Joke’s On Pak

Islamabad blaming India and Afghanistan for terrorism on its own soil is laughable

Pakistan continues to live in a state of delusion. After a suicide bombing outside an Islamabad court claimed the lives of 12 people, Shehbaz Sharif quickly pointed fingers at India and Afghanistan. Needless to say, this is laughable and a poorly disguised attempt at defecting blame from Pakistan’s own failings. For a country that practically wrote the playbook on maintaining double standards on terrorism – nurturing terror purveyors while claiming to be victims of terrorism – it’s rich that it now tries to implicate others for its own sins. 

There was time in the 1950s and 60s that Pakistan was being studied by foreign experts as a possible South Asian success story. But the disastrous measures of its leadership in 1971 in response to the liberation movement in what was then East Pakistan – now Bangladesh – served a body-blow to the very idea of Pakistan. Today, it continues similar colonial policies in Balochistan, provoking a powerful movement against Islamabad’s exploitation. During the Soviet-Afghan war, Pakistan hosted tens of thousands of mujahideen fighters to curry favour with US. Pakistani Taliban is their progeny. Recall also, it was merely a 100km from Islamabad in Abbottabad that bin Laden was found holed up.

Pakistan thinks it can play all sides and be friends with both US and China, turning to each whenever it needs to be bailed out. But it forgets that national strength stems from skilled people, institutions and economy. All three failed to develop because its military had other priorities. Today, Pakistan is a military dictatorship masquerading as a civilian regime. And with the 27th constitutional amendment – which gives lifetime immunity to Asim Munir – about to be passed, even the fig leaf of a hybrid regime is coming off. The question is how long Pakistan’s delusions can last in the face of its polycrises.    

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