Pakistan-Saudi Arabia mutual defense pact: News & Discussion

[030292]

I will bet my left arm - that if a similar "climb aboard" situation happens in Pakistan as it did in Afghanistan or Vietnam - those planes would fill so much they would not take off.

The problem is that those that stay behind are branded as terrorists because they want more from the state than merely being guns for hire by gcc and yanks.

 

[Oscar]

The problem is that those that stay behind are branded as terrorists because they want more from the state than merely being guns for hire by gcc and yanks.

Which is also valid - A lot of people who stay are not simple, not sold, and not waiting for a ticket. They want a state that does more than manage crises and export labour. They want schools that work, hospitals that don’t humiliate you, a police that isn’t a daily rishwat "tax" , a future for their kids that doesn’t depend on a visa lottery. Wanting that is not betrayal. It is the most normal political demand in any country.

Pakistan’s discourse is lazy and cruel in cycles. Dissent gets smeared. People asking for a fuller social contract get painted as anti-state, foreign-funded, or “fitna,” while the only patriotism some loud voices recognise is silence, slogans, or usefulness to someone else’s security agenda. That is a sickness in our political language. A citizen is not a terrorist because he refuses to accept that the country’s highest purpose is to be manpower for the Gulf or a file in someone else’s war.

A Pakistani state worthy of the name is not doomed to only two ugly scripts. It does not have to live as hired muscle or convenient manpower for the GCC and the Americans... AND it also does not have to get pulled into Iranian proxy contests because a sectarian politics has been captured and instrumentalized from outside. Both are forms of outsourcing the country’s purpose. Both reduce citizens to tools in other people’s rivalries.

Ordinary people who reject that and who want Pakistan to be a normal state for its own public, not a front line in someone else’s sectarian or great-power game are not traitors. They are asking for sovereignty in the only sense that matters day to day: policy shaped by our own social contract, not by whoever is paying, pressuring, or preaching loudest this year.

Not everyone who leaves is a mercenary for foreign powers, and not everyone who stays is automatically the moral center. Plenty leave because the state failed them in ordinary ways in terms of jobs, schools, safety, dignity and not because they wanted to become hired guns. Plenty stay because of family, property, love of place, or majboori, not only because they are holding a noble line.

If we flatten leavers into sellouts and stayers into branded victims, we recreate the same cartoon politics that already damages us.

Read the airport example as a warning about how thin the bargain has become for too many. The answer is not to romanticize exit, and not to romanticize suffering at home either. It is to build a Pakistan where capable people don’t need foreign insurance or pacts to raise their children and where wanting that does not get you put in a suspect box.

That - would take seriously strong arguments to disagree with.

 

[030292]

Which is also valid - A lot of people who stay are not simple, not sold, and not waiting for a ticket. They want a state that does more than manage crises and export labour. They want schools that work, hospitals that don’t humiliate you, a police that isn’t a daily rishwat "tax" , a future for their kids that doesn’t depend on a visa lottery. Wanting that is not betrayal. It is the most normal political demand in any country.

Pakistan’s discourse is lazy and cruel in cycles. Dissent gets smeared. People asking for a fuller social contract get painted as anti-state, foreign-funded, or “fitna,” while the only patriotism some loud voices recognise is silence, slogans, or usefulness to someone else’s security agenda. That is a sickness in our political language. A citizen is not a terrorist because he refuses to accept that the country’s highest purpose is to be manpower for the Gulf or a file in someone else’s war.

A Pakistani state worthy of the name is not doomed to only two ugly scripts. It does not have to live as hired muscle or convenient manpower for the GCC and the Americans... AND it also does not have to get pulled into Iranian proxy contests because a sectarian politics has been captured and instrumentalized from outside. Both are forms of outsourcing the country’s purpose. Both reduce citizens to tools in other people’s rivalries.

Ordinary people who reject that and who want Pakistan to be a normal state for its own public, not a front line in someone else’s sectarian or great-power game are not traitors. They are asking for sovereignty in the only sense that matters day to day: policy shaped by our own social contract, not by whoever is paying, pressuring, or preaching loudest this year.

Not everyone who leaves is a mercenary for foreign powers, and not everyone who stays is automatically the moral center. Plenty leave because the state failed them in ordinary ways in terms of jobs, schools, safety, dignity and not because they wanted to become hired guns. Plenty stay because of family, property, love of place, or majboori, not only because they are holding a noble line.

If we flatten leavers into sellouts and stayers into branded victims, we recreate the same cartoon politics that already damages us.

Read the airport example as a warning about how thin the bargain has become for too many. The answer is not to romanticize exit, and not to romanticize suffering at home either. It is to build a Pakistan where capable people don’t need foreign insurance or pacts to raise their children and where wanting that does not get you put in a suspect box.

That - would take seriously strong arguments to disagree with.

Thank you so much for investing the time to comprehensively reply to my post, really appreciate that sir.