Where is Pakistan heading for?
Dr. Abdul Ruff
Thanks to a perpetually faulty leadership, Pakistan, created to uphold Islamic faith, has become a disgrace to Islamic world. For none of the faults of people, other than electing and trusting government after government, Pakistan has been limping for years now owing to NATO occupation cum drone terrorism, domestic strife, economic failure, etc while the elected government makes all efforts to make the stay of American occupiers safe and terror-productive and also to promote leaders’ private interests and corporate benefits. Pakistani elite and core media just blindly promote state terrorism and operate against Islamic faith, contributing to the destabilization and decay of society at the behest of western strategist nuts.
When a government of Islamic nation works against the Muslims it only makes mockery of Islam. Insanity is the world used for describing the act of those who feel proud about their nation getting destroyed by foreign invaders. It is perfect shame that Pakistani leaders think being safe so long as foreigners control their minds and occupy their lands, killing people with newer drones. Pakistani leaders, controlled by western powers, have lost their moral capacity to govern the Islamic nation called Pakistan and are leading the people to nowhere, if not directly to the hell. In order to build a prosperous Pakistan where the rights of the people are secured and protected, where less-privileged and under-privileged sections are specially protected, where the people are positively encouraged to make a constructive contribution to national development – the government also has to play constructive role. Concern for people’s welfare and steps to fully implement the projects can be the inputs to build nation to promote real democracy. Unfortunately, Pakistani leaders are not known to have the ability to think positively for the people and Islam.
By throwing small bones to Pakistani leaders, USA has now occupied Islamic Pakistan. America began its destabilization work in Pakistan systematically, first, by attacking the innocent people the areas necessary for the future energy routes, then, by destabilizing zones that clamor for Islamization. Obviously, the NATO invaded Af-Pak not to promote Islam or assist Muslims to live like Muslims. Pakistani regime helps the foreign terrorists in democracy uniforms to kill the Muslims. On instructions from their American bosses, the elected government of core Pakistanis played into their dirty hands and successfully “halted the advance” of the Islamic sections of Pakistan striving for the establishment of Shari ‘a in Swat and South Waziristan in a crude treacherous manner, but also self-rule was granted to Gilgit-Baltistan. This is indeed a disgrace on Islamabad which has, in recent years, become an easy heaven for the NATO terror syndicate led by USA-UK terror twins, promoting all epidemic of anti-Islamic practices, while US-UK embassies throw cocktail parties at nights to select Pakistani stooges of imperialism who come there to make merry out of the sufferings of ordinary Pakistanis in the company of western civilized criminals.
Hence, the people of Pakistan keep suffering. Pakistani leaders behave just like their counterparts in non-Islamic as well as anti-Islamic nations. This is in fact misbehavior towards the people who have elected them to govern, but the leaders just misbehave by their misgovernance. Muslim leaders have prime duty to fellow Muslims, not like a boss to slaves, but a Muslim to his fellow Muslims especially the voters. India is no model for Pakistan or any other Muslim nation in the world, not even Bangladesh which feels shy of its religious identity, though the leaders use Islam for political and personal purposes.
Pakistani premier S.Y. R. Gilani said on 15th Jan that the government had made a conscious effort for pursuing policies that help people, strengthen institutions, and contribute to the growth and development of democracy in the country. Gilani said that the government’s policy of reconciliation had helped repeal the authoritarian 17th Amendment while the 18th Amendment made the parliament sovereign and restored the powers of Prime Minister, for the first time in the history of Pakistan a president willingly surrendering his powers to the Prime Minister and parliament. The Amendment, he says, has promoted genuine federalism and provincial autonomy, and paved the way for good governance in the country. Gilani said that during last three years the government’s focus was on preserving and promoting democracy where an inclusive, plural, and participatory model of governance could take roots for the greater good of the people.
