A country which can't feed more than half its population, education, healthcare, should seek depth in its own people.
KARACHI: This is with reference to Britta Petersen’s article of October 27 titled “On strategic depth — a European point of view”. A country which cannot feed more than half its population, cannot provide education to more than 60 per cent of its people and where a majority do not have access to affordable quality healthcare should first seek strategic depth in its own people. This is imperative if it wishes to emerge as a strong and cohesive nation at peace with itself.
And it is precisely because of this reason that we need to move away from the paranoia that has been built into our psyche through a manufactured threat from our eastern border and via history books that teach more propaganda and ideology than facts. The Pakistani leadership — military and civilian — would be doing themselves and this country a favour by learning a lesson from history: seeking a pliant state and installing puppets in Afghanistan has never worked and it never will.
Farhad Yousafzai
Published in The Express Tribune, October 29th, 2011.
