Khaled Ahmed - The unhappiness rankings need to take note: The lack of joy in Pakistan is palpable
We don’t know how the
United Nations’ 6th World Happiness Report calculated that Pakistan is ahead of
India, China, Iran, and Afghanistan on the ranking table of happiness. But ask
anyone on the Pakistani street and you will be hit with more unhappiness than
anywhere in South Asia. If you watch the TV channels in the region, the lack of
joy in Pakistan will overwhelm you. And “unhappy India”, killing innocent
Pakistanis across the LoC and harassing Pakistani diplomats in New Delhi through
its secret agents, adds to this suffering. The world is actually enjoying all
this secretly.
After the recent
Senate elections, Pakistani media succumbed to depravity as Pakistani
politicians go for each other’s throat and the establishment herds them around
at will as the “rejoicing third party”. This unnamed party is pulling the
political rug from under the feet of the dysfunctional state and is set to
booby-trap the June general election. India can get away
with anything because it is not internally troubled and no terrorism radiates
from it to the outside world while Pakistan faces sanctions for harbouring
terrorists. No matter what India does to punish Pakistan, it is with the tacit
approval of the world sick of Pakistan’s lack of internal sovereignty with 60
per cent of its territory without the writ of the state. The political parties
are entangled in their vendettas, siding with the “third party” to bring each
other’s government down.
Then there is the
“unhappiest” community of all, the Pashtun. The Pashtun Tahhafuz Movement (PTM)
showed its genuine numerical muscle in Peshawar on April 8, asking for rights
Pakistan has deprived them of. Triggered by the murder of a South Waziristan
shopkeeper in Karachi at the hands of a police officer in a “fake encounter”,
the PTM is asking questions that the state of Pakistan can’t answer. The
gathering of thousands from the Tribal Areas of Pakistan, asked “da sange azadi
dey” (what kind of freedom is this?). They want settlement after their long
status as refugees within Pakistan following mammoth evacuation in the
Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
FATA has borne the
brunt of jihad against the Soviet Union, accepting “foreign warriors” funded by
the US and Saudi Arabia. Local tribal elders who ran the territory through
their kind of panchayat called jirga were murdered to make place for warlords
who spearheaded the jihad. In the process, the proud Pashtun nation was
pulverised. Pakistan made the
decision to “preserve” the tribal society of the Pashtun by keeping them
separate from the rest of Pakistan, which meant no development amid primitive
laws. After FATA couldn’t sustain the growing population, internal migration
took place and destroyed the roots of the Pashtun culture. Nobody paid
attention till “internal” became “external” and FATA men started migrating to
the Middle East. Then the Afghan jihad
spawned local warlords who destroyed the jirga system, and mere savagery
replaced Pakistan’s badly-scuffed administration. After this, Pakistan had to
suffer the consequences of the original decision to retain FATA as a kind of
tribal museum, without schools and economic development. Karachi, in time,
became the largest Pashtun city in the world. It too became lawless like FATA.
The Pashtun form the
largest community of workers in Qatar and feature beyond their numerical
strength in Pakistan in all the states of the UAE. They have migrated to
Balochistan over centuries and now challenge the Baloch as the majority
community. Instead of settling the tribal region, Pakistan’s foreign policy and
geostrategic thinking has allowed millions of more unhappy Pashtuns from
Afghanistan to seek shelter in areas where the local Pashtuns are already
unsettled. Counted together, the Afghan and Pakistani Pashtuns form the largest
refugee population in the world.
Traditionally, the
Awami National Party of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa represented the Pashtun. Now the PTM
wants Pakistan to retrace its steps and treat them as normal citizens. The
truth is that the Pashtun represent the failure of Pakistan to become a normal
state. It was broken up in 1971 because of the mistakes it made. Now the
Pashtun want a correction that Pakistan will do well to understand before it
suffers yet another tragedy.
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