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The role of our army has always been more than just a group of soldiers who are trained to protect the border. Pakistan army has roots in the political arena as well as in the economical and social structure. Since independence, our army has run (played rather) with the political structure of our country due to the absence of good and result orientated democratic political parties.

In the last 40 years, at least, I have seen the favors (sarcastic) done by our army to save Pakistan. I hope the readers would be mature enough to understand that I am not talking about the role of our army as far as defense (border related) is concerned. I, myself, is very much obsessed and convinced towards the abilities and skills of our army. However, my indication is towards the contribution of the army in the political and social structure.

We have always used more than 50% of our budget for our defense. Major areas of Pakistan are still deprived of basic necessities and even the economic hub (Karachi) is still observing electricity load shedding of more than 5 hours daily. Yet we prefer buying weapons to compete with India over providing basic necessities to the people of Pakistan. Defense has become more important to our government/s compared to the basic necessities and commodities that are required to live a decent life.

So if “defense” is that important, and many readers would probably still vote for buying more weapons than providing education to poor, then why is it that we are still deprived of a “component”, which actually comes from the parent word “defense”? Yes, I am talking about ‘Security’. According to the Maslow’s Theory, security is the second stage of human needs, whereas, food, water and clothes are the basic requirements.

Nevertheless, even if we have jumped one step ahead in the hierarchy and have opted to work on the second stage more than the first stage, then the question is that have we actually accomplished the second stage of Maslow’s Theory (Safety) successfully? Are we secure? Is our life secure? Is our house secure? Is our money secure? Is our future generation secure?

As mentioned earlier, with more than 50% of the budget going towards the “defense” section, we find that our army is too busy building the Defense Housing Authority (DHA), Golf clubs, cantonments etc etc etc. They are too busy making more money. Are they the right people to protect us? If yes, then why do we hear about CIA, Blackwater, Xe, DynCorp and others working in Pakistan? Why do we hear that the drone attacks are not coming from anywhere else but they are actually operated from an airbase in Baluchistan?

Even if everything that I have stated in wrong, why is it that our army has FAILED to provide us with SECURITY even after taking that much money? Every government is now bound to take loans from IMF and WB just to match our defense requirements but at the end of the day we are still under the threat of Talibans. We, common people, are still not secure. Then what is our army doing? Should we think that our army has failed to protect us? At least me, being a patriot and a big fan of the army, will never accept this that they have failed. Then should we think that they are Pro-Talibans, which is why our army is not interested in protecting us?

I do understand that our army is waging a war in Waziristan but the fact of the matter is that our army allowed the Talibans to come this far. If they would have been either vigilant or anti-Taliban, then they would have stopped them from spreading all over Pakistan.

Every single person in this country has a huge amount of loan that he has to pay either to the IMF or to the WB because our leaders have taken that loan on the name of the nation/country. Do you think that our current leaders will be able to pay this amount back? What if we die with all that loan on our head? Who will pay it back?

If we say that our government was under pressure from the army to take loans so as to meet the requirements of the defense then my question to all of you is that has our army succeeded in providing us SECURITY? Is this the best our army can do? Is this the best our intelligence agencies can do? Why are we still wasting so much portion of our budget on them if they can’t provide us security? We are in this mess directly or indirectly because of our army and their loyalty/friendship towards the Talibans, or else, these Talibans would have never had the courage to pass our army and occupy the regions of Pakistan.

Long Live Pakistan. Pakistan Zindabaad.

Posted by – HIF

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