Foreign Hands or Our Perfidy

Facing the past, confronting and accepting the truth is notover-correction. Does it mean that you accept that atrocities were committed; but some of us are accepting more than warranted? With ready made scapegoats at hand, army, mullah, terrorists, sarmaayadaar, corrupt siyasatdaan et al, a long list is available to choose from, as the situation warrants. These elements are not scapegoats; they are the real villains and culprits in various degrees and in various periods of our history. And mostly they have worked in collusion to inflict various crimes on this hapless nation. Instead of facing up to our history objectively; to derive lessons for corrective or overcorrective action, if you please; we tend to bury the past and go into a state of denial. In fact we have never ever learned from our past mistakes/ crimes. Am sure, you are not implying that the past/ actions and conduct of the army, mullahs and terrorists etc have been pristine, innocuous and brimming of propriety? There are even stalwarts among us who deny the existential atrocities, murder and mayhem been committed by the terrorists on daily basis and conveniently attribute it to the elusive foreign hands. Let us for the sake of argument, for a second concede that; all our tribulations and travails are the handiwork of ubiquitous foreign hands; fine, but it still shows our culpability for at the very least, being incompetent and failing to thwart the enemy/ foreign hand actions against us. Or are we only innocent/ passive victims and have no role to play in what befalls us (or what was inflicted upon us in the past). Let me reiterate, what I been stating in this space: burying the truth, denying the facts, having a revisionist approach to history is not going to help us. We must eschew the Ostrich Syndrome. And again, the point is not that; in the context of East Pk debacle, who committed more atrocities; or even who initiated them; the point is that the army and its mercenary adjuncts the infamous Al Shams and Al Badr Brigades also did commit atrocities. It is all on record; deny it all you want to; but the world knows. It is this continuous and adamant denial of our mistakes and history (although there is a vast difference between mistake and crime) and refusal

to learn from it; that we are in such dire straits today. Did we learn from the ill-planned and unnecessary 1965 War? No we did not and repeated the same asinine mistake in Kargil after 34 years (by the way 34 years is a long time to reflect and learn, if one is so inclined!); but since we did nothing wrong, what was there to learn? Did we learn any lessons from how we treated the erstwhile East Pk? No, we did not; because we did nothing wrong; any wrong which was done, was the mischief of foreign hands. And never mind, we have been exactly doing the same in Baluchistan. Due to our acts of omission and commission, we have brought the situation (in Baluchistan) to such a dangerous pass, that the foreign hands have been given an opportunity to interfere. And the irony is that, now where there actually are foreign hands involved we are scared of naming them, (with a few, rare exceptions). On the other hand, even if we attribute all our problems to the machinations and conspiracies of the indefatigable and omnipotent foreign hands; how does it absolves us from the culpability of being incompetent and failing to safeguard our interests? Arent all those innocent scapegoats, you mentioned, collectively responsible for allowing the foreign hands to get there way? No sir, whichever way you look at it; the scapegoats are not innocuous victims of foreign-initiated perfidy. The foreign intervention comes in when 1) you rest your guard and give them a chance 2) when the 5thcolumnists among us, facilitate their nefarious designs 3) when we are in a perpetual state of denial and bury our heads in the sand. There are no dividends in denying the truth we should face up to it and learn from it. Our future is fraught; we are at the most perilous state/ stage of our existence; the least we could do, if nothing else; is to at least accept and owe up to our culpability. Regards, Naeem