Ambassadors Conference: A Shameless Manouver

In a country where there are so many things going on at the same time, it is sometimes hard to keep focus on one news item and actually get to the bottom of it. In most cases we have become so used to news headlines that we hardly ever choose to go beyond them. But in this process we sometimes miss the details which are actually more important than the story itself. And that seems to be the case with the recently concluded Ambassadors Conference in Islamabad which happened in the aftermath of the NATO air strikes about 2 weeks ago. 

Photo Credits: The Express Tribune

The Ambassadors conference happened in Islamabad and after two days of something they come up with a host of suggestions and what not. And that was the headline that was reported and then discussed. Now thing is the story and the activity goes beyond this and raises a lot of questions.  The first of which is, who the hell are the ambassadors to actually present solutions on Foreign Policy. Yes they are stakeholders and they have to actually help carry it out, but have they ever laid down the framework of the policy in the last 64 years. The answer to that is never have they been given this much importance or reported on. So then why are they now giving advice and presenting solutions to the Government of Pakistan when they have never done so in the past. Well that is the key question here.

Ever since the NATO attack, the Army along with the Government has taken a very hard stance for once. They managed to block the NATO supply routes and even managed to get the Shamsi Base back even though for years our overlords and Government had vehemently denied the US had it. That’s another story for another time as to how they always denied that the US never had the Shamsi Base and yet suddenly ordered the US to empty it. Getting back to the point, the Government and the Forces took a stance and blocked everything. This obviously put a lot of things on hold with the US and created a fairly volatile situation politically. 

Now thing is the sort of positions the Army and the Government had taken as a result of the NATO attack were very noble but very hard to climb down from. In diplomacy you always leave doors open, but once you take a stance like this, it is normally very hard to come back from that. So basically both of them did not want to look bad by softening their tone and instead they focused on figuring out how to back down without actually backing down. And that is why the whole Ambassadors Conference was cooked up. The logic was, if the Ambassadors, who are mostly deemed neutral, advised en mass that Pakistan needed to tone down its stance that would be a good logic and reasoning for the government and the army to take a step back without actually looking bad.

So the point is, whatever the Ambassadors are saying is being told to them. They are just fronting for the Army and the Government who want to chicken out of their stance against NATO and the US now because their money is being threatened. It is with these tools and stunts that they continue to fool the people of Pakistan in to believing that their overlords and the government are being firm and steadfast when in fact they are finding ways to go back on their words. Another instance of how the people of Pakistan get duped by their overlords.