THE OTHER CHILD OF MIDNIGHT STRIVES TO GROW

On its 77th birthday, Pakistan is facing a polycrisis that can be traced to its civil-military dissonance, foreign policy misadventures and geopolitical approaches. Can it emerge from the morass?

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INDEPENDENCE days are occasions for introspection. Pakistan's conflict- and turbulenceprone history means that August 14 stands out annually for reflections on the wrong turns and poor judgement calls of the past. This navel-gazing can extend over the whole month.

However, in many ways, August matches December as the nation's month for introspection, with the latter marked as the saddest on Pakistan's political calendar for suffering the greatest setback that can befall a nation its break-up-in December 1971.

December also stands out because it animates the national security challenge that Pakistan confronts. It was on December 27, 2007 that Benazir Bhutto was assassinated.

On December 16, 2014, Pakistan witnessed its most horrific terrorist attack on a school in Peshawar. These ghosts remain largely unburied, as is evidenced by the daily threat posed by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the persisting ambiguity surrounding the interface between Pakistan's state agencies and terrorist outfits.

Nevertheless, August has a special quality in Pakistan, just as it does in India, and therefore invokes a special kind of analysis.

The past 3-4 years have been exceptionally stressful for our neighbour. Major natural disasters, pronounced economic distress amid a near insolvency and debt default scenario, a national security crisis with mounting terrorist attacks and growing political protests in the insurgency-prone region of Baluchistan and the tribal areas all these have regularly hit the headlines for the past few years.

This internal turmoil is matched by a nightmarish external environment with a marked deterioration in many principal relationships. Bad India-Pakistan relations are hardly new. But the long slump since 2016 and the further dip since 2019 mean that the relationship is in its longest ever downturn in its current phase even including those associated with the 1965 and 1971 wars.