Will Pakistan survive?

Pakistan was the product of the conspiracy of the British Colonialism in 1947.

MILLENNIUM PHOTO: FREEDOM MOVEMENT, HISTORY’S BIGGEST MIGRATION. TRAIN LOADED TO CAPACITY, INDIA PAKISTAN PARTITION.. ISSUED BY DIRECTORATE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS, EAST PUNJAB.

The emergence of Pakistan was a cataclysmic event for Soth Asia. Mass displacement was accopanied by unimaginable violence of genocidal propotions as there was no state. That unimaginable violence put the foundation of the enmity between the two newly emerged countries India and Pakistan. The Punjabi , Refugees from india on one side and the India people on the other side became the worst enemies of each other. While the Bengali, Pashtuns, Baloch and Sindhi had nothing to do with it.

But the irony was that Pakistan was made on the land of other nations, like Afghans, Baloch , Sindhi and Bengali.

History is witness that when immigrants come to other country , if their population is less than the populaiton of indeginous people then they adopt the culture, language etc of the indigenous people , but if their population is more than the indeginous people , then the indegious people adopt the culure , language and tradition of the immigrants.

But in Pakistan as every thing is reverse against the other world, it is also different. The immigrants who had betrayed their motherland India and migranted to Pakistan , they were from 3 to 5 % . But they imposed their culture and language on the 95 to 97 % of the indegenous people. Therefore , Pakistan remained a cultureless country.

Jinnah , Sir Zafrullah Khan and Liaqat Ali Khan

During the Patition in 1947 , Pakistan was handed over to those people who were just agents of the British colonialist, they had to do nothing with the people. So after the partition these agents continued the same policy in Pakistan as the British in British India. By stong army , judiciary and beaurucracy , the British had controlled 400 million in British india, similarly Punjab dominated Pakistan Army , judiciary and civil & military establishment has made the remaining nationalities , the Pashtuns, Baloch , Sindhi and Bengali the colony of Punjab. But in 1971 , the Pakistan army was kicked out by the Bengalis and got independence from Pakistan.

Pakistan army surrenders in Dhaka

As a result this unnatural country , Pakistan, could’t service for 24 years and in 1971 , more than half of Pakistan became Bangladesh whereas the further disintegration of the remaining Pakistan is around the corner.

But on the other hand during partition India was handed over to the people who had given a lot of sacrifices of their people to get rid of the British Colony. So India is prospering day by day with all respects.

For over half of its existence , Pakistan has been ruled by the military.

The military always believed that the Pakistan could not afford a democratic system and must focus on stability and security through military means.

As a resulit the country’s political elite has been unable to create strong and ligitimate demorcratic political institutions. The manipulative behaviour of the political elite and the behind-the-scenes actitivies of the military and its spy agency ‘ISI’ have further weekend democray.

For their proxy wars in Afghanistn , India and Kashmir , Pakistan Army and ISI prepared the religious extremist and terrorist on its land.

The four Pakistani dictators

Pakistn army , ISI and civil-military establishment deliberately created the problems among the nationalities not to get together against them , so national integration couldn’t take place. The Pakistan leaders and Army have not been interested in buliding proper democratic institutions but instead focused on creating authoritarian state structure such the bureaucracy and the army , both inheritid from the British Raj.

Punjab dominated Pakistan military and political elites have been extraordinary preoccupied with creating a warrior and idoeological state and not a welfare-oriented , developing state.

The story of Pakistan’s tumultous evolution as a nation-state is fraught with leadership failure and institutional lapses. Pakistan Army and civil establishment did not allow other institutions flourishing to become stronger. Therefore , Pakistan has persisted as a weak yet authoritarian state with multiple developmental and securtiy challenges.

Due to its proxy wars in other countries , Pakistan’s condtion poses major challenges to international and regional security, specially in area of transnational terrorism and nuclear proliferation. Pakistan is a nuclear weapons state , the prospects of these weapons falling into the wrong hands has generated a great deal of international concern.

Pakistan has emerged as “failing state” , a state that cannot provide minimum law and order , control various competing societal forces and survive economically without external support. Pakistan remains a garrison or a heavilly militarized warrior state , with an intense focus on narrowly defined national security concerns.

Pakistan has devoted considerable energy into military security which has become Pakistan a wrrior state. But more than six decades of intense pursuit of military security has made Pakistan less secure and unified as a conherent political unit. The result has been domestic stagnation and even chaos. The Pakistan’s domestic instability , in turn , has worsened regional and global peace and security.

In fact the elite’s and Army’s policies have resulted in the creation of a violent , insecure and ideology -driven polity which is neither strong , nor prosperous , nor stably democratic , nor unified.

Fundamentalism and extremism in Pakistan

Using its geographic curse , Pakistan has always been receiving a vast amount of foreign aid, specillay United states has provided billions of military and economic aid. But being a warrior state Pakistan has been flouring the terrorists, extremists, fundamentalists and militants for ist proxy wars in Afghanistan , India and Kashmir. As a result Pakistan society is completely radicalized which is not only danger for its own people but for the international community as well.

Pakistan Army , on the name of Islam and Pakistan , has been trying to keep the various nationalities in Pakistna intact , but it failed specially after the separation of east Pakistan , now Banladesh. So there is no other option left with Pakistan how to keep these varioius nations keep in contact. As a result Pakistan will not survive any more for a long times.

So now the Pashtuns, Baloch and Sindhi better say to themselves Pashtuns, Baloch and Sindhi rather than Pakistan and consider themselves the colony of Punjab. These nationalities are struggling to get rid of Pakistan because since 1947 Pakistan brutally exposed its weakness and left itself open to disintegrate as soon as possible.

