Coronavirus crisis: Pakistan ill prepared and ill intentioned.

Rahul Kumar : At the time when the whole world is battling one of the biggest threats mankind has ever witnessed, the novel coronavirus pandemic, and gearing up for cooperation in every possible way to counter its impact, Pakistan stands out as an exception. For Pakistan, Kashmir issue is far more important than cooperating with its neighbours to fight this coronavirus pandemic even as its coronavirus case jumped to 94.

Pakistan insensitiveness to coronavirus threats was recently seen in the SAARC meeting held through video-conference, where all the heads of nations discussed a joint strategy to deal with the coronavirus threat.

कोरोना: 75 जिलों में केवल आवश्यक सेवाएं जारी रहेंगी, यात्री ट्रेन व मेट्रो 31 मार्च तक बंद

First, Pakistan’s prime minister Mr. Imran Khan, skipped the meeting, and instead sent State Minister of Health Zafar Mirza which was attended by other heads of governments. Second, during the meeting, Zafar Mirza raised the issue of J&K, claiming that the ‘lockdown’ in the region should be removed to allow better response to Coronavirus.

Pakistan again used such an important discussion to propagate its malicious and vilified agenda by highlighting Kashmir issue, which was not the agenda for discussion, thus trying to divert the discussion from important matters.

This shows Pakistan’s insensitiveness towards the global humanitarian crisis and its persistent malafide intention to highlight the Kashmir issue on multilateral platforms, where it has failed miserably.

Pakistan’s insensitiveness towards safety of its people from corona pandemic can be further gauged by its refusal to airlift and evacuate its citizens from Wuhan despite several appeals from families of those based in the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, in order to show solidarity with all weather friend China,putting life for hundreds of pakistani students at stake.
On the other hand, India has been successful in not only to evacuate its citizens from China and other countries but has also rescued citizens of few neighbouring countries.

In the same Saarc video conference, Indian Prime minister Narendra Modi,offered to set up an emergency fund to aid in the south Asian grouping’s fight against the coronavirus and said New Delhi was willing to announce an initial contribution of $10m to the corpus which could be replenished voluntarily by member nations, several of whom are very small economies.

Indian authorities have slammed Pakistan’s attempt to “politicise” a humanitarian issue by its “unwarranted” statement on Kashmir during the video conference.

Pakistan raising Kashmir issue during ‘SAARC fights Corona’ meeting reflects their ‘petty, poor & pathetic’ standard of governance & ‘myopic, misplaced & malicious’ priorities even in this hour of global crisis threatening mankind – shocking and shameful. The country deserved to be “quarantined” by the global community.

Pakistan has been trying to internationalise the Kashmir issue but India has asserted that the abrogation of Article 370 was its “internal matter”. New Delhi has also asked Islamabad to accept the reality and stop its anti-India rhetoric.

Pakistan should learn from India and strengthen its preparedness to tackle the coronavirus crisis. At the same time, it should recognise indispensable cooperation with neighbourhood countries.

By shedding anti India rhetoric and by showing willingness to cooperate with neighbours in a larger developmental paradigm, Pakistan can help in the revival of SAARC, which will be very fruitful in tackling the coronavirus crisis and set an example for other regional and global organisations.