'Pakistan's creation of Jihadi culture is a bleeding wound'

New Delhi, Nov 5 (IANS) Pakistan is confronted with four bleeding wounds, which include the country’s sick economy, political instability, security situation, and ever-growing corruption gripping national life that no government has been able to fix, a media report said.

The article in the Lahore-based Friday Times newspaper laments the creation of Jihadi culture in Pakistan, which "generated several militant organisations for jihad in Afghanistan and Jammu and Kashmir, many of which were patronised by the security establishment for their strategic use. Many jihadist organisations were banned by General (Pervez) Musharraf after the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2002. They turned against Pakistan, and General Musharraf merged into one organisation called TTP".

The article states that there was no security issue before Pakistan’s plunge into the first Afghan Jihad. "From 1982 to 1985, we recruited, indoctrinated, radicalised, trained in camps on our soil and launched into Afghanistan for guerrilla warfare a force of over 85,000 mujahideen. These jihadists came from different Muslim countries. The credit for this spectacular task was claimed by General Zia (ul-Haq) and General Akhtar (Abdur Rehman). The Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, but these jihadists remained in Pakistan as the countries of their origin refused to take them back. Many had married local girls and were allowed to settle down in the tribal agencies," the article observed.

It further states that this jihad project made Pakistan self-sufficient in drug production, drug addicts, Kalashnikov rifles, and religious militancy. In 1985, Pakistan could boast of having 1.5 million heroin addicts, while this scourge was non-existent in 1978. Again, Pakistan became part of the anti-terrorism war in 2001 and lost over 80,000 precious lives of its security personnel and citizens in terrorist attacks and suicide bombings.

On the economic front, Pakistan has chronically faced a shortage of foreign exchange reserves, food insecurity, stagnant exports, rising imports, dire balance of payments, ever-expanding non-developmental expenditures, reckless wastage of resources, uneven landholdings, unsustainable burden of defence budget, unending obsession with loans and foreign aid, unjust taxation and exploitative practices for recovery of taxes, the article points out.

"We face the unchecked growth of population, the unplanned expansion of our cities and the swelling number of unskilled youth with no jobs or livelihood. They seek employment abroad, and only fall prey to human smugglers and die a helpless death in foreign waters," the article states.

"The poverty ratio has grown to 45 per cent. The foreign exchange reserves have hovered around 14–15 billion dollars, the bigger part of which consists of safe deposits or rolled-over loans of some friendly countries. We face the humiliating conditions imposed by International Financial Institutions on our sovereign autonomy, but avoid drastically reducing our non-developmental expenditures; abolishing privileges of the elite that devour over $17.5 billion, and taking other structural steps to reform our economy and live with honour, dignity and pride instead of kowtowing to friendly friends for dole-outs," the article observes.

The article also laments that Pakistan has never had any political stability conducive to the free exercise of our fundamental rights as provided in the Constitution, with free and fair, non-controversial elections under an independent and impartial Election Commission. In this context, it also refers to the secession of East Pakistan to form Bangladesh due to the imposition of martial law after the election in December 1970.

--IANS

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