It seems that establishment wants us to forget all Pakistanis killed and take this new line of talking with militants.
JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: I was amazed to see how most of the 60 political and religious leaders sat on so obediently at the All Parties Conference, and once again willingly preferred to toe the security establishment’s line on various issues related to Pakistan-America relations and terrorism. Three decades ago, most of them or their predecessors took the same position when Pakistan’s security establishment decided to help the Americans get the Soviets out of Afghanistan.
In the 1980s, Pakistan became the base for arms supplies, the recruiting of mujahideen from all across the world, the establishment of countless religious seminaries, training camps for fighters, as well as safe havens for them. Once the Americans left the region, and avenging their Vietnam defeat, both Afghanistan and Pakistan plunged into ethnic and sectarian violence.
Following 9/11, Pakistan took another U-turn to abandon the fighters it had nurtured all through the 1990s and once again most of the politicians rallied around the establishment. And now on September 29, 2011, they all gathered and the end result was that Pakistan is not exactly a parliamentary democracy, because the politicians do not formulate the domestic and foreign policies. The point about opening dialogue with the terrorists is a new thing and only indicates that the country is doing this from a position of weakness.
Are we to forget the hundreds of suicide bombings, which have killed thousands of civilians and security personnel? It has forced both local and foreign investors to flee, caused unimaginable destruction of public and private property and given the country a terrible name in the eyes of the rest of the world. It seems that the establishment wants us to forget all this and take this new (or actual?) line. The resolution which came out of the APC’s marathon session speaks volumes about who runs things in Pakistan.
On a separate but related note, the points raised by Nawaz Sharif may have infuriated some religious leaders but remained unanswered and unaddressed. He was right in saying that there cannot be smoke without some fire and that if the rest of the world was accusing us of certain things then we can’t just dismiss it out of hand.
Masood Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, October 2nd, 2011.
