• Top Story
  • Weekly
  • Latest
  • Editorial
  • Opinion
  • Interview
  • Feature
  • Sports
  • News
  • J&K
  • World
  • Education
  • Health
  • Economy
  • Culture
  • Literature
  • Lifestyle
  • Books
What's Hot

Belt and Road Initiative: How Real is ‘Debt-trap Diplomacy’?

January 8, 2025

Why Pegasus Report Must be Made Public

December 25, 2024

America’s Waning Global Position

November 4, 2024
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
Trending
  • Belt and Road Initiative: How Real is ‘Debt-trap Diplomacy’?
  • Why Pegasus Report Must be Made Public
  • America’s Waning Global Position
  • Book Review—Shawls and Shawlbafs of Kashmir
  • Hundreds of Sheep Face Starvation as Forest Officials Bar Grazing
  • Photo Essay: Fire Fighting Service In Dal Lake
  • Pheran—How Kashmir’s Traditional Attire Evolved Through Centuries
  • Pheran—How Kashmir’s Traditional Attire Evolved Through Centuries
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
 Kashmir Newsline – Expression Unleashed Kashmir Newsline – Expression Unleashed
  • Weekly

    Weekly Dec 25 – Dec 31, 2022

    December 25, 2022

    Weekly Dec 05 – 11 Dec,2022

    December 7, 2022

    Weekly Nov 28 – Dec 04, 2022

    November 30, 2022

    Weekly November 21-27

    November 22, 2022

    Weekly November 14-20

    November 16, 2022
  • News
    1. India
    2. South Aisa
    3. World
    Featured
    Recent

    Belt and Road Initiative: How Real is ‘Debt-trap Diplomacy’?

    January 8, 2025

    Why Pegasus Report Must be Made Public

    December 25, 2024

    America’s Waning Global Position

    November 4, 2024
  • Feature
    1. Interview
    2. Literature
    3. Editorial
    4. Opinion
    5. Top Story
    6. Books
    7. View All

    Interview: ‘Travel, Observing and Tasting is the Best Way to Learn’

    October 2, 2023

    AS Dulat’s Kashmir Stories

    February 4, 2023

    Interview: ‘People are Deeply Pained by Mirwaiz’s Absence from Jamia Masjid’

    November 16, 2022

    ‘Abrogation of Article 370 has Made Kashmir More Dangerous than 1990s’

    October 18, 2022

    The Poet of Love—Daagh Dehlvi’s Poetry has Native Idiom and Sufi Undercurrent

    May 30, 2023

    The Breadth and Sweep of Sahir Ludhianvi’s Works

    March 8, 2023

    Memories of Gulmarg

    January 28, 2023

    ‘If This Language Lives On, Rahi Also Lives On’

    January 18, 2023

    Kashmir Needs Collective Fight against Glaring Drug Abuse

    December 27, 2022

    Healthcare Emergency

    December 7, 2022

    Traffic Mess: Who is to Blame? 

    November 30, 2022

    Give the Artists the Space They Need

    November 23, 2022

    Belt and Road Initiative: How Real is ‘Debt-trap Diplomacy’?

    January 8, 2025

    Why Pegasus Report Must be Made Public

    December 25, 2024

    America’s Waning Global Position

    November 4, 2024

    Writer’s Block What!

    October 8, 2023

    Belt and Road Initiative: How Real is ‘Debt-trap Diplomacy’?

    January 8, 2025

    Why Pegasus Report Must be Made Public

    December 25, 2024

    America’s Waning Global Position

    November 4, 2024

    Book Review—Shawls and Shawlbafs of Kashmir

    September 12, 2024

    Book Review—Shawls and Shawlbafs of Kashmir

    September 12, 2024

    Book Review: The Divine Dialect of Flowers

    October 5, 2023

    The Collision That Birthed Religion

    March 18, 2023

    Book Review: What is the Meter of the Dictionary?

    March 2, 2023

    Belt and Road Initiative: How Real is ‘Debt-trap Diplomacy’?

