Daily Times

There are numerous ways to commit national suicide. Although financial corruption is the most common, attractive and effective option, it still is chained within its own limitations: it is a sly, insidious and boring process that matures over decades. Unlike an impressive terrorist attack in which a 12-year-old blows himself up along with 50 other innocent people and succeeds in getting the world’s attention, we, as an established histrionic country that would die to be in the headline news, do not find white-collar crimes ‘glamourous’ enough for us. Instead, we look down upon it as a boring way to kill oneself. Pakistan, everyone should know by now, is here to look for immediate rewards and seek instant gratification even if it costs us our lives.
Despite the boredom, we have not abandoned monetary irregularities completely and are still nominated as one of the most corrupt countries in the world, yet we just do not rely upon it as the only way to self-immolate. Which is why we have mastered many other ways to blow ourselves up. They include, to name a few, our focus on state-sponsored terrorism as national pride, promotion of guerrilla warfare as a defence strategy, unilateral aggression as state ideology and encouragement of revolution or approval of an illegal government run by a single person as our only hope. To be honest, each one of them is an important ingredient that any nation must possess if it is committed to a suicide mission. Knowing that, can anyone question our sincerity to the cause after all we have done for it? Absolutely not!
But why would any nation want to hurt itself if there were no paradise afterwards? To convince the people, therefore, we had to promise them a heavenly incentive, a motive impressive enough to unite the country in setting itself up for collective suicide. What could that be? Everyone knows that it could not be anything other than paradise on Earth, the apple of our eyes, Kashmir, the landlocked state that is considered one of the most beautiful places in the world. Indeed, the idea to incorporate the whole valley in Pakistan was moving, galvanising a large number of countrymen for four decades. It helped us fight wars, lose them one by one and destroy our economy, all at the same time. However, lately, Kashmir has lost its attraction. I am not sure if it was the people of Kashmir who convinced us that they hated us much more than the Indians or we have convinced them that, as their partners, we could help them only to burn their own homes. One way or another, both of us understood the situation realising that there was no hope for survival with each other. The reality is that, today, in Pakistan no one cares about the people of the Valley still mostly occupied by the Indians who, after fighting all the wars, are going to become our largest trade partner soon. Is that not great?
Incapable of getting a piece of heaven here, we had to shift our interest to the real paradise in the afterlife if we wanted to continue the mission, which we did. This time, after learning from our previous mistakes, we decided that patriotism as political rhetoric (because it lacks divine approval) is not enough and we needed to get God on our side as well. As such we worked on Islam; the religion that helped us obtain this freedom was going to be manipulated to destroy its foundations. In a nutshell, by redefining its fundamental principles, twisting its core values of compassion, benevolence, generosity and sacrifice, and by transforming it into a religion of intolerance and war, we committed ourselves to wrecking the whole nation.
But how could it happen? Where there is a will there is a way. In our case, it happened as our dedication took the shape of promoting suicide attacks, sponsoring sectarian outfits, setting up their training camps, establishing terrorist sanctuaries and building their bomb making factories. The process was so impressive that we became the unchallenged and most admired champion in this field throughout the world. People, especially hardliners, fled from various countries to Pakistan in order to participate in ‘God’s work’. No matter how much of a misfit they were in their own societies and no matter how their fellow citizens loathed their religious bigotry, we welcomed them here as our brothers by letting them stay in the tribal areas, allowing them to get married into the local population and giving them a free hand to abolish the tribal culture with their grandiose ‘Islamic’ mission.
There was only one problem left though. In order to master the details, both of us — Pakistan and the trained terrorists — needed a well equipped laboratory, a place where we could deploy, secure and improve our assets, and a state where they felt free to implement their cowardly rule in the name of Islam. After the Russian invasion, no other country could have served this cause better for us than Afghanistan. All we had to do was turn up the political temperature here in the name of election rigging, remove or murder an elected prime minister, come into power and get a free hand in Afghanistan to ultimately formulate the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan at the cost of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
No doubt, compared to financial corruption, these measures were swift, effective and more aligned with our national attitude to seek attention. Now they have matured enough to help us meet our fate and at least become a nation like that of Somalia, Yemen or Sudan. But, if destiny really favoured us, we would end up being like Syria, Iraq or Libya and would remain in the headlines for a few more months.

The writer is a US-based freelance columnist. He tweets at @KaamranHashmi and can be reached at skamranhashmi@gmail.com