Calling Pakistan and Imran Khan's bluff about a 'successful' OIC summit

By Team Newsable | First Published Dec 20, 2021, 11:37 PM IST

Far from the presumption of success, Pakistan may have emerged from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation as more regressive.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and his Cabinet ministers went to town claiming how the summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation had been a success. Addressing a press briefing, Imran's Special Assistant for Political Communication Shahbaz Gill said that it was a matter of great pride for the country that all Muslim nations had arrived in Islamabad to attend the summit. In fact, he went to term the OIC session a great success wherein the Muslim world backed Pakistan’s stance on Afghanistan.

Pakistan's Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari too termed the extraordinary session a major diplomatic success for Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Afghanistan policy. But was it really so? According to Mahmoud Saikal, former Deputy Foreign Minister of Afghanistan and Ambassador to the UN and Australia, the OIC is a grouping of 57 nations and out of them, only 20 sent their foreign ministers to Sunday's extraordinary session of Council of Foreign Ministers.

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Saikal further observed that out of the five Central Asian members of OIC, three of them -- who also happen to be Afghanistan’s neighbours -- sent their foreign ministers to New Delhi instead. The former envoy observed that 24 hours since the conclusion of the OIC meeting, the key document (resolution) is still not publicly available.

24 hrs after the conclusion of the OIC meeting, the text of it’s key doc (the resolution) is not publicly available. Hard to assess the work of the Session w/out it. Still, establishing an Afghan Trust Fund is welcoming. Turning it to pledges & disbursement remain a challenge.2/2

— Mahmoud Saikal محمود صيقل (@MahmoudSaikal)

Countering the Pakistan government's claim that the OIC summit was a success, Saikal said that it was hard to assess the work of the session without an official document outlining the resolutions taken. Making his remarks on social media, the former envoy said that even though establishing an Afghan Trust Fund is a welcoming gesture, turning it to pledges and disbursement remains a challenge.

So what is it that Islamabad, which seems to have adopted the role of a self-appointed guardian of Afghanistan, achieved through the summit? Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi listed the establishment of a resolution for the Afghan banking system’s revival and the setting up of a Trust Fund as great achievements. But Pakistan and Imran Khan's hypocrisy was revealed when the Prime Minister justified the Taliban’s human rights excesses, mistreatment of women and denying them the right to education. Reiterating his misogynist outlook, he urged the international community to 'understand that the Taliban's idea of human rights and asserted that women's rights are different in every society.

Far from the presumption of success, Pakistan may have emerged as more regressive.

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