The 911 State

Of course nobody in the world wants to rush to our rescue when we need it the most. Why should they? The UN telling us that Pakistan suffers from an “image deficit” must be the understatement, the euphemism of the century. Think about what we must look like to the rest of the world. When they have tried to help us we have squandered the assistance, through short-lived bursts of consumption, or through misappropriation. When they refuse help, we get bitter.

Not only that, when the world wants to engage with us we start getting too clever for our own good, playing ‘double games’.  When they’ve turned their backs on us, we sink into a pathetic state of self pity and generalised anger.

Not only that, we have this nasty habit of constantly blackmailing the world: “Help us or we’ll collapse and then our nukes will fall into the wrong hands.” Pakistan’s high commissioner to the UK just played this card again this week, warning that failure to provide aid could lead to the balkanisation of the region. We’re the 911 state. Not only because on that date nine years ago the world came crashing down upon our heads. We’re the 911 state because we are always seen to be in the midst of an emergency, always fighting to survive the next round, always teetering on the edge of a calamity.

And the world has grown weary of it all. It’s a little bit like the boy who cried wolf, although we never cried wolf as such, we just harboured and raised the wolves the rest of the world would like to be rid of.

Now, when we need the world’s support more than ever before, perhaps somewhere a realisation can set in amongst us that there exists a community of nation states, and membership has its perks. Membership in the community of civilised countries means you get assistance when you need it the most. But it also means not brewing up toxic ideologies and waging stealth campaigns of random murder and mayhem against everyone else. It means not blackmailing the world with nuclear weapons, or acting cute and innocent when caught red-handed proliferating them to outlaw regimes.

So here’s a suggestion, and somebody please tell me why we cannot do this: let’s give the UN the money it needs. Think about it. The UN has asked for $480 million immediately, of which about $125 million has been committed. So let’s take the balance amount the UN needs and pay them from our own budget.  Three hundred and fifty five million dollars comes to Rs30 billion which is one-quarter the size of the last T-bill auction, half the size of what the Punjab government has allocated from its own budget. Any which way, it’s a manageable amount. And their machinery is going to be far better than our own in delivering results. Let’s step forward, tell them “here is $355 million, now please get to work!” Once we agree to pay, other donors are more likely to step forward. And let's also agree that we will not play the “give us money or our nukes will land up in the hands of the Taliban” card ever again.

It’ll take some imagination to break the habit of reaching for that card every time a difficulty rears its head, but it’s what we have to do if we want to live like a normal country. Let’s please stop blackmailing those we call our allies. Let’s please stop lying to those we call our friends, and those we ask for help.

It’ll be tough at first; it usually is when the time comes to break a habit that’s years in the making. But something tells me the world will heave a sigh of relief: relief for our stricken masses and relief that this headache called Pakistan might finally be resolving itself. A long shot perhaps, but it’s worth a prayer and so much is hanging on prayers these days. And the first step is to make that payment to the UN.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 19^th, 2010.