As a Pakistani, I think we should maintain as cordial relationships with Saudi Arabia as possible, without sacrificing our interests as a country. A lrage number of Pakistanis work in SA, and it is a major source of remittances that help us maintain working level of foreign exchange reserves despite huge trade deficit in our international trade. We know, in the past, that Saudis might have also given us oil on credit. But it will be more advantageous to build on existing good relationship between two countries to invite their influential business people to invest in possible opportunities and projects in Pakistan. And explore possibilities of cooperation between large firms in Saudi Arabia and firms in Pakistan that have a good reputation and are going to be easily trusted by foreigners. Once a few joint projects become successful and profitable, far more investment will surely follow. We have seen investment by SA in some public enterprises in the past, but a pattern of successful joint investment on various projects will follow as a result of cooperation mostly between private sector firms of the two countries, so some sort of effort has to be made to initiate joint projects here. Really a phenomenon of foreign investment in our country’s industry will result only if some industrial and manufacturing projects become very successful, and foreigners realize that investing in related industries is indeed very profitable and they can also run successful industrial ventures in Pakistan following the footsteps of those foreigners who have already invested here with success.
We also have to request Saudis to help us control the flow of money that helps people commit sectarian crimes, and should have some laws that charity and related donations into our country from foreigners are properly documented and there has to be some reasonable degree of accountability about how that money gets spent. A lot of foreign money in our poor country is a reason for many many problems most Pakistanis do not like in our country.
Another related issue is that we must not forget is that relations with Iran must be developed as it is natural for two neighboring countries. For example, In a little more than a decade, trade between Turkey and Iran has increased roughly by twenty five times. And benefits of trade between Pakistan and Iran would exceed, within a few years, the benefits from any foreign assistance we get from foreign countries opposed to good economic relationship between two neighbors. It is just that it is difficult for us to take the hard decisions that might result in a short time pain but far more benefit in the future. It would also be right to ask the foreign powers that Turkey can trade with Iran despite being a part of NATO, why can we not have good relations with Iran and others simultaneously. We do not want to part of any block or ally against any third country since being part of negative international politics will only hurt our country.
And I truly do not understand why the new government does not work on pipeline to import gas from Iran. Any delay in sourcing energy from Iran hurts our country’s economy. If only we had completed this project five years ago, the benefit to our country might have exceeded any foreign aid, but we continue to shoot ourself in the foot, and do not even realize how we are damaging our country by not realizing our own potential, and fear that some foreign aid will be forfeited if we take the right steps for our country, and this general thinking of our nation continues to hurt us.
When it comes to international relations, we have to make sure we are not working against any third country due to our proximity to some other friend. And we have to realize that it could be possible only if we are economically strong but we still have to ask donor countries that we would honestly safeguard their right interests related to terrorism and other right human concerns, but we will not support them in alienating any third country at all or make alliance against that country, because being part of negative international politics will always hurt us in the future and this will be extremely short sighted of our leaders today, and we will unwittingly damage our country’s economy and integrity. Only if we had learnt this a few decades ago, we might have been far more well off economically.
Since we had a discussion of foreign policy, I thought may be I could give some more ideas about foreign policy of our country and we could have some more discussion about it.
As I think, prosperity and better future of any country in today’s world depends upon three most important and very basic requirements. These factors that can shape the good future of any country are peace and order, trade with rest of the world, and giving good and right skills to its citizens. How any country, culture or region can promote and succeed in implementing the fine details of the above of these factors in their country, determines the prosperity of that country or area.
So one thing we have to truly consider in making our foreign policy is that we have to promote peace, at least, in our part of the world and anything that takes any country in the region, our friends or countries we traditionally consider our foes, towards any conflict or instability, has to be avoided and rather actively discouraged by our foreign policy. And it also means that state tries to promote very good relations with all neighbors, and promotes stability and prosperity in all those countries including India, Iran and Afghanistan. And actively uses its foreign policy to prevent anything in these countries or rest of the world that could result in any conflict in the region.
Most natural trading partners of any country are those countries bordering it. Prosperity in neighboring countries, generally, means that there would be more chances and opportunities for trade with these countries, implying that it would generally result in more economic activity within our own country. Our largest trading partners are America, Europe and Gulf countries because of more prosperity in those countries, and of course, it would be natural to retain and increase the trade with these countries using existing linkages, but some emphasis has to be towards trade with our neighbors. Case of most East Asian countries was similar as they grew by exporting mostly to richer nations but now those countries are moving towards increasing trade within East Asian countries. We really do not realize the potential of trade with our neighbors, especially because current trade volumes are usually very small, but if we adopt right policies and foreign relations, our trade with our neighbors can increase to levels comparable to trade with our traditional export markets. This makes a valid case for promoting peace and stability in the region as one of the most important cornerstone of our foreign policy, and slowly and gradually opening to neighboring countries in terms of better trade relations, and ease of travel, at least, for those people whose travel could promote economic, cultural, or educational and scientific ties between the neighbors. And it also makes a case for using our foreign policy to try to discourage activities all over the world to destabilize, or economically hurt our neighbors, while of course simultaneously trying to prevent anything that could encourage our neighbors to enter into any conflict elsewhere.
Similarly promoting conflict or instabilities among our neighbors will damage us because of related fallout in our own society in form of terrorism, sectarianism and lack of tolerance. And we will be target of antagonistic policies of our neighbors that will follow as a result of our unfriendly policies, and our resources will have to be spent in combating the threat from the hostile enemy as a result of our conflict promoting adverse policies. And we could also truly suffer as a country when some powerful neighbor could possibly damage us in some open or tacit conflict. And the resources we spend in preparing for possible combat would be better spent in educating and giving the right skills to our own population. So this gives us the idea that objective of our foreign policy should be towards truly decreasing hostilities with our neighbors that exist today and promoting better relationship with all of our neighbors so we could decrease the need for unproductive expenses associated with assuring security of our country in the atmosphere of conflict in our region.
It seems that all of the three factors I mentioned earlier that include peace, trade and right skills for citizens of our country converge and point towards a foreign policy that actively promotes stability and prosperity in the region and we should work with all our neighbors to ensure that we work as closely together as possible to achieve these common goals for the region and try to avoid and prevent any conflict and instability. And only then our geopolitical importance, that has remained geopolitical curse due to constant conflict and hostilities in the region, could result in trade with all other countries in the region and we could also provide trade corridors to Central Asian countries as they also grow richer reviving the memory of silk routes in modern times.
ahsanamin2999 
Why have you deleted my comments rather than responding to them?
I would request Senior Moderator to comment again. I can myself see that total comment number has gone to thirteen while I approved only seven comments but I did not delete or unapprove rest of the six comments. I did not even see them.