I wouldn’t start from here!

Ashraf Jehangir Qazi

(Only half spoof)

At the precipice, security asked them to move on.

In Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, protests and speeches against killings, tortures, disappearances, destruction of properties, stealing of land, energy and mineral resources, decades of violations of political rights, etc., are considered support for terrorism. In the name of counterterrorism a war has been declared against the protesting Baloch and Pashtun people. They have been deliberately driven from peaceful protest to militant insurgency. Like the Bourbons, our guardians have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing.

Why? A documentary with the title “Kingmakers in Pakistan who steal” suggests an answer with its title. True or false? The Baloch and most of the Pashtun have no doubt. However, the middle class and bourgeois intelligentsia of one of Pakistan’s four provinces by and large swallows the establishment propaganda. Why? A history and geography-instilled survival imperative of pragmatism? Maybe, but still quite a mouthful! Nevertheless, what does that do for national unity, an apparent prerequisite for national survival? Not much, but is anyone losing any sleep? To make matters more perverse, the solution to this drop scene will have to come from that one province. Or it won’t come at all.

False narratives and black laws are also launched to misinform and intimidate the majority into passively accepting what is happening -– just like half a century ago. Moreover, we are assured, there are always enough ‘stakeholders’ or ‘sell outs’ in all the provinces and regions to ensure the indefinite survival of the country – even as a failing state. Soldiers and patriots have shrewdly calculated the people are incapable or unwilling to resist them for long. They are assured the state will connive with them against the development, security and welfare of the people. Their success is measured by the ‘failed state’ indices of the country.

So, given the array of climate, nuclear, population, governance and security challenges, is our country, by any chance, dying? No way! scream our patriots without any meaningful resolve to do anything meaningful. They fervently believe we can survive forever at the lowest possible level because of the contingent interest of foreign ‘stakeholders’, i.e. masters, patrons and economic hitmen, in our survival, whatever our state! Conferences of vultures are accordingly welcome. That makes us a truly ‘hard country’ to break. And Hell is where no threat of consequences has any effect. Everybody has been there, done that!

Some suggest the only way out is a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation process that prioritises country above everything. There need be no losers. How innocent can one get! There have to be losers. Otherwise, what is the fun in winning? What is the fun of having a Constitution and rule of law if you can’t violate them at will? What is the fun of a free economy if you can’t have socialism for the rich and the market for the poor? What is the fun of fair elections if they can’t be rigged? What is the point of having an army that can’t surrender and claim victory? What is the point of having real patriots who can’t be jailed forever? The people of Pakistan, some say, are today united in depression, pessimism and outrage. And yet after Bhutan we are the happiest country in South Asia! What does this say about the plight of the two billion people of the region? And to know India is even less happy than us is to be in very heaven!

Spoilsports also say those whom the people of Pakistan appointed and trusted to serve as their protectors have turned out to be betrayers, colonisers, exploiters and abettors of external masters, enemies and ‘frenemies’. But I say: a people betrayed once; shame on the betrayers! A people betrayed for the umpteenth time; shame on whom? And to live in shame and be happy at the same time is no mean achievement. It takes chutzpah! And that is Yiddish, not Punjabi.

There needs, of course, to be a process of reckoning, redress, reconciliation and redemption that can lead to renewal, recovery, and indeed a renaissance. I take a humble bow for the brilliant alliteration. There will be no forgetting nor forgiving – only fading memories. No hybrid governance. But of course! And neither will there be vengeful punishment. IK assures us, and that is OK with me, whether or not it complies with justice. My slogan for the forbidden next election: IK is OK! That should get him a working majority – and me a place in his cabinet?

Reconciliation will be – or can be – a process of education, transformation and liberation, in other words, a revolution. And revolutions, of course, are made of reveries. The dreams of our founding fathers can live again. Is this not a prospect to move the most hardened cynic? No, it is not! And if not, are we already dead as a nation? Not to worry, dead or dying nations have a way of lingering on for quite a while – and can be strategically critical, and profitable for those who can collect. Death is after all a prelude to eternal life.

Meanwhile, our youth have other priorities than postponing the death of their country whose rulers show little concern whether they live or drown in the Mediterranean. And it is they who shall inherit the earth, with or without a country of their own.

As for the external environment, it is somewhat slippery for a slipping country. Trump’s US, which may survive Trump for the foreseeable future, and its cohorts, may have a stake in our resources but not in our survival. And those who matter among us have an ever shining stake in the Shining City on the Hill. And that should keep us going downhill for some time. That is the essence of the Art of the Deal at its most dazzling. Outdoing Gaza, Greenland and the Panama Canal, I dare say.

China is the essential strategic relationship for Pakistan. It is today rooted in stagnant cooperation and fading trust. It has enormous potential, which is likely to remain just that. Contemporary China is reputed to make no mistakes. So, can we be its one and only error? A unique distinction indeed! We are not to be underestimated. China is also aware of the US project to strategically detach Pakistan from it, particularly with respect to Gwadar and CPEC. This is at the core of the latest demands of the US, which our ruling elites pretend to reject. A quite unnecessary project since we have always been detached from reality and our own wellbeing. However, China needs to realise that its primary assets in Pakistan are not the ruling elites but the people, including the people of every province of Pakistan. This may be somewhat awkward for China. But it may be the only way to help it realise the strategic potential of Pakistan, and secure its own global supply chains. What was that about teaching grandmothers how to suck eggs? But sometimes grandmothers do forget. China has a number of alternatives. Pakistan might have been its best. Anyway, everything happens for the best in the best of all possible worlds in which learning from mistakes is Mamnoo, or Verboten.

In 1971 Prime Minister Chou En Lai reportedly declined Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s request for arms to crush the Mukti Bahini in East Pakistan on the grounds that China could not provide arms to any country to suppress its own people. However, the restoration of a government in Pakistan no longer arrayed against its people would resolve China’s dilemma. Alas, if wishes were horses beggars would fly! And PIA would get off the ground.

Afghanistan is the Cinderella story of Pakistan’s foreign policy. Despite the challenges it posed it was critical to Pakistan’s security. But arrogant ignorance instead of far-sighted generosity has been the hallmark of our Afghan policy, not unlike that of India towards Pakistan. As a result, we failed to become a prince charming and gratuitously transformed a smaller, poorer and weaker neighbour into a strategic asset for India against ourselves. It takes a particular kind of genius to accomplish this, along with eating grass to produce a bomb we can never use in any scenario.

Given the will and imagination this situation could change. So why do I think it will endure like India’s attitude towards us? Because we are so similar, and Afghans and Indians are so dissimilar. There is accordingly an enduring balance if not stability in our shifting mutual antipathy – something only Pakistanis, Indians and Afghans can fathom to the bafflement of the rest of the world. How’s that for being dense?

India remains the perennial challenge, which has been exacerbated by Modi’s India and Pakistan’s inept policies. Kashmir has become a display of shadow boxing for Pakistan. It used to be a real issue whose principled and peaceful compromise settlement in accordance with the wishes of the Kashmiris required Pakistan to become a viable state with viable options. But that was a bridge over the river Kwai – easier to destroy than cross. Modi’s wisdom is a function of our folly. I believe him when he says he loves us.

So where do we go from here? As the Irish farmer answered, “If I were you, sir, I wouldn’t start from here!”

The writer is a former Ambassador