Pakistan today finds itself ‘caught’ between a dead yesterday and an unborn tomorrow. The right term may be ‘suspended’. Or frozen. Suspended between an era that is dead— and an era that is yet to take birth. Frozen between a state that was. And a state that will be.
Look for a word ‘LIMBO’ in the dictionary and you will know what I am trying to mean.
Being here where Pakistan happens to finds itself to be, would not have been as mind-jolting or terrifying as it is, if the Nation had not been faced with challenges of astronomical proportions on two fronts.
(1) The country is in a state of war. Our soldiers are laying down lives on day-to-day basis against an enemy that is both visible and invisible. It is visible because we know its identity. Every now and then its guns fire death and destruction on the innocent civilians living close to the control line in Kashmir. It is invisible because it is waging an unconventional war through what we frequently call TERRORISTS but who in reality are saboteurs, infiltrators, and hired assassins. These camouflaged soldiers of the ENEMY also have facilitators in our own ranks. Our security forces which include the Pak Army are engaged determinedly and heroically in a deadly exercise to secure every inch of our homeland from the wiles of this treacherous enemy.
(2) The country is faced with an increasingly probable possibility of an economic meltdown because of the debt-burden that has been piled up because of the sinister policies of the Nawaz-Ishaque axis.
To combat this multi-challenge we need a functional and credible government that is not loaded with scandals, guilt, inertia ineptness and corruption.
Pakistan does have a government. But it is a government that is bonded to the dead yesterday and is ill-prepared to realize that the DEAD belong to the graves and not to the positions of high responsibility.
Pakistan cannot afford to remain suspended in this state for long. Some force has to emerge to snatch the country from the clutches of LIMBO.