Saturday, May 7, 2011

Why Pakistan can't emulate Egypt

Recently one of my friends suggested that there might be an Egypt story waiting to explode in Pakistan and the youth there might bring changes just like they did in Egypt.I beg to differ and here is why: The way I look at it, conditions in Pakistan are RADICALLY different from Egypt. There is something deeply rotten and pervasive about the fundamentalism picture in Pakistan. They have become the biggest exporter of Instability and terrorism worldwide. The elements protecting the fundamentalist forces are too many and too high and too obscure to the rest of the world yet frighteningly obvious to those who oppose them .They don’t hesitate in misleading anybody on anything .American stooges ruling the country or producing any semblance of a “Governed country” are even more helpless and clueless about the whole situation than the Americans and never too sure about their own fate.
In Egypt the uprising was against a corrupt ruler who had been ruling for close to 30 years. Now, thirty years is a really long period and having a single autocratic ruler for close to 30 years says a lot about stability index of a country(I don’t remember any other leader anywhere in the world ruling such a big non communist country sticking to power for so long without any major hiccups).There are some other basic differences, the psyche of Egyptian population is basically Secular (at least anti-fundamentalist)and if you see the historical perspective, although after originating in Egypt, globally MB became the most influential Muslim organization over the years and many of it’s members were involved or said to be involved in radical activities, the leadership of the organization in Egypt from Hassan al Banna to Mohammed Badie had been(or was kept )more towards the centre than right. The concerns of Egyptian population were social and not religious; they were more concerned about the rising wheat prices and dwindling food stocks and 30 years of Loot and mismanagement by Mubarak. In short, we can say that Egyptians might not be very fond of protecting religious rights and heritage of Non-Muslims (you have to take permission directly from the President to construct or repair any non-Muslim religious structure and that is tantamount to forced suicide of the structure in question along with everything that It represented) but they are definitely not fanatic and don’t allow themselves to be led by fanatics. There predominant voices are generally moderate and in the case of recent uprising they had a very strong headed Nobel Laureate in Mohamed Albaradei- who had added advantages of being perceived as strongly anti- American and Pro-Arab- at the helm of the things, therefore when they oppose established leadership they have somebody with a sensible head on his shoulders.
Pakistan has only radicals to lead and even their best brains were seen hobnobbing with Osama.If the topmost nuclear scientist of a country is meeting topmost terrorist of the world ,who has a declared policy of using anything and everything at his disposal to destroy innocent unsuspecting lives,if everybody right from the President of a country to Military and Intelligence heads have a common goal and that is to hide and save terrorists like Osama Bin Laden and Dawood Ibrahim,who are active everywhere from Indonesia to Phillipines to Malaysia to China to Russia to Europe,Africa to US and most of all India,and further if even the slightest moderation is being continuously and ruthlessly obliterated then what hope can we have from the youth or underground rock bands of bringing change.They don’t have any sensible leadership,they don’t have big names(other than all these fundamentalists) to be followed by youths and most of all their anti Americanism/anti Indianism is based on religious grounds .They might have a few sensible voices in Media but as a country they have only three ideologies –Anti- Americanism,Anti-Indianism and fanaticism. Not a very strong ideological base to run a whole country, even more so if you happen to possess a few hundred of nuclear warheads under your belt.
What can be better than having a stable, sensible, prosperous and progressive neighbourhood? But under the present circumstances, it seems too much of wishful thinking.It will take many very lucky Obamas just to clear the surface and the rot deep inside might be totally incurable.