by Saurabh Dubey

‘The idea of Pakistan’, always remained at the ideation stage after Jinnah passed away. Subsequently, for quite a substantial period of time under the reign of the Mullah-Military nexus, the inchoate idea became an abomination. Let us consider the status of the ‘Abomi-Nation of Pakistan’, is it truly an independent, sovereign nation? If you go by the history of the past seven decades, the rulers of that piece of land have invariably shifted their allegiances from being an American pet, to Saudi’s wahabi vassal and most certainly the last stage of their ideation process, being China’s puppet. When three big countries can and have at different times held and are holding considerable, economic, strategic and cultural clout over a piece of land, doesn’t that entity fall in the bracket of being a colony? The above words aren’t meant to hurt the sensitivities of ordinary Pakistanis, but there’s no need to sugarcoat a cyanide pill when you know what the end result will be. 

I wish I could say only the people of Pakistan can make a course correction, from the ideation stage to the implementation one. But Pakistan is so radicalized beyond repair that sensible Pakistanis have become a minority in their own land. Pakistan is definitely on the bucket list of every wannabe terrorist, and as if that wasn’t enough, now those terrorists have their names in the candidate list of Pakistani electoral process! Now that’s called job security, now tell me which country can match such high democratic standards. The elections in 2018 might as well give legitimacy to such noble people! This extended arm of the deep state aka the non state actors, if they find some spare time from plotting attacks on India, they take up kidnapping of innocent Indians only to sell them to the jihadis in uniform for a price. These unfortunate Indians end up becoming helpless pawns in the game of perverse anti-India propaganda. We have a water tight case against Pakistan’s charade of a spy story at the ICJ, we just have to wait and watch what tantrums and tirades are showered upon India and the ICJ when they lose miserably in this case, especially in an election year.

Thanks to the revolving door policy for terrorists, to recruit, to regroup, to rechristen and also have permanent residences in garrison towns and defence housing complexes, Pakistan has become like an R&D hub of sorts for IT i.e. ‘International Terrorism’. Carrying forward those best practices from decades of hands on experience the deep state adopted an implacable policy of waging a proxy war and add to that the indelible blot of nuclear proliferation, Pakistan has ticked all the boxes when it comes to lay an unenviable claim on the checklist of being the real rogue state: lust for land of others, thirst for blood of their neighbors, using terror as a foreign policy lever and if all else fails then seek attention by rattling its nuclear sabre. These are the signs of a delusional entity on a death wish. The genocide of three million Bengalis gave the world Bangladesh, so how can the same treatment of the Sindhis, Pasthuns and Balochis not alter the map of the territories this time to the west of the Indian subcontinent. The destructive path that the deep state has chosen to tread upon has become irreversible and with that the ‘Idea of Pakistan’ has become all the more untenable. No ‘iron brother’ and no ‘Arab father’ can stabilize a nation by pouring in money and acting as a diplomatic shield against its sins as the simple fact is that an entity which is inherently unstable cannot be perpetually bailed out. ‘Uncle’ Sam just dumped the ‘lies and deceit’ of Pakistan on the first day of 2018 by announcing to end all aid! The deep state has dug its heels so deep in the Pakistani psyche with decades of propaganda and paranoia; they transformed Jinnah’s idea of a modern and secular nation into a rabid Jihadi’s medieval and murderous abomination. Fooling one’s own people was not that a great feat, but they did a great job at duping their benefactors to the tune of billions of dollars and using that to build a parallel economy of military owned multi-billion dollar enterprises. They even saved a few billions of dollars aside for the perpetuation of an unhinged policy to bleed India by a thousand cuts, now that’s called Money Management 101!

