Pakistan Quotes

“if a colonizer replaces language, clothes and names of a nation then what remains is a mere shadow of the colonizer.”
― Hassan Zia Ahmed

“When we build a city, we take our grandest dreams as well as our deepest anxieties and set them in concrete for the next generation.”
― Steve Inskeep, Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi

“If you come to Karachi for a few days you will hate it, but if you come to Karachi for forty days, you will love it and never want to leave.”
― Steve Inskeep, Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi

“Bengali leader, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy (who served as Pakistan’s prime minister in 1956) had noted as early as March 1948 that Pakistan’s elite was predisposed to ‘raising the cry of “Pakistan in danger” for the purpose of arousing Muslim sentiments and binding them together’ to maintain its power.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“it was too loud for hope
it was too silent for victory.”
― Sneha Subramanian Kanta, Synecdoche

“The notion that where one is from can be understood using what remains of that place opens up a highly sensitive and rich terrain that can help unpack belonging, especially if that place has now been rendered inaccessible by national borders.”
― Aanchal Malhotra, Remnants of a Separation: A History of the Partition through Material Memory

“But insecurity remains the hallmark of Pakistan’s political and intellectual conversation. Even a comment about, say, Pakistan’s relatively low ranking among nations for book readership, is portrayed as an attack on the idea of Pakistan.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“Ironically, support for the idea of Pakistan was strongest in regions where
Muslims were a minority and Jinnah, as well as most of his principal lieutenants, belonged to areas that would not fall in Pakistan. To emerge as chief negotiator on behalf of Muslims, Jinnah and the All-India Muslim League had to prove their support in the Muslim majority provinces. ‘Such support’, Jalal points out, ‘could not have been won by too precise a political programme since the interests of Muslims in one part of India did not suit Muslims in others.’ Jinnah invoked religion as ‘a way of giving a semblance of unity and solidity to his divided Muslim constituents’.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“One can sympathize with the sentiment of Pakistanis who must constantly defend their country against criticism ranging from questioning of its very creation to its current policies. But it is equally important to understand that mere survival does not equate success and that progress often requires uninhibited introspection.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“Pakistanis often recount how civil servants in Pakistan’s early days worked out of makeshift offices, lived in tents and ran the government with limited stationery supplies. While the account is generally accurate, and the sacrifice of the officials admirable, it is equally important to understand that the difficulty was the result of a poor choice. Pakistan’s founder had selected the country’s capital to be located in a city lacking adequate facilities, preferring it over another provincial capital with a better establishment.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“1947, a found poem,
full of erasures in history
of India and Pakistan.”
― Sneha Subramanian Kanta, Synecdoche

“Is it possible to leave Karachi after living here for so long?”
― Steve Inskeep, Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi

“The problem with Pakistani politics is not only that the elite rule, but also that the masses want celebrities or influential people to represent them. This is a flawed mindset. By doing this, the people create the electables’, and discourage the growth of grassroots politics.”
― Reham Khan, Reham Khan

“In Taliban-controlled portions of Pakistan, “Polio vaccinations have been declared haram by the ulema, and the government campaign has subsequently stalled.” Like car insurance, vaccinations are a form of presumption. Only with the expulsion of the Taliban from the Swat Valley in the late summer of 2009 was the Pakistani government able to resume vaccinations.”
― Robert R. Reilly, The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis

