Responsible state

April 16, 2021

Massive respect to the two policemen who lost their lives and to all those officers who were seriously injured while fighting protesters who, in a few hours, brought a nuclear state to its knees. It is important to mention that on November 16, 2020, the government signed an agreement with the TLP. In February 2021, it signed another agreement to extend the deadline for taking the party’s demands to parliament and set it to April 20, 2021. Should we not admit that we buckled as a state. We signed agreements to buy time. We did not close down and disband this group from day one. We continue to allow many similar groups who squeeze our shrinking spaces for tolerance, peace and progress to exist.

Before fighting its external enemies, Pakistan must set its own house in order. It is time we grew out of this appeasement mode and started to behave as a responsible state.

Naeem Sadiq

Karachi