Book launch: How best to address Pakistan’s issues

Moazzam Husain pens down thoughts on solving country's problems

KARACHI: Pakistan belongs to the people and not to any other entity that has assumed for itself the role of becoming the country's custodian.

Entrepreneur and op-ed contributor, Moazzam Husain, who has also served the government in executive and advisory roles, said this at the launch of his book, 'Putting Pakistan right: standpoints on the war on terror, energy, transit corridors and economic development' on Thursday at the Karachi Gymkhana.

The book seeks to set into motion an energetic discussion on the issues facing Pakistan and how to address them.



According to Husain, changing the thinking of the establishment is one of the two major mind shifts needed in our society. The second major shift in mind set, he explained, is for the people of Pakistan to get rid of all kinds of phobias (that the rest of the world is out to get them).

This, he said, is a mental illness. "Pakistan does not need to justify its existence to anyone," he said, adding that Pakistan's existence is a fact and the country doesn't have to be on the defensive mode all the time.

Trying to differentiate between an existential threat and an everyday issue, he said that religious extremists, who want to take over power, are the existential threat for this country. "There is an ideology here that wants to take over the state," he claimed, informing that there are 300 different extremists groups which are part of this existential threat.

"Corruption and kickbacks are not existential threats," he pointed out, adding that they amount to two-to-three percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and in a perfect world they are one-or-one-and-a-half percent of the GDP.

He quoted a few blanket statements which are rife in our society: 'motives of the politicians are tainted; until corruption ends, nothing can change for the better in this country; in democracy the same faces come up again and again'. He said that the society is trapped in such statements.

The day will never come, according to him, when everything will be perfect.  "We don't live in a perfect world," he said.  "Politics is governed by interest not by niyat (motives)."

Former secretary general of the All Pakistan Newspapers Society, Arshad Zuberi, said that in the book, Husain has asked the establishment to share the truth regarding the war against terrorism as they are still not being transparent about it. "The Afghans have not accepted Pakistan and they are not going to accept Pakistan," he said, adding that this is a fact of life we need to accept.



"Nobody is trying to undo Pakistan, unless Pakistanis themselves want to undo Pakistan," he said. For the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, he said that China has got its interests to look after. "They are not doing us a favour," he said, adding that they want to develop Western China; otherwise, China would break because of the disparity present in the country.

China wants to keep its industry humming, they aren't interested in Pakistan and that is another reality that has to be accepted.

Pakistan's former ambassador to the United Nations, Abdullah Hussain Haroon, who was also a keynote speaker at the launch, informed that the writer has also quoted Dr Justice Javed Iqbal in his book, saying "Pakistan is not a failed state. It is in the hands of a failed generation." The phrase is from Iqbal's book, Islam and Pakistan's Identity.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 24^th, 2016.