Politics of Blood

[Huda]

In less than two months Hazara community has buried more than 200 bodies. Sadly, Quetta is not the only place where Shiites have been targeted. In last two weeks more than ten Shiite doctors and lawyers were killed in Peshawar. This killing spree has been going on from Khyber to Karachi, and let me clarify, Punjab is no less affected. Recently, an eye surgeon with his 11 years old son was murdered and this is not the first incident in the area.

The history of sectarian killings goes back to 1960s to Khairpur, Sind where more than 200 Shiites were killed during a religious procession by unknown armed men. Since then we are trying to find these “unknown, armed men” but the state response in jejune.


During 5 decades the community has lost hundreds of professionals, scholars, leaders even women and children. Intelligence agencies, security forces, judiciaries and governments of each time have miserably failed in pointing out the reasons for these atrocities. Instead, we have seen the shift of blames on other institutions or on foreign forces from Interior Ministries and Intelligence agencies.


Our five-year democracy has turned out to be futile as long as the real issues are concerned. Fully aware of the situation, Minister for Information and Broadcasting Qamar Zaman Kaira expressed that situation has not been so bad to prevent elections from being held. According to government, they have launched an operation against Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ); who has claimed the responsibility of attacks on Shiite; which resulted in more than 170 arrests.


Government has claimed to bring down some terrorists including the mastermind of the recent attack in one night. Here is the question, what magic led to the sudden arrests and shootouts in one night only? For last five years civil government has been shifting the blame on the Frontier Constabulary (FC), which controls 95% of the Baluchistan security.

On the other hand, Army has shifted the blame on civil government saying operation against terrorists can’t be launched until orders come from the Parliament. If civil government has failed in resolving Baluchistan’s issues, then what is the need of any democratic process in the first place? If the current operation under Army supervision fails, who would they call next to handle the terrorists activity?



Recently, defense Sec. of intelligence services shrugged off responsibility saying they did provide the report of huge chemical transfer from Lahore to Quetta. While, Interior Minister brushed off responsibility by shifting the blames on LEAs that they had already provided information on Quetta bloodshed and that there’s more to come in Karachi, Quetta and Peshawar. According to him, under 18th amendment, Interior Minister’s responsibility is to provide the information alone.

Majlis Wahdat-ul Muslemeen (MWM), a newly emerged group of Shiite has now claimed to be in charge of the protests carried out by the community around the country. However, these protests were called off unilaterally.



But many protestors showed a diffident towards MWM’s decision. They accepted the decision after reassuring promises from the government’s delegation. The question again is, what promises has the government made with MWM when the first blast had taken place in Quetta?

Recently, MWM has announced their participation in the upcoming election and are reportedly forming an alliance with PTI. Also that after the current incident they had exchanged fiery words with MQM on its stance towards protests. To elaborate, the MQM chief had asked to continue with the protests till Shiites see action instead of words.

In the meantime, Supreme Court Pakistan (SCP) has taken suo moto action on Quetta blasts. In recent hearing chief Justice asked, “We asked you to point out the elements who failed to perform duty and as a result of which the incident took place.”? The answer to this is, it is the failure of the government, where no inquiries were ever held for sectarian killings, failure of intelligence agencies that never bothered to uncover the real culprits of the sectarian killings that started from 1960s around the country. Along with it, the failure of Parliament that blinded itself to mass killings, and the SCP that has conveniently chosen to shut their eyes for the last 50years. Perhaps, if the killings continue at the same pace, there would be more mountains, trees and rivers than human beings.




http://blogs.thenews.com.pk/blogs/2013/03/politics-of-blood/

 

[Jason bourne]

The history of sectarian killings goes back to 1960s to Khairpur,Sind where more than 200 Shiites were killed during a religious procession by unknown armed men. Since then we are trying to find these “unknown, armed men” but the state response in

Even before the RAW was created...

 

[Durrak]

11 years old son was murdered and this is not the
first incident in the area.

How can someone kill innocent children,...Disgusting..

