Pakistan's 'smog diplomacy' won't work until it shuns anti-India intrigues

Lahore, the capital of Punjab, Pakistan’s largest province and the beating heart of the country, has been shrouded in deadly smog for days. On November 2, the AQI level reached 1067. As a result, the next day the government closed primary schools for a week, advised families to keep the elderly and young children indoors, stopped working on brick kilns and advised transporters to stop using vehicles that produce emissions. polluting smoke. However, construction activities have not yet been suspended. The smog has also covered parts of the central parts of the province.

Pakistan’s Environment Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb said on Sunday that easterly winds from Amritsar and Chandigarh, which were expected to last for about a week, had pushed the AQI level above 1,000. She told the media that her ministry would write a letter to the Pakistani Foreign Ministry. to propose that joint talks should be held with India to address the smog problem. In addition, news reports admit that the problem is caused by crop burning in Punjab, diesel fume emissions from vehicles and the operation of brick kilns.

Earlier, Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz had on October 10 called for ‘smog diplomacy’ between the Indian state of Punjab and Pakistan’s Punjab province to address an issue common to both. While addressing a gathering organized to greet the country’s Hindu minority on October 30, i.e. on the eve of Diwali, Maryam Nawaz referred to the smog problem and told the gathering that she proposed to write to the Chief Minister of Indian Punjab, Bhagwant Mann. , on this issue, because “until both the Punjabs come together, (they) will not be able to tackle the problem of smog”. She also said this was not “just a political issue”; this is a humanitarian issue.” She also said that about 30 percent of the smog came from India, but added that the wind did not know there was a boundary between them.

The fact is that both India and Pakistan are confronted with the smog problem. Both countries are taking action to control the problem, which poses a major threat to human health. Reports indicate that crop burning incidents in the northern Indian states are lower this year than in the past, but AQI levels in the northern states and the National Capital Region are very high, and despite the efforts of the central and state governments is the problem of air pollution is not yet under control. Media reports from Pakistan claim that authorities are taking criminal action against those who burn waste, but these actions have obviously not reduced the problem.

It is also undeniable that smog from one country enters another depending on the wind direction at this time of year. The question is whether both countries can really take joint action; what can be immediately ruled out is that this matter can be dealt with jointly by the two Punjabs. Maryam Nawaz may mean well and have an affinity for the ancestral village in Amritsar from which her grandfather came, but this issue will necessarily have to involve the two national governments that Marriyum Aurangzeb recognized.

The question is whether, given the current state of India-Pakistan relations and Pakistan’s continued hostility towards India, it is possible to even begin holding talks that would involve meetings of environmental experts from the two countries to gain insight into their individual problems with the ever-increasing problems. air pollution at this time of year. Maryam Nawaz is right when he says that this is a humanitarian issue, but one can argue that all matters that affect the security and safety of people can ultimately be called humanitarian issues. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate: what is the scope of humanitarian issues?

In 1998, India and Pakistan agreed on a dialogue format – called the Composite Dialogue – that involved three separate categories of issues, although these were not formally identified as such. The first category concerned humanitarian issues. This included accidental border crossings, fishermen entering the territorial waters of the other state, prisoner exchanges and visits by people from one country to pilgrimage sites in another. The second category consisted of areas of potential cooperation, such as trade and commerce, and the third covered areas of disagreement, such as terrorism, Jammu and Kashmir and Sir Creek. A discussion about smog necessarily falls into the second category. This is not a matter of semantics but of the nature of the dialogue structure between India and Pakistan.

The dialogue process has not taken place for more than twelve years. Prime Minister Narendra Modi tried to initiate dialogue in 2015. In December that year, ahead of his visit to Lahore on Christmas Day that month, the two countries agreed to initiate a comprehensive bilateral dialogue process based essentially on the categories of the Composite Dialogue. The Pakistani military sabotaged that effort through the Pathankot attack in January 2016, and relations reached a crisis point after the February 2019 Pulwama terrorist attack.

However, what deeply froze relations was Pakistan’s response to the constitutional changes in J&K in August 2019. Pakistan broke off all cooperation mechanisms, including trade, and the High Commissioners were also recalled by both countries. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s visit to Pakistan last month for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) heads of government meeting went smoothly, but there are no indications that bilateral ties will return to normal anytime soon.

In any case, the chances of new problems are high as there has been an increase in terrorism in the area after the formation of the Omar Abdullah-led government in the UT of J&K. This is partly because the Pakistani military does not want the impression that J&K is returning to normalcy to gain strength in the international community. Under these circumstances, the chances of India-Pakistanis returning to normal are difficult to imagine. The only positive side is that the February 2021 ceasefire remains in place.

There is no doubt that India and Pakistan belong to the same landmass and will therefore have to bear the brunt of climate change. This will be further exacerbated by anthropogenic activity and population growth in both countries. In fact, the rate of population growth in Pakistan is alarming. With the economy in shambles, there will be a constant supply of young people who will be indoctrinated into extreme versions of the Islamic faith and into anti-Indian sentiments. This does not bode well for collaborative efforts of the kind that Maryam Nawaz has in mind.

One last point. It is remarkable that Pakistan is doing its best to show that it is a moderate Islamic country where minorities are safe. Maryam Nawaz’s presence at the pre-Diwali meeting was illustrative of this undertaking. It is particularly striking that the banner behind her, as she spoke, was in Urdu and roughly translated into English read: “Minorities are our Crown.”

Nothing could be further from the truth in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

The writer is a former Indian diplomat who served as Ambassador of India to Afghanistan and Myanmar, and as Secretary to the Ministry of External Affairs. The opinions expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Firstpost.