December 16 : Not learning the lessons from Pakistan

Afsan Chowdhury
Published : 16 Dec 2014, 07:25 AM
Updated : 16 Dec 2014, 07:25 AM

It's a curious situation when the moment of our greatest victory also signals the era of questioning the depth of that victory. Did Bangladesh really observe a victory or was it more about the defeat of Pakistan ?. Was it a triumphant ceremony of the conquerors or the dismal surrender of the vanquished remains to be decided. If this was the great critical moment in history when Pakistan was whacked rather emphatically by India, it also laid the bare the lessons which one could draw from the behaviour of a state that was not intelligent enough to sustain an unusually constructed state system based on a confusing concoction of multiple nationalisms. But if the three parties stood here, one was magnificently triumphant in history, one was devastatingly humiliated while the last had no idea what was about to happen or how. Sadly this third one was us, Bangladesh.

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Why would anyone want to name spook agencies intelligence agencies can be quite puzzling since they often have not the least bit of grey matter. The most appropriate example for this notion is the analysis of the Pakistan state when it attacked Dhaka on March 26. Pakistan did bring in troops to fortify its position before the attack but when it did happen it was one of the messiest acts that the Pakistan army and indeed the state of Pakistan could commit. Not only did it destroy the image of Pakistan at a level never seen before but simply put destroyed Pakistan. If it birthed Bangladesh, then the very act of birth killed the substance, principle and imagination of the country. History has never been as cruelly treated as its own army, its permanent ruling class as the Pakistan army did to its state.

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Pakistani intelligence had no idea that the people of Bangladesh had rejected the military ruling classes of Pakistan and the only person who could hold Pakistan together in any shape or form was Sheikh Mujib. They were planning to attack on March 7, when Sheikh Mujib was giving the speech, expecting him to declare independence.

On that day they were even less prepared, but what does seem strange is that they thought they could attack that several million strong crowd and kill however many was necessary and in the process save Pakistan. How many people was Pakistan ready to kill in order to save itself? We will not know but we do know that Pakistan didn't survive the attack on March 26, perhaps a lesser carnage.

Yet all this was supposed to be known to the Pakistan military who had largely been in charge of Pakistan since its birth but it wasn't. The 1958 martial law takeover merely legitimised what was already a reality which was the military as the ruling party of Pakistan. But history shows that one can't survive as a state if one is not informed by intelligent sources. Pakistan military, sadly for Pakistan, didn't pass the test.

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Pakistan's problem was its national objective, an extension of the long anti- Indian/Congress/ Hindu hatred that was cemented by the first Kashmir war of 1947. This military conflict largely shaped Pakistan as it felt that the attack was not only on its body but the concept as well. They thought that a country based on an idea of "Muslim state" would not be tolerated by Hindu India. The military and the ideology fused into one and once that happened, defense of the state became more important than the people of the country.

Hence the systemic destruction of the state institutions in Pakistan that ultimately bought regime after autocratic regime to Pakistan was considered justified for the very reason that it fulfilled the military objective of the state which was paramount. So if democracy has failed in Pakistan, it wasn't mourned by the ruling class because the state was thought would be strong militarily not through the strength of its institutions and prosperity and peace of its people but the size of the military.

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One would have thought the lessons would have been made clear to the Bangladeshi ruling class after Pakistan's defeat on December 16, but our record on democracy and statecraft is not enviable at all. Since 1972, we can't claim that our achievements in the democracy are worth boasting. What began with curtailing of rights in the foundational years increased with the one-party rule system followed by several bouts of martial law. The many coups that we have endured are not just products of ambitious armies but a by-product of bad governance as well. However, like Pakistan we are not embarrassed by our failures in public governance and continue to defend them in the "best interest of the state" type arguments. As a result there is no growth of any institutions and whatever we had been, has been shaved down, possibly using this terrible excuse.

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Pakistan has suffered much and made others suffer even more because its external enemy also bred internal demons as well. Once it became clear that this was very useful to justify any acts, the excuse really took off. Everyone became vulnerable as the state excuse became powerful and finally the majority electors became the enemy instead of its guardian.

It was one of the rare cases; the majority became traitors and a relatively small group in the military became the defender of the faith. Pakistan was drowned by the fact that it believed that its powers that be was not accountable and what its military thought was what Pakistanis thought as well. The Pakistani and the military became one and the bloodletting was considered legitimate. While it was considered appropriate for the most distant Pakistanis, the Bengalis in 1971, things have remained mostly the same for all Pakistanis. What Pakistan forgot was that the state belonged to the people, and not to one group, civil or military. It's the lack of democratic practice that makes states weak and it seems we haven't learnt from Pakistan that the best protection for a state is not a strong security apparatus or policy but a democratic environment.

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Afsan Chowdhury is a journalist, activist and writer.