 

[niaz]

Unfortunately Pakistan society has been desensitized. Religious bigotry; thanks to the pro Wahhabi policies during 11 years of the most bigoted of all bigots Gen Ziaul Haq of Jabra chowk; has blinded the common man. If you kill Ahmadis & Christians and destroy their property, even the media keeps quite. Mass killing of Shia gets media attention for a few days and then forgotten. Same is the case with bombings of the mausoleums of the saints such as Data Durbar, Pakapattan, Bari Imam & Abdulla Shah Ghazi.

You have noticed from some of the posts in various threads of this forum that quite a few of the educated & intelligent people try to justify the unjustifiable and inhuman atrocities swept under the carpet with a shrug of the shoulders. What can you say about views of the man on the street?

One is forced to conclude that fundamental human virtues such as compassion towards fellow humans are nowhere to be seen. As evidenced from the extra judicial killing of Salman Taseer; shedding blood in the name of religion makes heroes out of cold blooded murderers.

We should be thankful that Adul Sattar Edhi and his organization is still around, else despite being full of Muslims, one worthy of belonging to the human race would have been hard to find in the land of the pure.

 

[GURU DUTT]

Unfortunately Pakistan society has been desensitized. Religious bigotry; thanks to the pro Wahhabi policies during 11 years of the most bigoted of all bigots Gen Ziaul Haq of Jabra chowk; has blinded the common man. If you kill Ahmadis & Christians and destroy their property, even the media keeps quite. Mass killing of Shia gets media attention for a few days and then forgotten. Same is the case with bombings of the mausoleums of the saints such as Data Durbar, Pakapattan, Bari Imam & Abdulla Shah Ghazi.

You have noticed from some of the posts in various threads of this forum that quite a few of the educated & intelligent people try to justify the unjustifiable and inhuman atrocities swept under the carpet with a shrug of the shoulders. What can you say about views of the man on the street?

One is forced to conclude that fundamental human virtues such as compassion towards fellow humans are nowhere to be seen. As evidenced from the extra judicial killing of Salman Taseer; shedding blood in the name of religion makes heroes out of cold blooded murderers.

We should be thankful that Adul Sattar Edhi and his organization is still around, else despite being full of Muslims, one worthy of belonging to the human race would have been hard to find in the land of the pure.

well this is realli chilling to see in a nation that was created in the first place to help all muslims have right to worship there Faith withowt fear of prosecution , whos founder was a shia & first ministers and beurocracy was having a major shia & ahmedi muslims in them so much so after the first election when in punjab muslim leuge lost misrabelli to the unionist the same ahmedies helped to propogate the pakistan cuase and helped muslim league make ground in Punjab the irony is same very shias and ahmedies are hunted and prosecuted with Govt watching like a mute sepctator ...sad very very sad

 

[darkinsky]

Unfortunately Pakistan society has been desensitized. Religious bigotry; thanks to the pro Wahhabi policies during 11 years of the most bigoted of all bigots Gen Ziaul Haq of Jabra chowk; has blinded the common man. If you kill Ahmadis & Christians and destroy their property, even the media keeps quite. Mass killing of Shia gets media attention for a few days and then forgotten. Same is the case with bombings of the mausoleums of the saints such as Data Durbar, Pakapattan, Bari Imam & Abdulla Shah Ghazi.

You have noticed from some of the posts in various threads of this forum that quite a few of the educated & intelligent people try to justify the unjustifiable and inhuman atrocities swept under the carpet with a shrug of the shoulders. What can you say about views of the man on the street?

One is forced to conclude that fundamental human virtues such as compassion towards fellow humans are nowhere to be seen. As evidenced from the extra judicial killing of Salman Taseer; shedding blood in the name of religion makes heroes out of cold blooded murderers.