Being a warior state , Pakistan’s war preparation spur development and conhsion, it could also bring about wholesale destruction and state collapse.

In fact , war-making efforts have led many developing states to decay and failure and Pakistan is one of them. Pakistan drove its economy into the ground to keep up its military preparations. Pakistan imposed 4 wars on India but was terribly defeated. Pakistan has never learnt lesson from East Pakistan debacle when more than half of Pakistan became Bangladesh. Pakistan still has been involved in the terrorists activities in its neighbor countries. Therefore , Pakistan is unpredictable country where any thing can take place any time but in the worst direction. Pakistan has stagnated as a state. Due to its war like situation , Pakistan has neglected long-term economic development.

A strong state is able to offer public goods , such as education , healthcare and physical infrastructure. A state is considered weak or failing if it is not able to offer most of these public goods. Weak states also tend to have little or no effective control over some parts of their territory. As a result power lies with the some local elements that may not show allegiance to the state which is the character of the colonial history: colonial powers drew line on maps for their own convenience , rather than for what could be controlled by postcolonial government. There is no government control. This “ state strength dilemma” can keep states weak. And Pakistan is the best example. The legitimacy can come from a combination of democracy and welfare or rapid economic development through trade and investment but one way or another , the state must provide its citizens with clear benefits.

Democray , economic interdependence and international institutions are necessary for a normal state. But these commodities are not available in Pakistan.

Haqqanis

Faisal Shehzaed

The other countries are inviting the specialist and experts for developments but Pakistan has been inviting the terrorists from the world , train them and send them back for terrorist activites in their countries. Other countries are exporting its products but Pakistan is exporting the nuclear technology and terrorism. As a result Pakistan couldn’t integrate into the global economy. In contrast to it , Pakistan is fully integrated into the world terrorism.

Loyalty comes through the benefits that the citizenry receives from the state. But in Pakistan , the Pukhtuns, Baloch , Sindhis and minorities are getting bullet riddles bodies , bagged missing person and brutality from the government. Pakistan has no ability to invest in its people but Pakistan makes people of Khyber Pukhtunkwa , Balochistan and Sindh its worst enemies.These state activities are counterproductive for its capacity.

Excessive focus on national security can destroy a state , as it happened in the case of the Soviet Union.

A state like Pakistan that overmilitirizes itself can seriously hamper state capacity as well as political and economic development.

Since its arrival as a nation-state after a bloody partition from India in 1947 , Pakistan has been extraordinary obsessed with security and particular the military balance with its neighbour. Pakistan has fought four wars with India- 1947-1948 , 1965 , 1971 and 1999. Pakistan has also engaged in the warfare by training and sending insurgents into Indian-controlled Kashmir.

The military elite of Pakistan has attempted continuously to offer a home base for transnational terrorist networks, engaging in terrorism on its own and initiating wars and crises to extract territorial concessions as a part of Kashmir and Afghan territory from Durand line to Indus River. However Pakistan’s this state policy has come with strong negatives. It has generated continuous military rule , stunning the growth of a healthy civil society. It has also destroyed the chances of democracy and civilian institutions taking root, hampered economic growth and created a garrison state that is bureaucratic and excessively focused on military control over all domains of society.

Pakistan is one of the weakest states globally. Its armed forces do not have control of several parts of the Pukhtun’s areas.

In the white clothes Brig. Mahmood with other general

Former Chief of Army staff with the mentors of Taliban.

Pakistan has always been training the melitants in the camps located in Pakistan , supervised by the Army and ISI ( intelligence organization) for its proxy wars in Afghanistan , Kahmir and India. As as reault Taliban have become key players in the political system of Pakistan with direct contact with ISI and civil-military establishment who have made hell many Pakistan cities like Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta but not any city in Punjab , however all these terrorist organizations are being flourished in Punjab under the supervision of Paksitan Army and ISI.

Economic benefits have been unevenly divided, making ethnic groups less successful than Punjabis. Most of the ruling class , including the military elite , has always come from the ruling province of Punjab.

More generally , successive rulers of Pakistan followed policies that negatively impacted political and economic development , integration and long-term security. As a result , Pakistan has become a very weak state economically. Pakistan is indeed one of the least globalized countries in terms of the core economic categrories of trade and investment.

It is Pakistan

A deeper understanding of Pakistan’s development has immense policy significance in the age of transnational terrorism and nuclear proliferation; in both areas , Pakistan has emerged as the single most important source of challenge. Since the 1990s, Pakistan has become the world’s biggest hotbed of transnational terrorism , with the connivance of elements of the state. Since 2001 , it has also become the home of al-Qaeda , Taliban forces and now ISIS waging war on the Western coalition protecting Afghan regime in Afghanistan. It has also posed a major challenge in nuclear proliferation , with the A.Q.Khan network illegally transferring nuclear materials to countries such as North Korea, Iran and Libya.

Pakistan has the potential for failure and the nuclear weapons can fall into the hands of Islamic radicals.

Due to its wrong policies , Pakistan can never be a strong state. Pakistan failed to innovate, it can become geopolitical and security nightmare for neighbours , other states and itself.

But where is the international community ? For how long the international community will be tollerating the negative role of Pakistan in the world.

The world community must think about seriously otherwise then it will be too late.

Writer :
Mashal Khan Takkar
Editor-in-Chief ,
THE VOICE TIMES (TVT)
Canada