    January 8, 2025

    Why Pegasus Report Must be Made Public

    December 25, 2024

    America’s Waning Global Position

    November 4, 2024

    Book Review—Shawls and Shawlbafs of Kashmir

    September 12, 2024
  • J&K

    Hundreds of Sheep Face Starvation as Forest Officials Bar Grazing

    March 14, 2024

    Photo Essay: Fire Fighting Service In Dal Lake

    March 8, 2024

    Tatakooti—Challenges of Owning a Towering Peak

    October 5, 2023

    Interview: ‘Travel, Observing and Tasting is the Best Way to Learn’

    October 2, 2023

    What is Ailing the Apple Farming?

    September 16, 2023
  • Lifestyle

    Eating Together Binds Families

    November 22, 2022

    How Smartphones are Harming Children

    October 25, 2022

    Raising a Champion

    October 11, 2022

    The Reluctant ‘Urban Poor’

    August 28, 2022

    The Reluctant ‘Urban Poor’

    August 21, 2022
  • Economy

    Explained: What is a Credit Score and Why is it Important?

    December 27, 2022

    Rights of Special Bank Customers

    November 30, 2022

    How to be a Socially Responsible Investor

    November 23, 2022

    Stock Exchange Crimes

    November 16, 2022

    Avoid Debt Trap

    November 8, 2022
  • Culture
  • Entertainment
  • Sports

    Tatakooti—Challenges of Owning a Towering Peak

    October 5, 2023

    When Salim was in the Mood

    July 12, 2023

    Why Does Team India Fail Consistently?

    December 27, 2022

    Hail Ben Stokes and Co.

    December 7, 2022

    England Tour of Pakistan

    November 30, 2022
 Kashmir Newsline – Expression Unleashed Kashmir Newsline – Expression Unleashed
Home»Opinion»Pakistan—the Ship is Sinking
Opinion

Pakistan—the Ship is Sinking

Kashmir NewslineBy Kashmir NewslineMarch 2, 2023Updated:March 6, 2023No Comments6 Mins Read
Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
Share
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Email

The country is struggling to remain afloat as it is disowned by its own people, abandoned and set adrift in an ocean flooded by disloyalty, corruption and selfishness.

by Lt Gen Tariq Khan

I see chaos before me and confusion all around – the future dark and hope illusive. People have become irrelevant. The judiciary is an accessory to crime and the government an accomplice to anarchy.

US senator Frank Lautenberg famously said: “One thing I have learned in my politics is that if one of the parties is shameless, the other party cannot afford to be spineless.”

PTI, the most popular party in the country entrusted with the hopes and expectations of the people, is slowly becoming irrelevant. PTI has erred, as it blundered in response to the machinations of the PDM and their supporters. It resigned from the national assembly allowing the PDM to play a one-sided match. This was followed by resignations from the Punjab and KP provincial assemblies. The ‘Azadi March’ was halted. They volunteered to go to jail, which has been called off after the SC verdict that the elections in Punjab and KP have to be held in 90 days.

These are valid steps that are taken in a conventional political environment where moral appeal has weightage. The PDM has no qualms about being labelled as liars, cheats and thieves. You cannot insult a cockroach by calling it a cockroach.

Their speciality is blackmailing through illegal, clandestine videos made on all those individuals and their families who have anything to do with the judiciary, the police, the government regulatory bodies or the law enforcement agencies. The people of this country are hostage to bribery, extortion, coercion and threats by their own government. Any probability of a wrong being addressed or righted through a moral, ethical, judicial, administrative or an act of governance is highly remote and next to impossible.

So who can the people appeal to? None! No such office exists today in this ‘land of the pure’ that prides itself in the label that it has accredited to itself: ‘The Islamic Republic of Pakistan’. It is far from being an Islamic entity and even farther from being a republic of any kind. It must rename itself as ‘the lawless land of crime and corruption’, with its coat-of-arms changed to display the three proverbial monkeys –  see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

It is a travesty of democracy where the media is muzzled, opinions considered libellous and any criticism labelled as a terrorist threat. The blatant lies of the government, though so transparently public, still suggest and insist that they only took this government position to provide relief to the people. That a 6% growth in the GDP has floundered to less than 2 % and inflation has reached over 40 % has no appeal to anyone’s conscience. The government, in an unprecedented exhibition of callous perfidy, unmoved by the misery that they caused to the people of this country, brazenly and shamelessly, amended laws so as to extricate themselves from the cases of theft and corruption. They then proceeded to accommodate the largest cabinet in the history of this hapless nation: 76 ministers of which 23 do not even have a portfolio since there were no ministries left. Thus, the political responses and the peaceful reactions of the PTI may look reasonable and reflect a high moral pedestal but they will remain ineffective.

