foreign-relations-of-pakistan

"[The Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People's Republic of China] can learn a lot from each other about the bloody persecution of religious dissidents, [the destruction of places of worship], the extra-legal assassinations, the harassment of refugees abroad [and more]. It appears that the learning process has already started."

"What our conversations have been with Chinese, this is not the case... Whatever issues we have with the Chinese, we speak to them behind closed doors. China has been one of the greatest friends to us in our most difficult times. When we were really struggling, our economy was struggling, China came to our rescue. So we respect the way they are."

"Our relationship with China is such that whatever issues we raise with China are always behind closed doors... We have economic ties with China, China is our neighbour. They've been very good to us in our most difficult times, so we respect the fact that if we have concerns we talk about them behind closed doors."

"Whatever issues we have with Chinese, we speak to them behind closed doors. China has been one of the greatest friends to us in our most difficult times. China came to the rescue when our economy was struggling."

"Pakistan sees China as its principal supporter against India and is unwilling to say or do anything that disrupts ties with Beijing."

"China has helped us when we were at rock bottom. We are really grateful to the Chinese government, so we have decided that any issues we have had with China we will handle privately."

"Pakistan remains of the firm view that the perspective and consent of the concerned States should be given utmost importance when dealing with the affairs which fall exclusively within their sovereign jurisdiction."

"China has been one of the greatest friends to us in our most difficult times, when we were really struggling.. When our economy was struggling, China came to our rescue."

"..Reading the British complaints, it is striking how they pre-echo American complaints about Pakistan in the post 9/11 era. In both cases, 150 years apart, Western governments are accusing Pakistanis and their forebears of exploiting their relationship with the West to make money..."

"Pakistan was once called the most allied ally of the United States. We are now the most non-allied."

"[Pakistan] will be a steadfast partner…. A force for freedom and moderation in the Arab world."

"For more than three decades, our supposed ally in South Asia has systematically lied to and manipulated successive presidential administrations — Republican and Democratic — in ways that have made the U.S. and the world less safe. Islamabad has been the recipient of more than $33 billion in American assistance since 2002, including $14 billion to combat terrorism and insurgents in the region even while Pakistan has been busily doing the opposite."

"..In a telling metaphor replete with a sense of shame, many Pakistanis have likened Washington’s relationship with Islamabad to that of a virile man and his vulnerable mistress. At times the latter is being passionately wooed and courted, and at others — such as the phase we are in now — is cruelly spurned and ignored..."

"For those who look at facts rather than at newspaper headlines, it is obvious that there is no danger whatsoever of the US giving the impression of valuing a Muslim life less than a Hindu life. Rather the reverse, and this consistently for decades. In 1971, the Pakistani Army was butchering Hindus in East Bengal by the hundreds of thousands (many times the total number of victims of Hindutva since then), yet the USA stood by Pakistan and did nothing to rein their Islamic allies in. Throughout the 1990s and till today, Pak-backed terrorists have been butchering Hindus in numerous shootings and bomb attacks and ethnically cleansing them from the Kashmir Valley, yet the USA have not used their leverage with Pakistan to stop this continuous terror wave. Dr. Hathaway's misrepresentation of this highly unbalanced American policy adds insult to injury."

"I made the trip knowing I was like the child putting his finger into the hole in the dike. And there are things that ... I don’t know ... one can’t ... oh, why not! The truth is that I spoke clearly to Mr. Nixon. And I told him what I had already told Mr. Heath, Mr. Pompidou, Mr. Brandt. I told him without mincing words that we couldn’t go on with ten million refugees on our backs, we couldn’t tolerate the fuse of such and explosive situation any longer. Well, Mr. Heath, Mr. Pompidou, and Mr. Brandt had understood very well. But not Mr. Nixon. The fact is that when the others understand one thing, Mr. Nixon understands another. I suspected he was very pro-Pakistan. Or rather I knew that the Americans had always been in favor of Pakistan—not so much because they were in favor of Pakistan, but because they were against India."

"The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies and deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!"