We should be thankful that Adul Sattar Edhi and his organization is still around, else despite being full of Muslims, one worthy of belonging to the human race would have been hard to find in the land of the pure.

i dont even give a fvuk, this has more to do with a state failing to enforce law and order than anything, there are bigots in US, india and every country but a state fails when it stops enforcing the law, and for this i only blame zordiri and his cronies for that matter(zordiri being shia himself and chief minister of sindh being shia himself)

when the security agencies tell you that an attack will occur, the bigot rehman malik who every now and then stop mobile services, double sawary faisl to follow such reports and make the police and rangers on high alert, he is a pain in the arse for common people nothing else

it is also said that zordiri is trying to do such terrorist attacks himself to delay the elections

 

[Ayush]

sad to see this in a nation whose quad e azam was a shia.
a nation which was created for all the Muslims of British india.

 

[RazorMC]

We've become used to seeing ticker slides with double-digit death tolls almost every day. This is why nobody cares enough to think about all this mayhem for more than a few seconds.

 

[niaz]

i dont even give a fvuk, this has more to do with a state failing to enforce law and order than anything, there are bigots in US, india and every country but a state fails when it stops enforcing the law, and for this i only blame zordiri and his cronies for that matter(zordiri being shia himself and chief minister of sindh being shia himself)

when the security agencies tell you that an attack will occur, the bigot rehman malik who every now and then stop mobile services, double sawary faisl to follow such reports and make the police and rangers on high alert, he is a pain in the arse for common people nothing else

it is also said that zordiri is trying to do such terrorist attacks himself to delay the elections

Hon Sir,

Of course you don't give a fig and there are many more with the same mindset. No one can argue with people who could'nt care less about so many of their countrymen including children being killed in cold blood.

It is not the question of Shia or Sunni, 18 of the 50 who were murdered in Abbas Town were Sunni. The tragic truth is that Pakistani blood is really cheap and no matter how many people lose their life, few people pay little more than lip service.

Your post reconfirms my assertion that there is no such thing as milk of human kindness in Pakistan any more.

 

[KRAIT]

We've become used to seeing ticker slides with double-digit death tolls almost every day. This is why nobody cares enough to think about all this mayhem for more than a few seconds.

This Indifference is the worst result of Terrorism. You are not alone who thinks like that, Indians have also become Indifferent. Farmers selling Organs to pay debt. DSP shot dead at Point Blank Range. I am loosing hope from this sub-continent.

 

[darkinsky]

Hon Sir,

Of course you don't give a fig and there are many more with the same mindset. No one can argue with people who could'nt care less about so many of their countrymen including children being killed in cold blood.

It is not the question of Shia or Sunni, 18 of the 50 who were murdered in Abbas Town were Sunni. The tragic truth is that Pakistani blood is really cheap and no matter how many people lose their life, few people pay little more than lip service.

Your post reconfirms my assertion that there is no such thing as milk of human kindness in Pakistan any more.

sir,

you are trying to be so much judgemental about what i said and i must say, yours is totally false judgement, false assumptions and assertions, and that i dont sympathise with those killed, but my simple point is, why guys like you are trying to bring the sectarian agenda here instead of trying to unite pakistani people, whether it be sunni or shia, everybody has lost his life as a pakistani

why are you trying to beat the 30 years old corpse of zia ul haq when infact its zardari you fail to criticise, its PPP you fail to criticise who is responsible to uphold law and order and simply playing their politics, when musharraf was around you were using the same rhetorics of wahabi deobandi, religious bigotry etc, and still now you fail to criticise the law enforcers for duing their jobs poorly

its time to accept that our elected people have failed and we will still elect the same people and its us to be blamed and not some wahabi deobandi etc

as i said bigots are in every society so are serial killers, religious bigots, extremists, terrorists, barbarians but its the job of the state to maintain check and balance in the country

its the same wahabi in whose bed america was sleeping and with the same wahabis america pays the blood money for raymond davis and succeeds to release its terrorist

see where i am getting?

 

[RazorMC]

This Indifference is the worst result of Terrorism. You are not alone who thinks like that, Indians have also become Indifferent. Farmers selling Organs to pay debt. DSP shot dead at Point Blank Range. I am loosing hope from this sub-continent.

