Quotes About Pakistan

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.

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

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.

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.

Getting the new state on its feet economically presented one of the major challenges. Pakistan had virtually no industry, and the major markets for its agricultural products were in India. Pakistan produced 75 percent of the world's jute supply but did not have a single jute processing mill. All the mills were in India. Although one-third of undivided India's cotton was grown in Pakistan, it had "only one-thirtieth of the cotton mills.

The constant refrain of Islamizing a Muslim-majority country, coupled with the belief that this nation must always be in conflict with its largest neighbour because of religious differences, is in many ways at the heart of most of Pakistan's current problems.

The dangers of an Afghan collapse are many: Afghan deaths, a loss of American prestige, a loss of NATO prestige, a moral blow to U.S. troops and veterans, a Taliban resurgence, huge setbacks for women, and greater power for Pakistan and Pakistani extremists.

Pakistan is also a victim of terrorism. We obviously condemn all forms of terrorism; we should cooperate in facing the menace and stem it.

From a social networking point of view, Pakistan is not very far away.

President Bush ends sanctions on Pakistan for developing nuclear power in 1998, reschedules its debt, and helps Musharraf consolidate his power.

In Pakistan politics is hereditary.

Pakistan needs to have decentralisation and a good local government system.

Lack of rule of law is the main reason Pakistan could not join the ranks of progressive nations.