National Security Adviser (NSA) Moeed Yusuf on Thursday said that Pakistan needs to “unapologetically” share its narrative with the world and the country was “far behind” others in terms of strategic communication.
His remarks came at a seminar in Islamabad on national narratives, where he highlighted the three words that captured his approach to narratives: proactive, unapologetic, and pragmatic.
According to the NSA’s outlined problems, the most “important one … which bothered me the most and continues to” was that there “is something in our culture of communication – less so domestically but mostly internationally – we are shy in presenting our view unapologetically”.
He asked, “why wasn’t this conversation being done far more unapologetically — not emotively — to clarify that Pakistan is going to do XYZ because it’s in our strategic interests,” especially given that Pakistan has a story and knows how to tell it.
“We were living in the world — and to some extent maybe even today — of public relations, press releases [and] responding to things at our own time. The world has moved on,” he stated, adding that other countries had moved onto forms of social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, for real-time engagement.
“We were still following a very conventional model of strategic communication to build narratives”.
Yusuf went on to say another issue was that Pakistan’s narratives did not always align with those of the West, particularly in the case of Afghanistan wherein Pakistan was used as a “scapegoat”, and “every problem was blamed” on Pakistan.
Another problem, according to him, was speaking “our language to others and expecting them to understand what we’re saying”.
“The same narratives and talking points couldn’t be used everywhere in front of every audience on every occasion. Apart from just the content it also matters who is delivering the message and how they are delivering it,” he maintained.
Yusuf further asked why Pakistanis were not being heard more and why more people were not presenting their point of view through writing or public appearances.
He highlighted that other countries have “lobbies against us” and gave the example of Indians who “spend more time undermining Pakistan than perhaps looking after themselves”.
This led him to question why the voice of Pakistanis isn’t “being heard more”.
“How many Pakistanis who understand Pakistan are in think tanks in key capitals?” he asked, before clarifying that Pakistanis did not necessarily have to agree with what the Pakistani state stands for but could also critique it.
“The difference is you need people who understand the context from within rather than having an outsider look into Pakistan”.
“The fact of the matter is that we have absorbed Western narratives of Pakistan to the point that even internally, there is a debate on whether Pakistan’s narrative is the correct one,” he said.
Yusuf said this was “mindboggling” for him since according to him, Pakistan had a real story to tell based on what the country was doing and stood for.
“There is absolutely no reason to be apologetic about it,” he said.
Furthermore, he outlined his experience when he came into government and elaborated on what he had found to be different, saying that for the first time he realised that Pakistan has a “real positive story to tell the world”.