Pakistan First

Israel’s recent surge of attacks in the Gaza Strip has prompt­ed crit­i­cism from near­ly any­body who’s some­body. But from nowhere has the con­dem­na­tion come as strong­ly as from Pak­istan, the land of the pure, the land of peace lov­ing Pak­ista­nis who con­sid­er it their duty to raise hue and cry when­ev­er there is any inci­dent per­tain­ing to the famed albeit noto­ri­ous Ummah. State­ments from the pre­mier Nawaz Sharif and the For­eign Office harsh­ly con­demned the Israeli onslaught into the Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ry, which shows how con­cerned Pak­istan is to play its ‘extreme­ly piv­otal’ role in the inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics. Social activists and the Face­book Jehadis along with the Twit­terati are going hys­ter­i­cal in their con­stant vil­i­fi­ca­tion of Israel online, in order to play their part in the move­ment against the glob­al oppres­sor of human rights.

I am not try­ing to defend Israel’s atroc­i­ties against the Pales­tini­ans, but one begins to won­der where was that emo­tion­al response in the case of IDPs? Pak­istan is going through a cru­cial stage in Sharif’s pre­mier­ship right now, with the army engaged in a full scale mil­i­tary oper­a­tion against the mil­i­tants in North­ern Waziris­tan, with more than 800,000 peo­ple hav­ing lit­tle access to shel­ter, food, clean water, cloth­ing and basic util­i­ties. These peo­ple share the same cit­i­zen­ship and rights which are enjoyed by the rest of Pakistan’s bur­geon­ing 180 mil­lion pop­u­la­tion, and as such are enti­tled to all the basic rights grant­ed to them by the con­sti­tu­tion. What has been done to cater the needs of these mil­lions of peo­ple who have been vic­tims of con­stant war­fare for the last decade? Has the same response been shown for the plight of our own peo­ple? Sad­ly, the answer is NO.

These peo­ple are being con­sid­ered a huge bur­den by the fed­er­a­tion which is, along with the provinces, reluc­tant to extend a wel­com­ing hand. On the oth­er hand, the entire Pak­istani nation along with the rul­ing elite trip over their heels in show­ing their sol­i­dar­i­ty and sup­port towards the peo­ple in Syr­ia, Egypt, Afghanistan and Pales­tine. Pak­ista­nis raised hell over the Syr­i­an issue and issued the strongest con­dem­na­tions while the peo­ple being killed by the Tal­iban were ignored. Pak­ista­nis took out ral­lies and protest­ed against the atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted in Egypt by Mubarak while Balochs being mur­dered were ignored. Pak­ista­nis cried and lament­ed over Afghan’s plight at the hands of USA while the ongo­ing Shia geno­cide was not giv­en even a cur­so­ry glance. Pak­ista­nis showed their sol­i­dar­i­ty to the Pales­tini­ans while the IDPS and vic­tims of tar­get killers were brushed aside. The ques­tion which aris­es here is what kind of utopi­an Pan-Islam­ic men­tal­i­ty Pak­ista­nis are har­bor­ing in their brains which makes them ignore the prob­lems at home?

Now, ana­lyz­ing the response of the rest of the Mus­lim world to Pakistan’s prob­lems, one is sur­prised to see the result. On the issue of Kash­mir, not a sin­gle Mus­lim coun­try sup­ports Pak­istan in Unit­ed Nations. Not a sin­gle Mus­lim coun­try has offered Pak­istan any sup­port mil­i­tar­i­ly or finan­cial­ly to deal with the Tal­iban threat. No Mus­lim coun­try has offered to shake hands with Pak­istan in its ongo­ing ener­gy cri­sis. Pak­istan is refused any sup­port by the Mus­lim coun­tries in the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.
This is the real­i­ty and we have to come to terms with it. The the­o­ry of real­ism in deter­min­ing the for­eign pol­i­cy is employed by all the coun­tries where the inter­na­tion­al sys­tem of coun­tries exists in a state of con­stant antag­o­nism and each coun­try pur­sues its self-inter­est. Pak­istan, how­ev­er, con­sid­ers its duty to extend finan­cial and moral sup­port to any Mus­lim coun­try while total­ly ignor­ing the prob­lems at home. Such a flawed for­eign pol­i­cy has led Pak­istan nowhere in the ranks of Islam­ic coun­tries who look sus­pi­cious­ly even at Pakistan’s sup­port and refuse to acknowl­edge it. The Arab coun­tries, towards which Pak­istan always has had a very soft and mal­leable cor­ner, do not con­sid­er Pak­istan any­thing oth­er than ‘Ajmees’.

Let’s deal with our own prob­lems first before rush­ing off to solve the prob­lems of oth­ers. Pakistan’s case is like the per­son who has stepped into a bog, and that per­son sees anoth­er per­son in the far­thest cor­ner of the bog. Can you save that per­son with­out sav­ing your­self first? We have enough of our own issues to solve first. Ter­ror­ism, geno­cide, intol­er­ance, per­se­cu­tion of our own peo­ple, all these are the prob­lems faced by Pak­istan. Syr­ia, Egypt, Afghanistan and Pales­tine can take the back seat. Let’s join hands and clear our own home off debris before offer­ing to clean oth­er parts of the com­mu­ni­ty, oth­er­wise we can only guess what the alien­at­ed peo­ple of this land will do in the face of this con­stant mar­gin­al­iza­tion and dis­crim­i­na­tion.