Pakistan is again in the eye of the storm. The government says most of the opposition leaders are thieves who had plundered the national wealth and squirreled it away in their overseas accounts. It justifies the prevailing hyperinflation by accusing the previous governments of money-laundering and massive corruption, due to which the country is held hostage to the IMF and FATF – both of them controlled by the US. The US Dollar, since the present government assumed power, has spiraled, soon to reach PKR 200 to the dollar mark. It is, says the government because the previous government had kept the exchange rate artificially low.
The opposition counters by accusing IK of cronyism, of being ignorant about the dynamics of the economy. It says PM is obsessed with hatred and revengefulness for the opposition leaders, that he is surrounded by sycophants who keep him embroiled with non-issues while pursuing their private agendas.
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What say you, the man on the street?
Frankly speaking, Pakistan had a semblance of good governance during the decade-long pseudo-democratic rule under Ayub Khan –Pakistan’s first military ruler. During this period, PKR had stayed at 4.50 -5.00 to a dollar. The economic and political stability, however, did not prevent a countrywide political agitation from engulfing the country on frivolous grounds.
The uprising against Ayub Khan was triggered when a group of Rawalpindi’s Gordon College students, who had gone to the Torkham border on a sightseeing tour, were stopped, on their way back, at a customs check post and deprived of the few items of cloth and toiletry they had purchased at Bara Bazar, one of the many smuggled goods markets dotting the Pak-Afghan border. The aggrieved students, on their return to Rawalpindi, staged a series of protests which soon snowballed into a countrywide agitation against Ayub.
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What were the undercurrents?
Ayub Khan was in the good books of the West till 1965-66. During the 1960s, Pakistan was projected by the US as Asia’s showcase economy. South Korea borrowed the details of Pakistan’s second five-year plan to learn from it. We gave 500 million dollars in aid to West Germany. When, in September 1962, Ayub Khan made a state visit to the US, President Kennedy received him at the airport. In 1966, Queen Elizabeth received him in front of London’s Tate Gallery. The West promoted him as the “de Gaulle of Asia’. Everything changed during the 1965 War between Pakistan and India
During this war, Ayub was taken for a ride by Bhutto when he believed in Bhutto’s thesis that launching infiltrators across the Ceasefire Line in Jammu & Kashmir will not result in India attacking Pakistan across the international border. “India has taken you by your neck, Mr. President”, taunted the US ambassador to Ayub on the telephone, soon after the Indian attack on Lahore. After the 65 War, the US stopped its military and economic aid to Pakistan and India. The stoppage hurt Pakistan much more than India. The 65 War had disturbed the US applecart in South Asia. Uncle Sam was angry with Ayub Khan for his 1965 misadventure.
Contrary to our perception, the US had always wanted to make India its strategic pivot in the Indo-Pacific region. Pakistan joined the US-sponsored Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) in 1955. Indo- US strategic cooperation started in 1956 (before China formally annexed Tibet in 1959) when the CIA established a base camp at Kalimpong, near India’s border with Tibet, to recruit Tibetan guerrillas to fight Chinese troops. Soon thereafter the CIA-trained militias in the eastern Kham region started fighting the Chinese.
Half a century later, it is not so much the hyperinflation that has made all the stakeholders in Pakistan’s corridors of a power line up against the sitting government – it is the heartburn caused to the US by yet another Third World leader who has: 1) Refused to give military bases to the US;2) Has not towed the US’ stance on Afghanistan;3) Visited Russia US against the US warnings and refused to condemn Russia on its Ukrainian invasion; 4) Maintained the stance of previous governments on CPEC.; 5) Not responded to the US-backed Saudi initiative to settle down on declaring the LoC in J&K as the international border.
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How is the US-India sponsored non-kinetic war unfolding against Pakistan?
America’s unparalleled clout over international institutions has made Pakistan increasingly dependent on her. This coupled with a cleverly cultivated network of alliances and Trojan horses (bureaucrats, politicians, intellectuals,etc.)has allowed the US to keep the Pakistani rulers under the leash.
In the past, a significant portion of the US economic aid to Pakistan had been consumed in defraying the cost of salaries and other perks to the USAID employees (most of whom doubled as CIA operatives) and the batteries of US Trojan horses working in Pakistani media and NGOs. This explains why the economic segment of US aid was always way higher than the military one. It is the game of chicken being played between the present government and the US-sponsored opposition. Who blinks first? Let us see.
Saleem Akhtar Malik is a Pakistan Army veteran who writes on national and international affairs, defense, military history, and military technology. He Tweets at @saleemakhtar53. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Global Village Space.