Pakistan Quotes

“The wounds will take decades to heal, centuries to overcome the trauma.”
― Gulzar, Two

“An army is a vital national institution but a nation is more than its army. It needs a vibrant economy, an educated and competitive workforce, as well as intellectual and scientific curiosity and creativity.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“At least part of Pakistan’s quality of education problem stems from its ideological orientation. The goal of education in Pakistan is not to enable critical thinking but to produce skilled professionals capable of applying transferred information instead of being able to think for themselves. To produce soldiers, engineers and doctors indoctrinated with a specifically defined Islamic ideology, the country has ignored liberal arts and social sciences.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“This arrogant, conceited history strides with her head in the clouds and never looks down. She does not realize how she crushes millions of people beneath her feet. The common people. She doesn't understand that one may cut a mountain in two, but people? It's a hard task, Bhai, to cute one people in two. They bleed."

A deep sigh coursed through the gathering. Master Fazal said, "History will keep on marching like this. The names of a few people will stick to her fabric. She will register those. there was Hitler, there was Mussolini, Churchill and Joseph Stalin, among others. this time the names maybe Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Jinnah, Subhash Bose! But the names of the lakhs and crores who have lost their lives will be nowhere. They will be mere numbers in which all of us will be included!".”
― Gulzar, Two

“There were always a few words that his flamboyant English insisted he mispronounce: words, I often imagined, over which his heart took hidden pleasure when he had got them by the gullet and held them there until they empurpled to the color of his own indignant nature. "Another" was one of them--I cannot count how many times each day we would hear him say, "Anther?" "Anther?" It did not matter whether it was another meal or another government or another baby at issue: all we heard was a voice bristling over with amazement at the thought that another could exist. It seemed his patience could not sustain itself over the trisyllabic, tripping up his voice on most trisyllables that did not sound like "Pakistan"--for there was a word over which he could not slow down, to exude ownership as he uttered it!”
― Sara Suleri, Meatless Days

“In popular sentiment, just as conspiracies have made Pakistan weak and vulnerable, its destined economic greatness has been thwarted by corruption, not poor policy choices.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“Pakistan has been unfortunate that its leaders and
rulers have repeatedly chosen ideological wooden-headedness over pursuit of reasonable and viable options.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“The veil of secrecy shrouding high-profile political assassinations in postindependence Pakistan has extended to information on the inner dynamics of its frenzied history.”
― Ayesha Jalal, The Struggle for Pakistan: A Muslim Homeland and Global Politics

“Clearly, on the world’s highest battlefield, a protracted war over the glaciers and passes had begun. The commanders in khaki reported the shooting and called the shots. Headquartered on the distant plains, the governmental chiefs of Pakistan and India depended on what their commanders from the desolate ice-covered peaks would report. Isolated with their platoons, and weighed under by snowman’s gear, these were often daredevil commanders. They were tasked to fly their country’s flags on the sequestered Himalayan peaks. Programmed into their DNA were nationalist narratives framing the other as ‘the enemy.’ Without this mindset, their hardship at such incredible heights would make no sense. From the clash of narratives alone could flow their will to battle their adversary. Institutional training and Statist historiography had programmed these men with guns into being willing warriors. Yet, when they accidently drifted into close proximity, this ‘processing’ would give way to human connection. With their weather-battered bodies and lonely hearts, quarantined from civilization and set in the harsh and desolate heights, they would share a smoke or a smile with an ‘enemy.”
― Nasim Zehra, From Kargil to the Coup: Events that Shook Pakistan

