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75 Years of Not Getting it Right

On its Diamond Jubilee, the nation once again stands at a crossroads

by Khaled Ahmed

File photo. Arif Ali—AFP

Unfortunately, every time Pakistan is made to think of itself on its Independence Day, Aug. 14, the result is not very positive. Across the years, the Independence Day mostly compels us to think pessimistically, focusing on failures and compulsions we did not get out of honorably. Given the statistics of the region, which means comparing ourselves with India and Bangladesh, one can’t stave off a feeling of failure. India has stayed put, enjoying a strong economy despite the bad press it has in Pakistan, and Bangladesh, instead of being punished for causing Pakistan to break up, has done far better than Pakistan, even in terms of border problems.

And on the 75th year of its birth, Pakistanis is suffering. The Economist recorded the rain disaster that has inundated most of Pakistan on the eve of its birthday: “Vast swathes of Pakistan have been inundated by its heaviest rainfall on record. Over 1,100 people have been killed, and early estimates put the costs at $10bn. On Aug. 30, the climate minister said that one third of the country was under water; the government declared 72 out of 160 districts to be disaster zones. The past few days have brought more than 100 deaths and the destruction of thousands of houses, as flash floods in northern Pakistan washed buildings from the riverbanks.”

Choosing wrong friends

There was a time when the Army differed with Pakistani politicians thinking of “normalization” with its neighbors. In 2022, it is the other way round. People, having succumbed to their habitual loathing of global superpower United States, listen to Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan alleging Washington has once again betrayed them while the more cautious Army wants Pakistan to tread carefully. In a weak position after its most powerful politician had managed to rub many erstwhile friends the wrong way, Islamabad fears losing the friends who helplessly invested in India rather than in underdeveloped Pakistan while employing its unlettered ex-pat Pakistani millions. Familiarly, as one listens to its great leader, greatness of Pakistan lies in its isolationist pride; and the Army for once does not agree with Imran Khan.

There is no misdiagnosis for once. Most of the media knows Khan’s do-it-again formula is suicidal, especially after his fiat of “unified curriculum” to ruin education with mass brainwashing, and would like to convince the masses otherwise. The direction of self-isolation is unavoidable on Pakistan’s 75th birthday. The Pakistani mind, nestling in a pit of despondency, thinks the economy a mere distraction while it can be posited that all our troubles can be straightened out through foreign policy. Everybody is an expert on it and advises ruptures and repairs of relations with states as a way out. It is mostly “break with America” and, a la Khan, the alternative is not China after what happened between him and Beijing on the CPEC.

Elections and disorder

Unknown to us, the state reacts to normal events like elections in a bizarre manner. The 1970 election led to the 1971 breakup of the state. All elections in the 1990s led to disorder that saw governments being dispatched before they could finish their tenures. So used have we and our political leaders become to this disorder that the 2008 elections “under NRO” seem abnormal because the government that came to power as a result actually completed its term. One big source of torture is that the “pain” of democracy will not be cured by electing a superman as Pakistan’s Supreme Leader.

Because the Muslims of Pakistan are suffering after creating what they thought was a home for Muslims and by Muslims, they forget that non-Muslim Pakistanis are also being made to suffer. A most sick answer to the plaint of breach of human rights is: since everybody is suffering, the minorities must suffer too. State institutions are more purblind than ever before to the rights of the weak and the underprivileged while the misunderstood cite religious edicts of treating non-Muslims in defiance of the international law that guides the treatment of minorities. We don’t like the U.S. but we continue to have great feelings for our “tribal brothers” in Afghanistan who don’t recognize even the Durand Line. Shockingly, but correctly, the Army and its focus on fencing the Durand Line, might not be on the same page this time around.

Taliban as destiny

Fortunately, memory has become guidance in 2022 although in the recent past during the U.S. war in Afghanistan the omens were grim. There was a time in 2011 when the Taliban in Swat had warned that no one should celebrate Aug. 14 or he would be put to death. In Lahore, a suicide-bomber had hit policemen in Allama Iqbal Town, killing nine and maiming over 35. The Interior Ministry had warned that there would be more attacks as the terrorists had moved into the big cities. Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa had condemned America for violating Pakistan’s territorial integrity by attacking inside the tribal areas.

Another attack by a drone near Wana also killed terrorists from outside the tribal agency, Arabs and Punjabis from the jihadi organizations. Just a day before Aug. 14, the sectarian war going on in the Kurram Agency in 2011 had claimed 28 more people, bringing the count for that week to nearly 200. The three-year old war killed thousands there while the government was unable to help the besieged inhabitants of Parachinar, the agency’s headquarters.

