“Before a Nation Dreams, It Must Be Able to Sleep First Safely” - I
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA
“During the final century of the Roman Empire, it was common for emperors to deny that their civilization was in decline. Only with the perspective of history can we see that the emperors were wrong, that the empire was failing, and that the Roman people were unwilling or unable to change their way of life before it was too late.” - Morris Berman in his book, “Why America Failed”
Napoleon still could not bring himself to admit that he (rather than 'factions’) was responsible for his downfall. Once Themistocles led ancient Athens to victory over Persia, but later he was exiled, and had to find refuge with his former enemies. As if this reference could undo his defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon wrote a famous letter to the Prince Regent, citing the example of Themistocles, “I have ended my political career; and I come, as Themistocles did, to seat myself by the hearth of the British people. I put myself under the protection of its laws…” (dated 13 July, 1815). The British like all victors were unimpressed by such a stock-phrase. They sent this “great general”, (a favorite of most dictators), not to the ambers of a cozy hearth for warming his cold hands and feet, but to St. Helena. Lesson. Grow, transform, rectify and learn, or be prepared for licking the dust and extinction. This is the law of God; this is the law of nature, and this is the law of history.
Why would Pakistan, its people, and especially its leadership be an exception, when change for them is a blasphemy! Our leadership in Pakistan is like that patient who feels terribly dizzy, but rather than admitting his condition before a doctor, keeps pretending, “Dizziness! No, not really”. How can the problem of political dizziness be addressed then in Pakistan, when every political leader regards himself an Anoki, the wrestler.
It is a fallacy to believe that Muslims or any other nation, are indispensable for God. God is very Merciful and Compassionate in case of individuals indulging in transgressions; but when nations adopt the ways that result in “corrupting the earth”; or when people as a whole deliberately begin to compromise in matters of human rights, justice and fair-play, and begin to lie without any moral compunctions, and stay adamant by refusing to “revive conscience”, or refuse to follow the process of self-analysis and self-correction, then God, we are told, just seals the fate of such nations.
“(Look out), the example of those (Messengers) we sent before you (O Muhammad) and you will find no change in our law”. 17:77
David Von Drehle in his interesting article, published in the Time of April 18, 2011 entitled, “The Way We Weren’t,” traces five reasons behind the American Civil War (1861-1865):
- It was caused by the imposition of high tariffs,
- It was caused by the blundering statesmen,
- It was caused by the clash of industrial and agricultural interests,
- It was caused by the fanatics,
- It was caused by the Marxists’ class struggle.
Is there a cause that is missing for the start of a civil war in Pakistan? Most of the countries in the Middle East were economically doing better than Pakistan when the revolution started there. Egypt had a good robust economy; Tunisia was still a tourist resort and had been called the “Switzerland of Africa”; Kaddafi could have been a mad man, but he was still holding different tribes together. Yet, people rose against their rulers! Why?
Countries often do not fall like a thud or a dynamited structure
(though some choose to fail spectacularly); often they fall in slow motion. And Pakistan is one of them. The thunderous fall of Afghanistan and Somalia and Sudan fell soft on Pakistani ears. Its elite and privileged class; and its unchanging dynasties of rulers in the last 40 years, who had developed a craving for insatiable hunger for applause, approval and power, didn’t feel any urge to listen and learn and then change and grow. They took Afghanistan’s fall with a smile. The factors that had destroyed Afghanistan were re-classified as valuable assets for Pakistan’s regional security. The realities of life remained elusive. The clue-less leaders kept asking the people to dream, to think big. But how could they do so when they were not even able to sleep safely? Hunger, lack of safety, chronic ailments, mal-nutrition, and humiliations haunted them like nightmares, and yet the leaders kept asking them, “Dream, fools dream”.
Carol S. Dweck, a great psychologist in her book, “Mindset”, writes, “Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.” Carol Dweck perhaps did not know that there lives a specie of human beings in our part of the world that honors only the reward and not the effort.
Remember the rubber-band law. It grows when it is stretched. Our leadership in Pakistan had always been nothing more than a piece of useless string that would neither stretch nor hold people together. It would snap at every stretch, but would re-emerge with a new knot. The tragedy visiting people relating to leadership did not end here; it got compounded when they themselves fell in love with this knotty and dysfunctional string of leadership and began taking it as their fait accompli. Feeding an addiction had never been so spectacular a habit as it became in Pakistan.
The title of this article has been borrowed from Bloomberg’s article, “Mexico Needs More Good Cops”. Economic reform is one thing, but ordinary citizens have to feel safe first is another. The epochal economic reforms introduced by the Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto could not keep his popularity intact for long. The overwhelming number of Mexican citizens have taken to the streets, which shows that his government has failed to provide safety and protection to them. The disappearance of 43 students on September 26, kidnapped in Iguala, the third-biggest city in Guerrero, one of Mexico’s poorest and most violent states, proved the last straw on the popularity camel of Mr Pena Nieto.
In Pakistan killing of people and even of army men in groups is much too common a sight. A few hollow statements of sympathy, a few reactionary steps, and then business as usual follows. One thing is amazingly common in Pakistan and Mexico: corruption in the police. 90 percent Mexicans said they had little or no confidence in their local police, and 75 said the same about the federal police. What would people say about police in Pakistan? The five-year “golden rule” of the PPP, and now the two- ear clumsy hotchpotch governance of the PML-N, did not even take the first step in reforming the police on modern, honest and efficient lines. Police in all the four provinces have become the private militia of the political parties or of the mafia as it happened in Mexico.
The police in Mexico are not paid as low as they are in Pakistan. They, however, get compensated through illegal means. The police were paid $460 a month by the city in Mexico, and $770 a month by their gang bosses. In the crime-ridden Chihuahua state, for instance, 98 percent of a 12,000-person force was found on the muster role of the mafia! The concrete steps taken by Mr Enrique Pena Nieto in the field of economics, and in liberating the energy laws, just failed to defend him within two years of his rule because he had failed to provide good cops to the country.
Likewise in Pakistan, all the metro and mega projects appear meaningless, rather a wastage of time and of borrowed money, if the people of Pakistan remain unsafe everywhere - in their homes as well as in their work places. No nation can dream of creativity and betterment, if it lives under constant fear all the time. (Continued next week)
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