Pakistan at war.

For the past weeks, it is crystal clear to all of us that Pakistan is engaged in a war to define itself. For those of us who are abroad, we have been witness to a Pakistan that has been changing over the past many years, and not always for the better. We have struggled at various periods to convince those around us that the Pakistan we see on CNN and BBC, is not the Pakistan we belong to and love. Whether we choose to accept it or not, it is that Pakistan that this war against extremism is trying to find and protect.

I concur with many of the reports and opinion pieces which fill our newspapers and television screens that war and conquest are not the only way with which we restore the writ of the state, and some semblance of law and order to our largely ungoverned nation. Many of the changes needed will be structural, and will require us to work long and hard to create a nation state which protects and nurtures its population. Yet, those changes cannot occur in a state of fear and oppression from life itself. We have been held hostage as a nation to extremist ideology for long enough. While it is a mind set that has to change, it cannot occur as long as we have two, three or ten thousand hardened militants whose only purpose is to wreak havoc and destruction. Our military is fighting our true enemy. They are fighting those who seek to bring nothing but destruction to our nation. While we can contend and argue about what brought us to this point, can we not all concede that the destruction we have seen in Peshawar and Rawalpindi has to stop? There can be no more room in our national dialogue for those who see destruction as the only way.

Yet, why is it that it is only the military which is at war? Why is the rest of the nation still focused on essential inanities like the NRO? Why are the senior leaders in government planning trips to watch cricket in Dubai and Abu Dhabi? How can it seem that in a time when we are fighting to define what we will stand for, what we will believe in as nation, that its business as usual in the corridors of government? Why are we not seeing our leaders at the front, acknowledging the sacrifices of our soldiers and the sacrifices of those innocents who live in Waziristan? Why is every single death of one of our soldiers not shown for what it is: the ultimate sacrifice of a young life to protect not only our physical bodies, but our identity as a nation and as a people?

May Allah grant us all peace in this world.