Part 9
By Iqbal Hamza
Another major factor driving Pakistan’s military regime toward collapse is its persistent evasion of responsibility. For decades, Pakistani generals have killed or disappeared tens of thousands of people to protect their illegitimate rule.
They have subjected the public to every imaginable form of oppression, and it is precisely these injustices that pushed ordinary citizens toward armed resistance and jihad.
Today, as these same Muslims wage a daily armed struggle in pursuit of their rights, the generals refuse to reflect on their own failures. Instead of acknowledging their mistakes, they accuse neighboring countries of stirring up unrest. They claim that these oppressed people are acting at the instigation of foreign countries and are attempting to undermine Pakistan’s security.
Yet these oppressive generals never pause to consider the deeper reality. They never ask why these people were driven to take up arms in the first place. By refusing to accept responsibility for their own abuses and unlawful conduct, and by absolving themselves by insisting that foreign powers are behind the unrest, they are in fact preparing a deadly storm for themselves.
We have a clear example of this pattern in neighboring Afghanistan. When the armed resistance against foreign occupiers began, the Afghan Republic adopted the very same narrative. For twenty continuous years, it insisted that those fighting against it were Pakistanis, and it blamed Pakistan for every challenge it faced.
The Afghan Republic held numerous meetings with Pakistan and, in an effort to win its cooperation, granted concessions such as allowing barbed-wire fencing along the Durand Line. At the same time, it shifted the blame for its own injustices onto Pakistan. Anyone who raised a rightful voice against the Republic’s abuses was smeared with the label Punjabi.
Today Pakistan’s military regime is imitating the fallen Afghan Republic in exactly the same manner. Every oppressed individual is portrayed as a foreign agent. The regime violates the rights of the public, kills Pakistani civilians, and engages in every manner of oppression and corruption. Yet whenever someone raises a rightful cry for justice, the authorities silence them by accusing them of working for neighboring countries.
We witnessed with our own eyes how this failed policy led to the downfall of the Afghan Republic. If Pakistan’s military regime continues down this same path, refuses to engage with its armed opponents, rejects their legitimate demands, and denies them their rights, while continuing to excuse itself by insisting they are nothing more than foreign-backed mercenaries, then the military regime in Pakistan will face the same inescapable collapse that overtook the former Afghan Republic.
