The recent killings of many uniformed personnel in Baluchistan is the first indication that things in Pakistan have slumped to the state of the country as in 1971, which resulted in the breakup of the country and the formation of Bangladesh.
The army, with its formula of resorting to brute force in order to keep itself in power, should be feeling the heat with its formula becoming unstuck. This is certain to cause panic in the pants of the high command. The more the panic in those halloed regions, the more will be the resort to violence by the army.
This should have been expected. When all avenues of peaceful expression of dissent to bring about political change are closed to the people, violence is the only avenue left open to them. What happens then is that frustration builds up, especially among the youth. This builds up most among those uncommonly gifted with energy and moved by ideals. If they cannot build up new organizations to express armed resistance, they will likely fill the skeletal ranks of the existing “insurgent” groups. The most organized of these are in Baluchistan. KP will follow the lead of Baluchistan because, for the moment, it is much better integrated and will take time to ignite. But army policies will not allow this situation to remain for long. The rest of Pakistan will follow with civil unrest.
The more the high command tries to resolve this problem, using its favourite tools, the worse they will make the problem. This is the great gift of stupidity. But when stupidity is supercharged by cowardice and pure malice, it reaches an entirely different level.
The high command should have been able to foresee what is now unfolding, and which they have condemned themselves to confront. After all, well before they become generals, they have to be 2nd Lieutenants. Right from then onwards they are taught to make military appreciations, i.e. to make assessments of whether to put in an attack from the right or the left. By the time they become generals, one would think, they ought to have become pretty adept at this. But then, even a military appreciation only works if every factor it is based on has been objectively considered. But if the framework of this assessment is a network of lies, but a stubborn hope persists that “true” conclusions will be reached this way, one might as well be crying for the moon.
And so ours has become an army of crying, though marauding, generals.
But all of the above has to do with patchwork solutions, wrong or right, meant to alleviate symptoms of a much deeper disease. This disease begins with the inequitable sharing of the national pie between the “haves” and the “have-nots”. This helps create and secure an elite social class. Progressively, new rules and budgets have reduced the share of the “have-nots” to a point where they should hardly be expected to remain vested in the state. And from the little that used to trickle down to them, an increasingly larger share is being claimed by theft committed by those who rule and administer them. This theft of national resources further creates the cream WITHIN the elite. The nation has declined consistently from where its ethos could have been defined as one of benign immorality, to one of aggressive accumulation by its privileged elites.
In short, it has become a nation of thieves. The motivation to commit theft has broken down the value system, and that has broken down EVERY institution. This is now threatening to unravel the state itself. Indeed, any Pakistani who examines the issue of our national decline will have to concede that this began with our moral decay as a society, and the driving engine of this moral decay was the loss of restraint to keep our urge for wrongful gain in check. What is common between Asim Munir, Qazi Isa, Shahbaz Sharif, Zardari, Mohsin Naqvi, and Sikander Sultan Raja etc, but illegal gain and the need for power to protect this gain? This is the factor common in the decay of all our institutions. What is the prime motivation behind many of the changes to our constitution, and new laws and rules, but this? What, at the very bottom, is driving the effort to give Qazi Isa an extension but to secure wealth gained through theft wantonly committed?
Indeed, Pakistan’s central problem has been the collapse of its moral infrastructure manifested in the theft committed by its most privileged citizens. From this centre, this disease has moved to the rest of the body destroying its marrow.
Idealistic friends often talk of the need to reform institutions and present their versions of the same. Uniformly these deal with structural aspects of reform ignoring the central malaise which brought the whole house down in the first place i.e. the unwillingness of those in charge of institutions to run them in the spirit intended, because this spirit lies subverted by the urge to steal and accumulate. Without a moral underpinning, no institution can run. Theft destroyed this underpinning and our institutions came crumbling down.
The problem central to Pakistan which has undermined society, its hopes and its dreams, is that of increasing theft by those privileged with the means or the power to commit it. This eventually led to injustice becoming rampant, which first destabilised and then to the beginnings of the unravelling of society. Unless this is first addressed, nothing else can be put right.
In short, it is moral decline manifested in massive wanton theft committed unchecked by the elite that has led to a state of injustice, which is gnawing at the jugular of Pakistan.
At the bottom, this is what ails Baluchistan and is the cause of its eruption. And this fire will spread.
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Tail Piece…
The following is the essence of above article. a. The drive to accumulate illicit wealth pushed back against the moral restraint standing against this drive. b. Mounds of illegal wealth began to be created, while the moral restraint which was a check against it was pushed into the shadows. c. Today these mounds have become towering mountains, while the moral restraint against it cannot even be seen, so deep it is lost in the valleys between these mountains. d. During its progress to assuming the shape of mountains, the accumulation of illegal wealth destroyed every institution of the state. e. If we are ever to find redemption, this CANNOT be done without first resurrecting the frayed moral framework without which the spirit needed for institutions to function cannot exist.