Excellencies, Distinguished Experts, Members of Diplomatic Corps, Students and Friends!
From its genesis, Pakistan as a State is symbolized as a land of political unrest that breeds instability within and beyond its borders. Believers in martial law, its civilian administrations have expectedly experienced repeated reversals. Governance has been marred by a volatile mix of ambition and myopic decision making. Lack of good political will has constantly steered the country towards a deeper political and socio-economic morass with unacceptable regional and global implications.
2. When a State uses tracts of its own people and their resources as collateral, may that be killing millions in erstwhile East Pakistan or killing thousands in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa presently, treating their own provinces, ethnicities, minorities as subjugated colonies, covering their own mis-governance, corruption and feudal mindsets, it charts and establishes the State’s path of degeneration and decadence.
3. The present political crisis in Pakistan has evolved out of the insatiable hunger for holding on to power by the political elite by rigging elections, detaining populist leaders in prison, building rickety coalitions, appeasing power centers like the military and judicial establishment through constitutional amendments and suppressing the voices of the masses through sheer force, internet blockades and adopting measures to deter any form of dissent or protest.
4. The Pakistani Army, that has either ruled Pakistan directly or through hybrid regimes in the last seven decades, has been the institution to take the final call for any policy or decision making. Mostly all public and private economic entities and institutions are either run by the military directly or headed by retired or in-service military generals. Decades of abuse of power have led to a point where the common man has grown a sense of detachment and wariness towards the Army viewing it as a rent-seeking class.
5. The provincial governments function as feudal fiefdoms of regional parties, challenging the political writ of the federal government. Political culture sprouting from elitism, ethnic and sectarian identity, political and bureaucratic corruption, religious radicalism and an absence of any farsighted economic or political planning has developed deep fissures of distrust and skepticism between the masses and the political elite, including the Army. Such fissures have given birth to home-grown insurgency and militancy in the provinces.
6. The Pakistani economy in the last few decades is going through a downward spiral due to reactionary, short-sighted and flawed economic planning. The Pakistani economy presently is being drawn by international financial institutions like the IMF and countries who have been bailing the limping economy through aid and loans. Such a contracting economy has led to stagflation, which is slow growth, high unemployment, and rising prices. In such an economic environment, the youth of the country is staring at a black hole with no future prospects.
7. Foreign policy has been predominantly reactionary and nothing is sui generis. ‘Blaming thy neighbour’ and playing the ‘victim card’ has been a consistent policy, devoid of any foresight of building relations based on trust, transparency, partnership and cooperation. Due to the internal security challenges and political instability, other countries are increasingly growing wary of coming to Pakistan’s assistance by way of investing in any new or ongoing projects. Even China has shown extreme caution with regard to the Second Phase of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, as their officials, engineers and workers have been easy targets for the insurgents and militants in the last two years. Pakistani policy makers have still to come to terms with former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statement that “Snakes in your backyard won’t bite only neighbours”, when she spoke about Pakistan following the state policy of sponsoring terrorism.
8. Being treated now like a pariah even in the Muslim world, Pakistani polity has moved into a cocoon, detached from global politics, focusing to blame its Western as well as Eastern neighbours for its internal woes. While still sponsoring and abetting terrorist groups in India, Pakistan has also gone to the extent of walking on the path of initiating low intensity conflict with Afghanistan in the garb of targeting Pakistani militants and insurgents hiding in Afghanistan, which might trigger larger regional implications.
9. The Pakistani political elite willfully overlooks in adopting any policy that could bring any long-term changes to the Pakistani polity or the economy, leaving the people of Pakistan to fend for themselves. The Pakistani political elite does not have the political will nor the political writ to bring forth such changes and like treating Cancer with Paracetamol, each political and government institution continues to seek for their own survival and economic benefits.
10. To conclude, I would like to say that, the Pakistan polity since its inception has provided fertile soil for the breeding of religious radicalism and ferment, military adventurism and deceit. Devoid of values and principles, it has pursued a unifocal policy of hate towards its larger neighbor defining its existence and external relations as well as the indoctrination of its people on that basis. Events and developments in Pakistan, both domestic, external and related to economy, over the past fifteen years or so have brought to the fore inherent flaws and unviability of this approach, denting the very idea of Pakistan. There is a virtual laundry list of these inherent flaws when it comes to Pakistan’s errant behavior as a State:
11. We have been, at ICWA, closely following the trends of the last fifteen years or so, especially post-President Musharraf, in Pakistan’s domestic political, security and economic environment. It is to take stock of these and their external implications that we have put together today’s very distinguished panel of experts. I look forward to an engaging and thought-provoking discussion. I wish the panelists all the best.
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