By Agha Iqrar Haroon
Pakistan is facing multiple challenges and threats directly linked with its geopolitical positioning, proximity with Afghanistan, its Foreign Policy and its relations with archrival India.
India since long is trying to destabilise Pakistan through all possible means and it is expanding our social faultlines and targeting our youth to stand against our state.
Social scientists believe that social inadequacy operates as booster to disintegrate any society which is victim of manipulation of its faultlines by its enemies rather social inadequacy is itself a dreadful faultline. UNDP report released in June 2016 indicates that 39 percent of Pakistanis live in multidimensional poverty, with the highest rates of poverty in FATA and Balochistan —-the two regions of Pakistan which were breeding grounds for terrorism.
With war between states now exceptionally rare, injecting violence within countries is known tactics of enemies through launching 4th or 5th Generation Warfare to achieve the goal of destroying the enemy. This goal can easily be achieved to widen already present social and economic faultlines.
Dysfunctional administrative system, un-proportionate population growth and obsolete educational system are helping India to expand faultlines within Pakistani society. Worth to mention that newly born electronic media is playing pivotal role to spread pessimism among youth that comprises over 45% of total population.
Almost every country possesses immeasurable and at times dramatic social, economic, and political fault lines and its enemies have right to widen these fault-lines if country allows them to do so.
African and Middle Eastern countries are prime examples where ethnic, religious, sectarian and social differences (fault-lines) were used to intensify process of their disintegration. The Rwandan genocide and Nigerian civil war, the Sudanese civil war and Darfur conflict can be considered as prime examples in Africa while Libyan, Iraqi and Syrian civil wars are shaping a new Middle East on sectarian differences. Yemeni crisis is latest example of disintegration of society as well as country through expanding ethnic and sectarian faultlines.
In South Asia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka faced disasters due to their ethnic and sectarian fault-lines during the last four decades. There is no doubt that Pakistan used ethnic and sectarian faultlines of Afghanistan for launching Jihad against former Soviet Union on the instructions of United States during early 80s. Same tool is being used against Pakistan by India that launched fourth generation warfare against Pakistan in early 2000. Ethnic and sectarian faultlines can easily be expanded through launching any narrative against the state and this is what Pakistan did in early 80s in Afghanistan and now Pakistan is facing today.
Pakistani Youth is very promising and still fighting to survive under dysfunctional social system and majority of youth still stand to fight for Pakistan. However, the only narrative that can compel youth of any country to protect motherland is diminishing in Pakistan and that is “Nationalism”.
Nationalism teaches that a nation should live for itself and govern itself. Nationalism is oriented towards developing and maintaining a national identity based on shared characteristics such as culture, language, race, religion, political goals or a belief in a common ancestry. Nationalism therefore seeks to preserve the nation’s culture. It often also involves a sense of pride in the nation’s achievements, and is closely linked to the concept of patriotism.
Nationalism survives through “Heroism” in any society and this important module has been taken away from syllabus since long.
The importance of heroes for nation building provides a better understanding of why we are the way we are. Our youth is biological Pakistani but it (our youth) finds that our national heroes are Shahab ad-Din Ghuri (Tajik Afghan), Mahmud of Ghazni (Afghan), Ahmad Shah Durrani (Afghan), Muhammad bin Qasim (Arab) and many more aliens like them are our heroes. One can understand my point when read the list of “made in Pakistan” state of the art military hardware. We have everything from Al-Khalid tank to Ghuri missile system.
Anthropologically, what distinguishes us from other nations is our historical culture and heritage, i.e., the main factors that shape and nurture an individual. Pakistan is no more a young nation as we are 70 year old and enjoy versatile strong Pakistani indigenous culture but we are not owning this culture and trying to find our cultural identity either in Muslim Heritage or Sub-continental heritage.
Pakistan is becoming a state where its population is facing the crises of “Citizenship” as society is strongly divided into privileged class and common man. Poor and powerless feel that they are no more “Citizens” of Pakistan. There are two parallel social justice systems in Pakistan—one works for privilege class and the other deals with common man.
Political philosophers and historian believe that minorities play the crucial role for scientific, social, cultural and economical development of any country and their existence is a safeguard against extreme tendencies and development of society. It could be a reason that India through its intelligence agencies launched war against minorities in Pakistan in early 90s by targeting minorities through radical religious groups and generating hate against State among minorities.
