Daily Times

Pakistan has been in a constant state of battling with issues like economic crisis, destruction due to climate changes, Kashmir case, Indo-Pakistan destabilized condition. Other than all these the emerging issue for Pakistan is at a psychological level, that are issues related to demoralisation, destabilisation of the state, chronic stress and availability and repetition of unrestricted media in Pakistan.

Psychological Subversion: Demoralization and Destabilization
Psychological subversion (PsychSub) is the name given by Susan Headley to a method of verbally manipulating people for information. It is similar in practice to so-called social engineering and pretexting, but has a more military focus to it. It was developed by Headley as an extension of knowledge she gained during hacking sessions with notorious early computer network hackers like Kevin Metnick. Ideologically hitting a nation is an attempt to brainwash the individuals of society. This process is called demoralization. Once demoralization is completed, the second stage of ideological brainwashing is “destabilization”.Demoralization is a process that is “irreversible”.The crisis would bring “a violent change of power, structure, and economy” and will be followed by the last stage, “normalization.” A person who was demoralized is unable to assess true information. It is a dangerous strategy for a nation because it is damaging the generation. Demoralization” which takes from 15 to 20 years to achieve. It is a continuous process that results in major crises by gradually hitting the pillars of the nation and making society weak from economic, political, social grounds.

Referring to such people, Bezmenov said:
“They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern [alluding to Pavlov]. You can not change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information. Even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still can not change the basic perception and the logic of behavior.”

Child Development and Chronic Stress in Pakistan
Excessive or prolonged activation of stress response systems in a child can have damaging effects on learning, behavior, and health across a person’s life span. Constantly viewing threatening images and acts of violence produce episodes of stress that increases a child’s heart rate and blood pressure as well as the production of stress hormones. Because of their age, children do not have the resources to manage this stress, which can disrupt the development of brain architecture and other organ systems with lifelong consequences. The elevated stress levels may last longer than in an adult, interrupting the natural process of development causing physical cognitive and emotional problems. There are many cases recorded of the children that suffer from the chronic stress phase in Pakistan. Group of ages between (12-18 years) in Pakistan have issues during child development because of the factors like chronic stress present in the environment.

Availability and Repetition of Unrestricted Media in Pakistan
Mostly children in Pakistan today have virtually unrestricted access to worldwide media coverage of terrorist acts, which threatens their mental and physical health due to their crude nature. Terrorist acts have been documented throughout history, but in the last decades, media coverage has given unfair attention to these despicable acts of shocking violence.

Media access brings worldwide events very close to children, and often in a very crude way, through the news, Internet, or social media. It can involve intrusive, unedited images portraying extreme acts of violence that can be very intense. Children do not have a sense of spatiality and rarely understand the concept that these events have occurred far from their current location. Instead, these almost live events can cause feelings of unsafety, hopelessness, and helplessness, which are often externalized by conduct problems.

The effects of indirect exposure to violence affect younger children more than older children and research indicates that real exposure to war events in children below age 10 increases their risk of developing internalizing disorders in later life. These conditions could be observed within Kashmiris on whom the Indian army and forces waged war, the acts of massive killings. One cannot even think of humanity within the Indian Government.

The writer is a student of MPhil -IR at National Defence University