An Open Defiance in Pakistan

Chickens have come home to roost in Pakistan. It is an open secret now that the suppression of human rights and sectarian violence has taken the toll of the society and polity in Pakistan. Every sphere of human life is under strain and the quality of life has declined. From the inception, Pakistan has been under the eclipse of the military dictatorship that has shaped the world view of its people and politics. Pakistan has not been able to emerge as a democracy as it was created to thrive on theocracy. The people who went to the newly created Pakistan in 1947 after the partition of India and the independence of India were always discriminated as “Mohajirs’ and not allowed to get parity with the elite class of Punjabis who have formed a cartel at various levels and assumed the control of both polity and military. Even Sindhis have been seeking secession from Pakistan from the very inception. Various leaders of this movement are operating the movement from outside Pakistan. Not only that Balochistan is on the boil with Balochis striving for their independence from Pakistan whom they accuse of human rights violations and incarceration of the Baloch leaders. Over the tears the Baloch freedom fighters have been taking the Pakistani military head on and giving it sleepless nights. The recent Jaffar Express hijack incident has brought the struggle of the Balochis in the international gaze. Pakistan has emerged as the client state .During the Cold War it was used by the United States to fight the USSR in Afghanistan but it used the flow of arms and money meant for fighting the American in Jammu and Kashmir to sponsor the asymmetrical war during the dictatorship of Zia–ul-Haq naming this subversion as Operation Topac. This nefarious act subjected the people in ethno-religious conflict and forced the minority community to live as refugees in their own nation. It has become a norm that no political dispensation can escape the wrath of Rawalpindi as it is the army that calls the shots and it is an open secret that the political leadership of Pakistan is a hostage of its army. The recent spate of crisis has again proved that Pakistan is a jelly state. Veteran journalist and eminent editor of India has been proved right. It was he who had described Pakistan as a jelly state in his book “Tinderbox Pakistan”. His assessment came at a time when strategic experts called Pakistan a failed state. But the vested interests at the international level have enabled it to survive to deter the India rise and as such function as a jelly state that has no order but is meant to inject subversion in the subcontinent. There was a lull for quite some time as far as the patronage of Pakistan by the US is concerned. Pakistan has developed an inherent trait of being a mercenary state. So to overcome the American deficit it embraced China more closely. The result is the defiance by the Balochis who have taken this embrace seriously as the lands of Balochistan have been under the Chinese control to oversee their strategic concerns. During the India-Pakistan conflict in the aftermath of the Pahalgam carnage, we have seen that the US has shown its affinity for Pakistan again and has indulged in wooing it again. Pakistan Army Chief Asim Munir’s recent visit to the US must be seen in this backdrop. But he has been welcomed there by protests and sloganeering by the Pakistanis by accusing him of dictatorship and addressing him as a mass murderer. Only time will tell as to what is brewing up in Pakistan as people are showing an open defiance.