Pakistan’s continued isolation is not good news

Regional trade has suffered over the years and so has the country

ISLAMABAD: Many people are talking and writing about the possible impact of the United Kingdom (UK) referendum for leaving the European Union (EU). It is quite possible too that the UK might make a u-turn from the referendum stance to avoid triggering disintegration.

Here, I would like to point out what lessons Pakistan needs to learn from this fiasco. I deem the result of the referendum a ‘fiasco’ as it has had a snowball impact on the world markets, public finance and trade atmosphere.



It was a public mandate that unleashed unmanageable upheaval in Europe and America.

The basic theme of the ‘leave’ vote was disengagement from regional players on a number of counts. A long list of goods and services going costly in the UK and unavailable in EU countries is currently being drawn up.

Disengaging or non-engagement in a region is a negative process.

Pakistan is probably the only country in the world that would engage with a handful of countries and none others. Regionally, Pakistan faces a ‘discard’s isolation’ thanks to such tendency.

Trade with India is a taboo. Exchange of goods and services with Afghanistan is a troublesome affair. Iran is not an active trading partner of Pakistan. China enjoys an advantage of cheap labour and dumps its goods. The Central Asian marketplace is not hospitable as Pakistan does not engage with countries that have trade stakes in those lands.

Brexit means a new upheaval for UK, Europe and the United States. Pakistan’s non-engagement means defiance toward hard realities of life and requirements of functional statehood.



If you read the Wilson Centre Digital Archives, you will be flabbergasted to know that a past dictator offered India a military alliance against China.



The pendulum, however, has swung over the past 50 years so excessively that even trading with India has become unmentionable.

Those who plead against regional trade ignore the prospects of Pakistan availing itself of opportunities it cannot have without opening up to the regional powers in trade and exchange of technology.

According to some estimates, if trading is done actively, Pakistan, Iran, India and Central Asia could create an economic bloc that would make these countries progressive within a decade and their standing would improve on the world economic map.

What stops Pakistan?

That is the question most economists would not touch upon as ‘a sickening hate-driven patriotism’ prevents their rational analysis.

There is a creeping sense of anxiety in countries like Pakistan – defiant to political-cultural-economic integration – that non-engagement in trade with the regional forces might render these states virtually inoperative in security, diplomacy and public service areas.

”The education of Pakistan produces tendencies of hate toward certain regional countries and patriotism is equated with hate,” said Pakistan’s former foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar. “Non-engagement has brought this country to a pass where trading with regional nations is a subject gaining little focus of analysts as a prerequisite to progress, diplomatic openness, cultural and political integration,” she added.

The British politician and leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) who led the campaign for Brexit Nigel Farage was booed at the EU Parliament session last Tuesday.



He became the target of international hostility only because he pleaded disengagement in trade at the broader and deeper levels.

No leader and institution in Pakistan has ever been the target of media and public venom for refusing to open up the country’s borders to regional trading, cultural exchanges and diplomatic initiatives. That is an alarming situation for a country that lost its majority to hostile posturing with neighbouring forces.

In March 2012, Pakistan created a procedure and announced India-Pakistan trade in all goods except the 1,200 items put on the negative list. This was a revolutionary step but trade still hasn’t flourished.

Opening up trade with India would go a long way in preparing Pakistani production houses for competitiveness that would not be achieved in trade with any other regional country. The argument that the Pakistani trading houses are wary of Indian edge in trade with this country is a false propaganda.



Pakistani chambers and trade bodies do want openness of the borders but they are forced to suppress their voices. Pakistan needs to integrate economically with the entire region. That would guarantee a bright future for this country.

The writer has worked with major newspapers and specialises in the analysis of public finance and geo-economics of terrorism

Published in The Express Tribune, July 4^th, 2016.

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