CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts: Pakistan’s massive military operation aimed to root out terrorism is now in its “final phase”, however, the menace is not going to just go away unless there is peace on the other side of the border in the strife-torn Afghanistan, Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi said during a talk at Harvard University.
“I think we have beaten back the dark forces of terrorism,” the Pakistani envoy told students and faculty members in a special podcast recorded at the Kennedy School as a part of its programme on the “Future of Diplomacy”. “We will defeat them (the terrorists) eventually — it’s still a work in progress — but we have come a long way,” she added, describing Zarb-e-Azb as the largest anti-terrorism operation anywhere in the world. In the course of her conversation, Ambassador Lodhi discussed peace, security issues and dynamics related to the region and beyond, as well as Pakistan’s role at the United Nations.
Dealing with what she called the “multi-dimensional threat of terrorism,” the Pakistani envoy said that law enforcement and military measures should be extensively complemented with countering the terrorists’ method of exploitation of local fears and grievances to lure followers into their fold.
“One lesson we learnt over the past decade and a half is that because we are dealing with a multi-dimensional threat, we also need a toolkit which is multi-focused and equally multi-faceted, and for that reason the kinetic part of what we need to do has to be supplemented by non-kinetic measures” she postulated. Adding on to her multi-faceted strategy against terrorism, she opined, “law enforcement is an important dimension but so is evolving a counter-narrative to that used by the men of violence who deploy certain kinds of appeals to recruit the young and impressionable.”
Setting the regional situation in context, Ambassador Lodhi said the security challenge in the region has emerged from many prolonged conflicts — Afghanistan has been in a state of conflict for over three and a half decades, while on the other side the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan still remains unresolved. “We in Pakistan call it (the Kashmir problem) the unfinished business of partition.
As a result of this unresolved dispute and other unsettled issues with India, the region has seen tension, conflict, war and along with that have come the security challenges we face today,” the ambassador said in the special podcast.
Discussing the global threat of terrorism she remarked that the tragedy had both internal and external dimensions everywhere. Across the world, she said,countries including the United States or other states in the Middle East were confronted with ISIS, busy dealing with both their domestic and external dimensions. Ambassador Lodhi briefed the audience on Pakistan’s active role at the United Nations, which has earned great respect for the country. “We work, of course, with other countries at the United Nations, which is an amazing place because the principal dynamic there is cooperative, not competitive(ness),…In fact, no country, however powerful, can achieve anything at the United Nations on its own.” she added She said that multilateral diplomacy teaches something very fundamental about diplomacy itself— unless you cooperate with others and align your interest with the interest of other countries, you are not going to achieve any of your own goals either.”But whatever the issues are, Pakistan has been at the forefront of development issues as also on intensely political issues as a several-time member of the Security Council. Pakistan has played a key role in shaping some of the norms that emerged on peacekeeping as well as peace and security issues,” she remarked. by our special correspondent