So are there any corrective measures for such an aberration? I cannot find any conventional steps that can shake the conscience of the government or the powers that be, other than the integral power of the people. It is the people who are sovereign. It is the people who first make up a State and its territories and then agree to be served by a government that is representative of the majority. It is the people who then approve the Constitution which is a document limiting the powers of the government thus protecting the people.

When the ethos of the State is lost, it spawns separatist movements and the country is plagued by insurgencies. When the Constitution is violated, it leads to tyranny where injustice prevails. When the government is incompetent, indifferent and corrupt, an economic collapse is inevitable. Insurgency, anarchy, economic instability and injustice are the ingredients that make a failed State.

Is Pakistan a failed State? The people and the leadership can see all the mess unfold before them. Yet, there is no sign of remorse.  There is an overwhelming indifference as people go about their business as if nothing has happened and what may happen will pass. It will not. The ship is sinking and we are all going down with it.

The country is struggling to remain afloat as it is disowned by its own people, abandoned and set adrift in an ocean flooded by disloyalty, corruption and selfishness. One wonders who could measure up to the task of saving the State. Is there anyone who can stand tall, above board, with courage and moral standing?

PTI needs to understand that their centre of gravity is the people of this country. The State belongs to the people. People matter and it is they who define Pakistan, not some ruling elite, dubious bureaucrat, self-righteous mullah or government mandarin. If these people, the multitudes that follow PTI, are not organised to come out on to the street to express their outrage, nothing will happen and it will lead to political failure and PTI’s undoing.

It’s now, when all else has failed, that only the people on the street, can make a difference. Unless a physical display of anger, frustration and resentment is projected, the political preferences as being assessed and measured, will never be translated into reality. The Government has to be overwhelmed by the shock and awe that huge crowds can evoke.

Lt. Gen. Tariq Khan retired as head of Pakistan’s Central Command and has led the Frontier Corps to victory against TTP.

 

 

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
Kashmir Newsline
  • Website

Related Posts

Belt and Road Initiative: How Real is ‘Debt-trap Diplomacy’?

January 8, 2025

Why Pegasus Report Must be Made Public

December 25, 2024

America’s Waning Global Position

November 4, 2024

Leave A Reply Cancel Reply

Top Posts

Team India’s Next Big Thing

July 6, 202227,463 Views

Why This Alpine Lake Trek Stands Out

July 6, 202225,423 Views

India’s Majoritarian Politics and the Role of Media

July 6, 202224,120 Views

Fragile Media Economies and Lack of Opportunities in Kashmir

July 6, 202223,225 Views
Don't Miss
Top Story

Belt and Road Initiative: How Real is ‘Debt-trap Diplomacy’?

By Kashmir NewslineJanuary 8, 20250

BRI’s transformative potential extends beyond economic development. It has the power to reshape global trade…

Why Pegasus Report Must be Made Public

December 25, 2024

America’s Waning Global Position

November 4, 2024

Book Review—Shawls and Shawlbafs of Kashmir

September 12, 2024
Stay In Touch
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Vimeo

Subscribe to Updates

Get the latest creative news from SmartMag about art & design.

Based out of Srinagar (Jammu & Kashmir) and brought out in print as a weekly with online presence as well, Kashmir Newsline is solely committed to ethical, fearless journalism. We at Kashmir Newsline cover politics, geopolitics, international relations, social issues, health, sports and almost everything else as objectively as humanly possible. Kashmir Newsline carries detailed reports and in-depth analysis on multiple developments happening in Kashmir and around the world.

Facebook X (Twitter)
Our Picks

Belt and Road Initiative: How Real is ‘Debt-trap Diplomacy’?

January 8, 2025

Why Pegasus Report Must be Made Public

December 25, 2024

America’s Waning Global Position

November 4, 2024
Most Popular

Team India’s Next Big Thing

July 6, 202227,463 Views

Why This Alpine Lake Trek Stands Out

July 6, 202225,423 Views

India’s Majoritarian Politics and the Role of Media

July 6, 202224,120 Views
Facebook X (Twitter)
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Politics
  • J&K
  • E-Paper
  • Contact Us
© 2025 Kashmir Newsline. Designed by NexG IT Solutions.

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.

Go to mobile version