[chottala.com] A hired diplomat torpedoes Bangla-Pak ties

A hired diplomat torpedoes Bangla-Pak ties

M. Shahidul Islam

It's not a prescribed segment of the routine assignment of a
Bangladesh High Commissioner in India to propagate against Pakistan.
But that is what one of the most senior diplomats of Bangladesh now
serving on contract, Ahmed Tariq Karim, has done lately.

Last week, Karim overstepped his mandate as an accredited diplomat and
stirred an unpleasant controversy by handing over a sensitive essay to
India's Hindu fundamentalist leader, LK Advani; depicting Pakistan as
a demonic nation and its military a spoiler.

In the 19-page-long polemic-laden thesis, Karim cited seven 'deadly
sins' of Pakistan which he said are responsible for the political
problems and weak democracy in that country.

Karim's catalogue of Pakistani 'sins' include "doctrines of Islamic
invincibility over Hindus, West Pakistani superiority over inferior
Bengalis (Bangladeshis), its (Pakistan's) indispensability as a
strategic ally of the US, too much emphasis on relations with China
and Iran, a belief that majority of Kashmiris want to join Pakistan,
and, that defence of East Pakistan lay in the plains of Punjab
(Pakistan)." Karim's thesis is an antic like himself.

A relic of the diplomacy's old guard, Karim is a veteran of the
Pakistan foreign service who has joined the diplomatic corps in 1967
and was supposed to spend a leisurely retied life like many of his
contemporaries. Instead, he was hand picked by the Awami League
administration to become Bangladesh's High Commissioner to India, and,
a rare one with the status of a cabinet minister.

This elevated stature of the hired High Commissioner has given a sense
to Pakistan that the written diatribes against another neighbourly
country must have gushed out with the blessings from the Bangladesh
Prime Minister herself.

That would have seemed unlikely if Karim had purported to contrite for
the Pakistani sins in his quest to establish peace and stability in
the region. Quite the contrary is his assertions. His paper warned of
a nuclear Armageddon in South Asia and made a plea to the
international community in general, and to the SAARC countries in
particular, to deploy measures that would encourage the return of
democracy in Pakistan.

Not only his first categorization of Pakistan being a 'weak democracy'
is nullified, this particular assertion can be construed to have
invited foreign interference to establish democracy in another
sovereign nation.

That is a dangerous notion; if the lessons of Iraq, Afghanistan and
many others are anything to go by. Democracy is a means to good and
accountable governance, not an end in itself, and, it does not alter
the entrenched threat perception of a nation. Pakistan does have
genuine fear of threat from India.

Besides, Karim is either unaware that Pakistan is enjoying a virtual
'democratic spring' after years of 'autocratic winters,' or he does
not believe the elected government of Pakistan is a democratic one;
despite the Pakistani judiciary having the freedom to dislodge even
the nation's Prime Minister from power.
Blaming the Pakistani army for all the ills of that nation, Karim
claimed that the 'selfish corporate mindset' of the Pakistani military
may spark off a nuclear confrontation with India.

A corporate mindset is governed by the calculus of loss and profit.
Sound strategists also expound waging war if losses are outweighed by
gains. There is nothing wrong about it. Besides, fear of a nuclear
confrontation between India and Pakistan has been haunting the region
of South Asia for decades. The reinforcement of that fear by someone,
whose job it is not to do so, is as ludicrous and audacious as it
gets.

Karim could have expressed such opinions as a free man, instead of
being on Bangladesh government's top diplomat. He should know that a
diplomat conveys, in the most persuasive way possible, the views of
the home government, not his own. If this is the view on Kashmir of
the current Bangladesh administration, the nation of Bangladesh has
been reduced to an Indian protectorate, unmistakably, which relegates
his status even lower.

However, Karim's vilifying of Pakistan was the punch line the Hindu
fundamentalist leader of India wanted and got. And, that's what made
the unsolicited zealotry of the Bangladeshi diplomat more dubious. No
wonder, almost instantly, Advani published Karim's highly opinionated
and sensitive information in his blog, where Karim was quoted as
saying, "The armed standoff between India and Pakistan over Kashmir
was "inevitably enlarged by the Pakistan military into a permanent
security threat to the newly established Muslim nation."

This segment of Karim's thesis may seem academic, but the author fails
to realize that two major wars over Kashmir wouldn't have taken place
if there was no genuine grievances and injustices. His thesis also
proved biased and conspicuously propaganda-laden due to its
intentional bypassing of the fact that a gross violation of
international law has occurred in this region due to India's
non-compliance for over half-a-century to conducting a referendum in
Kashmir, as was mandated by the UN.
If a diplomat of Karim's height is unaware that, pursuant to the
January 5, 1949 Resolution and the recommendation of the UN Commission
for India and Pakistan, "the question of the accession of the State of
Jammu and Kashmir to India or Pakistan will be decided through the
democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite," he shouldn't
have been chosen to become Bangladesh's plenipotentiary abroad, let
alone with the elevated status of a cabinet minister.
Instead of bridging differences and incompatibilities between nations,
which an adroit diplomat strives to do, Karim chose to become famous
by pitting one nation against another. His unbecoming actions have
torpedoed the last vestige of already-sunken Bangladesh-Pakistan
bilateral relations. (globalreview.ca).

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