A two-day workshop for women parliamentarians on “The International Strategic Environment and Pakistan’s Policy Imperatives” held in Islamabad on Wednesday. Human Rights Minister Dr Shireen Mazari was a key note speaker of the workshop. She gave an overview of the international strategic environment in the post-bipolar era. On Pak-US relations, Dr. Mazari said that Pakistan should revise its overall US policy and redefine its relationship with the US. She said that the US’ strategic goals in the region directly contradict Pakistan’s objectives. She stated, “The US wants to contain China, isolate Iran and make India a regional hegemon”. She criticized the US’s unilateral decision to opt out of international agreements – a move that has ledto more chaos in the system. She noted that the Trump administration’s decision to recognize Israel’s claim on the Occupied Golan heights was in direct violation of international law. Dr Mazari cautioned against Narendra Modi’s pledge to abrogate Article 370 which provides special status to Jammu and Kashmir, and Article 35-Aof the Indian constitution will change the demography of Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK). She argued that after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, NATO required a new rationale for its existence and started out-of-area operations- Afghanistan being a key example of this. Dr Mazari emphasised that currently, the principle of “Coalitions of the Willing” is being applied to allow direct intervention by certain states, thereby bypassing the UNSC. While discussing the situation in the Middle East and West Asia, Dr. Mazari referred to Ralph Peter’s article titled: “Blood Borders” that was published in the June 2006 issue of the US Armed Forces Journal. Peter’s, predicted that powerful Muslim states would be weakened and ultimately broken up – a phenomenon that has in fact been unfolding in the Middle East. In the post-9/11 era came the Greater Middle East Initiative GMEI, or Broader Middle East Initiative BMEI which claimed to promote liberal democracy and freedom of speech in these Muslim states, and resulted in the Arab Spring. However, there is still great instability in the region which has resulted in weakened Arab states. This instability created a power vacuum which further strengthened non-state actors and is reflected most clearly in the rise of the militant group including Daesh. She argued that with all these developments unfolding in the Middle East, Pakistan must also recognize the threats and challenges emerging from the western side of its border. Whilst talking about Pakistan-India relations, former Ambassador Zamir Akram noted the root cause of friction between the two countries is the divergence of their strategic objectives. ?
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