Lahore Attacks:A RAW Deal or Chicken Coming Home to Roost?

The frontal (and brazen) attacks on the cultural heart of Pakistan points out to the systemic nature of problems that Pakistan faces. These attacks along with the general state of contemporary Pakistan have the making or the trappings of a bizarre Kafkaesque drama unfolding in Pakistan. As a corollary, credence is lent to the oft repeated assertion that the ‘land of the pure’ is in the grips(or throes) of a severe identity crisis and is essentially at war with itself. It is too facile and simplistic to finger point at either India’s intelligence services or the usual run of the mill ‘foreign hand’ thing. The coordinated assaults in tandem with gory instances of suicide bombings across Pakistan come at a critical juncture: the expansion of war by Pakistan’s state apparatus (or the army) in Pakistan’s tribal areas and given the choice of targets is clearly meant to send a strong signal or make a strong statement. That is, the people orchestrating these daring attacks are demonstrating their ability to challenging the writ of the fragile Pakistani state anywhere in the territory of Pakistan, by implication mocking the state apparatus of Pakistan and thereby demonstrating that they too can enlarge or expand the conflict and take the battle to the enemy.(The enemy here is obviously the Pakistani state).In this asymmetric conflict or more appropriately war, the losers are the state and people of Pakistan. The question that arises or the apposite question is: why have things come to this bloody pass? The answer is complicated given the complex and complicated tangle that Pakistan has gotten itself into. However a sober analysis of the nature of the Pakistani state, its concomitant or attendant trajectory and policy stances (or postures) may yield some insights. It stands to reason that the Pakistani state has, given the ambiguity or the dissonance between the rhetoric that underpinned its formation, the nature of its state formation and its various permutations and combinations, has morphed into a national security state with the army at the heart of this institutional complex. Supported by a web of intelligence agencies and other ancillary state apparatii, this condition has entailed the morphing or degenerating of politics or the political process into mere administration. A natural concomitant of this degeneration is the cacophony of unrealistic demands and pressures on the Pakistani state which, in turn has led to a loss of focus and concentration of resources towards insalubrious ends. Hence state society relations in Pakistan remain or are comprehensively at odds with each other. Allied or wedded to this condition is the foreign policy stance of the Pakistani state. It(stance) means constant confrontation with its largest neighbor , India and the kind of interest in Afghanistan whose nature has been unsalutary for Pakistan and its politics. The means employed has entailed instrumentalizing Pakistan’s youth bulge towards ends that the Pakistani establishment deems as its overarching national interest. The concatenation of these elements, in turn has meant that Pakistan, in its external posture plays a double game or adopts a posture where a delicate balancing act is inherent .Pak-United States relation and its various permutations and combinations may be a classic instance of this. In this situation, state society relations suffer and mutual acrimony and suspicion defines the relationship between the US and Pakistan. On one end of the spectrum, Pakistan’s cosying up to the US in the post Cold War world lends grist to the mill of conspiracy theories whose manifestation is rampant anti Americanism and at the other end disaffection on part of those who have been coopted in the foreign policy posture of Pakistan.The results of all these is contemporary Pakistan: a nation rent and riven by violencs and essentially at war with itself. Now after having identified some of the main features of the Pakistani state and politics inhering in it, the question morphs into: How can Pakistan come out of the problems it has brought upon itself? The answer in the form of a prescription that strikes the mind is wholesale reorientation of the Pakistani state, its political economy, the alignment of the Pakistani state with its society and a foreign policy posture that enables Pakistan to eke out a respectable and honorable status in the comity of nations. More concretely, this means serious introspection and the return of politics to the blight riven land. Or take recourse to a nationalism that is inclusive and reorient the state toward enabling it to meet the real and germane demands of the citizens of Pakistan. Concomitantly this may entail taking a fresh look at relations between India and Pakistan and the dispute over Kashmir. The gelling of these factors or elements and vigorous efforts to bring these to fruition may lead to a naya Pakistan: a Pakistan defined by peace, prosperity and happiness for all its denizens and at peace with itself and the world at large.