Beating war drums: Indian objection to CPEC misplaced, says Sherry

Planned war carnival and objections to corridor will hamper peace, says Sherry.

ISLAMABAD: Senior PPP leader Sherry Rehman said on Wednesday that India organizing a war carnival on 50th anniversary of the 1965 Indo-Pak war will be detrimental. The Vice President of PPP said it would further shrink the space for any semblance of normalcy left in the bilateral relationship.

Muscular articulations such as these, or objecting to Pakistan’s CPEC route, will be seen as beating a war drum. Clearly, such moves will do very little in the way of resuming dialogue, said the former ambassador.



According to reports, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has ordered the armed forces, including the Indian Army and Air Force to organize the event from September 1 to 23, the dates of the actual war. The carnival will be held in the Indian capital.

Rehman said that any agenda for peace requires an appetite for it, not an investment in valourising memories of conflict.

Speaking on Indian reservations over the CPEC route, Rehman said that the corridor passes entirely through Pakistan’s territory. Any reservation over transit through Kashmir is misplaced.

Infrastructure projects are being developed on both sides of the LoC, which impact, foremost, the communities within Jammu and Kashmir.

Instead of finding pathways to peace and trade, it is unfortunate that the new “global re-positioning” of India includes large doses of coercive diplomacy and hard posturing. None of it will be helpful to constructing new regional economic dividends for South Asia, she cautioned. “Neither China nor Pakistan will take dictation from India as to where to build highways that connect people for prosperity,” she stated.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 4^th, 2015.