Hardeep Singh Bedi
Pakistan declined the US invitation to attend the ‘Summit for Democracy’ and skipped the virtual event that was hosted by US President Joe Biden this December 9-10.Biden invited around 110 countries, including Iraq, India, and Pakistan. Washington didn’t invite Pakistan’s ‘iron-brother’ China and instead sent an invitation to Taiwan to represent China. Russia was also not invited to the summit. Reportedly, both China and Russia were not invited over being single-party run Communist countries.
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry released a statement: “We value our partnership with the U.S. which we wish to expand both bilaterally as well as in terms of regional and international cooperation. We remain in contact with the U.S. on a range of issues and believe that we can engage on this subject at an opportune time in the future.“Pakistan will, meanwhile, continue to support all efforts aimed towards strengthening dialogue, constructive engagement, and international cooperation for the advancement of our shared goals,” it added.
Reports in Pakistani media gave various reasons for Islamabad’s decision to ‘ignore’ the summit.
Pakistan's leading English daily Dawn reported the main reason: “Policymakers in Islamabad are worried that not attending the summit would give India a free hand, which already has a strong influence in the US. But a strong Chinese reaction to the US decision to invite Taiwan made it obvious that attending the summit could seriously damage Islamabad’s relations with Beijing, a risk Pakistan could not take.” The last lines of this report- a risk Pakistan could not take- sums up all that Pakistan is a sovereign nation on papers but not in reality.
Though Pakistan and China define their friendship as “higher than the heights of the Himalayas and deeper than the depths of the Arabian Sea”, it's not a secret that the successive Pak governments have sold Pakistani interests to China.
To understand it better one has to study the China Pakistan Free Trade Agreement, 2007 wherein Pakistan reduced tariffs to zero on its imports of Chinese products that resulted in a huge advantage to China, especially when the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) started. Interestingly, Beijing didn’t offer any tariff concession on imports from Pakistan.
Now, the much-hyped and game-changer CPEC is proving to be a perfect example of China’s ‘debt-trap diplomacy'. China is forcing Pakistan to buy Chinese equipment for use in the CPEC projects and also giving loans to Pakistan to complete the purchase. This ‘debt trap’ has been killing the Pakistani economy slowly but steadily.
The icing on the cake is that evidence in the public domain portends that Islamabad has given a free pass to Beijing to loot the resources of Pakistan, especially of Balochistan and Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. Various reports say that poor Pakistani girls are being forcibly married to Chinese men. Whereas the Pakistani political and military leadership are the ones who are getting their share of the loot, the Pakistani citizens are befooled with the fake narrative that China is the only one that can help Pakistan against India.
Hence, when the Dawn says that Pakistan couldn’t afford to take a risk of irking China by attending Biden’s ‘Summit for Democracy’, it’s right. When a country's diplomacy behaves in a manner to please another country then it shall not call itself a sovereign country. Now, it’s up to Pakistani citizens to ask themselves: Was the decision of the Imran Khan government right?
If Pakistanis want to have a look at the conduct of sovereign nations then they should study Indian diplomacy in the context of the same ‘Summit for Democracy’. Just a few days before the US Summit for Democracy, Russian president Vladimir Putin visited India for a few hours on December 6, 2021, for the 21st bilateral Annual Summit. Twenty-eight agreements were signed between the two sides, both at the government as well as at the private sector level. Both sides shared views about the current security, political and economic situation in the world. India is well aware of the strained Russian-US relationship but as a sovereign nation, it not only hosted the Russian President but also participated in the US Summit for Democracy.
During the meeting with the Russian President, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “In the last few decades, the world witnessed many fundamental changes and different kinds of geopolitical equations emerged but the friendship of India and Russia remained constant.”
Putin echoed the sentiments and said that Russia perceives India as a “friendly nation".
"We perceive India as a great power, a friendly nation, and a time-tested friend. The relations between our nations are growing and I am looking into the future," said the Russian president.
In the Summit for Democracy, PM Modi made the national statement: “The India story has one clear message to the world. That democracy can deliver, that democracy has delivered, and that democracy will continue to deliver.”
Pakistan should have been thankful that despite being a hybrid-martial law state, the US had invited her to share the stage with the world's democracies.Moreover, Biden was indeed very generous by inviting Pakistan to the summit despite knowing very well that how Islamabad back-stabbed Washington in the US' fight against terrorism in Afghanistan. Pakistan missed a golden opportunity to be in the camp of sovereign and democratic countries.
(The writer is a senior journalist and columnist)
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