Pakistan's perspective on Libyan situation

Pakistan has finally spoken on the Libyan situation, but what it said is an impression of mature diplomacy. In these pages we have already expressed that after rather easy victories against dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt the Arab Revolution is going into a harder phase where dictators are deeply entrenched and would fight to the last irrespective of human cost.
That is now the scene in Libya. Colonel Qadhafi has decided to fight back whatever it takes. He has put into action air force causing deaths, estimated by media in 'thousands'. Given media's inaccessibility to the places attacked by air-borne assaults reality on the ground is not available.
But even then the numbers of people dislocated by military action and the sense of insecurity it has bred into the minds of foreign workers who are now amassing on Libya's borders with neighbouring Arab countries, clearly reflect the gravity of threat to normal life and its impact and fallout on the future of oil-rich Libya. So if our Foreign Office has taken time to firm up its position, as stated by Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir, in a media briefing on Thursday, the delay in making it public is understandable.
Pakistan believes the crisis is its internal affair and given the country's tribal culture it quite likely that the Libyan people will be able to establish "their equilibrium". In support of his argument, the foreign secretary cited the examples of Pakistan and Afghanistan where tribesmen have their own way of settling disputes between clans - a broad hint to the international community that crisis in the tribal region of Pakistan is amenable to resolution by tribal peace-making mechanism.
He has rejected threatened use of direct military intervention or under the umbrella of the United Nations, in line with growing world opinion that Libyan turmoil is its own problem and brooks no foreign interference. However, he did indicate that should "Security Council make a decision then it is binding on Pakistan," a possibility that doesn't exist given opposition to outside interference by China and Russia. That said Pakistan is not oblivious to gross human rights violations and would render support to any effort aimed at relieving the pain of people in Libya caused by violent government reaction to the votaries of Arab Revolution.
More relevantly, the matter at the heart of Pakistan's concern over the deepening Libyan crisis is some 18,000 Pakistani workers stranded in the cold desert. They are confronted with myriad challenges ranging from food scarcity to acute shortage of money and in some cases they carry no papers in support of their identity. To evacuate such a large number of people out of the danger is no easy job, but whatever is possible the government is doing. Secretary Salman Bashir said some 2,000 of them can be flown back by air, but that is only a fraction of the people stranded. No less challenging should be the evacuation of its expatriate workers for Bangladesh who number nearly 60,000 and for some other developing countries.
That it is the task cut out mainly for UN agencies particularly UNHCR it is heartening to find it already is in the field. What will these workers, in most of the cases their families and by all measures major contributors to their national economies, do to even partially meet these requirements is not easy to comprehend. One thing it is certain that Libya will not be same even when peace finally returns to this North African country. So the foreign secretary's hope that some would like to stay back because "situation is different in different regions."