It was perhaps year 1950 I still remember the headlines of a leading Urdu newspaper “PAKISTAN KHATRAY MAIN HAI” but at that time everyone was aware as to why Pakistan Khattray main hai, because it was a newly born state with meagre resources and pressure of rehabilitation of people migrated from India. Now it is 2020 even after 72 years situation has not much changed and this time real khatra is looming on our heads, but no one is realising. People do ask the questions that Pakistan being an atomic power and with most powerful army of the world and the resources available how can we be in danger? The quick answer is that unlike past the nation is busy in fighting amongst each other, we stand divided. To beat any enemy internally or externally the nation has to be on one page. If we critically and honestly examine and analyse the situation we get the answer without any problem. The simple answer is that comes to our mind is that at that time we were all Pakistani’s above sectarian divides, far from ethnicity ,we were all united living happily and presented our self as one nation, but with the passage of time today we are a fragmented nation divided in various groups and have turned ourselves into a crowd without knowing which direction to go.
Nations are inspired and driven by leaders, in our case we are rudderless ship trying to find the shore. No one is to be blamed except the people who failed to select leaders who could do justice with everyone by giving equal opportunities to everyone irrespective of cast and creed.
We all forgot much quoted 11 August 1947 speech by the founder of Pakistan Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. We ignored his advise and adopted path of hating each other thus creating more distances amongst various segments of society, the end result was the nation drifted away from its goals and objectives. No leader could fill the gap left behind by the founder. Hopes were pinned and focused on first prime minister of Pakistan Liaqat Ali Khan who was shot in public meeting at Rawalpindi on fateful day of 16 October 1951 and embarrassed shahadat. After his Shahadat the country fell in the hands of selfish leaders who never bothered about the problems of common man and failed to serve the country. They kept planning against each other and in short span of 11 years we witnessed great Tamasha of our assemblies and changed 7 prime ministers. This critical situation led to imposition of first martial law in the country by the government and president wanted to play fast one to change the Commander-in- Chief of Army and replace him with person of his own choice. What happened after that is history and known to everyone but it must be stated categorically that nobody learned any lesson from our past misdoings and continued with new experimentation that resulted in losing better half East Pakistan now called Bangladesh. We find ourselves in total mess today. Why we are facing this situation? Simply because we could not produce leader of that calibre that could steer the country out of crisis. Today we find ourselves in a situation where everyone is busy in abusing each other and media also stand divided and has joined hands who are out to destabilise Pakistan, most of them have lost their credibility by openly showing leaning towards a particular group and party. Self interest is the key to success and no one is willing to work for national integration and bring all parties on one page on national issues. Prime Minister invariably has to discuss even small matters like posting of IG in Sind Province in a cabinet meeting, if that is the situation of our governance only God can help us. To thwart dangers nation has to show unity if we don’t do that we become more vulnerable. Our in house fighting is certainly helping our external and internal enemies who find it easy to further penetrate in ranks and destabilise us.
While this is happening internally, Indian army chief and Prime Minister Modi is threatening Pakistan, however in a befitting response PM Imran Khan has warned Indian Prime Minister Modi that any further misadventure against Pakistan would be the last one. Kashmiris in IOK facing lock down for the last 186 days shall prove to be a greatest blunder on the part of Modi. Secondly Pakistan is in deep financial crisis, we are facing at least Rs 1000 billion short fall, that means more inflation, life will become more expensive, businesses will gradually close down due to high cost of business. When nations are economically weak coupled with unrest and confrontation of political parties with the government enemy gains strength and can play any foul game. Time to wake up, get united failing which we may be inviting Khatra in real sense, can we afford that? A million dollar question.