System Failure?
A low-key but intense national debate has been initiated because of the comments of some foreign observers expressing doubt about Pakistan’s survival as an entity. In the immortal paraphrased words of Mark Twain, “rumours of our demise may have been greatly exaggerated”, a cursory analysis does show that the “doom and gloom” clouds are much more dense in Karachi, even among sincere, dedicated citizens, than up-country. In the face of continued insecure environment for the city’s citizens, this is not surprising. The creeping anxiety in the psyche of the intellectuals and the entrepreneurs should ring alarm bells for those who are genuinely interested in the continued sovereignty and integrity of the country.
An extremely bright, young ISI major in the then East Pakistan in November 1990 gave his visiting boss from Islamabad a presentation in Dhaka as to what was likely to happen if events continued to follow an uncertain and erratic course. He ended his detailed submission by commenting that those who strongly believed in a united Pakistan felt very insecure as they would be left in the lurch if the worst came to pass. Having said his piece with courage, the field officer waited with bated breath for pearls of wisdom to emanate from the great man. It was not long in forthcoming, “if you are feeling scared, let me shift you and your family to West Pakistan”. That astonished young man, who later rose to high military rank in Bangladesh, decided in sheer frustration at that point of time that despite his personal convictions about the survival of Pakistan, his ethnic background left him no choice but to go with the growing synergy among the masses in then East Pakistan for a separate country. Whereas the intent of the individual was to bring into focus the strategic relevance of the times, his boss, whose appointment and vision thereof should have taken in the measure of the situation, reduced the implications to that of a petty individual requirement. Of such faux pas by the high and mighty is secession born! Today if you go to Islamabad and aspire to get the attention of those who matter in between office routine, afternoon nap, golf, riding and/or tennis and before the usual evening reception (i.e. business as usual), the answer to your repeated entreaties to please focus on Karachi in supersession to everything else is, “shift your family to Islamabad!” When you pester them repeatedly in the hope that maybe your persistence would break through their veneer of calm, the telephone operator (or bearer or whoever) has a repeated message for you, “Sahib has just left for a reception”. If this was confined to one person one would dismiss it as an aberration, unfortunately the exasperation with the bearer of bad tidings about Karachi is universal in Islamabad. While the country was burning in 1970-71, the leadership was out to an extended lunch, no wonder our world collapsed around us. Such is the irony of fate that when it did collapse, all those who had gone from pillar to post predicting dire straits unless remedial measures were taken, immediately became “traitors” for having stated the obvious. Twenty-five years later this is the same labelling for those who now dare to talk (and write) about growing Mohajir alienation from the Pakistan mainstream. The tragedy is that now almost, all except some myopic parochial diehards (with what goes for brains in their shoes), accept that gross mistakes across the whole spectrum were committed in the East Pakistan, dereliction of the norms of leadership and statecraft being directly responsible for the disaster.