Not just terrorism, but the media is also partly to blame for this change in attitude towards henious crimes. The constant presence of news about blood and gore and disgusting breaches of social values have made us think that perhaps it's only natural for all this to happen.

Maybe it was the woman's fault for dressing like that... Perhaps the minority member should have kept his mouth shut about the majority... Or wait; the Jewish lobby...

We want to believe all these statements simply because they make our life easier by blaming others instead of ourselves for this mess.

The systematic killing of Shias is not just religious in nature, but there's politics involved despite the appearance to be otherwise.

 

[niaz]

I wish I could express my views as well as Mr Harris Khalique has done.

The dark ages of Pakistan


Harris Khalique
Thursday, March 07, 2013
From Print Edition

Side-effect

The writer is a poet and author based in Islamabad.

In medieval Europe, heretics were burnt alive, rebels were quartered and their body parts were sent to the remote corners of the country, those who believed that the earth revolved around the sun were admonished and threatened. The Christian church held sway over kings, queens and princes, theology was knowledge and science was profanity. That period in history is called the Dark Ages.

Times changed. Europe saw the period of enlightenment, industrial revolution, ascendancy of philosophy over theology, pre-eminence of science and rational thought over dogmatism and superstition.

European civilisation produced Newton, Galileo, Einstein, Darwin, Freud and Marx. From James Watt to Graham Bell, thousands of discoverers and inventors completely transformed human existence. At the same time, they began to dominate the rest of the world – politically, culturally, militarily and economically. Even today, what we see in the form of the United States, Canada and Australia are the projections of European civilisation and culture over other parts of the planet.

The state of Pakistan began with a promise. Even the scars of the Partition of British India and the massive bloodletting it entailed did not held us from dreaming, from planning, from progressing in different walks of life. In our history, there were power struggles, political upheavals, dismemberment of the country, wars, economic downturns, martial rules, riots, corruption, mismanagement, et al, but there still was a faith in the future, a desire to improve and be better, an optimism and hope. But we slipped back and slipped back fast. We retrogressed. We plunged ourselves into the dark ages.

In today’s Pakistan, people are bombed, killed, maimed, beheaded, mutilated, looted, plundered and terrorised with impunity. If you look, think, talk differently, or are even perceived to be different from a person or an organisation with the means to eliminate people physically, you become extremely vulnerable. People are virtually lynched and their bodies charred.

I can recall one such episode from last July when work took me to London. The print and electronic media were full of commentary and analysis on a new discovery in the realm of particle physics and the praise for a British physicist, Dr Peter Higgs, who had discovered the so-called ‘God particle’ – a particle in the atom whose discovery is supposed to bring humanity closer to understanding how the universe came into existence. The particle was termed ‘Higgs boson’.

The remnants of science education left in me from my schooling years get me excited at times. The day I was absorbed in reading the details of the feats of Dr Higgs and other scientists in a British newspaper during a short train journey, one small news item from Pakistan on an inside page caught my eye. A man was dragged out of a police cell by an angry mob in the presence of the police, lynched and burnt to death. He was accused of blasphemy and was taken into police custody upon someone’s complaint. Those who knew him said that he was mentally deranged. He was not a Christian or a Hindu either. He was a born Muslim.

Even after having a blasphemy law in place, people could not wait for the man to receive a trial, let alone a fair trial. Without getting into the merits and demerits of having such a law in the country, nobody who participated in killing him thought even once that the man could have been wrongly accused. I folded the newspaper, put it away and stared blankly out of the window. I felt a chill in my spine and thought how do we compare as a nation with other countries and civilisations of today? We did not even know if the person was a heretic.

There have been about 1600 such cases filed against people. But the person who was killed belongs to the other list – the list of those against whom no case was even filed before they were murdered.