“Pakistanis are a pious, warm and hospitable people,’ wrote Richard Leiby, a Washington Post reporter who spent a year and a half there, lamenting that the news from Pakistan did not reflect that. He noted, however, that the bad news about Pakistan was not untrue. In his view, ‘Just like average Americans’, the simple Pakistani people ‘pay the price of their leaders’ magnificent mistakes’.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“Seventy years after its birth, Pakistan is a volatile semi-authoritarian, national security state, which has failed to run itself consistently under constitutional order or rule of law. Examining the causes of Pakistan’s persistent dysfunction, including an inquiry into its foundational idea, is more important than building a ‘positive image’ through half-truths.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“According to Trump, ‘The Pakistani people have suffered greatly from terrorism and extremism. We recognize those contributions and those sacrifices. But Pakistan has also sheltered the same organizations that try every single day to kill our people. We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists that we are fighting. But that will have to change, and that will change immediately. No partnership can survive a country’s harboring of militants and terrorists who target US service members and officials. It is time for Pakistan to demonstrate its commitment to civilization, order and to peace.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“In Pakistan, a perception has been officially cultivated that anyone who offers facts, statistics or opinions that do not coincide with the national narrative does so at the behest of Pakistan’s many external enemies.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“A few weeks after the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright said that ‘Pakistan has everything that gives you an international migraine. It has nuclear weapons, it has terrorism, extremists, corruption, it’s very poor and it’s in a location that’s really, really important.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“During the 1960s, Nevard had only to deal with angry letters to his editor, Americans influenced by Pakistani civil servants, and stringers modifying their stories under official guidance. By 2006, the Times’ Carlotta Gall discovered that Pakistan’s security apparatus had become far more pugnacious. ‘After five days of reporting in and around Quetta, Pakistan, I had somehow irritated the secretive but powerful Directorate for Inter Service Intelligence, the ISI,’ she wrote in her book The Wrong Enemy, describing the day Pakistani agents raided her hotel room.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“No one who is a friend of Pakistan must say anything that harms its reputation; anyone who dares to ask tough questions or make adverse remarks must be prepared to be categorized as Pakistan’s enemy.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“Ignored in the self-laudatory commentary about the stock market’s performance were other less positive facts. The Karachi Stock Exchange’s market capitalization in 2016 stood at a meagre $89 billion, which compares unfavourably with the $320 billion capitalization of the Dhaka Stock Exchange in Bangladesh.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“Pakistan’s poor performance in education is not a function of poverty but of according lower priority by successive governments. There are forty-three countries in the world that are poorer than Pakistan on a per capita GDP basis45 but twenty-four of them send more children to primary school than Pakistan does. Pakistan’s budgetary allocation for education—a meagre 2.6 per cent of GDP in 2015—is abysmally low and actual expenditure—1.5 per cent of GDP—is even less. Pakistan spends around seven times more on its military than on primary education. According to one estimate, just one-fifth of Pakistan’s military budget would be sufficient to finance universal primary education.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“Serious Pakistanis try to explain away the country’s shortcomings, often attributing them to the bad hand that Pakistan was dealt by the circumstances of its birth, its hostile relationship with India, its being a victim of wars and terrorism initiated by external great powers and its misfortune in lacking leadership. Neither attempts to examine structural and systemic flaws, or is willing to acknowledge collective errors and misplaced priorities that do not go away merely by changing leaders.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“The collective wisdom in Pakistan seems to be that nothing in Pakistan’s predicament is the result of wrong policy choices made by its leaders and that the only thing Pakistanis need to do is to fend off discussion of the negatives, rather than attend to the negatives themselves.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“Pakistanis must figure out why India, which inherited similar institutions from the British Raj, maintained democracy consistently after Independence while Pakistan could not. They should also examine how Bangladesh has been able to expand its economy while reducing its population after breaking off from Pakistan.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“Alongside the data on Pakistan’s economic achievements since 1947, Pakistan’s quasi-official history acknowledges the country’s persistent need to borrow and seek aid. But these economic problems are, in Lodhi’s words, ‘rooted in poor state management, not Pakistan’s economic fundamentals’. In fact, this last point has been an essential part of the Pakistani national narrative over the years: Pakistan has just not found a great leader since Jinnah, the Quaid-i-Azam (literally, the great leader) ‘to unlock Pakistan’s potential’. Its problem is only ‘poor governance, rule without law, and shortsighted leadership’, which have ‘mired the country in layers of crises that have gravely retarded Pakistan’s progress and development’.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“Responsibility for collective failure or miscalculation can be avoided by lamenting the absence of good leaders. There appears little willingness to consider that Pakistan might need to review some of the fundamental assumptions in its national belief system—militarism, radical Islamist ideology, perennial conflict with India, dependence on external support, and refusal to recognize ethnic identities and religious pluralism—to break out of permanent crisis mode to a more stable future.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“Pakistan, unlike India, would not start out with a functioning capital, central government or financial resources, which necessitated greater homework on the part of the Muslim League leaders. Unfortunately, they did little by way of preparation for running the country they had demanded. Many of Pakistan’s teething problems were the result of this ill-preparedness but Pakistani accounts of the country’s early days paint them as hardships inflicted on Muslim Pakistan by its non-Muslim enemies.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State

“It is noteworthy that the Muslim League had campaigned for Pakistan for seven years without deciding what its capital might be. The Bengalis proposed Dhaka while others suggested Lahore and even Multan, a historic city in the south of Punjab. But the subject was never seriously discussed while rallying Muslims to the cause of Pakistan. After belatedly deciding on Karachi as the capital, Muslim League leaders expected the British Indian Army to resolve the problems they might encounter in accommodating the government of their new country. This was one of the earliest manifestations of Pakistan’s tendency to rely on the military as the solution to problems normally falling in the civilian domain.”
― Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State