Quotes from Husain Haqqani

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.

In one way, it was. After the 'Objectives Resolution' there was no turning back from Pakistan's status as an Islamic ideological 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.

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.

As in many insecure states, in Pakistan the line between preventing the nation's enemies from causing it harm and declaring everyone who disagrees with the government an enemy of the nation was blurred.

If concerns about national identity led to an emphasis on religious ideology, the need for keeping the military well supplied resulted in Pakistan's alliance with the United States.

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.

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.

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'.

In the process of moulding a nation on the basis of Islam, Pakistan has ended up earning for itself the reputation for being home to the world's angriest Muslims.

The United States initially poured money and arms into Pakistan in the hope of building a major fighting force that could assist in defending Asia against communism. Pakistan repeatedly failed to live up to its promises to provide troops for any of the wars the United States fought against communist forces, instead using American weapons in its wars with India.

Most Pakistanis would rather gloss over inconvenient truths or be content with blaming different villains for their country's plight when confronted with unpleasant facts.

Pakistan has gone on to try and define by law who is or is not a Muslim, adopted (and abandoned) interest-free banking, considered segregation of the sexes in public, and endeavoured to implement sharia. The quality of education in Pakistan has declined as a result of attempts to comply with clerical demands.

National pride should not deter Pakistanis from confronting the fact that education has not been their national priority the same way as, say, acquiring nuclear weapons.

The number of clerics has also increased exponentially. At Independence in 1947, there were only 137 madrasas (Islamic seminaries) in Pakistan. Nine years later, a 1956 survey reported that the number of madrasas had increased to 244 in West Pakistan. By 1995, the ministry of education estimated the figure at 3,906, which increased to 7,000 in 2000 and 35,000 by 2016.

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.

As of 2014, Pakistan is home to the third largest illiterate population globally and there are only fifteen countries in the world with a lower literacy rate than Pakistan. 34

The average Pakistani student is brought up on a mix of dogma and mythology that does not encourage respect for facts or empiricism.

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.

Pakistanis were being conditioned to believe that their nationhood was under constant threat and that the threat came from India. Within weeks of independence, editorials in the Muslim League newspaper, Dawn, "called for 'guns rather than butter, 'urging a bigger and better-equipped army to defend 'the sacred soil? of Pakistan.

The list of American grievances is long: Pakistan developed nuclear weapons while promising the United States that it would not; the United States helped arm and train Mujahideen against the Soviets during the 1980s, but Pakistan chose to keep these militants well armed and sufficiently funded even after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989; and, from the American perspective, Pakistan's crackdown on terrorist groups, particularly after 9/11, has been halfhearted at best.

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?

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.

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.