Indian PM Narendra Modi arrives in Dubai after 34 years, is given a guard of honor with a 21-gun salute and in the evening is seen at Sheikh Zayed Mosque tweeting a selfie to his 14 million followers around the world.

The situation is making Pakistani’s lose their calm, as it rightly should. UAE is a country of Muslim brothers, with a significant number of Pakistani’s settled here, part of a booming remittance economy. Our relationship with the UAE should not have weakened.

UAE on its part has blatantly treated Modi like a star, knowing full well his anti-Muslim past and anti-Pakistan rhetoric. Was Pakistan’s refusal to join the Arab coalition to go to war in Yemen so hard to digest? Is this love for Modi a way for UAE to rub salt in our wounds? Trust Modi to take advantage of the situation and milk it for all its worth. He stood there, in Dubai, and openly took digs at Pakistan and Turkey. If Pakistan was so wrong in joining the war, did Modi want to put Indian troops in Yemen?

Indian foreign policy has shifted gears from commercial to more strategic in recent times while Pakistan has faltered. Strong warnings from UAE were ignored and our leaders directed all focus towards pacifying Saudi Arabia with a few trips. For Modi these withering relations are easy and smooth landing fields. May it be the visit to Bangladesh, Russia or this time UAE, Modi knows where and how to fill the vacuum. Where was our premier meanwhile? In Belarus, a country most Pakistani’s would be hard pressed to locate on a map.

Modi’s 26-country visit in just 15 months in power has changed the way in which India thinks about the world and vice versa. These visits have yielded many results for a country looking to expand its economic and strategic prowess. May it be the economic cooperation with China, or bypassing Pakistan to endorse sub regional cooperation by signing the BBIN treaty with Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh, or going ahead with the contentious land agreement with Bangladesh, or going to UAE to sign multiple accords on bilateral cooperation, security and investments and ending his tour with allocation for a land for a first Hindu temple in Abu Dhabi.

Pakistan foreign policy is failing on multiple fronts. We currently do not even have a foreign minister. Age-old advisers may not be a solution and the portfolio assumed by PM Nawaz is not yielding significant results. The visit to Belarus may be a step towards getting closer to Moscow, but it is hardly going to help our position in the Middle East and South Asia. Times are turbulent and we need to move fast. The Arab friendship cannot be lost.