People on the fringes

As the then-NWFP assembly condemned the NATO forces in Afghanistan, it did nothing to resolve the crisis faced by the Kurram Agency. The governor—whose office was becoming politically controversial—had been unable to come to the help of the Parachinar population, which didn’t even have access to medicines. The wounded were piling up in the local hospital and operations were being performed without proper supplies. The medical stores of Kurram sent crores of rupees for medicines to Peshawar, where they lay packed but undeliverable for three months. Under pressure, people in Parachinar said they were not being rescued because they were Shia.

The warlord of Bajaur, Maulvi Faqir Mohammed, an Islamist militant and, until March 2012, a deputy leader of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, got more ferocious as his men came under attack from the Army. He vowed revenge after he lost 18 of his warriors to aerial bombing and told the local population that they would be targeted by his men if they did not resist the Pakistan Army. The NWFP assembly ignored that the Taliban in Swat had attacked the house of well-known Awami National Party leader Afzal Khan. It failed to recognize that the Taliban, going into Afghanistan from the tribal areas, had virtually conquered half of the country, as reported by the BBC on Independence Day.

Non-exercise of the intellect

The National Assembly, while frequently condemning India over the latest incidents in Kashmir, neglected to take note of the bombings that hit Quetta in the week preceding Independence Day of 2012. The spate of grenade-throwing and timed detonations had been unprecedented in recent history. Baloch nationalist militants gave out a warning after killing two people in Hub in a bombing that they would cause bombs to go off across Balochistan on Independence Day. As if in response, one ANP minister resigned from the cabinet in Islamabad and the PMLN “returnee” ministers quietly decided not to attend the cabinet meeting.

Everybody seeking revenge and demanding aggressive action in foreign policy claims he has 200 million people behind him. But on the eve of one Independence Day of the past, when a TV channel interviewed the first 15 people on the street, it was told the priorities chosen by politicians and TV anchors were all wrong. The political glands in Pakistan are secreting juices that may satisfy the heart but fail to appeal to the mind. The economy in 2022, which is the priority of the country’s 220 million population, exclusively demands an exercise of the intellect.

When in trouble reform education

The “unified curriculum” problem in Pakistan is a pointer. Nowhere are we more misguided than in our discussion of education. Most of us seem bothered about the “three systems” prevailing in the country. There is anger only about the elitist education that uses English as medium of instruction. Most of us don’t know what we will do if the country agrees and decides to convert the three systems—state sector, private sector, madrassa—into one. We think of “flattening” rather than “equalizing” our society: bring the whole system down, rather than up, to make it look egalitarian.

Under democracy there are two fundamental conditions that must not be violated: freedom, and equality of opportunity. The freedom to choose one’s system of education must be retained intact; the state must endeavor to create equal opportunity by raising the standards in its own sector of education. If English is helpful in promoting the national cause in this globalized world, then bring its quality up in the state sector instead of abolishing it. Most politicians who speak angrily about our education system reek with vengeance rather than reform.

Intellect sabotaged by ideology

If you ask an economist, education is a must but it is a long-term issue. He would say more on the issue but he is not concerned with ideological issues. That leaves education out of the “sense of emergency” with which we discuss our future. Quite correctly, he says the most urgent task in ensuring a good future is the development of the country’s infrastructure. (NB: he includes education in infrastructure without endangering himself by discussing its nature.) If you look at the success stories of Asia, infrastructure revolution is the most prominent factor.

If no one is willing to spell out what kind of education we should impart, then we are dangerous to the state itself. We are thinking of pulling down the structure we have without agreeing on what we will introduce in its place. Revenge against elitism is not a good urge for reform. One thing is empirically proven and that is that Islamization of education in the Zia era has led to intolerance and has lowered the level of skills. Without denigrating our religion, we must take a close look at the weakness in the secular content of our education. A report on our schools says pupils lack in “free thinking.”

Utopia of the warlord

After getting Swat back from Fazlullah, we had the opportunity to revise our thinking about the nature of the state we are living in, threatened from within while our mind continues to concentrate on “enemies abroad.” At the time, we were being gradually conquered by Baitullah Mehsud, but when we decided to confront him we had first to label him as an agent of India and America. The most immediate challenge is the recognition of the existential crisis of a state that is non-viable because of its irredentism and its involvement in asymmetrical conflict with India through non state actors.

It is not honor we should reclaim through insisting on sovereignty. It is economic survival we should reclaim by re-establishing our internal sovereignty. In common parlance, we have to first regain a state of law and order before thinking about the future of the state. There is nothing more dishonorable in the current geopolitical context than being “poor.” The warlike slogan of “we will eat grass” is a false slogan. The poor of Pakistan deserve better.

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