Pakistan in a Fix

Marriot bombings- Lal masjid incident in Islamabad, police personnel repeatedly blown up by suicide bombers, attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team, abduction for ransom becoming rampant and every city looking to be under siege with barricaded streets, thousands of internally displaced people and Pakistani army sweating it out to gain control of Dir, Buner and Swat region from Taliban doesn’t augur well for Pakistan. Pakistan is in a quagmire and is heading towards theocracy. Pakistan, a nation of 175 million, struggles for its survival. Why did Pakistan reach this particular stage here are few reasons :

1. There is big transformation culturally and socially in Pakistan after partition. Pakistan has been constantly detaching itself from Indian subcontinent and has made a conscious effort to join Arabian Peninsula. Pakistan has completely forgotten that it was once a part of India. It has totally ignored very rich, tolerant, kinder, gentler version of Islam like Sufism and has embraced unyielding, stern version of Islam called wahabism.

2. Wahabism and Arabianisation of Pakistan was a result of Ronald Reagan’s consent to push for islam in order to defeat Russians in Afghanistan. With the approval of America, Pakistan put up a red carpet invitation for radical Islamists from all over Arabian countries to fight in Afghanistan. Then Pakistan used same extremists to infiltrate into Kashmir. These fighters didn’t go back to their motherland but started to propagate hard-line salafi and Deobandi beliefs. They bitterly opposed Barelvis, Shias and other Muslims further dividing already a divided country. Pakistani workers returning from arab countries also endorsed this view. This led to spread of a movement which frowned on every expression of joy and pleasurable past time. Music and movies were violently opposed. Thus, the real Pakistani culture was trampled to death.


3. Pakistani leadership year after year from Zia-ul-huq to Gilani haven’t had the courage to speak out against these cultural offensive or the atrocities committed in the name of culture. Their lone agenda has been to hold on to the power by inciting hatredness

4. Nexus between religious fundamentalists and Pakistani army is one more reason. After afghan and Russian war, Pak army had realized the power of Jihad as an instrument of foreign policy, and so the network grew from strength to strength. But post 9/11 the nexus went horribly wrong. Today the same Pakistani army is under attack from religious militants. Jihadists are blowing themselves up to kill Pak soldiers who were once more than their kinsmen. Never the less the army has not yet learnt the lesson and is still ambivalent in its relation with the Jihadists.


5. Indoctrination through curriculum. Over the years extremism has been breeding at a ferocious rate in schools. The schools with this kind of education as already produced a generation incapable of religious-cultural tolerance. Pakistan education system demands that Islam be understood as a complete code of life, and creates in the mind of school child a sense of siege and constant embattlement by stressing that Islam is under threat everywhere. In a fascist move an act was passed in parliament where all the government and private schools were required to follow this curriculum. Successive governments have refused to change the curriculum and have silently allowed young minds to be moulded by fanatics. Militant Jihad has become part of culture on college and university campuses. Armed groups have flourished, invited students for Jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan, set up offices throughout the country and collected funds at Friday prayers and declared war without borders.

6. Madrassas have proved to be primary vehicle for Saudi-ising Pakistan’s education. Mullah’s of madrassas whose principle function had been to produce imams and muezzins for mosques and teaching children to read the quran have become main propaganda machines to spread the holy war. They spew venom and teach to hate all those who are not followers of Prophet Mohammed, rather than to love and live in harmony. There are these kinds of madrassas across the length and breadth of Pakistan.


7. Environment of poverty, deprivation, lack of justice, extreme difference of wealth have already added fuel to this uncontrollable raging fire. Islamists leaders like Sufi Mohammed, Batiullah Mehsud , Fazlullah have created their own cults and have seized control over the minds of innocent people who have looked up to these extremists with hope of a better life. Women’s life has become pathetic. Public hanging and flogging have become common. Education for women is forbidden. Nearly 200 schools for girls were blow up in Swat region itself by Fazlullah’s militants.

Unless Pakistani Govt ensures equal rights to all, especially right to education for women, better facilities for the deprived, the situation in the country will only get worse. Beheading and lynching will continue unless education system and madrassas teach the lesson of cultural-religious tolerance and acceptance. Above all this Pak army and US should make sure that Frankenstein created by themselves called Taliban must be laid to rest forever for a bright and prosperous Pakistan.