Deepak Vohra

What ails Pakistan?

It is trapped in a broken time machine.

Islam became Pakistan, Pakistan became the military, the military became Islam – the macabre dance is unending.

That funny character with a pucca British accent who masquerades as Pakistan’s Foreign Minister told a Japanese newspaper in end-May 2021 that Pakistan’s priorities had changed; its thought process had changed.

Our priorities, he said, in a transformed Pakistan, are economic growth, human development, security, elimination and eradication of terrorism, and reversing extremism.

And the world better listen, since we have nuclear weapons. 

No one listens.

Since Kashmir was missing, his boss made up with a warning in June 2021 to India (with the Indian Prime Minister discussing the Kashmir situation with all parties) not to make any more changes in Kashmir’s status and repeated it in July 2021.

The vacuous Im the Dim says Pakistan would not need nuclear weapons if the Kashmir issue were settled, implying that the weapons are to be used in and for Kashmir! 

He claimed that any country which has a neighbour seven times its size would be worried.”

He has said it clearly. Pakistan is not even a distant second to India in every which way.

Liabilities due on China-funded energy projects under the CPEC surpass $31 billion and Beijing declines to restructure $3 billion in liabilities coming due in 2021 that Islamabad possibly cannot pay.

In his first tweet of 2018, former US President Donald Trump had lamented: “The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies and deceit.”

In his six months in office, Joe Biden has ignored Pakistan, once America’s frontline ally in the war on terror, prompting Imran Khan to write a signed piece in The Washington Post in July begging for attention. 

Despite frantic window dressing (including arrest warrants against global terrorist Hafiz Saeed et al), the 39-member Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in June 2021 retained Pakistan on its “grey list” of countries under enhanced scrutiny.

In March 2021, a Pakistani think tank said that Pakistan's frequent grey-listing by FATF (2008-2019) may have resulted in a cumulative GDP loss of $38 billion, through increased skepticism about the economy, decline in local investment, exports and foreign direct investment.

My own assessment of the cost to Pakistan since 1947 is USD 300 bn (2021 dollars).

In 2019, exiled dictator Pervez Musharraf admitted that Pakistan had supported and trained terror groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba to carry out attacks in Kashmir.

In July 2019, Present Prime Minister Shri IK Niazi accepted in the USA that there were between 30-40,000 armed terrorists in Pakistan.

Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in 2010.

Shri Niazi and his Foreign Minister both call him a martyr!

They have lost their marbles.

Funnily, atheist best friend China’s severe repression of its Muslims does not evoke even a squeak from Pakistan!

Some years ago, American think tank Brookings Institution wrote that with the possible exception of Iran, Pakistan was the world’s most active sponsor of terrorism.

Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s amazing MEA culpa and promise of a change of priorities begs the question: what were Pakistan’s priorities before the abrupt change of heart? Terrorism, Hafiz Saeed, anything and everything that was anti-India, Islamic fundamentalism, being China’s bootlicker, coveting Kashmir? 

Why, may one ask, is there this sudden change of focus?

The Taliban do not trust Pakistan, as they feel Pakistan abandoned and fought them after 9/11 without even saying “sorry guys” because of US threats (of the bomb you into the stone age variety), even though Pakistan renovated its mothballed Mujahideen training camps and resumed clandestine support within a few years, terrified of the growing Indian and Tajik influence in Afghanistan. 

Feeling that their military had become an American mercenary, in December 2007 former Pakistani-trained Mujahideen formed the Tehrik-i-Taliban in Pakistan (TTP) in the badlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan to capture state power through a terrorist campaign with support from Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.

With no more Soviet blood in Afghanistan, they turned on their former mentors.

Kashmir is Pakistan’s eternal tinnitus, that it wants to wrest from India, and Afghanistan is its dream gone hopelessly sour.

Kashmir does not empty Pakistan of its sorrows, it empties it of its strengths.

Some may recall that within weeks of its birth by Cesarean section (it came out deformed, according to its father), Pakistan began to play around with non-state actors.

It tried to take Kashmir in 1947, 1965, 1971, 1999, hoping that its external aggression would provoke internal insurrection in the Kashmir valley. It did not happen and Pakistan lived to regret its stupidity.

The Kashmiris were promised jannat in that Islamic heaven called Pakistan. Now they are being mocked because they did not rise against the regularization of Kashmir’s status when India abolished Article 370.

Kashmiris are angry with Pakistan.

Does Pakistan have a fantasy beyond Kashmir? It did at one time.

It started messing around (with blessings from China) in India’s northeast in the 1950s, especially Nagaland and Mizoram.

Rebel leaders visited East and West Pakistan and China for weapons and training. 

With the secession of East Pakistan, the surrender of several Naga and Mizo rebels in Dhaka, the insurgencies were substantially weakened.

Pakistan looks like a war-ravaged skeleton of a state that is not even trying to put itself back together, facing daunting challenges: poverty, illiteracy, energy crisis, corruption, political instability, terrorism, overpopulation, inflation, unemployment, economic crisis (Pakistan’s GDP is where India’s was in 1975).

Its worst problem is China.

Four years ago, the Pakistani newspaper, 'Dawn', had leaked an internal document in which the Chinese government reassured its PSUs about an extortionary assured return of about 16%-17% on their investments in CPEC.

The chairman of the Pakistani Senate Committee on Development wryly commented: "The East India Company is back in Pakistan."

If Pakistan cedes sovereignty to China, the latter will “Xinjiangize” it by making the whole country an internment camp. 

The Chinese must have always known that trucking or piping fuel all the way from Gwadar to refineries and production units on their eastern seaboard was clearly not economically viable.

They simply used the ruse to dominate Pakistan politically and economically and, above all, make the Pak Armed forces an appendage to the PLA.

