Breaking news
Monday, December 01, 2008
Chris Cork
It is high time that a hitherto closely guarded secret was shared with a wider audience. Enormous effort has gone into keeping this particular secret safe, thousands of men and women beaver away in media outlets, government offices and quite possibly the HQ’s of the World Bank and the IMF…all doing their best to keep this one under wraps. The decision to expose this nugget was taken, as befits these things, in a crepuscular coffee shop in the smarter part of Karachi at the dead of night.
Two men sat at a small table. They were alone – the proprietor said that trade was bad because of the economic situation – and they had just enjoyed a rather fine small meal. “I think you should say something,” said the other one. Thus it is that history is made, and those few words have turned the key that now allows sight of our best-kept secret, one so freighted with import that it has been in a lead-lined box for the last sixty-odd years; but now revealed. So here it is…Pakistan is not falling apart.
There…it’s finally out in the open. It flies in the face of conventional wisdom and the majority of doom-merchants who are writing additions to the world’s longest obituary on a daily basis, the legions of aging pundits supplementing their pensions by hiring themselves out to any TV channel that will give them air time and the international observers and chatterboxes who lob brickbats at us from the sidelines. Pakistan is not falling apart. Further, it shows no sign of doing so imminently and – viewed with as much objectivity as can be mustered on a Saturday morning after a late night – has shown little sign of actually collapsing in on itself for more than half a century. This is not to say that as a nation it is in the best of health, because it isn’t, and it suffers a variety of long-term chronic ailments that render it eligible for admission to the acute ward in the Hospital of Nations – there to recover from its latest grapple with infirmity before being discharged to recover as best it can. But failing it isn’t.
One can point to any number of negatives, and there is no shortage of people who draw handsome salaries doing just that, but the fact is that this is not a nation on the brink of collapse – and there are several things that are worth drawing your attention to as evidence of this, Dear Reader. Firstly, I picked up my new CNIC yesterday from the NADRA office in Karachi. The system worked. I filled forms, paid a fee, got my card renewed. Simple, straightforward and efficient. Not the kind of thing you expect in a failed state. I travelled by bus from Bahawalpur to Karachi across an area which foreigners are warned is extremely dangerous. We arrived on time, unscathed and the shuttle-bus dropped me in the city centre. Shortly after arrival I used my ATM card to get money from a bank different to the one I bank with and later used it as a debit card to stock up on books and films. I loaded credit on to my mobile phone, dropped into an Internet café for a quick look at the Indian newspapers and checked out the possibility of a WiFi hookup for my laptop whilst here in town.
These are not things you do in a state that is falling apart. You do not do these things in Ethiopia, Somalia or Chad. Pakistan is not a wholly lawless and ungoverned country. It has a functioning local-government system, a Parliament that meets regularly (if thinly attended), and whilst there is poverty we have not yet dropped into famine – nor does it look like we will. The majority of the land area is not at war with itself and is no more or less safe than downtown Los Angeles. You can travel freely and safely in most areas – I do, often. No, this is not a nation about to fall apart. Mind you, if the national ATM system crashes and a certain Korean bus company shuts up shop – I may have to revise my opinion!
The writer is a British social worker settled in Pakistan. Email:[email protected]
Good article put some reality light to darkness created by the world media.