Until when, will we, as a nation, try to keep ourselves drunk on past glories, blame games, victimhood and empty rhetoric? Being a strong critic of Khan, his party and followers, several friends tried to direct my attention towards yesterday's speech. I heard it live but didn't comment because I was shocked and surprised at the shallowness of what was said and honestly didn't know what to make of it. The celebrations of PTI supporters were expected, even those who were quite dormant recently due to bad performance of PTI in its one year of government in center and six years of government in KP province. Perhaps, they are less to blame as they saw a hope in Khan or they were made to believe so; the Messiah complex that we as a society suffer from. So they need something to satiate their longing for that hope (or shortcut) and surely their leader knows that.
Climate change is a hot topic and it was good to see him talking about that. However, we have to do more than planting trees. Dams and bad urban planning also ruin the climate and the ecosystems. Climate change activists such as Baba Jan has been kept under arrest in Gilgit for a long time now because he raised the concerns on government's planning regarding Attabad Lake. Lack of water management is drying up the underground aquifers in Pakistan and government is doing nothing about that. Dams are a real threat to environment, yet we see government run campaigns for new dams. Our cities have no waste management systems, have bad sewage systems and almost no waste-water treatment plants. Industries dump poison in river . In my 2008 research paper, I found 50 times more heavy metals than permissible limits in the waste water of 3 bigger industrial estates of North (Peshawar, Hattar and Gujranwala.) It's been 11 years and the amounts of these poisonous metals have increased instead of being controlled.
Money laundering is definitely a big problem but instead of telling world not to accept free investment, shouldn't we make our own laws to control that? Two of PM's close aides have been disqualified because of corruption. Big companies and billionaires are bailed out by government via presidential and SC orders. Government has failed to find ways to make the money-draining institutions culpable and to bring them under audit. Governmental schemes are ridden with stories of corruption. Shouldn't we start this from our own home instead of lecturing world and instead of using corruption as a mere populist slogan?
Some of the old critics of Khan also looked impressed of the speech. The only positive thing, one could honestly see in that speech was raising the issue of Kashmir. But there's this thing. It is a story of oppression by an oppressor, not a story of Islamophobia as he mentioned. Had it been put this way by him, it would have been better. Besides, we made this country on the basis of two nation theory. Indians did not. So why do you wonder if Muslims of Kashmir aren't opressed because of this identity? Who has started this identity debate? Besides, what RSS is doing in India is not much different than what we do here to our religious minorities including Ahmadis, Hindus, Shia, Hazara and Christians. Need I remind someone the atrocities these people face on the daily basis in Pakistan? And is there not the same reason (Muslim and non-Muslim idenity) behind this systemic opression? It's just that the face of the opressor is different here. It's us over here and it's them over there.
World is not run on emotions. It is run on solid realities of the present such as economy, wealth and power. He is right that world takes India more seriously and why shouldn't it do that? If we had a better economic standing and human rights record, only then could we lecture the world on these things and only then would world take us seriously.
Yes, he pissed India off. But how is that a chest-thumping success? How is that going to change anything? Will world take us seriously now? I call it empty rhetoric because our foreign policy has failed. We couldn't garner the support of merely 16 countries for filing a resolution on Kashmir in United Nations Human Rights Commission. For the resolution to be adopted, it needed further 8 votes. Last time I checked there were 50+ Muslim countries in the world. Your foreign policy and claim of being the leader of Muslim world has failed. Shouting in front of Uniter Nations' General Assembly for three times more than the allotted time isn't going to make much difference. Actions speak louder than words!
Some people are comparing his speech with Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's "courageous" speech in UN on 15th of December, 1971. We all know what happened the next day, don't we? The difference between courage and stupidity is defined by the results that are achieved. The head of states are not activists or motivational speakers that they lecture others to take action. They are not Greta Thunberg, who can move the world by her emotional outburst, even when she was factual and precise despite all those emotions. It doesn't work this way. Head of states are guided by action and substance.
I don't want to start a debate on Islamophobia. But let me ask Mr. PM, did he include Ahmadis and Shia in 1.3 billion Muslims? Do we ourselves not hurt each others religious sentiments ourselves? Not one single sect considers other sects true Muslims. Takfir and sectarian violence within our societies is a normal thing. He said terrorism has no religion. But have you considered this fact that terrorists extract all their ideological motivations from religion? Do our religious scholars not endorse their Jihad, let alone condemn it? Does an exploding Muslim due to religious reasons not scare someone? What have we done to reduce the sentiment of so-called Islamophobia in west? We leave our countries ridden with economic instability and sectarian and state violence and then try to establish the same in west. We tell them to respect our religious sentiments. And when they come to our countries, we again tell them to cover themselves and to be respectful. And they do. What else do you want? Beggars can't be choosers. Are the people of Yemen and Syria not Muslims? Who is killing them? Is the war in the Middle East not a result of sectarian clash and power politics of two Muslim countries? Who gave the refuge to Yemeni and Syrian refuges when war broke out? How Muslim countries close their borders to Muslim refuges, whether Syrian, Yemenis or Palestianians, in these cases, is not some secret. Just one day before this speech in UNGA, Pakistan voted against extending the on-going investigation on war crimes in Yemen, alongside Saudi Arabia and India. And yet, we have the audacity to call upon the hypocrisy of "west" against Muslims. Furthermore, human rights violations, racism and anti-Muslim bigotry (a right word for Islamophobia) are real issues and more people in west speak about it considering it their own problem than us. We do not have a power position or moral standing to lecture them on this, also considering what we are doing to our own minorities.
We should come out of the delusions that we have surrounded ourselves with and better work on ourselves. Talking about Kashmir and the plight of Kashmiris is great but what have we done to reduce their plight in real? Talking about Human Rights is easy when you try to score some political points or to support your empty rhetoric but the defenders of human rights in your own country have to run for their lives. They are called traitors, persecuted, lynched by mobs, killed by their closed ones, threatened and chased by security apparatus, abducted and made to flee from the country. The issue of human rights is called a foreign and western agenda here and is frowed upon. Selective outrage won't help. World is not stupid. They can see through your selective humanity.
This speech can give some simpletons goosebumbps and pamper their feelings of grandeur but not to anyone with critical insight of current politics, history and international relations. And even if one ignores all above as a mere rant of some desi liberal, the end justifies the mean. Let's wait for the results of the speech. Let's see if the world really moves after this. I am sure, deep down, you are also wondering how any word of this speech will make any practical difference. The real courage comes from accepting the truth.
