Pakistan, a Sleeping Superpower

In the 60s the building that we all know as Habib Bank Plaza in Karachi
was the tallest building all the way from the Middle East down to
Singapore. In the 1960s almost every army, navy and air force in the
Middle East was manned by Pakistani officers and men. We literally raised
those armed forces. Many airlines that operate from the Gulf have
actually been trained, organized and manned by PIA. Sure, Pakistan has
fallen on tough times. But let all Pakistanis take strength from the fact
that this great country needs to be put back on the track from which it got
derailed in the 1960s. We Pakistanis have to once again regain our lost
glory.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—Way back in the 1960s Pakistan was truly on the move.

The early Ayub years gave us the “Green Revolution” because of the
construction and commissioning of dams such as Mangla and Tarbela. Barrages
were erected all the way down to the Guddu near Hyderabad.

These dams and barrages gave birth to an efficient network of canals and small
distributaries which in the sixties not only made Pakistan self-sufficient but
surplus in agricultural products.

In the 60s the building that we all know as Habib Bank Plaza in Karachi was the
tallest building all the way from the Middle East down to Singapore. In the
1960s almost every army, navy and air force in the Middle East was manned by
Pakistani officers and men. We literally raised those armed forces.

Many airlines that operate from the Gulf have actually been trained, organized
and manned by PIA staff when they initially started operations. Today they are
amongst the best in the world while PIA is in a total mess.

In 1972 it was Pakistan that created history and paved the way for the world to
move in the direction that it actually has moved by being instrumental in
bringing about President Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing (then Peking). That
visit helped both China and USA equally and opened the world to be shaped as
it is today. Not long after that, in 1979, if Pakistan had not taken on the USSR
on its own initially, along with the Afghan Mujahideen, the world today would
have been very different.

One can go on recounting many more aspects of Pakistan to show what a

potently viable country it should have been today with an economy strong
enough to stand it in good stead for exercising an independent foreign policy as
well as in bringing about an environment in which the country would have had
a content population which would, in turn, have excluded space to all sorts of
disruptions.

What, then, went wrong and why do people now talk in terms of whether
Pakistan will be able to outlast its present crisis?

Pakistan indeed lost its way in the years that followed the incidents I have
quoted; military coups, the judicial murder of an elected prime minister,
frequent derailing of the political process, an erratic foreign policy pursued by
a bunch of minds that were driven by reasons other than prudent statecraft,
importing of self-seeking bankers and making them prime ministers, denying of
provincial autonomy to the federating units, allowing ethnic and other kinds of
militancy to grow, letting fiefdoms be created right under the nose of the
state, making talent become subservient to cronyism, treating education as if
it was insignificant and so much more is all responsible for the dire straits we
find ourselves in after having made a great start in the early years of our
freedom.

It is said that South Korea laid its foundations for progress and prosperity on
Pakistan’s First Five Year Plan. Pakistan never made a second five-year plan
and in fact the First Five Year Plan was followed by unplanned improvisation.
Who knows, had Pakistan followed its own First Five Year Plan like South Korea
did, in the subsequent years Pakistan too may well have been one of the
biggest economies of the world today. (South Korea is now the fourth-biggest
of Asia and the world’s 15th.)

Most Pakistanis are known to have a strong faith in the country’s ability to
bounce back from the wilderness. Pakistan is not a country that can be written
off because a handful of insurgents have taken the state on frontally and
because the state has not responded as responsibly as it ought to have ever
since the crisis was evolving. Reacting to situations when crises explode in the
face cannot be the best of situations for any state.

The present crisis should never have gotten to where it now stands. Now that it
has and now that it has to be handled, let all Pakistanis take strength from the
fact that this great country needs to be put back on the track from which it got
derailed in the 1960s.

We Pakistanis have to once again regain our lost glory and win back our
rightful, respectable and dignified place in the comity of nations. We can and
must do it.