Pakistan and its neighbours

Look at the map of Pakistan. The overwhelming length of its land border — 92% of a total of 6,774kms — is shared with three countries: India (43%), Afghanistan (36%) and Iran (13%). Pakistan has poor relations with each of these three neighbours.

Has anyone seriously asked the two obvious questions: Why? And, at what cost?

Before we jump on the moral high-horse and go into paroxysms of indignant self-righteousness, we could consider the following:

When George Bush asks “Why do they hate us?” and answers “Because we are so good,” we marvel at his intelligence. When we proclaim the same, we want to be taken seriously?

Surely, some self-reflection is in order.

Point number one: When nobody likes you, the problem could very well be with you. At the very least, intellectual honesty demands one should be open to the possibility.

All right, there is a ready-to-serve narrative for the hostility with India. It is a Hindu country and Hindus are different from Muslims and want nothing better than to undo Pakistan. Ergo, we have to terrorise them from time to time lest, God forbid, they change their minds.

But what about our fellow-Muslim neighbours. Do we have semi-plausible narratives to explain our unhappiness with them?

We need to have a friendly regime in Afghanistan so we can be friends with them. Of course, this involves regime change about which we have serious qualms except when we are desperately seeking friends. And a little strategic depth won’t hurt either because when we have to pole-vault over the Indian border, we can start running from much further back.

Meanwhile, as former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright said about the death of 500,000 Iraqis: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.”

And Iran, don’t they belong to a different sect? In any case, the enemy of our friend is our enemy, isn’t it?

Okay, I am exaggerating (slightly) but could we put some more coherent narratives on the table and have a national discussion without being defensive or afraid. And, while we are at it, could we also discuss who are the geniuses making these brilliant foreign policy decisions? Because it is certainly not the citizens.

We do seem to have a surreal notion of how to resolve our issues. Instead of trying to get along with the neighbours we have, we seem desperate to relocate ourselves to another neighbourhood. If only we could become ‘Bakistan’ and cuddle up to Saudi Arabia or attach ourselves to the underside of those wonderful ’stans, or be an extension of China, wouldn’t everything be so wonderful?

Quite aside from the fact that moving a country is not quite the same as moving a family from quarrelsome Harbanspura to peaceful Bedian, the nice thing about counterfactuals is that they never need to be put to the test. Having made a hash of Saarc and RCD, we can boldly dream we would make a great success of CAP (Central Asia and Pakistan — seriously).

It does help to have a short memory. Didn’t we have a neighbour (a little more than that, actually) about a 1,000 miles to the east and what exactly did we do to it that it could not bear our embrace?

Is everyone in this pipedream too smoked up to keep track of the contradictions? We launched a jihad in Afghanistan because godless communists were being nasty to our fellow Muslims and now our best friends are godless communists who allegedly won’t allow Muslims in their country to grow beards or fast during Ramazan (sorry, Ramadan). We are sincerely upset about Kashmir but, please, could we sincerely avert our eyes from Xinjiang. Or else.

More and more this comes across as a melange of self-serving gibberish that just doesn’t hold together. But who is to say and we know who there is to hear.

And what about the benefits and costs? Every situation has its winners and losers and in almost every case two truths are held: the winners are few and the losers many, and the winners convince the losers that everything is happening in the latter’s interest and is exactly as the Good Lord willed. How much better the reward when it is finally conferred in the Hereafter.

There’s no prize for guessing the winners and the losers. Just look for the folks whose lifestyle is immune to whatever happens on the borders and those who are laughing to the bank and onwards to the Bahamas. There go your winners. As for the losers, think of those for whom a few rupees less in the price of food would mean two meals a day instead of one.

You may not be able to do much about it but I am sure you can figure it out.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 5^th, 2017.

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