A starving nuclear power

I remember that song that Shehzad Roy had sung where he starts out by saying how at the age of 10, he saw in the daily news broadcast that Pakistan was going through a delicate period. And when he turned 20 and the news broadcast said the same thing. Pakistan being in a delicate and precarious situation is this country’s perpetual mode.

I have a bit of the same story to share also. When I was very young, I remember it took a combination of struggle, aggression and luck to be able to get one’s hands on a bag of flour. Then I watched Pakistan become a world champion in cricket. The nation celebrated the great victory. Excelling in sports is celebrated because it shows how healthy and happy a nation is. Nevertheless, the cricket world champion nation was still standing in line to be able to get a bag of flour. I also witnessed the Ras Koh hills of Chagai changing color indicating that Pakistan had become a nuclear power. Yet, the flour lines did not vanish. Basically, as a nuclear armed nation, we could annihilate another nation within seconds but we couldn’t feed our own people.

When you google what nations possess nuclear weapons, you will find that 3 nations possessing nuclear weapons are also the nations where people are starving: Pakistan, India and North Korea. And then a striking difference emerges: only North Korea is starving due to foreign sanctions. Pakistan and India are both starving due to their own negligence, poor governance and sheer corruption. More specifically Pakistanis are starving not due to foreign sanctions but rather due to foreign interference.

It was rather remarkable to see the captured Indian pilot Abhinandan Varthaman to be served with tea because these are the very people for whom the nuclear arms were acquired. The nuclear behaviour is only reserved for Pakistani citizens, who would appreciate a lot if they could afford that very cup of tea. The people of Pakistan need nutrients not nuclear.

Pakistan as a state does not reach out to its citizens who are in trouble abroad. So many Pakistanis are in jail in Saudi and other prisons for minor crimes. So many have been killed by foreign nations, sometimes even on US soil. I mean seriously, who are we trying to scare with these weapons anyway? What are we trying to convey to the world: sure, imprison our citizens, kill them if you’d like even on Pakistani soil, we wouldn’t bother asking about them. Send your drones and kill innocent people including children and we would keep the ‘suspected militants killed’ narrative alive. But we got nuclear weapons in case someone dares to attack our soil. I don’t know about you, but it sounds absolutely ridiculous to me.

I guess we might be confusing the state with the nation. Ideally, the state is made up of the people in a certain geography within certain border lines. Realistically, Pakistan is only made up of the state. And then there are the rest of the people and the cattle. Only the state matters. The rest have a unique lifestyle: people breathe in order to live. Pakistanis live just to breathe. That is all the freedom they have until that starts getting taxed too or taken away entirely by some sort of a midnight courtroom.

Which Pakistani citizen can claim that his embassy reached out to him during some troubling situation abroad. I once tried to make a Nicop using the services of a Pakistani consulate in Houston, Texas. I can confidently claim that going to the moon might have been easier. As a matter of fact, foreign citizens who land in Pakistan have more respect and power than Pakistani citizens. Even the people of Pakistan give more respect and value to European or American citizens who land in Islamabad and other cities.

If you are done reading, go get some flour before the neutralinos get to it too.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 30^th, 2023.

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