Militarily troubled Pakistan and terribly administered Tribals

Militarily troubled Pakistan and terribly administered Tribals
Pukhtoon Khan
pashtun@hotmail.com


Pakistan was hijacked by the civil and military beaureocracy after its creation to control the state of affairs. This control made it an unfair state instead of a welfare state.

It was the fallacious vision and vested interests of Pakistani leaders due to which genuine political leadership was not encouraged to come forward and take the reigns of power to empower the masses of Pakistan and lead them towards the goals of progress and prosperity.

The poor but proud sons of the land especially Pakhtuns, Baloch and Sindhis who raised their voice against the exploitative policies of the puppet popular governments and military regimes for their legitimate rights were dealt with an iron hand and state propaganda was used to defame them and distort their image in the masses.

On the contrary despite being part of the third world, India is transforming itself into a world power and asserting herself in the world community. UAE in the Middle East and Finland in Eastern Europe are good examples. These countries have evolved a stable system in relatively much lesser time. India is even asking for a seat in Security Council due to its strong institutions.

The constitutional safety to the institutional-building-reforms has put India on the road to progress and progressive development. The reason for the glorious march of Indian nation towards becoming a probable super power of the 21st century is nothing except its strong institutions.

The critical evaluation of socio-politico-economic vision in the synthetic political nomenclature of Pakistan history gives a dark and gloomy picture.

1. In the British India Muslim League were using the slogan of an Islamic ideological (theocratic) state as envisioned in Lahore resolution based on Muslim nationalism. It aimed at realizing the dream of establishing an ideological state based on the tenets of Islam.It proved wrong with the creation of Bangla Desh.

2. After partition though the pre partition vision of Islamic republic was encapsulated in objective resolution but when the first constitution of Pakistan was enacted the objective resolution was kept in directive principles and not in operative clauses due to its impracticality.

3. In the dictatorial regimes upto Ayub Khan, the vision shifted to Industrial targets but due to lack of institutionalization the dream could not be realized.

4. Bhutto gave a democratic cum socialistic vision to the nation but US with the help of military establishment did not let him complete his agenda. He left a valuable legacy of framing a constitution which was, although, not according to the wishes of all the major nationalities living in Pakistan but reflected the aspirations of the cross section of people living in west Pakistan.

5. When power was usurped by General Zia he deceived the whole nation with the so called Islamisation vision and instead of presenting it as a system of social justice which could be somewhat acceptable to the people of Pakistan ,he used it as a militant ideology to safeguard US interests and justify his illegitimate military regime.

Millions of Afghans and Pakhtuns were sacrificed at the altar of the political cum military interests of both US and Pakistan. The whole nation was indoctrinated with the holy war philosophy to prepare them to sacrifice their lives for containing the Anti American revolutions in Afghanistan and Iran. All current day sectarian and militant groups including Mahajir Qaumai Movement (MQM) and top of them all the Al-Qaeda were fabricated in Zia regime either by ISI or CIA.

6. During the incomplete political tenures of Benazir and Nawaz positive steps were taken to give a popular vision to the nation but due to short span, corruption and military interruption it could not be realized.

7. The military regime of Musharraf had to shift the focus to a progressive vision but at the cost of sovereignty and self respect of the nation.Musharraf had to neutralize the effects of his predecessor who encouraged, nourished, created and aided the terrorist groups with the help of ISI and CIA in his regime. He became an ally in the war against terrorism by the United States which is infact a war against imperialism by the divided states of the third world especially Muslims states.

The first mistake of the Musharraf regime was opting to join the so called war against terrorism which was aimed at targeting and then controlling all those states which had the potential of becoming threats to the political hegemony of United States in its post 9/11 world global vision.

The second mistake he committed was that after becoming ally with the United Sates and getting aid to combat terrorism in Pakistan he used the aid to strengthen his political stature instead of using it to eliminate the reactionary Arab terrorist group called Al-Qaeda which targets the educated lot and ex-military personnel to plan and use poor religious youth to carry their operations from various cities of Pakistan.

The third mistake which his regime did was that his corrupt ministers and military establishment used the US financial support to increase its strategic depth in Afghanistan to make it unstable by aiding Taliban despite of repeated protests by the Karzai government to stop cross border infiltration into Afghanistan.

When ISI-backed Taliban became stronger enough in Afghanistan to pressurize Karzai government, they were hijacked by educated beaureocrats and ex-military Pakistani men of Al-Qaeda operating in Pakistan and the innocent Pakhtuns of Pakistan had to face the consequences of their political influence after the djinn came out of the bottle to target Pakistan itself.

The same mistake was done by NATO forces in Afghanistan. Instead of acting as peace keeping forces, helping the Afghan government to form and equip a national army, establishing the infrastructure, providing security to investors and working for the welfare of Afghans the search of ISAF forces for the ISI-backed Taliban resulted in a lot of casualties due to which they started loosing the sympathies of Afghans.

The current situation is that ISI-backed Taliban are getting strength throughout Pakistan and the planners and sympathizers of Al-Qaeda are misleading them to achieve their ulterior motives. Terrorism is an Arab reactionary phenomenon. Neither Afghans across the Durand line nor Pakistanis ever approved of it in the past.

The latest gift of wrong Pakistani policies is the US warning of challenging the sovereignty of Pakistan by attacking the Tribals who have been serving as volunteer army for Pakistan and offered volunteer services in conquering the current Azad Kashmir while the army has been enjoying all the perks and portfolios for more than four decades in Pakistan history.

Having been a part of invincible Afghanistan for centuries it is a shame for a ruling and historic nation like Pakhtuns to live in a state which has given nothing to them – not even a name to their region but has looted everything from them except their sense of pride and honor. It is against the psyche of Pakhtuns to buy submission at the cost of freedom and compromise on their honor by not retaliating against any aggression.

The people in the tribal belt and Pushtoons are totally innocent and they have no idea whatsoever about Al-Qaeda which had been based in the past in cities like Rawalpindi due to the ISI headquarters or in Lahore due to Global religious headquarter of Raiwind or in Karachi due to being a big metropolis from which Al-Qaeda leader like SKM was arrested in the past.

The following strategy should be adopted to prevent any potential extremism in the fraudulently administered Tribal areas (FATA):

1. Political parties should be allowed in the tribal areas so that the unemployed and illiterate people get political awareness and do not fall prey to the indoctrination of the religious demagogues.

2. It is recommended to convert the existing madrassas into schools which teach modern science & technology subjects in addition to the religious subjects.

3. Establish industries in the tribal belt. Industrialization creates its own culture and values and changes the thinking, lifestyle, needs and life goals of individual. It is a real and practical tool for cultural engineering. Values and culture are products of technology.

4. Practical steps should be taken to make tribal areas as industrial zones and tourist resorts so that the youth get employed. Unemployment has to be uprooted from underdeveloped areas especially tribal areas as it has been the root cause for the youngsters of these areas to get attracted towards madrassas which work on charity basis.

5. Formal education, technical education and vocational training should be introduced to facilitate the industrialization process.

6. Political reforms should be introduced by abandoning the colonial legacy of FCR and merging the tribal areas with the mainstream Pakhtuns regions of NWFP, Attock, Mianwali and Pakhtun belt of Baluchistan to make a united province called Pakhtunkhwa.

Frontier Post 29th July 2007
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