There are no “good” Pakistanis left: The geopolitics of obedience

For most of Pakistan’s history, the security state has divided the country into two convenient species: the obedient and the dangerous.

The terminology changes with geography, ethnicity and political need. “Good” Taliban and “bad” Taliban. “Good” Baloch and “bad” Baloch. Patriotic Pashtuns and foreign-sponsored Pashtuns. Heroic Kashmiris and suspicious Kashmiris. More recently, acceptable supporters of Imran Khan and unacceptable ones — the former frightened into apology, the latter insufficiently broken to surrender.

“Good” has never meant peaceful, democratic or law-abiding. It means useful.

A good Pakistani mistakes submission for patriotism and silence for unity. A bad Pakistani asks the questions the state cannot survive: Who rules? By what right? For whose benefit?

The present military order now faces a grave shortage. It is running out of good Pakistanis.

The Baloch have grievances. The Pashtuns have memories. The poor have electricity bills. The landless have discovered that patriotic speeches cannot be paid as rent. Journalists ask questions. Judges occasionally remember they are judges. Imran Khan’s supporters retain the dangerous belief that elections should involve voters.

And now Kashmiris have committed the ultimate ideological offence: they have demanded rights from Pakistan instead of merely demanding them from India.

The national emergency is obvious.

Everyone has become political.

The unrest in Pakistan-administered Kashmir has exposed the fraud with unusual clarity. For decades, Islamabad displayed Azad Jammu and Kashmir as the serene opposite of Indian-administered Kashmir: peaceful where India was militarized, represented where India repressed, grateful where India provoked resistance.

It was one of the establishment’s most treasured exhibits — a model territory preserved behind glass, preferably without Kashmiri
fingerprints.

Then the exhibit began speaking.

The movement across Rawalakot, Muzaffarabad and surrounding districts did not arise from obscure ideology. It grew from punishing electricity prices, unemployment, unaffordable necessities, elite privilege, broken agreements and an electoral system many residents believe allows Pakistan-based parties to manufacture governments.

These are political grievances.

But the security state owns only one instrument of analysis, and it is shaped like a baton.

The Joint Awami Action Committee was banned. Leaders were hunted. Roads were blocked. Internet services were disrupted. Security forces were deployed. Elections proceeded beneath deaths, arrests, boycotts and communications blackouts.

A blackout is not merely the absence of information.

It is power without witnesses.

It allows the state to dispute what journalists cannot inspect, deny what families cannot transmit and transform uncertainty into innocence. The authorities extinguish the lights, then demand evidence of what happened in the dark.

When Al Jazeera’s reporting showed boycotts, deserted streets and public contempt for the electoral process, access to its website was reportedly restricted.

The response was almost poetic: when the mirror reveals the face, arrest the mirror.

Pakistan’s rulers still speak reverently of Kashmiri self-determination. The phrase remains available for export. It simply cannot be practised at home.

A Kashmiri confronting India is a freedom fighter. A Kashmiri confronting Islamabad is a miscreant. Resistance across the Line of Control is heroic; resistance on this side is foreign-sponsored. Political agency is sacred when it weakens Delhi and intolerable when it embarrasses Rawalpindi.

Pakistan does not support Kashmiri freedom. It supports Kashmiri anger under military licence.

The approved Kashmiri may denounce Delhi, invoke liberation abroad and perform resistance on cue. He may not examine power in Muzaffarabad. He may demand self-determination everywhere except where he lives.

Islamabad wants the theatre of resistance without the substance of autonomy. The Kashmiri may speak only when the establishment supplies the script, the stage and the villain.

This doctrine now governs the entire federation.

Every grievance becomes sabotage. Every civic movement acquires a foreign handler. Every protest conceals a conspiracy. Every critic works for an intelligence agency. Every electricity bill arrives wearing a suicide vest. Terrorism no longer describes violence.It describes politics conducted without military permission.

The logic is brutally efficient. Protesters must be answered. Terrorists need only be crushed. Reform is difficult; ammunition is simple. The establishment has abolished political failure by criminalizing its victims.

At the summit stands Field Marshal Asim Munir, marketed abroad as a strategist, mediator and stabilizing statesman. At home, stability increasingly resembles a country pinned to the floor and ordered to stop struggling.

Citizens demanding ballots, affordable electricity or constitutional government are treated as threats. The commander overseeing their coercion travels between capitals as the reasonable man managing an irrational nation.

A strongman need not be legitimate if he is strategically available.

Foreign handshakes have become an imported electoral mandate. Meetings with presidents, monarchs and generals are displayed as substitutes for domestic consent. Geography is available. Troops are available. Mediation is available. Sovereignty may be negotiated according to the package selected.

Meanwhile, Imran Khan sits in prison because he exposes the military’s deepest weakness: coercion can seize territory, television stations and courtrooms, but it cannot manufacture allegiance.

The establishment calls itself the glue holding Pakistan together. Yet it has spent decades dissolving every bond it could not command —parliament, parties, elections, nationalities and constitutional rule. Having burned the house, it now declares itself the only fire brigade.

The arsonist has appointed himself fire marshal.

A state that calls Baloch dissent treason, Pashtun dissent terrorism, electoral dissent sedition and Kashmiri dissent conspiracy is not defending the nation. It is defending headquarters from the nation.

Soon there may be no “good” Pakistanis left — only suspects awaiting classification, punishment and instruction in the patriotic etiquette of silence.

That will not mean the security state has defeated its enemies.

It will mean it has turned the entire country into one.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.