Many of us have been through those awkward moments when we make a super-desperate attempt to be witty and end up instead with a string of boo-boos. We recognise that moment, tip our hats to it, chuckle, and move on. It takes a very special brand of well, idiocy, to continue to think in such situations that one has scored and so highly, that one must repeat the boo-boo ad nauseum. Some of our opinionating-gents seem to do just that, much to the initial horror and lasting amusement of the rest of us.
But I must substantiate my claims. Take for example, the many instances (including the recent flame wars that are politely being referred to as ‘rebuttals’) where they stubbornly continue to insist, among other things, that the Pakistani state has no internal structural problems whatsoever, and that, it is always the oh-so-evil-and-corrupt politicians that lead our pak-saaf generals astray. Of course, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto started the 1965 war, just as Nawaz Sharif started the Kargil war! The poor generals were too naïve to know any better. Tsk.
Then there’s the issue of sovereignty and foreign aid at which we baulk, particularly when it comes from the US. It is all well and good to decry the US’s imperialist designs and to harp about sovereignty, but one sounds like a hypocrite when one does that while knowing that it is that same imperialist power that is, unfortunately, keeping the economy afloat. Without foreign debt and loans and expat remittances, we’d be gurgling deep within the waters of our own flooded graves.
Let’s examine each of these factors separately, starting with our own citizens. With the highest tax bracket stuck at 20 percent, and an overwhelming majority of our patriots constantly plotting ways and means to evade even that, we cannot rely on taxes to keep the economy afloat. But there are always expat remittances, you’d say. True, but even there, the State Bank of Pakistan expects only somewhere around US$8.5 billion this year in documented remittances from about seven million Pakistanis who are working abroad. This amount, unfortunately, covers only about five percent of our gross domestic product.
We could always be given loans, though! Well, no, that is a thoroughly bad idea, given as how Pakistan has long crossed the threshold where said debt load is not covered by aid. In such a situation, ‘friends’ who insist on burdening us with more loans aren’t really being very friendly. Even in terms of pure ‘aid’, they haven’t looked out for the poorer friend i.e., Pakistan. Let’s begin with our BFF, China, which has, over the years, given us five times less aid than Japan, 15 times less aid than Saudi Arabia, 13 times less aid than the UK, and 30 times less aid than the US. Meanwhile, the same BFF has worked hard to increase Pakistan’s debt load, by loaning us 24 times the amount that it gave in aid (US$9 million in aid as opposed to loans of US$217 million).The Saudis have been slightly better in this regard, by giving us US$137million in aid, and loaning us only US$68 million. The amount given by Saudi Arabia, however, is far from enough.
Now consider the much-vilified US, which handed over more that US$500million during the 2010 floods, as opposed to China which told us to make do with US$18 million. The US also doesn’t deal in loans and debt; and US aid to Pakistan is currently the highest that it has ever been, notwithstanding our shenanigans with Osama bin Laden, David Headley, the Lashkar-e-Taiba, ‘strategic depth’ and whatnot (and this was merely a summary, given the word limit restrictions of this column. Those seeking details are welcome to get in touch with me separately).
As such, in terms of pure hard cash and basic survival, the Americans, conniving imperialists though they most certainly are, have stood by Pakistan far more steadfastly than those who wish to, say, throw us back to the Middle Ages by cultivating local madmen who’d gladly bomb us there.
When I was young, my mother hoped to protect me from the big, bad world through this one phrase: ‘Dost hota nahi har haath milaaney wallah’. Wise words; those who seek to bury us in debt or decimate our society by nurturing maniacs most certainly aren’t worthy of being called a ‘dost’.
In the end, a word for our opinionating-gents: pointing out problems is not ‘self-loathing’ but ‘tough love’; acknowledging problems is the first step towards eventual rectification. ‘Self-loathing’, on the other hand, is to continue to bury one’s head in the sand and insist that everything is hunky-dory when it most obviously is not. As such, it is obvious who our ‘self-loathers’ are.
The writer is a freelance journalist and researcher based in Karachi. She is also a proud urban coffee-shop revolutionary who generally has nothing better to do than gossip on Twitter at @UroojZia.