KARACHI, Dec 24: Prospects of peace in South Asia in the post- Taliban era are not promising, at least in the near future.
This was said by speakers at a seminar organised by the Mir Ghous Bukhsh Bizenjo Foundation on Sunday at Sidco Centre on “Prospects of peace in South Asia in the post-Taliban era.”
The speakers included Dr Asad Sayeed, M.B. Naqvi, Dr Jaffar Ahmad and B.M. Kutty, while Mujahid Barelvi conducted the seminar.
The speakers were of the view that India-Pakistan friendship and cooperation was the corner stone of peace, tolerance, good governance and stability in South Asia.
Dr Asad Sayeed said that the expectations raised, after Pakistan joined the post-Sept 11 international coalition against terrorism, regarding the huge benefits that would accrue from the lifting of sanctions and aid had not materialised.
“What we have so far got is not even 50 per cent compensation for what the economy lost in the post-Sept 11 developments,” observed Dr Asad Sayeed.
Referring to US presence in the area, Dr Sayeed said that with the Americans present in force at Jacobabad and other places and the US calling all the shots, a process of recolonisation of Pakistan was in progress at the moment.
Journalist MB Naqvi said: “today Americans are holding four bases in Pakistan. Afghanistan is under US occupation. The whole of Central Asia has come under US domination. If Pakistan continues with its present policy, a humiliating fate awaits it, as Americans are bent upon using Pakistan”.
Dr Jaffar Ahmad said Pakistan had persisted in its wrong Afghanistan policy for 20 years and then suddenly it had to reverse the policy overnight.
He called for a change in the Kashmir policy also before it was too late and the country was confronted with a similar fate.
Mr B.M. Kutty of the Pakistan Workers Party said that America’s second Afghan war with Pakistan as the frontline state (the first was fought in the eighties through Pakistan- sponsored warlords and their Mujahideen) appeared to be drawing to a close with the induction of an interim government in Kabul.
He noted that with the Taliban regime gone Afghanistan awaited to be rebuilt from the ruins left by 20 years of bloodshed and devastation, even as the former warlords were trying to reclaim their old positions of power and influence and Pakistan found itself in deep trouble, with the ugly ghost of its disasterous Taliban-centred Afghan policy staring it in the face.
Mr Kutty quoted the following paragraph of late Mir Ghous Bukhsh Bizenjo taken from an interview given to Indian journalist Rajendra Sareen on South Asia, Afghanistan and Central Asia.
“If peace and stability are to be ensured in this region, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan and India must establish a system of mutual relationship amongst them, through which they can secure their respective national interests and at the same time act in concert on the international stage to protect their collective regional interests. Otherwise they are bound to clash and you will witness periodic wars between them.” “The long standing mutual mistrust between Pakistan and India is such that anything done by Pakistan in the name of national interest is at once construed by India as opposed to its national interest and vice versa. This provides the most inviting scenario for foreign powers with vested interests to manipulate and meddle in the internal affairs of one or the other state in the region, with negative consequences for peace and stability of the whole region.”
Mr Kutty recalled that Bizenjo Sahib was firm in his belief that had India and pakistan been on friendly terms, the Americans would not have used Pakistani soil in the 1980’s to launch its proxy war against Afghanistan with the connivance of Zia-ul-Haq’s military regime.