Comment
Pakistan has been moving from one crisis to another. Its perception too keeps changing. Before independence clerics condemned it as a convulsive, divisive and polluted idea of an infidel that for them Mohammad Ali Jinnah was. Not long ago Pakistan was being described as a failing or failed state. Now President Obama has dismissed it as dysfunctional state. Where do we go from here, after all the insurmountable mess we are in -- one cannot make a safe guess.
Usually some of the historically important dates in a nation’s life provide its people, its leaders, thinkers, policy makers and powers that be -- time for sincere stocktaking. Regretfully we only indulge in high sounding rhetoric and rituals as one sees on the death anniversary of Pakistan’s founder Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah or previous to it Defence of Pakistan Day.
Emotional outbursts of people who matter -- in various walks of life -- are cliché ridden. Critical juncture, cross-road, defining movement, calls to get united, rise above self, commitment to do and die for Pakistan -- are full of sound and fury -- do they mean anything? Having lost half of MAJ’s Pakistan, yet we have the gall to say that now we have become invincible and that we will blind the evil eye that shall cast its evil spell on us. Drawing on the blackboard, however, paints a bleak picture.
We are in the midst of a ferocious war -- perhaps worst ever. Valiantly fought Zarb-e-Azb claims to have recaptured and cleared that sizeable portion of our beloved country where we had lost our writ to the Jihadi terrorists. Hardly authoritative words to that laudable claim had dried, the terrorists struck again with the message loud and clear -- “Joe, we are here, we aren’t going anywhere”.
About the situation in two of the four provinces, less said the better. Pakistan’s mega city -- MAJ’s birth place -- country’s main economic hub -- the hen that lays the golden egg -- is not normal although those in-charge of law and order since many years -- are basking in the glory of ingratiated achievements. Their punitive raids 24/7, arbitrary arrests of thousands and killing daily of many undesirables in encounters -- seems to be tales from Arabian nights. And now how many more years down the road before Karachi would be as safe as early 70s or near to 94/96, seems to be a road from here to eternity. The more they do away with, the more crop up from nowhere.
Obviously those who are carrying on the Jihad to secure Karachi for Pakistan have a carte blanche -- much like the bigoted terrorists who kill with impunity. No one to hold them accountable of all the good and bad that is being done. It was no pleasant scene to watch on the TV channels the physically diminutive parliamentary leader of the fourth largest electoral party in the country being manhandled by a hefty, overfed Gullo Butt like character under the glare of dozens of cameras. Whatever -- it must have been a rude shock for those who in their profound optimism feel that democracy has come to stay.
A month earlier in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s largest province, Jihadi terrorists struck with all their might, killing the President of Balochistan Bar Association and 75 other lawyers. It was the severest blow to the people of province that already suffer from an unenviable literacy rate. Killing of that many professionals -- cream of liberal, democratic and secular lot -- crusaders for rule of law, recovery of missing persons and justice to the families of those who are mysteriously found killed -- was perhaps the most cruel blow ever to the province where life has been short, brutish and nasty despite it being overly under the management of dozens of law enforcing agencies -- military et all -- since years.
Young Hani Baloch’s painful wailing for her missing father human rights activist Waheed Baloch seems to have become a far cry in the wilderness with not many lawyers now daring to take the case. Senators have every reason to call the massacre a failure of the intelligence agencies and law-enforcers. There is definitely something more than meets the eye and a planned method with an objective behind this madness especially when its onus is passed onto the Indian Raw -- a feat easier than done thing than to effectively counter whoever is out there to destroy peace and endanger CPEC -- the game changer.
In Khyber Pakhtoonkhawa ever since December 16, 2014 massacre of 150 children of Army Public School, the province remains an uninterrupted target of the terrorists. It seems that these anti-Pakistan elements enjoy the same sort of immunity that the Americans did when they invaded garrison town of Abbottabad with full throttled noise of their helicopters, killed Osama Bin Laden (May 2, 2011), captured his body, his secret documentations without disturbing the opiated slumber of those responsible for air surveillance system and security of country’s territorial sovereignty.
Latest attack of the Jihadis targeting Mardan and Christian Colony in Warsak Dam just got averted with least blood due to the extraordinary bravery of the police.
The much orchestrated National Action Plan (NAP) and Provincial Apex Committees as civil-and-military stake holders hastily formed after APS to eliminate terrorism, sectarianism, reform madressahs -- are neither here nor there -- only getting heavier under the dust in the Ministry of Interior. Except Karachi where the Apex Committee meets with every sneeze, in rest of the provinces, the less said the better about the Apex Committees. When the military expresses dis-satisfaction over the lack of civil government’s participation in the war, it is a manifestation of frustration and not a hint at possible military takeover. KP Administration’s funding of a seminary shows the unbreakable relations between Taliban and PTI leadership.
Out of four only one province is being projected as an oasis of peace in the entire country of over 200 million. It is not because its administrators have turned it into a land of milk-n-honey, where every child born is lap-top educated irrespective of the fact that quite a lot of them are subject of sexual abuse for self, pelf and profit of the powerful, where internationally condemned terrorists are being closely watched by the law-enforcers but not arrested (as per the recent statement of Adviser Foreign Affairs), where notoriously known training centres for agents of terrorism/sectarianism are happily funded by the provincial government for buying its own protection and security for its bosses.
It is a land where rulers are children of bigger god as compared to those of the lesser god in other provinces. It is no go area for the federal law enforcers, where justice for blatant killings such as Model Town’s, rampant rapes that have become order of the day, terrorist raids, likes of Chootu Gangs -- remain a cry in the wilderness. It is selected by the Providence to be biggest beneficiary of the windfall profits from the CPEC -- if follies of our rulers don’t push it to become yet another Kalabagh Dam.
Fringe beneficiaries of state patronage of such a golden era of peace and tranquility are leaders having sympathies for terrorists and the assassin of the liberal and secular governor of Punjab Salman Taseer. His huge funeral procession and now conversion of his burial place into a shrine -- are a legacy of the last military dictator General Pervez Musharraf’s “enlightened moderation” and appeasement of the present civil government that is believed to overly bigoted dressed in Seville Row outfits.
When I sat down to pen a tribute to MAJ on his death anniversary I got waylaid in delving into a broader spectrum. Coming back to MAJ -- if we want to save Pakistan we must make it his Pakistan committed to non-negotiable, progressive and egalitarian Pakistan -- neither a security nor a theocratic state -- but a secular state to ensure to all its citizens equal rights and opportunities irrespective of caste, creed, colour or gender. Remember much before Pakistan became a reality, MAJ said it clearly -- “I will rather not have a Pakistan where rich would become richer and poor become poorer”. That was his economic agenda for a viable and prosperous Pakistan.
The author is a former High Commissioner of Pakistan to UK and a veteran journalist.
