But the whirlwind into which Pakistan is being sucked today is of its own creation. Is it not justice of history? What the ruling elites of Pakistan did to Afghanistan that seems precisely to be the main reason due to which they will now lose power and influence in Pakistan. Had there been an independent Pakistan, there would have been a genuine freedom struggle in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union.
It is believable that an independent Pakistan would have been aware of what anarchy in a society means. An independent Pakistan would not have sold itself for doing whatever others wanted it to do for money. An independent Pakistan would have been genuinely sympathetic to Afghan people and would have done everything in not letting them fall into the precipice. An independent Pakistan would have played a role worthy of emulation anywhere in the world for Afghan freedom. An independent Pakistan would not have become a lackey and a meek follower of the United States allowing them avenging Vietnam in Afghanistan.
Therefore what actually happened in Afghanistan was not freedom struggle, but the fulfillment of American agenda at the cost of Afghan society. Where was the Afghan freedom when the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan, for example? And then, is replacement of one occupier with another the fruit of a freedom struggle?
And for all this and throughout the disintegration of Afghanistan, Pakistan’s role remained villainous. Pakistan was not pushing Afghanistan toward freedom and independence, but pulling it toward itself into slavery. Pakistan succeeded.
The embrace of Pakistan has cost Afghanistan dearly. But why, Afghanistan went into Pakistani embrace, in the first place?
It is not accidental that both have damaged each other and will continue to damage each other until at least one of them gets wiser heads who think right and big and are in the position to lead it. It is not even tribalism that the elites and the rulers on both sides of the Durand Line are involved in. Tribalism had at least some code of ethics and its sanctity to help a society as the reference point. Again it is not accidental that having some of the proudest individuals in both countries and having so many milestones of history to the credit of their ancestors, both countries lie prostrate at the feet of Imperialism. Obviously greatness cannot be inherited. Every time, it has to be earned with hard and right work.
Those who have brought the peoples of Pakistan to this situation, failed to consolidate Pakistan when there was time to do so. And those who could not adopt any sustainable policy, internally or externally, for half a century for their own country could not have been Afghanistan’s saviours. Servants of Imperialism, Pakistani ruling classes enjoyed playing their own mean and clandestine imperialism in Afghanistan. Pakistan should not have interfered, but only helped Afghanistan. But then, if Pakistani ruling classes could understand this, Pakistan itself would not have been in this shape today. In fact the destiny of our region would have been absolutely different.
Anyhow, Afghanistan is still in a disintegration process. The responsibility lies with the Afghans themselves, the Soviet Union, the United States and Pakistan. How Afghanistan will come out of this situation and regain its independence is now intricately intertwined with Pakistan’s fortunes and vice versa.
But the foreign sponsored present Afghan state is actually a cover and deception to conceal the actual American-Zionist-Western or Zionist-Jewish-Christian occupation of that fragmented country. But the occupiers never term it an occupation and speak in a soft political language to Afghans. They imply that Afghans should understand that the West is civilized and therefore should follow them under their caring supervision to become civilized too! Many in the world and Afghanistan have been deceived.
This is the hard reality of these two countries presently – one disintegrated and eventually occupied and the other in the process of disintegration and under an American-Zionist-Western proxy occupation.
Will Pakistan be physically occupied? Obviously, for that to happen, an occupier has to be available, ready and willing to come forward at the appropriate time. It is possible that Pakistan may not find an occupier and is left to its fate, fragmented and neither dead nor living, but only after its nuclear fangs are removed. And there are understandable reasons to support this observation. At that stage, there will be no need of Afghanistan’s occupation too. In fact Afghanistan’s occupation seems to be basically fake. The West is not doing the job of nation-building there as they claim. They seem to be passing their time to look like nation-builders while they butcher Iraqis to subdue them, try to subdue Iran and de-nuclearize Pakistan.
But with so many Western assets in Pakistan and their experience with the Pakistani elites and rulers if they think they are in a position to achieve their objectives – nuclear disarmament of Pakistan being the main one — without physical occupation of the country, they do not seem to be apparently wrong. And as the West is overall on the retreat but not recognizing it yet, it is more likely that their behaviour will be illogical and erratic. So we should not rule out their decisions in the future based on ideology too as they did previously — planning and launching their 9/11 themselves to create pretext and then invading Afghanistan and Iraq.
So may things can happen. I am not ready to take anything for granted. Even equipped with the overall and reasonably correct understanding of the historical process, we have to see at every step what lies ahead next and move accordingly.
The way I see things, therefore, I can say with reasonable certainty that with every passing day, the destinies of Pakistan and Afghanistan are becoming more and more intertwined. Therefore one cannot be liberated without the liberation of the other which we in Pakistan and they in Afghanistan have to learn and learn fast. There is hardly any time left to behave as we used to behave. There is hardly any time left, with whatsoever reason given, to talk things, which may hinder unity anywhere among any sections of the peoples of this entire region — Pakistan-Afghanistan.
Entry of Afghanistan, therefore, in Al-Manshoor should be a moment of pause and deliberation for all of us in Pakistan and Afghanistan. I take it as a sacred moment for the region and for the Muslim world generally. And if your heart does not open immediately with warm feelings to welcome this development in the history of our region, I will advise that you continue to deliberate on this and wait for things to become clearer to you. But, it will be foolish on anybody’s part to react quickly and therefore unwisely with conclusions which will create impediments for unity of the peoples of the region for a well defined and right cause – the Liberation of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
I gave much thought before and even during the initial stages of writing this manifesto and eventually came to the conclusion that there was no escape from history which has to be revised and retold because more falsehood than truth has been told to our people in the name of their history. In fact our people were overburdened with ideology precisely at the time when with the spread of knowledge tools had become available for nations or peoples to understand and interpret their histories more correctly than what they had been believing earlier to be their histories. Therefore while writing Al-Manshoor, it looked quite natural to me and I felt at home to pass sometime through the streets and bazaars of our history for details while traveling on its ‘Grand Trunk Road’ generally and pointing out on the way the significance of each and every important milestone to the reader and my fellow traveler.
This special itinerary of Al-Manshoor will be helpful, I believe, in replacing ideology in the consciousness of our people with the facts of history and their as right an interpretation as our present level of knowledge makes possible. This is the beginning of our Liberation.
Although it is painful but we have to accept that our consciousnesses are defective, otherwise we would not have been in the present situation. Therefore we have to unlearn many things. And we have to relearn many things but under changed guidelines. And obviously we have to learn many things new to erase the distortions of our consciousnesses.
If Afghanistan is occupied and Pakistan never achieved its real independence and the leadership classes of both countries are comfortable with wherever the American-led West has been or is shepherding them to, and have nothing to say except some comments on procedural matters here and there or quarreling with each other and blaming each other, such distortion of consciousness and detachment from reality could not have happened in a year or two or even in a decade. It happened in history.
We carry with us, as any other people of the world, our defects, which continued to accumulate, but we failed to rectify them. Current politics, under Imperialism, uses these defects, it thinks to its advantage, but in the process creates new and makes the already existing defects bigger and more complicated.
Therefore to history must we return and come out with new and correct, or at least more correct, conclusions about our past and pull our people along, with struggle and example that this distortion is corrected and we stand face to face with reality. In history will be found the seeds of that great unity which we seek within Pakistan, within Afghanistan, and within the region – Pakistan-Afghanistan – without which now neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan can be liberated. ■