim world starts asserting its influence, one can expect the end of Israeli ethnic barbarity and Indian communal bloodshed tacitly conveniently ignored by the most intellectually impoverished and highly arrogant Bush administration, he maintained.

In his presentation, IPRI president Dr Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema said Pakistan’s defence production establishment long for modernization. He underlined the need to overhaul industry of weapon systems that, in his view, can only be made possible through the acquisition of technologically advanced defence equipments. Laser, radar, night vision and latest version of tanks and aircraft etc are vital to enhance the suitability and applicability of our defence system specially in the wake of heightened military build up in the region, he added.

Seminar conductor Aabeera Sherafghan summed up the proceedings by drawing attention towards the Kashmir conflict. She termed the Kashmir issue a South Asian nuclear flashpoint which in her view, might trigger large-scale conflagration if timely steps are not taken to resolve the lingering issue once and for all.

She also flayed unstable nuclear deterrence existing between two nuclear states while adding that only tension reduction strategy, embodying strategic restraint regime, can lead to a stable nuclear deterrence based on balance of terror in South Asia.—Zia-ur-Rehman Hashmi