Post-truth chaos and Pakistan

Pakistan shares a challenging neighbourhood — a factor that keeps impacting Pakistan’s relations with neighbours

As political debate heated up after the formation of PDA and social media started kicking up dust, an orchestrated assault on the state institutions is emerging. There is a need to analyse the issue through the prism of post-truth politics.

Cambridge dictionary describes post-truth as “relating to a situation in which people are more likely to accept an argument based on their emotions and beliefs, rather than one based on facts”. Post-truth differs from traditional contesting and falsifying of facts, it relegates facts and experts opinions to secondary importance, and more emphasis is on appeal to emotions.

Pakistan shares a challenging neighbourhood with giants — a geographical factor that keeps impacting Pakistan’s relations with neighbours and its internal polity. Despite the fact that the year 2020 has become a chaotic one for many countries, Pakistan’s neighbourhood has witnessed some positive developments, where the entire gambit of chaos woven around Pakistan seems to be coming apart.

For last two decades, Pakistan had been staring at a two-front war — India on one side and a destabilised Afghanistan on the other. International security pundits and their surrogates in Pakistan were talking of a bleak future for Pakistan with a map projecting its fragmentation by 2015. Internally a complete chaos brigade, hell bent at spreading despondency, was busy targeting the military and the people through a doomsday campaign, and it appeared as if fall of Pakistan was inevitable.

Past three years witnessed a reversal of this trend as the US realised that its longest war was unable to settle the Afghan question through military means. As Trump became disappointed and disillusioned with the military strategy in Afghanistan, he asked his advisors to look for alternate options. Pakistan had been advising the American leadership that the Afghan questions was to be settled on the negotiating table. Thus, Pakistan emerged as a pivotal player in the Afghan peace process and helped the international community in bringing the warring sides on to the negotiating table.

Another strategic shift in the region happened in May 2020 along the Indo-China LAC in Ladakh. China reclaimed approximately 1,200 square kilometres of its perceived territory and the Indian military, the third largest in the world, could not mount any worthwhile response. Earlier in February 2019, Pakistan military re-established nuclear deterrence in South Asia through Operation Swift Retort and displayed to the entire world that India was a paper tiger. Pakistan’s standing up to India and her military response in the hills of Nowshera Valley in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJ&K) had far reaching consequences and it boosted Pakistan military’s prestige at home and abroad.

As narrated in a piece published in this newspaper earlier this year, we had highlighted that the current spate of Indian state-sponsored terrorism in Balochistan and even Karachi points to the frustration with the lost cause. RAW has to find a bogey to deflect attention away from its failure in Ladakh, and pushing her proxies like BLA, Altaf Hussain, Senge Hasan Sarang (G-B dissident) and Sindhu Desh is akin to a donkey whipping the dust after having run short of fodder.

Coming back to strategic landscape and how Pakistan has emerged stronger despite the chaos in the past two decades, why has internal political debate been intensified against Pakistan Army and its intelligence agencies and who is trying to reverse Pakistan’s gains in international arena through an internal manoeuvre?

Looking around, one finds fortunes of India and Pakistan reversed: Pakistan has emerged from diplomatic isolation and the spectre of two-front war is receding whereas India is becoming isolated and her standoff with China has created a two-front war scenario.

We conducted a psychoanalysis of anti-state themes being generated by chaos generators, especially after the PML-N leadership’s blatant assault on the state, and found that it is precisely targeting the bond between Pakistan Army and the people of Pakistan. Some of the chaotic themes are enumerated below:

Reminding the people that Pakistan Army is the albatross hanging in the neck of Pakistan since its inception, time has come to get rid of this structure (Target Pakistan Army).

Stigmatising the national development role played by Army in the disturbed areas of K-P, Balochistan and even G-B, where the soldiers and officers are sacrificing their blood to protect the development projects and guard the borders (Target Pakistan Army).

Blaming Pakistan Army for political engineering despite the fact that that people voted for change in the last elections to get rid of the corrupt system (Target Pakistan Army).

Provide fuel to the Indian media (read RAW-sponsored media) with dubious data and anti-Pakistan narrative. Interestingly, Indian and anti-Army narrative being driven by some political parties has common strands (Target Pakistan Army).

Use history of wars fought by Pakistan Army to tarnish its image vis-a-vis Indian Army and dilute the sacrifices rendered by soldiers and officers by trivialising the context through imaginary punch lines of post-truth — forgetting that Pakistan Army and her sister services were always outnumbered by Indian military forces, even not realising that the Indian Army suffered total defeat when confronted by a larger Army of China (Target Pakistan Army).

Instead of appreciating the sacrifices of officers and soldiers of Pakistan Army in the war against terror — something that the entire world acknowledges as a big success story of our times — there is an effort of deflecting the discussion to imaginary and trivial aspects of ethno fascist nationalism. Latest raising of Punjab card by political leaders shows the depth to which they would go down in maligning Pakistani state institutions. Unfortunate, statements by some leaders inciting their supporters to surround the houses of Corps Commanders point to the heinous propaganda being used against the military leadership. This is something that Indian intelligence would desire (Target Pakistan Army).

Another important aspect of post-truth era is the question of reputation and credibility of leadership. One imaginary or trivial scandal of your past can ruin your reputation. The current narrative of targeting senior officers of Pakistan Army points to this trend (Target Pakistan Army).

The state and major stakeholders in Pakistan should have a wholesome view of post-truth era and how it is impacting governance and state security. For that we need an informed debate and a compatible strategy.

It appears as if Pakistan Army’s improved image has become a thorn in the eyes of some international players and foes of Pakistan so they looked for an opportunity to dent this image and worked hard to weave the cobweb of post-truth through domestic surrogates.

To conclude, we will quote a Pakistan Army critic, Christine Fair, who said, “For Pakistan to collapse, it is basically the Pakistan Army which has to collapse. For better or worse, I do not see that happening.” The chaos generators and traitors attacking Pakistan must know that Pakistan is here to stay and the bond between Pakistan Army and the people of Pakistan will not be dented. Inshallah.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 6^th, 2020.

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