Who have we not killed, individually or amass, in the past twenty years? Whose places of worship have we not bombed? Whose shrines have we not desecrated? Christians, Hindus, Ahmadis, Shias, Sunnis – who has been spared? Churches are burnt down, temples are vandalised and mosques are blown-up. Funeral processions are attacked. Then we have the gall to say that this is all being done by the enemies of Pakistan, the external forces, the international agencies, so on and so forth?

Even if there is international interference and ‘wicked’ foreigners operating on the Pakistani soil, who on earth has provided them the hotbed? Haven’t we promoted a national narrative of hatred, intolerance and narrow-mindedness ourselves – through the hypocritical religiosity of state institutions, defective and short-sighted foreign policy, discriminatory laws, twisted evangelism of mainstream media and bigoted school curricula?

But what the Shias of Pakistan are facing today is the worst onslaught of terror on any group of people on religious basis compared to what has happened in the country ever before. January 2013, it was Alamdar Road. February 2013, it was Kirani Road. March 2013, it is Abbas Town. There are nine more months to go. May God have mercy on us!

While professionals and doctors belonging to the Shia community are targeted and killed from Karachi and Lahore to Quetta and Gilgit, the murder of two naval officers in Karachi, bearing names that sound Shia even if they are not, is a shocking new development. Women and children are not being spared either when Gilgit-bound or Zahedan-bound buses carrying Shia passengers are attacked or indiscriminate bombing and firing takes place on processions and congregations.

In dealing with those we consider rebels and them being quartered and their limbs being sent around the country, we have decided to do it differently from the medieval times. We make them disappear. They may have rebelled more against our political and economic interests rather than the state but if our narrow interest and lopsided understanding of the issue sees them as rebels, they must be condemned. But who has the time to try them for treason? We make some of them languish in unknown prisons for times unending, while some others are killed and their bodies thrown out in the open. Balochistan is a case in point.

So where do we go from here as a people? Immediately and urgently, the formal and the not-so-formal institutions governing the state and society of Pakistan – the political parties, the military, the media and the civil society – have to resolve that no time is left if we ever want to come out of this cycle of brutality and violence.

There has to be a consensus among all centres of political and military power to take purposeful action to eliminate terrorism – be it religious, sectarian, ethnic or political. In tandem with the administrative and structural measures, the Pakistani state and society have to do what the Europeans did to come out of their dark ages. We have to establish the ascendancy of philosophy over theology, pre-eminence of science and rational thought over dogmatism and superstition, power of knowledge over ignorance, preference of pluralism over singularity, choice of diversity over uniformity.

It is time to start writing a new narrative of hope, of love, of inclusion and of mutual respect. This respect has to be achieved between communities within Pakistan and between Pakistanis and other nations. Those championing a particular brand of Islam in Pakistan in the name of anti-imperialism must be made to understand that, while they do not want the west to dominate them, they must also not aspire to dominate the rest of the world.

Email: harris.khalique@gmail.com
http://www.defence.pk/forums/newreply.php?p=4004949&noquote=1

To avoid some bigot saying that the name suggests a Christian. His name is of Arabic origin which actually means a guard and would otherwise be spelled as Haaris.

 

[Capt.Popeye]

Unfortunately Pakistan society has been desensitized. Religious bigotry; thanks to the pro Wahhabi policies during 11 years of the most bigoted of all bigots Gen Ziaul Haq of Jabra chowk; has blinded the common man. If you kill Ahmadis & Christians and destroy their property, even the media keeps quite. Mass killing of Shia gets media attention for a few days and then forgotten. Same is the case with bombings of the mausoleums of the saints such as Data Durbar, Pakapattan, Bari Imam & Abdulla Shah Ghazi.

You have noticed from some of the posts in various threads of this forum that quite a few of the educated & intelligent people try to justify the unjustifiable and inhuman atrocities swept under the carpet with a shrug of the shoulders. What can you say about views of the man on the street?

One is forced to conclude that fundamental human virtues such as compassion towards fellow humans are nowhere to be seen. As evidenced from the extra judicial killing of Salman Taseer; shedding blood in the name of religion makes heroes out of cold blooded murderers.