"But Pakistan’s slaughter of its Bengalis in 1971 is starkly different. Here the United States was allied with the killers. The White House was actively and knowingly supporting a murderous regime at many of the most crucial moments. There was no question about whether the United States should intervene; it was already intervening on behalf of a military dictatorship decimating its own people. This stands as one of the worst moments of moral blindness in U.S. foreign policy. Pakistan’s crackdown on the Bengalis was not routine or small-scale killing, not something that could be dismissed as business as usual, but a colossal and systematic onslaught. Midway through the bloodshed, both the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department conservatively estimated that about two hundred thousand people had lost their lives. Many more would perish, cut down by Pakistani forces or dying in droves in miserable refugee camps."

"And the bloodletting of 1971 marks an important chapter of a U.S. embrace of military dictators at their worst. Although American popular memory about Pakistan tends to start in September 2001, it was Nixon’s embrace of Yahya that helped to define a U.S. relationship with Pakistan based overwhelmingly on the military, even in its most repugnant hour. Nixon and Kissinger set the stage for an ongoing decimation of Pakistan’s democratic opposition, giving time and space to Islamicize the country more and more. This pattern of U.S. antidemocratic engagement—with origins going back far beyond Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s most recent U.S.-backed military dictator—has helped convince so many Pakistanis that the United States coldly pursues its own realpolitik interests and cares nothing for them."

"No country, not even the United States, can prevent massacres everywhere in the world. But these atrocities were carried out by a close U.S. ally, which prized its warm relationship with the United States, and used U.S. weapons and military supplies against its own people. Surely there was some U.S. responsibility here. And yet Nixon and Kissinger, for all their clout with Pakistan, despite all the warnings from Blood and others, continued to support this military dictatorship while it committed grievous crimes against humanity."

"In one of the awkward alignments of the Cold War, President Richard Nixon had lined up the democratic United States with this authoritarian government, while the despots in the Soviet Union found themselves standing behind democratic India."

"The Obama administration never said publicly what it suspected: that the Pakistani military knew all along that bin Laden was living with his extended family in Abbottabad, one of Pakistan’s best-known garrison towns. If Washington had declared that Pakistan was harboring bin Laden, then Pakistan would have legally been a state sponsor of terrorism, and subject to mandatory sanctions like Iran, said Mr. Riedel, the former South Asia adviser to the Bush and Obama administrations. That would have forced the Americans to end its support for Pakistan and that in turn, would have led Pakistan to stop American war supplies from transiting Pakistan, increasing the cost of the war."

"The Hindus, especially in Bengal, welcomed the New Learning of Europe and the institutions the British brought. The Muslims, wounded by their loss of power, and out of old religious scruples, stood aside. It was the beginning of the intellectual distance between the two communities. This distance has grown with independence; and it is this—more even than religion now — that at the end of the twentieth century has made India and Pakistan quite distinct countries. India, with an intelligentsia that grows by leaps and bounds, expands in all directions. Pakistan, proclaiming only the faith and then proclaiming the faith again, ever shrinks. It was Muslim insecurity that led to the call for the creation of Pakistan. It went at the same time with an idea of old glory, of the invaders sweeping down from the northwest and looting the temples of Hindustan and imposing the faith on the infidel. The fantasy still lives; and for the Muslim converts of the subcontinent it is the start of their neurosis, because in this fantasy the convert forgets who or what he is and becomes the violator."

"Today the absurd spectacle of the high-stepping soldiers from India and Pakistan who nightly strut their robotic lowering and folding of flags, with their high kicks, stamps and twirls, at a border crossing on the Old Trunk Road between their two countries, draws increasingly large cheering crowds from each side and is a YouTube favourite. It is surely a bit of harmless fun. Or is it? Both countries have nuclear weapons and a long history of conflict and mutual suspicion. And militarism, whether that means elevating the military to a position as the noblest and best of their societies or the leaching of military values, such as discipline and obedience into the civilian world, can lead to trouble for democratic societies."

"The most important departure from determinism during the Cold War had to do, obviously, with hot wars. Prior to 1945, great powers fought great wars so frequently that they seemed to be permanent features of the international landscape: Lenin even relied on them to provide the mechanism by which capitalism would self-destruct. After 1945, however, wars were limited to those between superpowers and smaller powers, as in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan, or to wars among smaller powers like the four Israel and its Arab neighbors fought between 1948 and 1973, or the three India-Pakistan wars of 1947-48, 1965, and 1971, or the long, bloody, and indecisive struggle that consumed Iran and Iraq throughout the 1980s."

