Since Pakistan’s first Aug 14

Roedad Khan

On Aug 14, 1947, I was a 24-year-old subordinate judge–full of idealism, hope and ambition. For me and for all those who belonged to my generation, Pakistan symbolised all our wishes and expectations. On that day, over a century-and-a-half of British rule came to an end. The Union Jack was lowered for the last time. I saw the sun set on the British Empire in the subcontinent. It is not just that we had a great leader who seemed to embody in his determination a bright and different world as each person imagined it. We had entered a new era. Mr Jinnah could not have foreseen the tragic decline of Pakistan when he passed his flaming torch into the hands of his successors, or how venal those hands could be. Sixty-three years after Mr Jinnah gave us a great country, little men mired in corruption have captured political power and destroyed his legacy. If Mr Jinnah came today and saw Zardari in occupation of his august office, he would say, “I am afraid I need to erase this and start all over again.” Zardari’s handling of the current unprecedented flood crisis is horrendous. The response one would expect from the head of state never happened. He ignored the country’s worst flooding in 80 years, a national disaster of epic proportions with thousands of lives lost and millions of people affected, in order to travel abroad and address a party meeting in Birmingham. He seems too indifferent, too callous, too insensitive on the television screen. What is there to celebrate? Bloated dead bodies are floating down the rivers of Pakistan, reminiscent of the terrible cyclone which struck East Pakistan in 1970 with disastrous consequences. Millions have been displaced. Whole villages have disappeared. People have lost all their belongings. Zardari couldn’t care less. Sixty-three years after independence, we have a disjointed, dysfunctional, lopsided, hybrid, artificial, political system–a non-sovereign rubberstamp parliament, a weak and ineffective prime minister, appointed by a powerful accidental president. The federation is united only by a “rope of sand.” The independence of Pakistan is a myth. By succumbing to American pressure, we managed to secure a temporary reprieve. But at what price? Everyday American aircraft violate our airspace, and bomb our villages, killing innocent men, women and children. In 2009 alone, the Americans killed 667 innocent men, women and children. With impunity, no questions asked, no protest, no expression of remorse from them. Today Pakistan is dotted with American fortresses, which seriously compromises our internal and external sovereignty. American security personnel stationed on our soil move in and out of the country without any let or hindrance. Pakistan has become a launching pad for military operations against neighbouring Muslim countries. We have been drawn into somebody else’s war without understanding its true dimension or ultimate objectives. Nuclear Pakistan has been turned into an American lackey, currently engaged in a proxy war against its own people. To no nation has fate been more malignant than to Pakistan. With few exceptions, Pakistan has long been saddled with poor, even malevolent, leadership: predatory kleptocrats, military dictators, political illiterates and carpetbaggers. After Benazir Bhutto’s tragic assassination, Mr Zardari’s sudden ascension to the Presidency caused panic and fear among people. His record since then hasn’t exactly been an exercise in the glories of Pakistan’s democracy. We are saddened when we look back at all the squandered decades. Once we were the envy of the developing world. That is now the stuff of nostalgia. Pakistan has lapsed into languor, a spiritless lassitude. A sense of guilt, shame, danger and anxiety hangs over the country like a pall. It appears as if we are on a phantom train that is gathering momentum and we cannot get off. Today Pakistan is a silent, mournful land where few people talk of the distant future and most live from day to day. They see themselves as ordinary and unimportant, their suffering too common to be noted, and prefer to bury their pain. Today the political landscape of Pakistan is dotted with Potemkin villages. All the trappings of democracy are there, albeit in anaemic form. Parliamentarians go through the motions of attending parliamentary sessions, question hour and privilege motions, endless debates which everybody knows are sterile and totally unrelated to the people’s real problems. Why did Pakistan become a land of opportunities for corrupt, unscrupulous, unprincipled politicians, judges, generals and civil servants, smugglers and tax-evaders, who have bank accounts, luxurious villas, mansions, and apartments in the West? Why did Pakistan become a nightmare of corruption, crime and despair? Sixty-three years after it came into being, Pakistan is among the world’s most badly governed and politically corrupt countries. Corruption is endemic and extends throughout all segments of society. It is made all the worse by a “culture of impunity.” Why? The whys of history are never answered. Too long have we been passive spectators of events. Today our fate is in our hands, but soon it may pass beyond control. A shout in the mountains has been known to start an avalanche. We must call things by their names and shout louder. Let Pakistan be Pakistan again. Let it be the dream it used to be—a dream that is almost dead today. “From those who live like leeches on people’s lives”—who have robbed us of everything, our past, our present, our future and all our beautiful dreams—we must take back our land, and our money. Many nations in the past have attempted to develop democratic institutions, only to lose them when they took their liberties and political institutions for granted, and failed to comprehend the threats, both internal and external, facing them. Pakistan is a classic example. Born at midnight as a sovereign, independent, democratic country, today it is neither sovereign, nor independent, nor even democratic. Today it is not just a “rentier state,” not just a client state. It is a slave state, ill-led, ill-governed by a power-hungry junta and a puppet government set up by Washington. Where are the voices of public outrage? Where is the leadership willing to stand up and say: Enough! Enough! We have sullied ourselves enough. Why are we so passively mute? How can we be so comatose as a nation when thousands of poor people are dying along the rivers of Pakistan before our own eyes? Millions are stranded without shelter, with nothing to eat and nothing to drink with nobody to look after them. When the history of these benighted times comes to be written, it will be noted that the Pakistani army and independent media, both print and electronic, were the only institutions which served the nation most meritoriously in its hour of greatest need. The spontaneous demonstrations and outpouring of anger of the flood-affected people witnessed all over the world are ominous. With such ripples, do tidal waves begin? Who will tap the anger, the frustration and the resentment among millions of our people? Both military dictatorship and corrupt, fraudulent democracy, have failed them. The country is impoverished and humiliated. Democratic forms remain, but democracy itself is in effect dead or dying. One man, one man alone, occupying the commanding heights of power, is responsible for the mess we are in today. Zardari is taking Pakistan to a perilous place. The course he is on leads is downhill. It is not enough to sit back and let history slowly evolve. To settle back into cold-hearted acceptance of the status quo is not an option. The writer is a former federal secretary. Email: roedad@comsats.net.pk,www.roedadkhan.com