The appointment of Pakistan as the non-member, non-executive President of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) for a fixed two-year term exhibits nothing but institutional sclerosis, myopia, chilling indifference, western hubris, systematic denial and gaslighting. The fine art of political parody has got a new genre. There are no analogues to this in recent memory.
Pakistan is a threat to regional stability, peace, and security to all three countries it shares its biggest land borders: India, Afghanistan, and Iran.
Pakistan: A Terror Factory
Islamabad has painstakingly followed the same terror template and modus operandi through proxy actors, sleeper cells, border infiltration, narco trafficking and terrorist groups in all three countries.
It is the scourge of terrorism and the fount of religious fanaticism in South Asia, a launchpad for Beijing’s hegemony, and the menace that precludes broader regional connectivity in the region that’s home to a quarter of the world’s population. SAARC( South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation), founded in 1985, was rendered dysfunctional mainly due to Pak sponsored terrorism.
Over the years, UNSC has been unable to prevent the flare-up of any large conflict and is in a dire need of restructuring. The post World War 2 system has largely been characterized by strong inertial headwinds that resist any progress towards equitable power sharing, and a deeper and more multifaceted understanding of conflict resolutions.
Any litany of the myriad failures of UNSC, and its role as a mute spectator, from Belgrade to Baghdad, will fill up encyclopedic volumes. What was envisioned as the high-table of responsible big powers, often acts as a hand-maiden of unilateralism.
Pakistan’s role in aiding and abetting insurgency and terrorism is well known. Its gross violation of human rights from Bangladesh in the 1970s to Balochistan in the mid 2000s, needs no further elaboration to even a high-school student.
Two-Tier Citizenship in Pakistan
The state-sanctioned discrimination against the Ahmediyas, with a population of five million, violates all the UN charters as well as norms of basic decency in any civil society.
The Islamist character of the Pakistani state and its osmosis in society is an open secret. Only the willfully and nihilistically blind remain suspended in perennial naysaying and denial. As per a Pew Survey, only 7% of Pakistani citizens consider Ahmediyas as Muslims. Others still dwell in the mind frames established by General Zia-ul-Haq’s Hudood Ordnance in 1979.
In the province of Panjab, the country’s economic powerhouse, the appointment for street cleansers and sweepers is restricted to only the country’s minority Christians, which is satirized in the Muhammad Hanif novel ‘Our Lady of Alice Bhatti’.
The ‘purity hunts’ against non-muslims and other minorities in this literal ‘Land of the Pure’, have been well documented.
In what’s exemplar of perfect legal gymnastics, the sovereignty of this country still vests with God, as per the Objectives Resolution of 1949. The radical chics and flak catchers of today who lose no breath to virtue-signal and berate other countries and political setups over the most minor infractions, are seen nowhere when the sins of the Pakistani state are tabulated.
A Fusion of Agenda
The strategic utility of Pakistan as a ‘Frontline State’ to the western war-mongers is well known. Now strategy, tactics, and politics all fuse.
“Pakistan was a nation conceived in fear, born in bitterness, and broken in folly. It took less than 25 years to prove to the world, if not to itself, that a nation created out of negatives was founded on sand”, wrote James Cameron, the British foreign correspondent, after the creation of Bangladesh in 1971
From genocide, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and religious persecution, Pakistan has achieved a dubious distinction like no other country. Yet all leading global institutions, World Bank to the UN, have scrambled to keep the basket-case afloat and the rentier class happy.
Samuel P. Huntington was prescient when he said in 1993 that “the most dangerous clashes of the future are likely to arise from the interaction of Western arrogance, Islamic intolerance, and Sinic assertiveness”. All of these three traits combine in the mollycoddling of Pakistan, which hedges between the Chi-Pak, or the China-Pakistan axis, as well the West led alliance.
That said, Western conceit, duplicity, and Orwellian Newspeak, has few takers today. For India and the larger third world, increased mutual cooperation, free trade agreements, and multilateral concords is the way to go.