An in-depth study of research papers of Indian Think Tanks indicate that India is working to harm Pakistan by expanding following faultlines:
The political faultlines:
Civil-military relations (media hype to create or at least paint differences –Latest example Cyril story)
Federationists versus separatists (Baluchistan example)
Moderates versus extremists (Pakistan Islam Ka Qila Hai narrative)
Constitutionalists versus Agitationists (example PTI stance over parliament and democracy)
The social and religious faultlines:
Sectarian divide between the Sunnis and Shias
Intra-sectarian divide among Barelvis, Deobandis and Salafists (example– instant rise of Barlevis and US funding to Sufi Islam in Pakistan)
Inter-tribe divides (Lethal for KPK and Baluchistan)
The ethnic faultlines:
Between all provinces – Punjabi versus Baluch versus Pakhtuns versus Sindhis – and those within provinces like Sindhi versus Mohajir in Sindh, Seraiki versus Punjabi in Punjab, Hazara versus Pakhtun in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Baluch versus Pakhtun in Baluchistan.
The economic faultlines:
The growing divide between the various classes and rising inequality of income and economic opportunities
Security and administrative faultlines:
Declining capacity of the state to provide public goods, services to the people. (Example—social services like Health and Education sectors have fallen completely to private sector. State has gone to a level where it cannot even provide cooking oil to population if multinational firms decide to stop supply)
Non-state and quasi-state actors were morally supported in past and instead of accepting role to Army to defend the country—radical religious groups have been portraying that they are defenders of Pakistan.
Many of these fault-lines overlap each other. All these fault-lines are in the play today and will complicate any and every effort to combat the most serious threat to Pakistan’s security that is terrorism.
It is pertinent to cite observations of Russian and Central Asian anthropologists about Pakistan who believe that Pakistan is:
- a thin (geographically) country of over 210 million people which is sitting on population bomb but cannot launch any Birth-control campaign because Pakistan is an extremist Islamic Republic where Birth-control campaign is Un-Islamic and Un-ethical.
- Pakistan cannot store its sweet drinking water due to lack of dams while its water sources are under the clutches of its enemy—-India.
- Diversion from a “Moderate Society” to “Jihadi Society” in early 80s cost very heavy price economically, socially and diplomatically and now trying to come out from situation but radical components have become stronger than state machinery and are not ready to accept to follow change in state narrative
- Pakistan has no realistic Regional and Global Foreign Policy. It wishes to shake hands with Russia and Iran while offering its forces to protect certain Middle Eastern countries which are adversaries of Russian and Iranian policies in Middle East.
It looks that civil and military leadership are working to strengthen Pakistan but they must understand that social and economic faultlines can only be managed through providing justice to people and job opportunities to youth, protect food resources and respect minorities and people of smaller provinces.
It is pertinent to mention that there is dire need to promote “Nationalism” and “Motherland” to deal with threat of faultlines. We MUST accept that we over-projected and injected “Muslim Brotherhood” in our society during the last 35 years to gain strategic interests while forgetting “Motherland” and “Nationalism”.
What is to be done at macro level?
- Complete overhauling of Taxation and shifting taxes from Indirect to Direct and cap ever-increasing Budget deficit.
- Controlling Trade Deficit by discouraging imports
- Selling off corporations like PIA, Railways, and Pakistan Steel Mills to control over Rs. 500 billion grants being wasted by these sick state corporations—Or—send them on contract to private sector for at least 10 years
- Overhauling of Justice System including review of Criminal Procedure Code (CrPc) and Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) to ensure Rule of Law. Corruption in Bar and Bench can be controlled to make Pakistan Judicial Council a vibrant institution or to scrap it and introducing better accountability system.
- Complete check on edible product smuggling to Afghanistan. Ban on Afghans to work in Pakistan without Working Visa or Business Visa.
- Let Afghanistan to live like a neighbour instead of our social component. Behave with Afghans as we do with Indians or Iranians when they come to Pakistan for jobs, businesses or trade.
- Remember there is NO Brotherhood when matter is to protect your country. The concept of “Motherland” has been eliminated by religious scholars by replacing it with the concept of “Muslim Brotherhood” and “Universal Muslim State”. Remember “Universal Muslim State” concept is the philosophy used by terrorist outfits to destabilise the entire world.
- No compromise over water issue because Pakistan cannot construct dams over night but India can stop waters overnight as it has already completed canal networking in Indian Occupied Kashmir and other states to divert waters from rivers.
- Construction of small and big dams is need of the day.
- Cap radical ethnic and religious groups those are contesting the writ of the state while forgetting their political alignments
- Complete overhauling of educational system that is helping to divide the society in different smaller social groups
- Complete ban on print and electronic media to publish, broadcast and promote material that can harm interfaith and inter-cultural harmony
This list of “what is to be done” can be very long but above mentioned points should be taken as “Immediate Actions Check List” to snub constant pressure coming from our enemies to harm our society.
We must accept that this is born right of our enemies to plan against us but this is the foremost duty of us to protect our country—- Let us try together—-
