NATO withdrawal next door: Need for own post-2014 strategy stressed

Conference deliberates on regional security challenges

ISLAMABAD: Strategists, analysts and educations have said Pakistan needs to thrash out a clear strategy to deal with potential fallout after US-led international forces leave Afghanistan this year.

The experts were speaking at a two-day conference on ‘The Global Strategic Environment in the Post-2014 era and Pakistan’ organised at the the School of Politics and International Relations of Quaid-i-Azam University in collaboration with Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung.

Minister of State for Federal Education and Professional Training Muhammad Balighur Rehman said Pakistan is facing challenges from religious extremists and to defeat them we will have to fight many wars like Zarb-e-Azb.

Senator Mushahid Hussain said there was hope for peace in South Asia with the
new Indian government but these hopes faded due to Prime Minister Narender Modi’s adherence to his hawkish past.

Former US assistant defence secretary Dr Peter Lavoy said Pakistan can help the US vis-à-vis the rise of ISIS in the Middle East but Pakistan has refused to participate in the US-led global coalition against it due to internal security issues.

Defence analyst Dr Hasan Askari Rizvi said Pakistan is in a state of regional and international conflicts and the major issue is how
to convert these challenges into an opportunity in a complex global regional environment.

“Pakistan needs a new approach to form a security policy to deal with these conflicts and challenges,” he said, adding that Pakistan needs to convince the international community that it will eliminate all militant groups without any discrimination in its foreign policy.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 17^th, 2014.