Daily Times

On Sunday, we attended a wedding lunch at a five-star hotel here in this City by the Sea. The large crowd of guests was très chic, with that brittle sophistication that only the Karachi haut-bourgeoisie can carry off. We heard one sweet young thing ask another stunning exemplar of the dress-designer’s craft, “Are you going to the jalsa [rally] today?” The answer came, “Yes, of course, right after this shaadi [wedding]. There is no way I would miss it.”

Oh, sweet young things! Doubtless virginal (at least, politically), and about to gain their first experience of the real Pakistan!

Or perhaps not. At the jalsa, an atmosphere of unreal fantasy prevailed. A party leader with no knowledge of law, politics or economics was going to provide good laws, good governance and a wondrously growing GDP. The soiled lotas (turncoats) flanking him would somehow promote a clean government. The violent bitterness of a brutalised nationality, the Baloch, would be converted to flag-waving patriotism at the magical touch of our former cricket captain. Pakistan would become a welfare state, like Britain of the 1970s, notwithstanding our quaint tradition of paying no taxes and Britain’s own subsequent rejection of welfare state handouts. (Question: since welfare states are a socialist concept, are you a socialist, Mr Imran Khan? Please do answer this, because we would very much like to know exactly what you do stand for.)

In the meantime, the great Karachi middle classes, backbone of the MQM, stayed home. The youth of this country (other than the aforesaid sweet young things and their wannabe multinational banker suitors) were conspicuous by their absence. Let’s be clear. As I pointed out in an earlier piece in these pages, the much-touted ‘Facebook Generation’ is not representative of the youth in Pakistan. Apart from those colloquially labelled as ‘burgers’ by our toiling masses and downtrodden poor, the reality is that Pakistan’s youth today is something of a ‘Lost Generation’. The first to be hit by economic downturns, they are unemployed for the most part — and, quite often, unemployable. If at all they have been educated, it has been under the toxic post-Zia syllabi. Their brains have been stuffed with misinformation and jingoist fantasies, in order to render them jihadi raw material for the endless wars in Afghanistan. These young people are angry, bitter, confused and highly inflammable. Look around on your street corners, in the mean alleys of your underprivileged mohallas, in your katchi abadis (squatter camps) and the dead-end squalor of your villages, and you will see them — idle youngsters, with nothing to do and very little they can do, burning with nihilistic hatred.

Despite the guitar-strumming of the now-middle-aged Salman Ahmed and Faisal Kapadia, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has nothing to offer the nation’s youth. Neither does any other party, since they have all become clubs for rich, old men.

As the new boy in town, Mr Imran Khan does not have to offer any excuses. It is the other political parties, whether in government or in opposition, that must account for their litany of failures. It is not just the immediate problems of unemployment and rising fuel prices or the haemorrhaging public sector enterprises or the power crisis. There is a still more terrifying example of governmental failure before us. I refer of course to all that has happened in, and has emanated from, the northern portions of this country.

Let us be clear that NATO’s war in Afghanistan may or may not be ‘our’ war (I hold that it is very much ‘our’ war, but that is not the point here), and al Qaeda may have been largely eliminated in Pakistan, but the war against the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) insurgents, who have committed repeated terrorist violence against the people and the state of Pakistan, has not gone away.

Since the days of the Raj, the government’s writ in FATA was always tenuous. But it was never altogether absent. A mixture of hikmat-e-amali (judicious management), pressure, outright bribery and even the subtle application of force had been used by successive governments to ensure that these areas remained part of Pakistan and broadly acknowledged the writ of the government of the day.

But our last military dictator chose to strike egregious ‘deals’ with these extremists. And whole swathes of our sovereign territory were handed over to their rule. The authority of Pakistan was effectively surrendered, first in North Waziristan, then in South Waziristan. ‘Islamic Emirates’ took over in Kurram Agency and Darra Adam Khel. These were followed by the Mohmand, Khyber, Orakzai and Bajaur Agencies. From a base in the Malakand Agency, the ‘militants’ (an interesting new bit of bureaucratese, certainly better than the old ‘miscreants’) poured down into the valley of Swat and then out in the direction of Mardan. This was, finally, the point at which the state of Pakistan chose to fight back. And the battle, accompanied by bouts of terrorist violence in our cities, continues to date.

Our governmental and opposition personalities are all preoccupied with their power games, moves, countermoves and subtle feints and parries. And all this time, this particular menace remains unchecked. Our authorities talk of using the local tribal leaders to combat the extremists. But the point is that, even before the consolidation of the TTP in the tribal areas, a mixture of flawed government policies, demographic and economic changes, and the notoriously arbitrary Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) had already led to a power shift from the traditional tribal leaders to the armed mullahs.

As to conducting talks with the Taliban themselves, as both Imran Khan and US Vice President Joe Biden advocate, let us ask whether the Taliban are even interested in talks. No, says their spokesman, Shamim Mehsud, the TTP will simply not hold talks with the government until the “enforcement of shariah”, pulling out of security forces from the tribal areas, payment of compensation and release of the Taliban from Pakistani prisons. So much for that!

I trust my readers will sense, as I have, the ideological context in which these two realities — the alienated nihilism of our youth and the violent treason of the insurgents — have been nurtured. It is not a matter of differences between religious ‘extremists’ and ‘moderates’. Not any more. It is a matter of the very geographic and civilisational survival of Pakistan.

Do we have the wisdom to understand the real issues, the real stakes and the real war? Quick fixes, whether administered by Khan, Sharif, Kayani or Zardari, will not work.

The writer is a marketing consultant based in Karachi. He is also a poet