Mired in Infamy and Ignominy Is Pakistan, Today

By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada

Etched, as in granite, on the collective memory of Pakistanis is that historic congregation, of March 23, 1940, in what was then Lahore’s Minto Park that brought together All India Muslim League’s galaxy of prominent leaders.

Under the inspiring leadership of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, that epochal conclave, that day, had adopted what later called to be known as the Pakistan Resolution, resolving to establish an independent and sovereign entity of their own for the Muslims of British India.

The Pakistan Resolution was adopted in an open park fearlessly and boldly for the whole world to take note of Muslims of India on the march, with elan and panache. The proximity and vicinity of Lahore’s historic Badshahi Mosque and Lahore Fort—glorious landmark remnants of Centuries-long Moghul rule over India—was to remind the world that Indian Muslims were determined to pick up the thread of their great legacy from the point where it was sundered by the onset of the British Raj.

On March 23, 2025, Pakistan observed the 85 th anniversary of that historic day.

However, in marked contrast to the intrepid and fearless legacy of the most important day in the Pakistani almanac, the ceremony marking its observance was held in the secure confines of Islamabad’s President’s House. What was also prominent by its absence on the occasion was any representation of the common Pakistani.

Pakistan was achieved as an independent and sovereign entity as a result of monumental sacrifices of the people, especially of those who migrated to it from Hindu-dominated areas of India and, in the process, were butchered in the blood-letting that accompanied the Partition of British India into two sovereign states.

The Islamabad ceremony heralding the memory of that historic day was an exclusive gathering of the ruling elite of Pakistan, of the pompous patricians who have hogged Pakistan’s political landscape, perennially, since the engineered demise of its founding fathers within five years of Pakistan’s birth.

The plebeians of Pakistan were kept away from the regal ceremony to show them their place of no consequence in the governance of their land. They have been shunned, kept at a safe distance, in the name of security, ostensibly in the charade of securing them from terrorism.

But terrorism has been rampant in the three years since Imran Khan’s (IK) elected government was toppled from power in a conspiracy hatched between those political carpetbaggers rejected by the people of Pakistan and power-hungry ‘Khakis’ who have been in the political camp, for decades, like the proverbial camel of the Bedouin.

This year, too, like the previous year, the Pakistan Day parade wasn’t held in the open on the excuse of ‘security’ which has, lately, been on the spike. But the ceremony turned into a tragi-comic spectacle with the entry of President Zardari, the two-time head of state, whose notoriety as a con artist has fanned out of Pakistan and become universal. If anyone had any doubt about how sickening is his presence at the apex of Pakistan was quickly evaporated by the manner of his conduct at the ceremony.

The way he reviewed the guard of honor presented to him encapsulated his lethal presence at the head of Pakistan. He walked, nay barely dragged himself, as if it was a dead man walking.

But the grand finale—of shame and embarrassment for every Pakistani with the love of their motherland in their heart—came when the sick man stood at the rostrum, trembling, to deliver his presidential address.

The video clip of Zardari’s faltering address has gone viral, world-wide, wherever Pakistanis are located. It was downright sickening. The man stammered at every sentence; couldn’t pronounce, correctly, simple, every day, common words of Urdu, from the prepared text placed before him.

In a sinking voice, barely audible, the sick man let the whole world know what kind of pestilence Pakistanis have been heaped on their heads by the power-addicted, purblind, generals, Zardari’s mentors and compatriots pulling his, and of his ilk’s strings from behind the flimsy curtain of a Fascist Pakistan, a reality recently confirmed by the prestigious “Intelligence Unit” of universally respected journal, The Economist.

Zardari’s comic-tragic performance personified, beyond any speck of doubt, the tragedy of Pakistan. His act only compounded the tragedy.

Shameless as he’s, Zardari rubbed salt into the wounds of Pakistanis, at home and abroad, later that day at the civil awards ceremony he presided over. He conferred Pakistan’s highest civil award, Nishan-e-Pakistan, posthumously, on his late father-in-law, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Zardari may be too ignorant to remember the true legacy of ZAB, a principal character of the 1971 tragedy of East Pakistan which sundered Quaid’s Pakistan and spawned Bangladesh.

And further thumbing his nose at patriotic Pakistanis, Zardari also conferred high awards on goons of notoriety, like himself. Anver Majid, implicated as the main facilitator of Zardari’s in money-laundering, to Dubai and other safe havens, overseas, was decorated with a high civil award.

So was another notorious goon of international fame, one Omar Farooq Zahoor. This goon is wanted in Norway, Ghana and Turkey, among several other countries, for myriad pecuniary crimes. But he’s a hero to Zardari for, falsely, testifying against IK and his wife, in the infamous Tosha Khana case. Rewarding him was, perhaps, meant to send a message to IK that the armed forces had no intent of coming to terms with him.

Polarization in the political landscape is the name of the game. The khakis are either totally ignorant of the lesson of Pakistan’s own history or, else, they’re so power-drunk and besotted that their use of relentless ‘might’ is still the right course for them and the country.

Baluchistan and KPK are literally burning in the inferno of terrorism. The Pakistan Day ceremony within the confines of the President House was an indirect acknowledgment of the spiraling terrorism stalking the two border provinces. The situation in Baluchistan is becoming dire by the day. But they seem totally impervious of any course-correction.

The Baluchistan situation is as political as was the scenario in East Pakistan. But the generals’ playbook is still the same to deal with a situation spinning out of their control. Baluchistan has been neglected and its people’s legitimate grievances shunned and not listened to with any intent to help redress them.

Back in 1971, General Yahya Khan deemed the use of force as a legitimate tool in response to the majority of Pakistanis’ demands for their civil and political rights. His blatant and purblind resort to force to quench the fires of discontent of East Pakistanis led to the country being truncated and halved. Any sane person knows that doing the same experiment over and over again, and hoping that its result would be different from before is, in the words of Einstein, an unmistakable proof of madness.

One shudders to think of where the Khakis and their political minions would lead a Pakistan mired in the muck of gargantuan follies and blunders. It’s a scenario too befogged by despondency to show any flicker of hope. - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com

(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)