In a country where there are somany things going on at the same time, it is sometimes hard to keep focus onone news item and actually get to the bottom of it. In most cases we havebecome so used to news headlines that we hardly ever choose to go beyond them.But in this process we sometimes miss the details which are actually moreimportant than the story itself. And that seems to be the case with therecently concluded Ambassadors Conference in Islamabad which happened in theaftermath of the NATO air strikes about 2 weeks ago.
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| Photo Credits: The Express Tribune |
The Ambassadors conferencehappened in Islamabad and after two days of something they come up with a hostof suggestions and what not. And that was the headline that was reported andthen discussed. Now thing is the story and the activity goes beyond this andraises a lot of questions. The first ofwhich is, who the hell are the ambassadors to actually present solutions onForeign Policy. Yes they are stakeholders and they have to actually help carryit out, but have they ever laid down the framework of the policy in the last 64years. The answer to that is never have they been given this much importance orreported on. So then why are they now giving advice and presenting solutions tothe Government of Pakistan when they have never done so in the past. Well thatis the key question here.
Ever since the NATO attack, theArmy along with the Government has taken a very hard stance for once. Theymanaged to block the NATO supply routes and even managed to get the Shamsi Baseback even though for years our overlords and Government had vehemently deniedthe US had it. That’s another story for another time as to how they alwaysdenied that the US never had the Shamsi Base and yet suddenly ordered the US toempty it. Getting back to the point, the Government and the Forces took astance and blocked everything. This obviously put a lot of things on hold withthe US and created a fairly volatile situation politically.
Now thing is the sort ofpositions the Army and the Government had taken as a result of the NATO attackwere very noble but very hard to climb down from. In diplomacy you always leavedoors open, but once you take a stance like this, it is normally very hard tocome back from that. So basically both of them did not want to look bad bysoftening their tone and instead they focused on figuring out how to back downwithout actually backing down. And that is why the whole Ambassadors Conferencewas cooked up. The logic was, if the Ambassadors, who are mostly deemed neutral,advised en mass that Pakistan needed to tone down its stance that would be agood logic and reasoning for the government and the army to take a step backwithout actually looking bad.
So the point is, whatever theAmbassadors are saying is being told to them. They are just fronting for the Army and theGovernment who want to chicken out of their stance against NATO and the US nowbecause their money is being threatened. It is with these tools and stunts thatthey continue to fool the people of Pakistan in to believing that theiroverlords and the government are being firm and steadfast when in fact they arefinding ways to go back on their words. Another instance of how the people ofPakistan get duped by their overlords.
Syndicated from: Seedhi Baat