Has Pakistan turned the corner?

The writer is a retired air-vice marshal, former ambassador and a security and political analyst.
There is something in the air. The angst seems to have subsided. The fear of sudden tumult has lost its eminence. It seems this nation has found some purpose and there is a direction towards which it seems to be moving. People have begun to react, to show their outrage and displeasure; governments respond to such opinion even if slowly and the larger sentiment gets translated into how the courts rule and how responses of those in authority – and in parliament, importantly – are modified, largely.
And this pressure isn’t going anywhere; the print and the electronic media are both beyond their critical point and cannot be bottled back in. As long as that is so the masses will have their conscience shaken and their voice heard. Many may find it easy to deride this quiet revolution in our society but will be loath to disregard its continuing impact on how this polity and society have moved and changed for the better.
Such change would have been the last thing our political chiefs needed but even within them the signs of some change finally emerge. Nature’s inevitable course of setting the sediment down in stagnant fluid seems to have done the trick. And, unless that is too early a judgement on a class that has known only one way of existence – that of the sediment, with all its propensity to dash our hopes – for the moment, the political fief seems to be moving in harmony with the changing times. And maybe this behavioural mutation in the political leadership is what engenders hope and promise. Their priorities and policies may still be suspect, and they still may seem uninitiated and sullen, but they can hardly avoid noticing what the larger sentiment of society is.
Many link the changing behaviour in our political class to the force behind; the single-minded omnipresence of an army chief who simply is too far ahead of this class in leading this country not only out of its predicaments but also charting a course that others in the wake are only destined to follow. Leadership has always been the key but here he is not only leading his own forces but the nation and its class of leaders who are increasingly finding it difficult to keep up. May the chief run hard and fast in a chase which over time should instil some residual motion in our ‘stagflated’ politicos. The chief will go, but this class will stay. To me this nut is still to be cracked.
To sustain the movement – and hence the direction – will we continue to need a whip-lasher, or will some fear of God exorcise the demons within this class with the realisation that business as usual will not do. And it is not in seeing this chief through but in patently modifying behaviours and conduct to meet the aspirations of the people who get them in. Something tells me business as usual will not do and politicos will have to change. This slow but sure change will endure.
For the moment just review the whirlwind of promise that just happens to have visited this long hapless people. Terrorism seems to have subsided, both in Balochistan and in Fata. There instead are happier tidings of many wanting to talk and re-enter the fold of nationhood. Karachi is quieter and functioning; that isn’t a mean achievement given what jungle it had become. As the underbrush is cleaned away the chances for the blood-sucking creeps to find refuge therein are no more. We need to build on this with an MQM and a PPP that can take the mission forward, and that will need a more sustaining change in both their attitudes and in their conduct. Business as usual – no more. This now should be national purpose.
Our Achilles heel for long, Afghanistan, a self-imposed imperative, too has found the courage to break clear of its morass of destruction and disability into a dawn of greater promise and peaceful coexistence. Yes, Pakistan has a role, but to Afghanistan it is a matter of existential interest. What uncertainty might have emanated with the departure of Mullah Omar may seem to settle into an opportunity of greater pragmatism especially when the purpose and the mission of the Taliban are almost over with the departure of the American bulk from Afghanistan.
War-fighting is tiring and saps all faculties. It also must have a clear mission. An absence of a mission and war fatigue both propel the cause to settle. The evolving environment in Afghanistan lends itself to hopeful future. We need to stay that route in Afghanistan. If not, if fragmentation is deep and diverse and the terror economy prevails, there is always the chance of offshoots and hosts that just might invite more dangerous mutants such as the Daesh. For the sake of avoiding that future war – which will be harder and more ferocious, and will spread beyond its point of entry, devouring expanded turf – we will need to entrench peace harder and faster.
This needs a sustained cooperative approach on both sides of the border beyond the malfeasance that entities like the NDS and RAW strew even as the bigger calling is that of peace. Misplaced sloganeering and belligerent banter by some callous commentators on either side must not obscure the larger objective of progress and prosperity for the people of Pakistan. The Chinese investment will only bear fruit if we let it blossom; and that needs a nurturing environment.
Even with India, Pakistan has kept an exemplary rationalist approach. Pakistan has played its card well even on something as slippery and complex as Mumbai. While India was obsessed with using the occasion to malign us and was therefore never given to resolve it through a cooperative judicial-legal process, Pakistan stuck to a largely legal recourse. A largely legal-criminal matter lost its essence when India would only frame it politically to seek maximum mileage. They only lost credibility with this approach.
Everything else – the false alarms of a boat off Purbandar, the subsequent Indian Coast Guard antics, the LoC bombardments and the farce at Gurdaspur, to the ultimate hoax of apprehending a Kasab-2 – have failed to hold and added more muck in India’s face. Today regionally and globally India has a lot less credibility because of its propagandistic shenanigans. Pakistan must retain its moral higher mantle even in the face of belligerence and provocations. We must deny India its goal to embroil us in a dirty war. Peace on both borders is our need, not India’s.
It all began with the Judicial Commission to investigate election fraud and it came out solidly to address what was really wrong, not what was earnestly hoped for by a section of an overzealous populace. The system survived and the institutions prevailed. What must be rectified and reformed has now become a common test of the entire political class. Parliament after having played some with the PTI was realistic enough to know what was in the larger interest of the country; the PTI was reentered into parliament. The PTI was rational enough to know that mere sloganeering was not letting it go anywhere; it relented and rejoined the political process strengthening the institution of politics and parliament.
The Supreme Court’s review of the 18th and the 21st amendments refused to be driven by the reactionary sentiment of those who always make a case for a showdown with the military in an institutional draw, and judged on merit what this nation needed to spur its motion and movement towards a promising future. These are indicative of a common cause to break out of the logjam of ordinariness as a nation.
The barbarism in Kasur will haunt the nation on its 69th Independence Day only to remind it that the journey isn’t over yet. The sentiment of change must permeate the entrenched social cultures given to exploitation of their surroundings. The feeling of getting away with it all must now be our next target. The good will prevail. It has to.
Email: shhzdchdhry@yahoo.com