Attempting to fight India directly, China got a bloody nose so now wants to fight us to the last Pakistani.

It has just sacked, for the second time in quick succession, its General confronting India.

Hundreds of Pakistani girls, especially poor Christians and from minority communities, are allegedly being lured to China, often through sham marriages and against cash payments to their parents.

Similarly, the Pakistani armed forces are under instruction not to react to assaults by Chinese ‘guests,’ regardless of the reason.

There is a limerick about the Lady from Niger, who went for a ride on a tiger, they returned from the ride with the lady inside, and a smile on the face of the tiger!

Niazi should know that one cannot dismount after riding a dangerous monster. He rides two, China and his military.

Niazi is a foolish tragic hero with delusions of grandeur.

Niazi acknowledged Pakistan’s loneliness by lamenting in a media interview last year that only China had stood by Pakistan in every good and bad time.

He does not know his history.

As Pakistan was splitting at its seams in 1971, China did nothing, despite the disgraceful Henry Kissinger urging it to intervene.

Facing disaster in the 1999 Kargil War, Pakistan’s pleas to China for diplomatic support elicited a statement that it should withdraw to its side of the Line of Control.

How many more Chinese kicks in its butt does masochistic Pakistan want?

If Pakistan went to war with India, China would make threatening noises and do nothing.

The “higher than the mountains, sweeter than honey, deeper than the oceans” nonsense to describe China-Pakistan relations is a Pakistani construct, not Chinese.

Since June 2021, Pakistan soldiers and Chinese workers have been killed in the sensitive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region, despite the special army division raised to protect Chinese workers.

In July 2021, 15 Pakistani soldiers were killed by the TTP while 9 Chinese engineers working on the 4,300 MW Dassu Dam in Upper Kohistan in Northwestern Pakistan died in a bus blast, in what Beijing said was a bomb attack but Islamabad called a vehicle failure.

I am reminded of Hillary Clinton’s warning to Pakistan in 2011 referring to the Haqqani network: "You can't keep snakes in your backyard and expect them to only bite your neighbour,” she said.

Niazi, who loves Jihadis of every hue falls consistently for the dangerous delusion that, in a bad position, he could always conjure up some issue to extricate him from his difficulties.

The Islamic BBC and parallel OIC (and now a stillborn China-Pakistan media outlet) were outlandish ideas that left a permanent boot imprint on his rear.

A recent Gallup poll suggested that spiralling inflation and unemployment were the biggest problems haunting the people of Pakistan and not Kashmir.

To control the soaring prices of food grains, sugar and cotton, Islamabad decided a couple of months ago to partially rescind its ban on trade with India, and then quickly rescinded its rescindment. 

In June 2021, former cricket player Niazi did not allow Pakistan Television to buy broadcast rights for the ICC World Cricket Championship cricket matches (in his cricket crazy nation) from the Indian company that holds them because this would demoralize Kashmiris!

Two years ago, he had asked his compatriots to stand silently for half an hour after Friday prayers in solidarity with the people of Kashmir, like naughty schoolboys being chastised.

In 2019, he lamented that the world had not done anything (on Kashmir) because India had a huge market. Does he remember the catch phrase during Bill Clinton’s campaign in the 1990s – “it is the economy stupid?”

The IMF has bailed out Pakistan 13 times, the largest being in 2019.

No one cares about Pakistan. America is worried about Afghanistan, so it tolerates Pakistan. China is worried about India and Afghanistan, so it tolerates Pakistan. Russia is worried about Afghanistan, so it tolerates Pakistan.

In July 2021, Shri Niazi refused to answer a question about the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan.

All he could whimper was that Pakistan was doing everything possible short of military action (as in 2001) to rein in the Taliban.

If Russia and America kiss and makeup (Foreign Ministers, Security Advisers, Presidents), their need for Pakistan will decline.

As the Americans would say, Pakistan is up sh*t creek without a paddle.

As of June 2021, the country’s outstanding debt is well over its GDP.

The debt-to-GDP ratio could double by end-2023 if debts continue to grow at the current clip – which would coincide with the end of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s debt-inflating five-year term.

Pakistan has a currency reserve of less than USD 8 billion, enough only to cover 1.5 months of imports.

The country is living on borrowed money and borrowed time.

The July 2021 World Bank USD 800 million loan to Pakistan (with tough conditions) is for clean energy and human capital development (it is part of some USD 27 bn that Pakistan needs during the current financial year).

These are critical areas, that Pakistan has ignored, welcoming polluting obsolete coal-based power plants from China and preferring jihadist madrassas to modern schools.

Pakistan is in an unending war with itself.

Its military has ruined the country by creating an Islamic terrorist infrastructure that has superseded state institutions.

It has penetrated the overall economy and operates in the formal, informal and shadow sectors, including agriculture, education, oil, banking, manufacturing, insurance, and airlines.

The Pakistani citizen is alienated from the State and sees violence as a legitimate alternative.

The Balochis, Sindhis, Mohajirs and tribals detest the Punjabi-dominated establishment.

To keep them quiet, hatred of Hindu India has to be constantly reinforced and the army projects itself as the defender of Islam and the bulwark against India’s ‘nefarious’ designs to swallow Pakistan. 

"Religion is the opium of the people…a palliative against suffering and exploitation and provides the oppressed and marginalized with pleasant illusions which gave them the strength to carry on" German sociologist Karl Marx had said. 

Pakistan retrogresses towards a primitive religion-based tribalism.

School textbooks in Pakistan denigrate Hindus and extol jihadis who kill infidels.

(Deepak Vohra is a senior diplomat, special Advisor to Prime Minister on Lesotho, South Sudan and Guinea-Bissau and Special Advisor to Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Councils, Leh and Kargil)