Gilani said that since coming into power the government faced several challenges, such as terrorism, religious extremism, deposed judiciary, aberrations in the constitution, economic crisis, unprecedented floods, energy shortages and other destabilizing events, including the insurgency in FATA and Balochistan. Gilani says Pakistani economy is being revived and Pakistan’s economy had already made a moderate recovery in 2010, helped by supportive monetary and fiscal policies. How far people have benefited form this remains to be seen.
However, the Zardari-Gilani regime has totally failed to resolve any of these issues or to improve living conditions of people which is the top priority of any elected government. But Gilani refuses to mention the NATO occupation as the chief cause of all problems Islamabad is facing for years now. The government responded to these challenges not with political will of respecting the sentiments of voters but with terror collaboration with occupation NATO terror syndicate. The government has opted for a process of mutual adjustment with fellow political parties fostering a semblance of harmony only to stay in power to pursue cooperate and NATO interests - and not for the cause of poor and deprived. Like cricket bowlers offer SIXes and Fours just for fun and keep the audience in good humors, the rulers share the pleasures of power with those who matter, leaving the voters in darkness. After all, vote is a privilege given to people and by voting they are in fact upholding democracy. Beyond that people have no credible control over the leaders and parties.
Of course, in 1947 and immediacy after that new Pakistan had no choices when it faced existential threat and insult from an arrogant India. But Musharraf cannot pretend to be naive or innocent, like Indian terror PM, when he caved in to US demand to let it state terrorists pass through Pakistani territories to cross over to Afghanistan to catch one Osama and recover the WMD he supposedly possessed, Perhaps, Musharraf would not have foreseen the future scenario when the NATO terror syndicate would occupy Pakistan, killing Muslims with drones. However, over years of close relationship, Pakistan must have noticed that USA could use its poisonous tentacles against any Muslim nation.
Pathetic state of governance in Pakistan and ignorance and negligence of problems of common people, the majority of voters, have shown Zardari in poor light. Curiously enough, the Zardari leadership stood aside, all aloof and disinterested, caring not the least to give the ship a clear direction and destination. It left governance to go to the dogs while according all the primacy to politics. In the process, it has forfeited much of the public goodwill that heralded its electoral win and is now mired in a groundswell of public scorn and chagrin.
Owing to deliberate, faulty polices, Pakistani ship was visibly adrift aimlessly. As the citizenry screamed out despairingly that the PPP-led government is not giving even a semblance of governance and never ever had this nation felt such an absence of an administration as starkly as was it experiencing over these times, the party leadership remained unfazed, unshaken and unmoved. The PPP's precariousness springs out from its lack of parliamentary majority and its dependence on MQM to survive and stay in power at Islamabad. The relief it has got is transient and fragile, which may perish at any time. For the first thing, after extracting concessions it wanted the MQM's appetite has unarguably whetted for more.
Political leaders are not quite impressed by the suffering the people; nor do they worry about foreign occupation. Twice prime minister (1990-93 and1997-99) and twice chief minister of Punjab, Pakistan's principal political leader Nawaz Sharif, 61 says he is not very keen to capture presidency and is waiting in the wings, but Zardari makes sure he does not replace him very easily. Sharif is head of Pakistan Muslim League and spent 10 years in exile in Saudi Arabia after failing to exile Chief of Staff Gen Musharraf, who then assumed the presidency. Sharif ordered Pakistan's nuclear tests in 1998 in response to India's tests. USA does not promote him now as he is virulently anti-American. Sharif also has close links with Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), an influential Islamic revivalist movement that developed an ideology based on the modern revolutionary view of Islam in the contemporary world. The Jamaati envisions a state ruled by Islamic law and opposes Westernization -- including capitalism, socialism, bank interest, birth control and Western social mores. It enjoys an unknown measure of army support. JI sympathizers among those in charge of nuclear weapons security is a major, rather unnecessary, concern in US and allied terror intelligence wings.
