Daily Times

Any functional and organised state builds its narratives at three levels: internal, regional and international. That is a perfectly normal practice, as the state consciously realises the need and crafts an impressive narrative that benefits it. Today, it is an inevitable requirement of the modern statecraft. Now, societies and economies are built on the marketing of a people, and on how a nation is perceived by others.

Putting it more simply, a narrative is an impression that you imagine and feel with your eyes closed, and is based on the first few impressions that you ‘see’ with the eye of your mind. Let’s experiment a little further: close your eyes and think of Afghanistan, and understand what comes to your mind. And a second later, close your eyes again, and think of China. What comes to your mind now would definitely be different than what came to your mind when you thought of Afghanistan.  You can continue doing this with as many countries as you possibly know, and you would be truly amazed with the difference of impressions that your mind would generate. Impressions are really important, because they inform opinions.

Now imagine that you are a foreigner, and all that you have consumed about Pakistan for the last four decades is war, refugees, blasts, sectarian killings, political instability and, finally the cherry on the cake, military dictatorships. At any given time, when you had closed your eyes what else could you have possibly imagined other than these “feathers in our national cap” that I have just mentioned? Let’s be a bit truthful here!

But there is some other news from Pakistan as well.

The Pakistani state is busy for the last five years in grappling with something called generating a new national narrative. Some awareness might have been already present, but interestingly, the Pakistani state was not the originator of this debate internally. This evolved as a result of a larger and consistent civil society debate that jointly progressed in collaboration with the local and international development organisations. Practitioners of the counter violent extremism (CVE) are aware of the trajectory that initially was not more than a scattered thought process here and there, until two or three years ago a need was finally established. There is no a question about the fact that within its own right the Pakistani state is a rational actor, and has tried deciding whatever it deemed best for the nation and people. The problem is essentially is about the level of ingenuity and intellect that the state possesses, and, this, my friends, needs questioning.

No other society and people have suffered the kind of terrorist violence that Pakistan suffered since 2001, but the Pakistani state could not even generate sympathy for the victims; empathy being a farther cry. As we, the people, suffered terrible human and economic losses, the world saw us as people who promoted terrorism, and spread it regionally and internationally. Former United States Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen had called Pakistan the ‘epicentre of terrorism’. US politician Madeleine Albright termed Pakistan as the ‘international migraine’. David Kilcullen, an Australian colonel who advised the Bush and Obama administrations, predicted in March 2009 that Pakistan may collapse within months. Pakistanis did not deserve these tongue lashes.

No other society and people have suffered the kind of terrorist violence that Pakistan has since 2001. Yet the Pakistani state has not even generated sympathy for the victims

Lately there is popular debate in Pakistan about building ‘counter narratives’. Off and on, the political leadership touches upon this expression, and on May 18, the military leadership also participated in the debate by holding a seminar on ‘Role of Youth in Rejecting Extremism’. Jointly organised by the Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) and the Higher Education Commission (HEC), a diverse gathering of educationists, religious and social scholars, and media and civil society representatives attended the event. This is simultaneously welcoming and alarming. Born in the 1970s, I have seen military leaders and their political allies create various narratives that destroyed fundamentals of the Pakistani society, as they were made in bureaucratic isolation. The present drive would also not succeed if the same bureaucratic wine is presented in a new social bottle. State must not act in haste, as its hasty narratives in the past did not do any good. The nation’s fingers are crossed.

The writer is a social entrepreneur and a student of Pakistan’s social and political challenges. Twitter: @mkw72