“May God bless that poor woman and keep her safe. She has suffered enough. The rest of us, our suffering in this third phase of Pakistan’s history may just be beginning.”

PHASE one was state construction and finding ties to bind a new nation. Roughly between 1947 and 1958, when the political class was quickly overtaken and subjugated by a military and bureaucratic elite in the permanent state. Religion was quickly identified as the binding tie with potential in a country of diverse people and political histories.

Phase two began in the late 1970s. Three events in relatively quick succession that took the militarised and bureaucratised state and the experimentation with religious nationalism in the first three decades to the next level. The three events: the Zia coup and his Islamisation drive; the Iranian revolution just as petrodollars were turbocharging regional politics; and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan under the Cold War overhang.

For at least two decades since the late 1970s, much of what Pakistan did or responded to stemmed from a combination of the three events layered on top of the original militarised and bureaucratised state and the experimentation with religious nationalism. There is no authoritative tome on that phase because we haven’t produced a world-class historian or political scientist since to write the book. There lies its own tale of sorrow.

The first contradiction is rooted in the second war in Afghanistan. If we helped the mujahideen defeat the Soviets, then how can we help the Americans fight the Taliban, drawn from the same inspiration as the mujahideen? Both wars can’t be right, and we’ve never had the courage to say the first one was wrong.

May God bless that poor woman and keep her safe. She has suffered enough. The rest of us, our suffering in this third phase of Pakistan’s history may just be beginning.

https://www.dawn.com/news/1443480/the-third-phase