Pakistan wascreated for all the wrong reasons. It came into existence simply as a result of the belief of a few muslims in pre-1947India that they would not be safe inIndia post-independence. They felt that they required a separate identity. Their religion would be the reason for the existence of their country. Jinnah took advantage of the sentiments of "his" people, and mounted a movement for the creation ofPakistan. To put pressure on the British to divide
India, Jinnah fomented communal violence in August 1946; convincing the British that Hindus and Muslims could not live together. Eventually, the British had to yield....andPakistan was born.
A country born in this manner......by "strategic" use of violence and terrorism.....is bound to suffer. Right from its birth, the country has been in trouble. Religion was supposed to be the unifying factor for the country. People were expected to feel as one because of their religion.Pakistan forgot that what unifies is not religion, but culture and language and shared history. Because the only thing that definedPakistan was religion, it wascreated in a deformed shape, with its two parts – East and West – far removed from each other. Very soon, it realized that thoughEastPakistan was also Muslim, that was not enough to keep it united. Soon,Bangladesh was born andPakistan
learnt the lesson the hard way. But did it? It also soon realized that just because the country was built for and by muslims alone, it was not reason enough to believe that all people were committed to nation building. Soon, the rogues amongst its citizenry took the law in their own hands and a series of dictators followed.Pakistan lost its democracy. How couldPakistan have democracy.....after all democracy's basic tenet is respect for diversity;
Pakistan
had no diversity at all.
Violence was always the center piece ofPakistan's diplomatic strategy. In the war against the erstwhileUSSR inAfghanistan,Pakistan chose to side with theUS. It was happy to be used as theUS's benaami fighter.India, though aligned with theUSSR at that time, wanted no piece of the action in
Afghanistan. It stayed away. ButPakistan was happy to fight on behalf of the
US. A nation which is happy to become another's proxy should not complain that its sovereignty has been usurped by that nation. Musharraf's complaint on this today is laughable.Why did he not do anything to change the course ofPakistan when he had absolute power in his own hands?
Pakistan's birth pangs also made it anti-India from the start. Usually, one would expect that the pain of Partition would have brought a bit of sense of restraint and maturity to both nations; not so
Pakistan. It must have hurt when the world referred to
Pakistan as an earlier part ofIndia. It had no history....all of that belonged to
India. And whenIndia helped create
Bangladesh,Pakistan became a permanent enemy ofIndia. More importantly, it perpetuated its strategic choice of violence as a tool of diplomacy. To constantly fight
India, it needed an excuse. A war was a short-lived and usually self-harming way of engaging
India.....and hence the
Kashmir problem wascreated in the 1990s.Pakistan's mind worked smartly like that of a terrorist's....the
Kashmir strategy was a smart one. It helped distract its own people away from what they really wanted – economic progress – which they were not witnessing. It helped them deploy the muhahideen who were rendered spare after the Afghan war ended. It also made
India look wrong – thatIndia was "squatting" onKashmir was a credible possibility. It was a masterstroke no doubt; but the point is that if a country's biggest masterstroke is in the area of violence and terrorism, it cannot augur well for that country.
Citizens of a country which practices terrorism as its policy are bound to practice the same policy themselves. The number of Pakistanis involved in worldwide terrorism acts is so huge it would appear that terrorism was a large export earner for their country. It was alright when
Pakistan's terrorists were fighting the
US's enemies; but when they started targeting US andWestern Europe
,Pakistan just went too far. It had to be controlled. The relentless drone attacks the
US has been conducting inPakistan was proof of theUS's trust gap with
Pakistan....and its determination to control that country.
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