Save SOUTH ASIA

Pakistan appears to be beyond salvage: A sordid saga of a promising nation going down the path of self destruction it appears to have unfolded now. Pakistan is a nation state whose fanaticism-soaked genesis could not be mellowed out even by the mighty forces of Time. The age old practice of the Western world of turning a Nelson’s eye to the threat Pakistan posed to the entire subcontinent has aggravated the geo-political complications and the subcontinent now stands at the brink of a new and seemingly unending era of instability. It’s not about attack on the Sri Lankan cricketers or 26/11 also for that matter. It is about how the south Asia’s rich history and heritage of values and philosophies that guided the civilizations of the world like a beacon through ages has quietly taken a back seat and made way for the forces of unreason and inhumanity. The world awaits the results of Obama’s Af-Pak magic pill. Countries like India who have been blowing whistles since all these years and continue to face the brunt of having the volatile and hostile pseudo-democracy in the neighbourhood stand at the margin, beleaguered and lonely. India watches helplessly from the sidelines as Pakistan’s creative and imaginative political elite continue to beguile the international community with all sorts of ‘theories’ about 26/11. Our throats have gone hoarse. The gravity and gruffness of our stance has barely made any difference to the way the world looks at Pakistan.

Leave alone a Pakistani, even an Indian may not like this. But one can help drawing this sad and worrying conclusion: Pakistan is in ruins. Before it drags down south Asia, the world has to act. The western powers like US will have to repair the wrongs done.

Just try to deconstruct the whole damn thing called terrorism. There are terrorists who are enemies of civil societies and governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan and neither of the two wants them. Another bunch has these guys who are zealously supported and trained by the Pakistan government to bleed countries like India. And this tribe of terrorists is very much in demand by the Pakistan government and the so called other state and non-state actors in tow. And somewhere in between lies the twilight zone of the ruthless terror machine. Pakistan is the victim as well as the perpetrator. But its fate as a victim does not outweigh its self-appointed role of perpetrator, the one that does not hesitate in using terrorism as an instrument of state policy.

‘What would happen if you try to ride a tiger…?’, says P Chidambaram, India’s Home Minister, very rightly.