Rising from the meltdown

The Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment (BEOE) has confirmed sending 172,144 Pakistani workers abroad to different countries in the first three months of this year. That speaks of a number short of a million during the financial year. Then there are other people who leave the country through whatever means become available to them, with some even losing their lives on the way to their destinations.

Simultaneously, the IMF has lowered Pakistan’s growth forecast to 2.6 per cent for the current fiscal year. This falls significantly short of the 3.6 per cent growth target set by the Pakistani government. The World Bank has trimmed the forecast to 2.7 per cent.

The growing unrest in Balochistan and the decisive protests in Sindh against the canals project add to the heightening level of uncertainty that plagues Pakistan today. This can no longer be hidden behind an artificial veneer. Gradually, the plaster is coming off the surface to show gaping holes appearing in an increasingly debilitated structure.

The most alarming of these developments is the mass exodus that is taking place from the country, impacting virtually every household. The more people one talks to, the more one realises that there are just a few left who may still manage to keep their faith intact in the future of the country. The bulk of the population is looking at every possible alternate avenue to escape. Most of them are liquidating their paltry assets to leave rather than suffer the depleting prospects of a future here.

Evaluating the policies being pursued by the power wielders, and with no indication of any significant improvement in the economic, security and political domains, the gravity of this syndrome is likely to intensify. To add to the existing problems, the growth graph continues to slip further, thus rendering even the meagre projected targets unrealistic.

The terrorist attack in Pahalgam in IIOJK, which resulted in the death of more than 20 people, is another development that India would want Pakistan to suffer for. From the moment the tragedy occurred, the Indian media has been hollering, indicting Pakistan without evidence, with officials of their government not lagging far behind. Pakistan has been at the forefront of fighting the scourge of terror and has suffered enormously in the process, with billions lost in the wars and over 100,000 dead. But mostly, this has gone unrecognised because of the incoherent policies pursued by Pakistani leadership intoxicated by the task of enhancing their personal profit rather than promoting the national narrative.

In the wake of the terrorist attack, India has implemented a few steps immediately. It has suspended the Indus Waters Treaty; banned Saarc visas for Pakistanis; cancelled existing visas and given visitors 48 hours to leave India; shut down Wagah-Attari border; declared defence attaches and advisers at the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi ‘persona non grata’ and given them a week to leave India, and recalled its defence, naval and air advisers from its High Commission in Islamabad whose strength will be brought down to 30 from the existing 55. Indian defence forces have been put on high alert with a vow to launch action against those who planned and carried out the Pahalgam attack.

These extremely portentous and consequential steps can have a far-reaching impact on the marginal relations that India and Pakistan have struggled to maintain in the recent past. But even more worrisome are the calls for punishing Pakistan by launching an outright war. Jingoism reigns supreme across the length and breadth of India.

In a tit-for-tat move, Pakistan has since done likewise. It may restore some parity in the context of semantics, but it does little in terms of mitigating the grave dangers that seem to be inching closer in a relentless manner.

Such are the times when nations come together in an expression of unity and resolve. Though verbal assurances to the effect have been transmitted by leaders, Pakistan presents a picture of a country riven by deep division and discord. With its constitution and rule of law having lost relevance, the judiciary having been subdued in the clutches of the executive, and most state institutions reduced to being the handmaidens of the bastions of power, Pakistan survives on wobbly ground.

A country in a state of such disrepair is rendered vulnerable by adversaries, both internal and external. Would it, therefore, be advisable to continue treading the path that we have done in the past, thus aggravating the state of discord and disunity, or is there even a remote prospect that we ponder our gravely flawed policies and, seeing the lurking dangers hovering above from the neighbour next door, get down to injecting a semblance of order and justice in our thinking to bring people together?

Let it be known that this is the only sensible way to move further, as an insistence on pursuing the old and divisive ways will put us deeper into the meltdown that we have been experiencing in the recent past. The only avenue forward is by re-evaluating our policies and priorities. We must determine whether Pakistan and its people are more important or the interests of its minuscule beneficiary elite. If it is the former, it would require a surgical shift in our policies. But if it is the latter, we are well on course to self-destruction. We need no foreign forces to attack us, as we have done the groundwork admirably. It is only a matter of time before the structure comes down upon us.

One understands that undertaking a drastic reappraisal of policies and deeds requires immense courage. But one also understands that the state cannot take sides. It must assume the role of a non-partisan and caring arbiter in dispensing with its people. Once we get on this difficult remedial trail, regenerative steps will keep leading us across the hurdles to the rising of a morning that people of this country have survived in desperate hope of. That day must dawn in their lives.

Let the bastions of power be shaken from their slumber. Let their ego not obscure their wisdom. Let sanity and sagacity combine to determine the course ahead. In these challenging times with existential repercussions, there is only one person who can rally the people behind him because he reverberates in their hearts and minds. He has been incarcerated in a cell at Adiala for the last two years for no crime of his. He is needed more than ever to lead his people.

The day Imran Khan walks out of the jail gate will mark the beginning of the long journey to salvation, extricating Pakistan from the meltdown where it has long been abandoned to simmer in.

The writer is a political and security strategist and the founder of the Regional Peace Institute. He is a former special assistant to former PM Imran Khan and heads the PTI’s policy think-tank. He tweets @RaoofHasan