"I come from an Indian Muslim family, but I experience India as a very pleasant country, whereas in Pakistan I feel ill at ease. You would think it should be the reverse. But in spite of its many defects, India is a rich and open society, while Pakistan is culturally an impoverished and closed society."

"I wish President Musharraf well, we want to work with him to bring greater balance in our own relations. But I have to be realistic enough to recognize the role that terrorist elements have played in the last few years in the history of Pakistan. Taliban was the creation of Pakistan extremists, the Wahabi Islam which has flourished, thousands and thousands of schools, the madrassas, were set up to preach this jihad based on hatred of other religions . . . and Pakistan is not a democracy in the sense that we know and you know. . . . We wish Pakistan success in emerging as a moderate Muslim state. We will work with President Musharraf . . . but we have to recognize what has happened."

"This distance has grown with independence; and it is this—more even than religion now—that at the end of the twentieth century has made India and Pakistan quite distinct countries. India, with an intelligentsia that grows by leaps and bounds, expands in all directions. Pakistan, proclaiming only the faith and then proclaiming the faith again, ever shrinks. It was Muslim insecurity that led to the call for the creation of Pakistan. It went at the same time with an idea of old glory, of the invaders sweeping down from the northwest and looting the temples of Hindustan and imposing the faith on the infidel. The fantasy still lives; and for the Muslim converts of the subcontinent it is the start of their neurosis, because in this fantasy the convert forgets who or what he is and becomes the violator. It is as though—switching continents—the indigenous people of Mexico and Peru were to side with Cortés and Pizarro and the Spaniards as the bringers of the true faith."

"The formation of Pakistan was necessary so that it may be used as a base for conquering the rest of India to Islam."

"(The achievement of Pakistan) was the first successful step in this 20th century to realise their 1200-year old dream of complete subjugation of this country."

"Just as Medina had provided a base for the eventual victory of Islam in Arabia, Pakistan would pave the way for the triumphal return of Islam as the ruling power over the entire subcontinent. The whole of Hindustan would thus be turned into Pakistan just as the Prophet himself had turned all of Arabia into Pakistan."

"Hitler was waging wars on other countries of Europe and the circumstances compelled the Englishmen to free India. The march of Hitler could not be checked without India’s help. Therefore, Congress and Gandhiji’s principles of non-violence and non-cooperation proved to be effective and India got freedom on the condition that Muslims would be given Pakistan. Pakistan was created but many of the Muslims were not accepted in Pakistan so they returned to India. All the four provinces of Pakistan were inhabited by fair-complexioned people, therefore, those Indian Muslims who had fair complexion were accommodated. They also spoke Urdu like Pakistanis. However, only a few Hindus chose to continue living in Pakistan. My dark complexioned brother returned to India with his wife and children. My father had died and therefore my mother too returned to India along with her children. I belonged to Aligarh, I decided to stay there. Muslims of Aligarh also did no go anywhere, so I was safe there."

"India and Pakistan, where people starve in the streets, waste billions on military spending because of the Kashmir dispute. Now some of India’s extreme Hindu nationalists warn they want to reabsorb Pakistan, Bangladesh, and even Sri Lanka into Mother India. Previous Indian leaders have been cautious. But not PM Modi. He is showing signs of power intoxication."

"In his dealings with Pakistan too, he Nehru] tried to "see their viewpoint also", and consequently made concessions of which millions of Hindus have suffered the consequences (handing over pieces of territory, stopping the reconquest of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir when it was succeeding, refraining from efforts to enforce the Pakistani part of the Nehru-Liaqat pact)... Some will not even grant him the essential Brahmin attribute: thought. All his writings are full of borrowed thought."

"Pakistan has decided to bleed India with thousand cuts."

"If we were to attack Iraq now, alone or with few allies, it would set a precedent that could come back to haunt us. In recent days, Russia has talked of an invasion of Georgia to attack Chechen rebels. India has mentioned the possibility of a pre-emptive strike on Pakistan. And what if China were to perceive a threat from Taiwan? So Mr. President, for all its appeal, a unilateral attack, while it cannot be ruled out, on the present facts is not a good option."

"The story of Pakistan is a terror story actually. It started with a poet who thought that Muslims were so highly evolved that they should have a special place in India for themselves. This wish to sift countries of unnecessary and irrelevant populations is terrible and this is exactly what happened in Pakistan."