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Dear Dr. Amjad
Mirza Sahib,
In your post 115, you appear to
be asserting that the Taliban are taking over Pakistan as the Pakistani
military has lost the will to fight against them. Generally the term
‘Taliban’ is used for the group in Afghanistan who ruled that country from
1996 to 2001 and now they are the main resistance group fighting against
the invaders led by the US imperialism.
Are you also addressing the Pushtoons from FATA and NWF as Taliban who are
apparently opposing Pakistan for taking part in American war on terror,
which is nothing but an American ploy for other sinister plans and
geo-political interests in the region?
It appears to me that you are up
in arms against the symptoms and you have totally overlooked the root- cause that is responsible for creating the symptoms that
you are reporting with deep concern.
During 1980s, when the soviets
were the invaders, the Pakistani forces, military or civilians, official or
private, helped the Afghans by carrying out a proxy war against the
invaders. Now you are expecting the same folks to fight the Afghanis (or
Taliban) making the American hegemony their own. There is no magical potion
or a simple way available to switch the sides turning the ideologies upside
down with a flick of a switch.
In fact, it’s the American
interest in the region for the pipeline through Afghanistan and Balochistan that is the root- cause of all the nuisance
and upheaval in the region. Surprisingly, you have written at length about
the symptoms without even a cursory hint of the real cause. What do you
think about CIA’s role in the troubled region? Do you not think they are
busy in their usual covert dirty operations?
At present, Pakistan is
going through a very difficult and the most crucial time of its life. It
has serious economic problems, it is going through
a civil war like situation in several areas. There is a talk of
balkanization of Pakistan
which will suit the external powers very well for the control of the region
by severing it into smaller and easily manageable chunks. A civil war is
all that is required to get it broken up into pieces. The Americans have
turned the country into a war zone. The government has not prepared or
implemented any development plans in almost a decade. The imports are totally
out of step with the exports. No one is willing to invest in the war torn
and semi-destabilized country, inflation is out of control. Under these
conditions, you are selling ‘secularism’ as if it is some kind of
proverbial snake oil that will fix all ills.
What Pakistan really needs
immediately is economic and political stability to put people’s minds at
ease. The country needs industry and additional electrical power to run the
industry so the people can be put to work. The masses need education so
that they can think for themselves. This is not the time to harp on
Secularism or the secular forces. How many people in Pakistan do
you think, even know what the word ‘secular’ stands for? The country needs
an independent judiciary, a government that is for the people and by the
people, not the one installed by foreign powers. With all the vital and
basic socio-economic and political elements missing in the society, I fail
to see how are you going to hang the secularism up in the vacuum without
having furnished a base for it? Aren’t you trying to put cart in front of
the horse?
Dear Mirza
Sahib, with all due respect, please get real, stay on the ground with the
rest of the population, the majority of which don’t know where the next
meal is going to come from. They need food on the table, peace in their
hearts and civil liberties around them. They cannot be expected to carry
the ‘secular’ banner while under fire from drones flying from their own
land. Pakistan’s
very existence is at stake. It needs security. You need to identify the
factors which are threatening the security of the country and it is
certainly not the lack of secularism. We will worry about the icing after
having acquired a cake.
Regards,
Javed I. Chaudry
March 14, 2009
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