Humiliation of Sartaj
Aziz
The humiliating
treatment meted out to Mr. Sartaj Aziz by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and
Narendra Modi is shocking, to say the least. While the attitude of Mr. Modi is
due to his intense hatred of Muslims and Pakistan, Mr. Ghani conveniently
forgot how much Afghanistan owes to Pakistan, which was in the forefront to
oust the Soviet Union from his country (while India supported the Soviet
occupation). Pakistan has hosted three million Afghan refugees for the past
over thirty years. Mr. Ghani displayed his servitude to Mr. Modi by refusing to
accept Pakistan’s generous offer of 500 million dollars to help in the
reconstruction of Afghanistan, saying that Pakistan should use the money to
curb terrorism. So what about Indian aid of a billion dollars to his country?
Shouldn’t he have advised the Indian premier to use that money to provide
toilets to poor Indians?
The time has come to get
tough with Afghanistan. We have a trade transit agreement with that country
which is being used to flood Pakistan with goods meant for Afghanistan, causing
many of our industries to collapse and threatening many others with closure.
Hosting the refugees has resulted in arms and drug smuggling, along with
terrorism which has cost the lives of over fifty thousand Pakistanis.
We should start by
revising the Afghan Transit Trade Agreement and impose the same conditions on
Afghanistan as India has imposed on Nepal, recovering full custom duty at
Indian sea ports on all Nepalese imports and refunding the duty amount to Nepal
at the end of the financial year. Naturally, Nepalese importers are forced to
buy most of their requirements from India, and to import only those goods which
are not manufactured in India. We should also arrange for the immediate
repatriation of Afghan refugees from Pakistan. Only then will Mr. Ashraf Ghani
realize how much his country owes to Pakistan.
SHAKIR LAKHANI
KARACHI
December 29, 2016
http://dailytimes.com.pk/e-paper/2016-12-29/lahore/8696
Post a Comment