We should be thankful that Adul Sattar Edhi and his organization is still around, else despite being full of Muslims, one worthy of belonging to the human race would have been hard to find in the land of the pure.

@niaz saab; this post of yours (like nearly each one of yours) is thought-provoking in its intent and intensely sincere in its content. I salute that.

I will start my post by referring to the underlined part of your post first. Humanity is blessed to be able to claim Abdul Sattar Edhi as one of its own. But that has not changed some "Men" at all.
Abdul Sattar Edhi is able to tend to the persistent human debris created by these "Men" in quiet and solemn dignity. But even he (the saintly man that he is) has been unable to prevent this murderous mayhem around him. That is no fault of his; but of these "Men" who claim to inhabit the same human species that Abdul Sattar Edhi belongs to. What an Irony!

You are right in attributing some role in the atmsperics that allows this to happen; to Zia. But Niaz sab; the process actually began before him, in the time of Bhutto. Luckily for humankind, both of them were ejected from Planet Earth before their natural time was up. If you think hard; it all began when Pakistan began to turn its back on all that Jinnah saab stood for; and now Mr.Jinnah is just reduced to a "portrait of a patrician gentleman in gilt-edged frames hanging on various walls in Pakistan".

Mr.Jinnah will be simply shocked and ashamed to see his country reduced to this pathetic state of existence. He hoped to see Pakistan as a country where Muslims (that means all Muslims regardless) would be able to live in secure circumstances and seek their destiny in an atmsphere of Peace and Progress. While extending and affording that same atmsophere to all non-Muslim citizens.
Is that happenning?
I do not think so.

 

[niaz]

@niaz saab; this post of yours (like nearly each one of yours) is thought-provoking in its intent and intensely sincere in its content. I salute that.

I will start my post by referring to the underlined part of your post first. Humanity is blessed to be able to claim Abdul Sattar Edhi as one of its own. But that has not changed some "Men" at all.
Abdul Sattar Edhi is able to tend to the persistent human debris created by these "Men" in quiet and solemn dignity. But even he (the saintly man that he is) has been unable to prevent this murderous mayhem around him. That is no fault of his; but of these "Men" who claim to inhabit the same human species that Abdul Sattar Edhi belongs to. What an Irony!

You are right in attributing some role in the atmsperics that allows this to happen; to Zia. But Niaz sab; the process actually began before him, in the time of Bhutto. Luckily for humankind, both of them were ejected from Planet Earth before their natural time was up. If you think hard; it all began when Pakistan began to turn its back on all that Jinnah saab stood for; and now Mr.Jinnah is just reduced to a "portrait of a patrician gentleman in gilt-edged frames hanging on various walls in Pakistan".

Mr.Jinnah will be simply shocked and ashamed to see his country reduced to this pathetic state of existence. He hoped to see Pakistan as a country where Muslims (that means all Muslims regardless) would be able to live in secure circumstances and seek their destiny in an atmsphere of Peace and Progress. While extending and affording that same atmsophere to all non-Muslim citizens.
Is that happenning?
I do not think so.

Hon Capt. Popeye,

You observations have a point. However, I don't think that situation would have become this bad had the Quaid remained alive for a few more years. Don't think that 'Objectives Resolution' would have passed in the first place.

No point me repeating what I have already stated 'N' times. I can quote the following article published in the News today. However, please note that being a liberal; my views only represent a minority view. I can lament and shed tears and cry my heart out but it would be of little avail unless some strong willed liberal person takes the helm of Pakistan Gov't. Whereas it looks likely that if & when elections do take place, largest party will probably be PML-N which is full of bigots such Rana Sana ullah and Punjab gov't is actually providing support to the cold blooded killers of LEJ in return for the votes of their supporters. This is not mine but opinion of the Federal Interior Minister Rehaman Malik no less!

If you hear political debates on the TV, there is nothing but the blame game. Thus I don't expect situation to improve in the near future.