The escalating CIA drone war has itself created a hell in Pakistan and growing hatred for US imperialism in occupied Islamabad and mounting political tensions within the country. It has become a routine for the GST nations to call those who are their target for other reasons and who oppose them as terrorists. As in all such CIA drone attacks, the victims are described as “militants,” but this has not been independently verified. Often, such reports have proven false, with evidence emerging that among those killed by the drone missiles are unarmed villagers, including women and children. Classified cables released by WikiLeaks last month revealed that small units of US Special Forces troops are already secretly operating inside Pakistan alongside the Pakistani military.
Until now, the CIA missile campaign has been focused on North Waziristan, further to the south, killing tribal Muslims in the zone, mainly to clear the energy routes for India. NATO is trying to expand the terror war zone to other parts of Pakistan by creating the necessary terror gimmicks. The US has continuously linked a successful outcome to the conflict in Afghanistan with eliminating the ability of the Taliban and Al Qaeda to operate in remote regions across the border in Pakistan. This a major US myth, deliberately spread around to make the terrorized world believe that there is "insurgency".
People of Pakistan have been as much ill-fated population as their country itself is crisis-prone nation. USA keeps Pakistan boiling by using its puppetry remotes alternatively. The current destabilization stage is the outcome of the faulty foreign policy of Pakistan for decades now, depending too much on western bosses in order to shield itself from the Indian menace and manipulations. Today, USA is seen aiding the Indian greed. But for China, it looks now, Pakistan ruled by greedy politicians who have legs fixed in USA and UK, would have been evaporated long ago.
By ignoring popular sentiments against terror wars, the USA has employed terror methods to kill Muslims by using both counter-insurgency” and “counter-terrorism” to fool the world. After using “counter-insurgency”, the Pentagon is now trying to shift from “counter-insurgency” to “counter-terrorism” once again, saying that such a move is a more cost-effective, and less troop-intensive, terror strategy. The fact is the image of “counter-terrorism” is more playable with Americans than awkward “counter-insurgency”. However, ultimately, all that Washington (rather the Neoconservative terror nuts) wants is genocides of Muslims and consumption of their dead bodies and drinking of their still hot blood.
Perhaps, many apprehend, Pakistan is gradually slipping under military rule for the fifth time since independence, albeit still in civilian garb. Musharraf is trying to make his reappearance in Pakistan politics now as a politician in democracy suits, and Kayani, already the country's most powerful man, is slowly being pushed to fill the political vacuum. To head off a Sharif presidency following the next elections, a thinly disguised military takeover appears to have taken place. Of course, directionless Pakistan political theater has shown that military rule is far better than so-called democratic set up which directly promote rampant corruption and foreign occupation and drone culture.
Had indeed it taken its responsibility of governing the state seriously from the outset, many say, Pakistan would have carried through even tough painful reforms necessarily entailed by the messy conditions the country is in for so long and by now their fruits would have been flowing in to the citizenry to its own political advantage as well. But it failed badly. It just wasted those precious years in politicking, making more profits, leaving it not much of a grace period now. But the leadership is not very much concerned about any thing, except majority in parliament. Of course, the ruling party talks only about fighting terrorism and, at the behest of USA, orders the killing of Muslims.
Pakistan has clearly forgotten its original mandate as an Islamic nation in Asia and now anti-Islamism has percolated into every sphere of Islamabad. This is indeed a great tragedy! If, in spite of all ill-effects of borrowed capitalism, imperialist terrorism, Islamabad is still adamant to change it’s foreign and domestic polices, only some miracles alone can save Pakistan.
And, certainly, that cannot be USA or its NATO terror syndicates having anti-Islamic goals in the world! USA has only lost just a building in Sept-11 self-inflicted tragedy by enacting the sky smoke scenario, but the foolish Islamic world has lost three nations, property worth trillions of US dollars and, most importantly, millions of innocent Muslims.
But USA is still occupying Pakistan.