“Failed” Pakistan in the Eyes of Future Western Historians

If Pakistan really ceases to exist – at least in the present form – in the years to come, as there is a secret US plan, how will the future western historians write about it?

Written by

SOROOR AHMED

Published on

June 14, 2022
If Pakistan really ceases to exist – at least in the present form – in the years to come, as there is a secret US plan, how will the future western historians write about it? Apparently it would be absurd to write an obituary of a country in advance as nations do not die like human beings. Sometimes they are left to survive – at least on paper – by their masters for years, even generations, when in all practical way they are dead.
Whether Pakistan survives in this form or not, many future western historians would write its past in a very different way. They will certainly write that Pakistan ceased to exist or ended up as a failed state because it was a backward feudal country whose people were illiterate, ignorant and stuck to the medieval past. They were narrow-minded bigots who only exported terrorism to the world. Perhaps not even a line or two would be written in the official western history about the positive aspects of this society. None may write that in many social and economic indices it was even better than India. The people were more healthy; gender ratio was better; children not as malnourished as in India or many other developing countries. None would then write that the starvation deaths or farmers’ suicide in Pakistan was much less than India and the overall status of women was still better. Nobody would then write that women as such were much more emancipated than India. There would be no mention of the fact that Herald, a highly reputed newsmagazine of that country, had all-women editorial staff – right from Editor to trainee sub-editors – way back in mid-1980s. Perhaps nowhere in the West had an all-women team been taking out such a high standard magazine and that too about a quarter century back.
Some stray mention may be made about Pakistan’s rare achievements in the field of cricket, hockey and squash. So far its headway in the nuclear research is concerned the future western historians would make only passing reference – and that too in an entirely negative sense. They would not say that it was the achievement of the scientists of that country, but would dismiss the whole story by stating that Abdul Qadeer Khan was an international smuggler.
Perhaps not a single line would be written on Pakistan’s rarest feat – the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in 1988 and its subsequent dismemberment. The Americans have already usurped that credit even when there is no denying the fact that their role in the Afghan war of 1980s was minimal. It was the people of Afghanistan, with the help of the then Pak government, who ensured the retreat of the world’s second most powerful country.
Just as today when we do not know any positive characteristics of the Mughal rule before 1857, hardly anything good would be taught to the school-children in the future. The white-skinned political masters would then create a Sir Syed to tell the people of that part of the country that your state had failed because you did not adopt western science and the English language. You were an ignorant and illiterate bunch of jehadis who had nothing to do with ‘development’. Then a la Mohammadan Anglo-Oriental College or Aligarh Muslim University or an American ‘Islamic’ University may come up in Karachi, Islamabad or Lahore to ‘educate’ the upcoming generation. The new generation will then produce a whole lot of ‘thinkers’ in that country who would then parrot what the West wanted them to do.
Sufism would be taught in the name of Islam. The new generation teachers would teach pseudo-science in place of science or social science. The process of civilizing the ‘uncouth’ people of that failed nation would start.
The intellectual bombardment then would be so strong that none would then dare to say that the failed state of Pakistan then had certain great qualities. None would say that Pakistan was once a fairly modern state, which in its few decades of existence made some very good material development.
Perhaps nobody would then be left to state that Pakistan failed not because it had all the above-mentioned bad qualities but because it lost its destination at the time of its very birth. It came up in the name of Islam, but within five years of its existence the society got divided first on language issue, which two decades later led to its first dismemberment – creation of Bangladesh. Nobody would then blame rulers like Ghulam Mohammad, Firoz Khan Noon, Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Perwez Musharraf, Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif etc., though they were all either downright corrupt, despotic or simply inefficient and drunkard, who danced to the tune of the United States.
In fact, the future historians would find little fault with the above eight or so personalities who ruled Pakistan. Like in the case of Emperor Aurangzeb today these future writers would put all the blame of the failure of Pakistan on one man, General Zia-ul-Haq, who notwithstanding all his fault can still boast of having one achievement up the sleeve – the defeat of Soviet Union and its dismemberment. He managed to do so when Soviet Union had all the plan to invade Pakistan to reach the Arabian Sea.
History, especially the official version of the modern times, is written in this very manner. Future historians would blame Islam for all the ills that plagued the failed state of Pakistan while the fact is that Islam had nothing to do with the dismemberment of that country in 1971 and its failure much later. Pakistan failed because the state had no ideological commitment, the people, especially the ruling class, had become corrupt and luxurious-minded and had absolutely nothing to do with Islam.