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The Way out of the Pakistani Morass 

By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada

Pakistan today presents the specter of a deeply divided nation. Coupled with that, it’s a fractured nation, with deep fissures running down the middle of its body politics.

It’s divided because there’s no political consensus or coherence. This anomaly is due to the ersatz political landscape foisted on the nation: the political party, PTI, chosen by the people—in an unambiguous and transparent exercise of their fundamental right of ‘vote’, last February 8—is in political wilderness. Instead, those political charlatans vociferously rejected by the people have been thrust on them and have been ruling with scant regard for the rights and interests of the people.

Rubbing salt into the wounds of the people, and exacerbating their sense of disenfranchisement, is that their leader, Imran Khan (IK) has been behind bars for more than 16 months, on trumped-up and palpably absurd charges. Spiking the people’s sense of being rendered orphans in their own land, is that there’s no indication from the powers-that-be that they have any intent of ending IK’s incarceration.

On top of the political divide, there’s the monster of terrorism raising its ugly head with vengeance, especially in Khyber Pakhtoon Khwah (KPK) and the long-troubled Baluchistan.

The frequency and ferocity of incidents of terrorism are alarming. Statistics compiled by think tanks and interest groups paint a dismal picture of terrorists gaining an unmistakable upper hand, especially in the two border provinces, while law enforcement measures have been cutting a sorry figure in the face of terrorist assaults.

According to the figures compiled on the subject, there were 645 terrorist attacks in 2023, taking a casualty toll of 508, mostly of security personnel.

But this jumped to 856 attacks, by November 2024, with a casualty toll of 476.

Obviously, terrorist factions feel emboldened by the political divide and disarray in the governance of the country. They know that since the engineered toppling of IK from his pedestal, the puppets ruling the roost in Islamabad lack popular support and people’s approbation. Hence, they see before them an inviting field to operate in and have been taking full advantage of it.

What’s more disconcerting in this scenario is that this alarming spike in terrorism has spawned an equally menacing monster of sectarianism. The recent bloody attacks on the Shiias of Kurram Agency should be an eye-opener to those, in particular, charged with security apparatus. Rapacious mobs attacked Shiias in the presence of hundreds of security personnel and Rangers.

Apparently, the security paraphernalia in Pakistan finds itself helpless to stem the rising tide of terrorism and sectarianism. This is despite the ruling elite’s claim that they are winning against those breaching Pakistan’s security.

The official narrative that terrorists have been forced on the back foot is not only belied by the spike in incidents of terrorism but also by the casualty figures amongst the security personnel, supposedly stemming the march of the terrorists. According to statistics compiled by the Islamabad-based Pakistan Institute of Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS), 1,627 security personnel have been killed, mostly in KPK, from January 2020 to the end of November 2024, in 2,400 terrorist attacks.

All this has been happening under the watch of the Pakistan Army ruling the roost in the country and holding it in thrall to their unstinted and relentless one-upmanship, as far as the governance is concerned.

The footprints of the power-besotted generals, under Army Chief Asim Munir, in keeping IK in the political wilderness are too unmistakable for anyone to ignore or overlook.

IK’s ouster from power was spearheaded by Asim Munir’s predecessor, General Qamar Bajwa. But Asim Munir has piled on the misery and added his own lethal fringes to what Bajwa had scripted.

The impunity with which PTI followers’ peaceful assembly at Islamabad’s D-Chowk , on November 26, was turned into a blood bath of the innocent, has stirred the conscience of quarters far beyond the frontiers of Pakistan. That there’s no remorse or regret is a chilling analogy with the 1919 massacre of Jalianwala Bagh, of Amritsar, under British Colonial rulers. The bloody architect of that gory massacre, Brigadier Dyer, said, at his trial in Britain, that he had no remorse over what he did; his only regret was that his soldiers had run out of bullets.

What is more disconcerting, the puppet government of Shehbaz Sharif is bringing in one rule after another to turn Pakistan into a fascist state, in its strictest sense. After snuffing out any semblance of independence of the judiciary, under the 26 th Amendment to the Constitution, there’s now legislation in the works to put the social media in chains.

The latest ploy of the puppet government is to create a National Digital Authority to regulate and monitor the internet in the country. As it is, the internet has been under assault by the ruling clique in Pakistan for quite some time. But that hasn’t quite worked. So, there’s now a further move to regiment the internet in the name of ostensibly regulating it.

So, what is the way out of the blind alley?

IK has come up with a twin of ideas to lead the country out of the present morass.

On the one hand, he has, reluctantly and under the force of circumstances, asked the people to start a campaign of civil disobedience. Gandhi, in his long struggle against the British rule over India, had wielded this peaceful mode with great success. There’s no reason why the people of Pakistan can’t emulate Gandhi’s pacifist example of protest and resistance.

Overseas Pakistanis—the most ardent and vocal of IK’s followers and unapologetic critics of aggrandizing generals have thrown their own weight behind IK’s move by willing to drastically reduce—if not totally put a halt—to the flow of remittances to Pakistan. Everyone knows how dependent Pakistan’s beleaguered economy is on remittances, of tens of billions of dollars, from overseas Pakistanis. Wielded carefully, this could calibrate the civil disobedience movement over a vast spectrum.

Coupled with it, overseas Pakistanis should also galvanize support among their host governments, particularly in Europe and North America. The Pakistani community in the US has done great work in lobbying, with some success, the US Congress and other opinion-making circles—in academia and news media, in particular—to the chagrin of the Army and the political puppets dangling at the end of their string.

The mafia is already nervous about the incoming Trump administration’s alleged ‘soft corner’ for IK. And Pakistan’s history bears witness that its pompous Bonapartes squeak into submission at any command from their masters in Washington.

So, the bottom line is that Pakistanis, at home and abroad, have the capacity and means to put real teeth to IK’s call on them to wage a peaceful protest of civil disobedience and end the long night of repression. - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com

(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)