Being a Pakistani is synonymous to being emotional. The most common and perhaps the only way in which we show our patriotism to our homeland is by showing hatred for any country that says or does something apparently negative and that too is conditional depending upon our individual perception, preferences and priorities. Our adrenaline takes a sudden steep peak when Pakistan plays a cricket or even a kabaddi match against India yet we wait desperately for the upcoming Shahrukh Khan or Katrina Kaif movie. We use Islamic laws as our shield against Non-Muslim nations when that seems to be the most convenient thing to do and solves our problem easily or puts us in a superior position while simultaneously we absolutely disregard other Islamic rules in our daily proceedings because it requires patience, sacrifice, selflessness, humanity, kindness, generosity and honesty; all of which are challenging virtues to practice. So many people are being killed daily in our country for years and no one is held accountable for it, no one raises voice against it, yet if someone from another country does that we shout and protest. The value of a murdered human in our country is decided by his social/political/financial background, by the nationality and political/social standing of the murderer and how much hype media creates about it. The two men killed by Raymond Davis were average young Pakistani men. They could have been killed by our own police in a so-called “encounter” or had become unfortunate victim of one of so many suicide bombings that happen all around our country or could have been shot dead by mobile snatchers or run over by drunken truck drivers or have become a target of a stray bullet on a new years’ eve. We would have simply read their news while sipping our morning tea without giving a serious thought to it, their death would have just been mentioned as a number that we come across daily in news like “5 people shot dead in various parts of Karachi”. So I ask a question: Why does it hurt our fake pride so much if a US national kills them and why do we not react in the same way if our own countrymen do that? Davis killed only 2 people; that is a below average number of lives we loose daily due to poverty, sexual harassment, mobile snatching, unavailability of standard health care, irresponsible driving, burgling etc. Do we fight this strongly for the lost lives of these innocent people too who die because of any of these reasons?
The truth is we Pakistanis have our fantasies walking with us at all times which put a curtain over the reality. Freedom, individual identity, national solidarity and unity are words associated with our country only on paper; we once read about them in our Pakistan Studies book but these qualities are extinct from our nation on the whole. We choose to live in a bubble and evade from facing this bitter truth but once in a while situations like Davis case burst our fantasy bubble and force us to see our horrible faces in the mirror of reality; we get to witness our weaknesses, mistakes and failures. We don’t have enough courage to admit that the only thing that is left of a nation whose foundation was laid in 1947 is the geographical boundaries on the world map, that the land of the pure is not all that pure anymore, that we have to stop pointing fingers at other nations and blaming them for our failures, that we have to choose our battles wisely and fight with the right enemy, that the conflict lies within us only and that is where we need to focus our protests.
Having said that, I am not defending what Raymond Davis did. I strongly despise his act and do not have words enough to condemn this brutality. But I was hit a thousand times strongly when mobile snatchers killed two young brothers last month in Karachi , when I came across the case of a Pakistani teenage girl who was atrociously killed by her own father, when my country’s police officials raped young girls and threw away their dead bodies inhumanly, when a teenage girl was shot dead by a stray bullet on new years’ eve just because some irresponsible people felt it was their right to ‘enjoy’ this way.
To conclude, I believe we first need to identify and accept bravely our mistakes and shortcomings and then start looking for solutions to get rid of them and finally and most importantly ACT on those solutions to see the desired results. US decide our future and play our strings as those of puppets because we let them do so. We have amputated our own legs and we use US aids as crutches to stand and a nation that has handicapped itself to this extent does not have a right to complain. Just by showing our anger for any and every attack that US does on us and comfortably ignoring the culprits running freely in our own country would do absolutely NO good. No matter what damage US has done in our country, it is still very small in comparison to the mutilation that has been done by our own hands. Once we have cleared up the self-created mess of dishonesty, corruption, selfishness and lust for money and power, then we’d realize that there isn’t anyone left to fight against anymore because true national solidarity and independence speak for itself and no super-power of the world can dare to look inferiorly at the nations that are sovereign, autonomous and self-reliant not just in words but in each and every action.
