Nepal: The Goa SCO conference and Pakistan

“A man’s manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait”.

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Biratnagar: Bluntly speaking, neighboring country Pakistan is seemingly the victim of “enemy from within” phenomenon. It is at its weakest state perhaps in its history.

This is what I felt and now conclude that Pakistan will be even more fatigued in the days ahead if the way its media veterans, intellectuals, social networks and foreign policy veterans took their own Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto’s performance at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization held in Goa, India, May 4-5, 2023.

And in addition, the arrest of former PM Imran Khan by the sitting government in the recent week too has added the misery of Pakistani society which has almost burnt the nation.

It is these highly erratic act across the country of Imran Khan’s supporters since a week or so that we at this paper fail to appreciate. In fact we condemn the destruction that the PRI supporters have caused to the Pakistani nation.

Khan was arrested May 09, 2023, from inside the High Court in Islamabad by National Accountability Bureau ( NAB) on the charges of corruption in connection with the Al-Qadir Trust, which he owns alongside his wife, Bushra Bibi.

(We will talk on this issue in details next week).

Back to the point:

Watching various mushrooming Pakistani media channels/outlets, what was evident and distinctly clear that the so-called informed citizenry of Pakistan enjoyed BB’s intended insult and humiliation by Indian regime and its disciplined Godi media to the hilt and in doing so, the informed literati back in Pakistan some way or the other displayed their own political and intellectual’s bankruptcy of the highest order.

Nepal, my own country suffered from his syndrome which allowed India to pounce Nepal beginning early 1990s. Some Pakistanis were even heard saying that FM Bilawal must not have landed in India.

What a ridiculous comment?

The new entrant in diplomatic domain, Bilawal Bhutto, did all he can to reiterate the issues which were and are important to Pakistan, for example I guess, Kashmir occupation by India, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and the Islamophobic attitude of PM Modi’s Indian government.

FM Bilawal also demanded restoration of statehood for resumption of talks with India which meant that India should revert the August 5, 2019 unilateral actions on the breakup of Jammu and Kashmir.

One Twitterati apparently from Pakistan says “it was the best interview he had watched  from a Pak politician. His confidence, preparedness and the depth of knowledge of international relations were simply superb.”

As an outsider and a keen watcher of South Asian Regional Politics, what I can say is that FM Bhutto gave his best while being in the Indian soil attending the SCO meet.

Negative comments need to be brushed aside.

On the contrary, BB’s counterpart, the arrogant and short tempered exhibited his erratic traits, posing with a visibly cold face which was keenly noted by the political commentators in South Asia including this scribe.

Back home from Goa meet, FM Bilawal talking to the press said a “sense of insecurity’ as the main reason behind incensed remarks by FM Shankar on Pakistan.

“I succeeded in countering the false narrative “of Modi’s regime that every Muslim was a terror suspect and exposing Delhi’s history of defiance of bilateral and international agreements”, reports the Dawn newspaper dated May 06, 2023.

The fact is that BB attended the Foreign Ministers’ meeting of the SCO in India as a distinguished member of the SCO conglomerate.

He showed Pakistani presence in a determined manner though the Indian media tried hard to pounce upon him.

Yes! Indeed, comparatively speaking, Bilawal Bhutto is new entrant in FP domain junior and has less expertise in the foreign affairs’ domain as compared to India’s highly arrogant Foreign Minister Shankar who was best termed as “Waiter” by Professor S. Swamy. How Jay Shankar is a waiter in the eyes of Harvard Professor Swamy is not of our interest.

FM Shankar could be taken as what Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (August 28, 1749-March 22, 1832) the German author said once, “A man’s manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait”.

Perhaps FM Shankar’s actions at the SCO meet were very close to what the German author said when alive.
In Nepal, FM Shankar is taken as a political terrorist.
The debates and discussion that we watched through social media on Pakistani participation at the SCO meet in Goa gave an impression that Pakistan is completely a broken society, as stated earlier, and that the country’s nationals in many more ways than one speaking almost with the same pungent tone as was being “calculatedly and under a design” aired by Indian media.

Pakistani nationals pouncing upon Pakistan! A bizarre scene.

In sum, Pakistani nationals do not possess a common voice on Foreign Policy issues as Indian nationals exhibit their total and unconditional solidarity with the government stance on Foreign Policy issues.

This is what makes Pakistan weaker that India.

The feeling among some Pakistani nationals that “we are inferior to rival Indians” is what shall in all likelihood do not allow its own government to stand tall in the comity of nations and more so in South Asia in the years ahead.
It is this inferiority complex that has got to be erased from “brainwashed” brain.

Pakistani nationals perhaps expected Julfikar Ali Bhutto’s diplomatic stature in junior Bhutto as senior Bhutto had come out with flying colors when he had signed the Shimla agreement on 2 nd July in Shimla with Madame Indira Gandhi.

Junior Bhutto over time shall attain the same height if and when he is not grilled by his own brethren in Pakistan.
And finally, Pakistan’s diplomats posted at least in South Asian capitals should have by now organized a brief Press meet to blunt the flood of India’s talking nonsense against Pakistan and its FM Bilawal Bhutto.

Nepal is flooded with the erratic comments made by India and its tamed media on Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto’s Goa SCO meet.

India’s Godi media injects venom in Nepali minds which later becomes the opinions of the Nepali intellectuals, to put it bluntly. And what we hear from Godi media becomes final for we the Nepali people.

We rarely get the Pakistani version on Pakistani events. So sad. Is Islamabad listening?

That’s all.

-A delayed posting: Ed. Upadhyaya.