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Trade ties, cricket tours or for that matter every single seemingly innocuous aspect of India-Pakistan relations is predicated solely on the political leadership’s urgency for normalcy. So, the decision made by Pakistan’s Finance Minister Hammad Azhar to resume the import of cotton and sugar from India at the Cabinet’s economic coordination committee (ECC) meeting on Wednesday seemed to be the next logical step in a new diplomatic course charted by the governments of India and Pakistan, the contours and destination of which are yet to be delineated. However, the Pakistan federal cabinet, in 24 hours, has overturned the ECC decision without offering any reason, forcing observers to believe that this could be another victory for Islamist hotheads who had all along held India-Pakistan relations hostage to the two-nation theory, laying a military claim on Indian territories with a Muslim majority. Thus, what appeared to be a detente has turned out to be yet another fork
Let’s ‘Normalize’ Pakistan First
Let’s ‘Normalize’ Pakistan First
File photo. Aamir Qureshi AFP
Restoration of ties between Pakistan and India requires both sides to set aside accusations of terrorism and focus on trade and regional cooperation
On April 1, 2021, the federal cabinet under Prime Minister Imran Khan rejected a proposal of the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) also under Prime Minister Khan to import cotton yarn and sugar from India. The proposal was moved by Khan himself at the ECC in his role as caretaker commerce minister. A minister later said that the ECC proposal would be re-examined to see the kind of economic, political and institutional effect resuming formal relations with India would yield. This put an end to the “optimistic” expectation in Pakistan about “normalization” of relations between the neighboring states.
The Islamabad Security Dialogue an appraisal
Serious-minded policy analysts in India have always recommended a détente in Indo-Pakistan relations
The writer is a retired major general and has an interest in International Relations and Political Sociology. He can be reached at [email protected] and tweets @20 Inam
Last week the linkage of the first-ever Islamabad Security Dialogue (ISD) was established with the United States thinking about the Indo-Pakistan region, in my Op-ed, “The Islamabad Security Dialogue: Perspective and Potential”. Before an appraisal of the ISD, let us encapsulate the essence of the prevailing global environment that is likely to impact the regional milieu. Whether the recent bonhomie between India and Pakistan, as evidenced by the positive steps taken by either side, is a spur of the moment re-orientation; a long-awaited outcome of the Track-II and other parleys; result of India-Pakistan’s own security calculus; or a subtle nudging by the Biden
The writer is an author.
IN Indo-Pak relations, peace is less a bullet-ridden dove than a lacerated phoenix that rises periodically out of the ashes of experience.
Its latest emergence has come in the form of a speech given by the COAS Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa at the Islamabad Security Dialogue on March 18. If one can surmount the laboured militarese “exogenous factors of the global and regional environment and inner layers being the endogenous factors of internal peace, stability and developmental orientation” it is a speech that deserves mature attention.
He regretted that “despite the tremendous human and resource potential, the unsettled disputes are dragging this region back to the swamp of poverty and underdevelopment. It is saddening to know that even today it is among the least integrated regions of the world in terms of trade, infrastructure, water and energy cooperation”. He added with unquestionable sincerity: “Let me say profoundly that we are ready to impro