“Even the most modern and westernized leaders, ranging from Harvard-educated Benazir Bhutto to self-professed Ataturk fan Pervez Musharraf, have failed to stop Pakistan from descending farther into an Islamist quagmire.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“Pakistani officers consider the most regressive clerics patriotic because, after all, they would never make common cause with Pakistan’s external enemies—the Indians and whoever else Pakistani intelligence might know or imagine as conspiring against the country at any given moment. Liberal and secular thinkers, on the other hand, are permanently suspect. If they speak up for any ethnic group, they must want Pakistan’s disintegration; if they ask for a secular state, they could be asking for eliminating Pakistan’s identity and a virtual reincorporation into India; and if they question the army’s political role or its budget, they must be in league with ‘the enemy’.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“Pakistan’s efforts to consolidate itself by popularizing theology as national or even national-security policy have unleashed violent forces that Pakistan is now contending with. Instead of strengthening the country and raising the morale of its people in permanently confronting India, the ‘Ghazwa-e-Hind’ type of thinking has resulted in terrorist attacks within Pakistan and set the stage for divisions among jihadis that are hurting Pakistan’s security instead of enhancing it. The theologically rooted view of what threatens Pakistan— as opposed to what might really threaten Pakistan—undermines the prospect of a realistic foreign policy. Conspiracy theories and contending interpretations of religious prophecies cast Don Quixotes tilting at windmills as ‘national security experts’ rather than producing hard-thinking analysts anticipating actual policies of other governments.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“Unlike other countries, where the apex court is only the court of final appeal in criminal matters, Pakistan’s Supreme Court acts politically to directly make pronouncements in response to media articles or petitions by political rivals. One need not be convicted of disloyalty to the state after due process of law when innuendo, fabricated media reports and public comments by Supreme Court judges can suffice to tarnish reputations and cut public support.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“The military is Pakistan’s only institution inherited from the British Raj that has proved resilient and effective. ‘As the history of law, democracy, administration and education in Pakistan demonstrates, other British institutions in what is now Pakistan (and to a lesser extent India as well) failed to take root, failed to work, or have been transformed in ways that their authors would scarcely have recognized.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“In recent years, army families have played a significant part in social media mobilization and lending support to pro-military politicians (such as former cricket star Imran Khan) and clerics.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“For sixteen years since 9/11, Pakistan has aided the American forces in Afghanistan by providing logistical support while providing a haven to their enemies at the same time. As a result of this dichotomy, some factions of Taliban have turned on Pakistan and attacked Pakistani civilian as well as military targets. Pakistan has lost America’s trust as American critics accuse Pakistan of acting as arsonist and firefighter in Afghanistan at the same time.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“Just as Pakistan’s elite engages in rent-seeking behaviour at the domestic level, Pakistan has acted as a rentier state at the international level. Political scientists define a rentier state as one ‘which derives all or a substantial portion of its national revenues from the rent of indigenous resources to external clients’. Although most rentier states depend on a single natural resource, such as oil, Pakistan has been able to parlay its strategic location into a resource and has become dependent on foreign aid. Having relied on the United States for the last seventy years, there appears to be a tendency among Pakistan’s policymakers to show a preference for China as the country’s new economic patron”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“Air Marshal Nur Khan, a war hero and former Pakistan air force chief, had once likened Pakistan’s aid dependency to ‘taking opium’. Speaking to an American diplomat soon after the loss of East Pakistan in December 1971, he said, ‘Instead of using the country’s own resources to solve the country’s problems, the aid craver, like the opium craver, simply kept on begging to foreigners to bail him out of his difficulties.’ Nur Khan proposed ‘a Chinese style austerity programme’ for Pakistan although he doubted if ‘many Pakistanis had the conviction and dedication to put up with the sacrifice that such a programme would entail’.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“It was ironic that even in promising to end aid dependence, Pakistan’s leaders sought trade on easier terms instead of retooling their economy to expand trade as many other countries have been able to do.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“Fifty years and several other threats and aid suspensions later, Pakistan continues to nurture a sentimental opposition to aid, while seeking foreign assistance remains an integral part of the economic strategy pursued by successive governments, both military and civilian. There are reasons Pakistan’s economic managers have not given up on external aid despite rising remittances. Although remittances enhance the country’s foreign exchange reserves, they are spent by millions of individuals and do not enhance the government’s treasury. Only aid provides budget support in hard currency and can be used for buying military equipment that Pakistan constantly needs.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“Pakistan views itself as a strategically located country needed by the world’s major powers and as home to descendants of mighty Muslim warriors. This view of the self, coupled with the dominance of a narrow elite, accounts for Pakistan’s inability to address its periodic economic crises.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“The average Pakistani student is brought up on a mix of dogma and mythology that does not encourage respect for facts or empiricism.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“The pervasiveness of distortions of history and the tendency to discuss even the sciences in the context of Islam’s glory or Pakistan’s security, crafts a mind that sees things not as they are but as it would like them to be. The consequence of using education as a tool of ideological indoctrination has been to undermine the quality of Pakistani education. Although Pakistan has produced many individuals who have done path breaking work in the sciences and even social sciences, these are the exceptions, not the norm.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“If there were lessons to be learnt from the East Pakistan/ Bangladesh fiasco, Pakistan’s civil and military leaders did not learn them. Instead of recognizing the inadequacy of the two nation theory, religious ideology and brute force in keeping the country together, the break-up was rationalized as the result of Indian hostility, malfeasance of Pakistani politicians, and the geographic remoteness of the eastern wing.”
― Husain Haqqani

“The obstinate refusal to consider reform proposals and the insistence on rewriting history rather than learning from it have trapped Pakistan in a vicious circle. Instead of acknowledging bad decisions and moving away from them, Pakistan’s policymakers deny their bad choices; they then make further wrong decisions to support their denial, with further consequences and further denials. It is, based on the criteria defined by Tuchman, classic folly.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“To end its march of folly, Pakistan needs to reassess its core beliefs about a religion-based polity, reconsider the notion of permanent conflict with its larger neighbour, recreate political institutions to reflect its ethnic diversity and rebuild its economy without reliance on the largesse of others. Only then would it be able to reliably get rid of the spectre of failure or fragility and low international standing by all non-military benchmarks.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“Pakistan could continue to survive as it has done so far and defy further negative predictions. But if it does not grow economically sufficiently, integrate globally and remains mired in ideological debates and crises, how would its next seven decades be any different from the past seventy years?”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“Sudden and unexplained deaths of key politicians have been a recurring feature of Pakistani history since 1951. Often the reasons have been patently evident.”
― Ayesha Jalal, The Struggle for Pakistan: A Muslim Homeland and Global Politics

“This arrogant, conceited history strides with her head in the clouds and never looks down. She does not realize how she crushes millions of people beneath her feet. The common people. She doesn't understand that one may cut a mountain in two, but people? It's a hard task, Bhai, to cute one people in two. They bleed.”
― Gulzar, Two

“A deep sigh coursed through the gathering. Master Fazal said, 'History will keep on marching like this. The names of a few people will stick to her fabric. She will register those. there was Hitler, there was Mussolini, Churchill and Joseph Stalin, among others. this time the names maybe Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Jinnah, Subhash Bose! But the names of the lakhs and crores who have lost their lives will be nowhere. They will be mere numbers in which all of us will be included!”
― Gulzar, Two