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Due to lack of resources, knowledge and industry, we had two choices. First, we could build ourselves socially, technologically and knowledge-wise by taking help of USSR. Second, we could keep pre-partition social and economic structures intact, and for day to day survival take financial help of USA, the emerged sole super power, after WWII.
Our indigenous tribal and feudal politicians and Muhajir leadership were never willing to share politics and power (democracy) with the poor people of Pakistan. Same was desired by the USA. So, our leadership chose the second option of USA to survive. For the first decade the leadership survived due to the bureaucracy and without any constitution of our own. Afterwards, army ruled the country with the help of civil bureaucracy for another decade. Hunger, homelessness, economic and social poverty and ignorance multiplied for common Punjabis, Pukhtoons, Sindhi, Balochs and Bengalis. These ethnicities would have been better off, had they been part of India where tribalism and feudalism was abolished and social democracy was the system of governance after independence.
Thus, we replaced British with Americans as external rulers and added civil-military bureaucracy as internal colonizers. Extreme poverty compelled the majority of people of East Pakistan, Bengalis, to win freedom from West Pakistan to form Bangladesh in 1971. To save the rest of Pakistan the ruling elite (civil-military bureaucracy and tribal/feudal lords) made the country’s first unanimous constitution in 1973. The constitution is the mixture of mutually exclusive systems: Islam, Socialism and democracy. The numeric strength of civil-military bureaucracy increased with the decrease in territory after the formation of Bangladesh. The involvement of Arabs was also increased in Punjab due to Islamic character of the constitution. USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan, 1979, increased the role of anti-communist Arabs and Americans more in our state and society for USA-backed Afghan Jehad.
Socially, we became more divided and poorer. Centuries old tribal moral clash, sectarianism, between Shia and Sunni surfaced due to the Sunni-Wahabi influence of Arabs. Economy went to the hands of mafias related to drugs, weapons and smuggling of other goods.
Military not only remained part of such economy but multiplied it forming cartels involving even basic industries related to sugar, wheat, cement etc. by the end of the rule of last military dictator Gen. Musharraf. Intermittent so-called democratic governments came and were sacked untimely in 1990’s but nothing changed for better as the governments had positions just, with power still rested with civil-military bureaucracy. 9/11 changed the world, so did the Pakistan. People got space for their power in governance. Gen. Musharraf failed to meet the interests of USA-led NATO forces engaged to eliminate Taliban from Afghanistan and bring stability there due to China and Russia’s pressures. So, Americans preferred democracy over dictatorship to meet its interests in Afghanistan. Elections of 2008 and NRO, after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, must be seen in this context. This is exactly where the Arabs and American interests diverged as far as Afghanistan is concerned. Arabs involvement depends on the post 2014 situation of Afghanistan when NATO and majority of American troops would have gone from there.
The Americans are going to stay for a long time in Afghanistan even after the NATO and majority of their troops leave by 2014. The first phase of their stay has been for bringing about stability and building institutions and infrastructure, and the second phase will be to expand their economic and strategic interests in the region. In this regard Americans have taken into confidence Russia, the Central Asian States, China, India and even Iran except Pakistan. Americans have assured them that no kind of terror will be supported or tolerated anymore in the region.
Americans want constant chaos in Pakistan come what may for the last six decades. It’s due the fact that Americans want the area stretched between Bay of Bengal to Baltic Sea leading to Europe disconnected economically through anarchy in Pakistan. If the Americans don’t do it, they would ultimately lose the control over 3/4 of the world. Relaxation of trade between India and Iran and China and Iran in the US/UN sanctions on Iran is not without reason in this context. That’s exactly why President Asif Ali Zardari, who had foreseen this duplicity a long ago, had to move fast to get the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline started and completed by the exit of US-led NATO forces by the end of 2014 from Afghanistan. The President Asif Ali Zardari had already taken the regional powers into confidence in this regard and will work more on it. The president Zardari has to work most on TAPI gas pipeline project in which Afghanistan is the corridor as well. Pakistan’s economy has become precariously dependent on energy and the energy is the dire need of teeming poor Pakistanis at the moment.
Pakistan and Iran can manage the required finance 7.5 billion US$ by bartering our rice with Iranian petroleum on which we spend more than 12 billion US$ annually. India is doing such with Iran already. Americans, in reaction, cannot give green signal to army to take over the country as Pakistan will not be united within a month and the regional fall out of that will never be tolerated by the regional powers- China, Russia and India. Americans cannot tolerate to lose their multi-billion US$ investment in Afghanistan. And this is what Americans know well and will not dare finance anymore military coup in Pakistan. Our devastating obsessions of ‘strategic depth’ instead of economic depth led us to extreme poverty, strategic death and extreme international isolation as no country likes to engage us economically except Iran which needs to sell its petroleum products to survive desperately, given the US backed UN sanctions.
The bureaucrats and generals with the help of judges have treated the teeming millions of poor Pakistanis in the absence of true politics and democracy pathetically. It’s pertinent to mention here that 85% of civil-military bureaucracy is Punjabi ethnically and they ruled 35 years directly and 25 years indirectly consuming almost all what poor people of Pakistan gave the state in the form of taxes. The required politics and political direction is now here very much here to go back never again. The upcoming general elections will be the decisive election between the democratic and dark forces of destruction. The people have always voted for politicians, not generals.
The futility of two referenda by Gen. Zia and Gen. Musharraf respectively are the enough of proof in our political history. The people, now, know that in these dictatorships the dark forces of destruction were developed and distributed within and without the country.
The religious/sectarian politics of Arabs in Pakistan and American duplicity towards the development of Pakistan are over now.
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By Muhammad Shoaib Akif
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