Frail state, not a failed one


Tariq Khosa
Friday, March 08, 2013
From Print Edition


2 0 2 0

Pakistan is the fifth-most-populous nation of 180 million citizens. It has the sixth-largest military in the world. It is the seventh member of the all-powerful nuclear club.

Yet it is one of the most volatile and insecure nations of the world. It is at war with itself due to the policy blunders committed by the political and military leaderships that have been at the helm of affairs since September 11, 1948, when Jinnah passed away, leaving behind a nation like a rudderless ship.

We lost more than half the country in 1971. The remaining half is going through internal bleeding since the 9/11 event that finds the superpower involved in two declared and one undeclared war since 2001. Afghanistan and Iraq have experienced American invasions and Pakistan has witnessed an unprecedented carnage in the form of an undeclared US war through drones and commandos on its soil.

While external factors and wars do impact the immediate neighbourhoods, such challenges test the character, grit and integrity of leaders whose wisdom guides their nations through testing times. Attention has to be given to internal fault=lines that can break nations up and cause unrest in societies.

Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah wanted a separate homeland for Muslims because he feared they would become a political underclass in a united India dominated by Hindus.

Jinnah’s vision for Pakistan was for it to be a pluralistic, democratic and tolerant polity based on principles of social justice, and not a theocracy. Religion, in the words of Jinnah, had nothing to do with the business of the state. “We shall not be an Islamic state, but a liberal, democratic Muslim state,” he declared.

The religious extremism and intolerance we witness today is because of the fact that the mullah, with the help of the state, was able to hijack the Quaid’s vision and superimpose an ideology that perpetuated a divisive religiosity rather than an all-inclusive faith that ensures equal rights to all the citizens of the state, irrespective of their creeds and beliefs.

Therefore, the state finds itself at war with society. The nexus in the 1980s between the mullah and the militants resulted in the introduction of jihad as an instrument for realisation of the foreign policy objectives of a superpower pitted against another in Afghanistan.

During that decade of decadence in our country, we saw a mushroom growth of sectarian and ethnic militant organisations under the state patronage. That was a perfect recipe for disaster from which Pakistan has not recovered yet.

Mullahs and militants forged a partnership that culminated in the rise of the Taliban during the next decade that saw the shadowy security establishment calling the shots, instead of the civilian political leadership. Yet another “saviour,” Gen Musharraf, took the reins of power in October 1999.

After 9/11 Pakistan became a frontline state in the erroneously named war against terror. Suddenly, we found a distinction between the “good” and the “bad” Taliban. Under external pressure, sectarian and ****** organisations were banned but some continued to operate with impunity with changed nomenclatures, with the state looking the other way.

While the mullahs and militants have become a mortal threat to the state, it is politicians with a feudal mindset who are greatly responsible for the weakening of the state apparatus through their promotion of patronage and kinship.

Corruption and poor governance has been their trademark. Rule of law and merit are alien concepts for most political parties which have taken turns in ruling this nation. Unfortunately, both political and military governments have failed to improve administration of justice and to take measures to ensure the rule of law.

Pakistan is not a failed state, but it is definitely a frail state despite a strong and resilient society that is seeking a new social contract which promotes rule of law, merit, fairness, good public order, social and economic justice, progress, peace and prosperity.

What is required is a comprehensive national-security policy that discourages religious extremism promoted by the mullah and combats terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, with no place for non-state actors and militant outfits.

Lack of political will and consensus, the civil-military disconnect, poor coordination between federal and provincial security and intelligence agencies, and the need for the strengthening of state institutions dealing with administration of justice are some of the issues that require immediate attention.

The 2008 national elections resulted in the restoration of an independent judiciary. 2013 is the year of change. Pakistanis hope for the formation of a new elected government that comes up to public expectations.

An independent election commission supported by the judiciary and assisted by the civil services and the armed forces needs to make sure that the elections are transparent and fair, because it is only such elections can lead to a better Pakistan.

The writer has been in public service since 1973.

Frail state, not a failed one - Tariq Khosa