Those very billions could have made Pakistan today’s Turkey, instead of spending it on the welfare of the common Pakistani, weapons were bought to kill their own people. That money could have been put to better use: to replace the prevalent medieval madarssa based indoctrination into modern education, to upgrade its crumbling healthcare system as innumerable Pakistanis come to India for topnotch and affordable medical care, to revive its industries that face acute power cuts but these were never the priorities. With an exploding population, rampant extremism and high rate of unemployment (not to mention the employment opportunities swallowed by the Chinese workers on the CPEC: Colonization of Pakistan Economically and Culturally!), a powder keg has been opened which needs just a tiny spark to combust. The Pakistani people have been fed perverse propaganda since its inception about ‘Kashmir being their jugular vein’, ‘India being the existential threat’ and ‘they being the descendants of Arab invaders’, to hide their failures and also to gobble up a good percentage of national budget as well as foreign aid. The deep state created a fantasyland where their own people have become the prisoners of such poisonous propaganda.

Given the recent developments in the Chipakistan story, within the next five years the Chinese iron embrace of Pakistan will begin to rust and crumble. The State Bank of Pakistan has recently put Chinese Yuan as its main currency for trade within or outside Pakistan. This will have an adverse impact in the long term as the basket of other stable and more robust foreign currencies in the dwindling forex reserves of Pakistan might decrease to a level which would warrant devaluation of Pakistani Rupee (which is currently at 112 Rupee per US dollar). In one stroke of fiscal foolishness, this yearning for Yuan could become an albatross around the neck of the Pakistani economy. 

OBOR is slowly turning out to be the ‘Kiss of Death or Debt’ for many a countries, and CPEC will add to the economic emasculation of Pakistan’s already weak economy. Last May Dawn newspaper had published the CPEC blue print which unveiled that thousands of acres of Pakistani agricultural land will be leased to Chinese enterprises, plus there will be a system of monitoring and surveillance from Peshawar to Karachi. A national fibre optic cable will be used for internet traffic and terrestrial distribution of broadcast TV, which will enable Chinese media in popularizing Chinese culture! These plans are nothing but the same old communist ploys for grabbing land and crushing culture of indigenous people, in this case occupied territories of Balochistan and PoK.

In Xinjiang (occupied East Turkestan) the cultural carnage started the same way, and things have gone so far that the Uyghurs aren’t allowed to observe Ramadan, they can’t name their kids with overtly Islamic names, they are not allowed to keep long beards as prescribed by the Communist regime and their movements are being microscopically monitored by acquiring their biometric data like iris scans and fingerprints along with DNA samples of all residents in the region! Occupied East Turkestan among other occupied territories under Chinese control has become a big jail where Uyghurs are treated as criminals and second class citizens. This part of the Chinese culture need not be imbued by Pakistan as they have been giving the same treatment to the indigenous people of territories under its illegal occupation. The hypocrisy of the Arab and the Muslim world is ridiculous, they rightly pursue the Palestine cause, but when it comes to stand in solidarity with the Uyghurs their silver tongues turn to lead thanks to Chinese economic and diplomatic glue that has sealed their collective lips. Pakistan will cry a river for just one ‘K’ i.e. Kashmir and not for Kasghar, as they can’t afford to lose their last geo-strategic crutch in Communist China. 

Let’s be honest China doesn’t have the ‘Midas touch’, quite the contrary it has the ‘Bhasmasur touch’ and Pakistan will find it the hard way. As if inter-provincial frictions weren’t enough, CPEC will endow Pakistan with combined crises of economic and ecologic disasters and no amount of propaganda will be able to paint a rosy picture on the chaotic canvas of this often trumpeted ‘game changer’ corridor. It will only help in changing Pakistan’s geography in India’s favor. When the propaganda bubble will burst and economic reality of collapsed corridors and not so benevolent benefactors will sink in, for the common Pakistani the time for introspection or a revolution may well have lapsed. And this would be the implosion before the explosion of the ‘Idea of Pakistan’. 

Saurabh Dubey is a keen observer of Geo-politics and a Research Analyst on the same subject. Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of IDN. IDN does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same