After his anti-Pakistan antics at the Goa BRICS summit, what Modi did at Amritsar should have come as no surprise; using a cooperative multilateral forum to demonise Pakistan as the mother and father of terrorism. That this time Modi was whole-heartedly assisted in his Pakistan-bashing by the puppet of American occupation in Afghanistan, its so-called president Ghani, should come as no surprise either. Neither should our government’s tame behaviour. And that is the worst part.

Should we be surprised that Sartaj Aziz meekly accepted the punches as if his hands were tied up behind his back? Did we expect anything else from the Nawaz government? Its timid responses to Modi’s belligerence fit an obvious pattern. So, the first question to ask is: If we had decided to attend the so-called Heart of Asia conference, why did we go unprepared? Why did we go with no homework and all our guards down as if we were visiting our love-filled nani’s house?

Of course, in this day and age, we can’t pretend not to know what’s been going on in our region and the globe of late. Is the Nawaz government oblivious of the US-India-Afghanistan nexus out to scuttle Pak-China cooperation for regional peace and integration? Or is it a willing partner in the disruptive crusade of this US-led unholy triad, this trilateral heartburn of Asia?

Now, when Modi has turned India into a monster, is certainly no time to have a soft spot for our mini-me big brother neighbour. Growing up under the dark shadow of General Zia’s pseudo-Islamic dictatorship, and the US-engineered Saudi-sponsored Afghan jihad that came with it, one had reason to view India favourably. I’d never actually been there but, back in those days, India appeared to be a positive place across the border where Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians lived together peacefully. It was a country that spoke for Palestine.

When we were selling ourselves for peanuts in the great imperial game; poisoning our society with sectarian extremism and Islamic militancy, intolerance and imposed bigotry; when we were pawning our future following a soulless monster and doing his violent bidding, spawning terrorists to export them to Afghanistan under the CIA-watch; back in those days, India seemed so much more dignified in its independence and confident in its cultural roots, tolerant and progressive.

Modi’s India is another country. Under his demonic Hindutva leadership, India is making the same mistakes we made years ago. Thanks to the leadership of General Raheel, and no thanks to the Nawaz government, we have changed that suicidal US-led trajectory. By distancing ourselves from the US and its two-faced war-on-terror project, we have managed to bring terrorism under control and created room for the constructive Pak-China win-win cooperation to bloom.

Modi’s India is a pathetic poodle learning cheap tricks to become the favourite lapdog of Uncle Sam, waging overt and covert wars on its neighbours and the future of over 1 billion Indian citizens to please his corrupt corporate masters. Modi’s India is a close friend of the rogue state of Israel, exchanging notes on suppressing freedom struggles in Kashmir and Palestine with techniques of 21st century barbarism.

Muslim, Dalit and Christian minorities are being persecuted by bigoted Hindutva brigades across the length and breadth of India, as are Indian citizens who refuse to ride Modi’s bandwagon. The ideals of a non-aligned, secular, socialistic and democratic India are being quickly replaced with US-subservience, religious intolerance, predatory capitalism and fascism.

Instead of taking up its natural place as an important player in the win-win scheme of Eurasian integration being advanced by the China-Russia nexus, India has decided to join the unipolar US cabal for disrupting the multipolar dream. Modi’s India would rather pair up with the puppet Afghan government and play the US-engineered two-faced game of terror in the region. So where does this US-India-Afghanistan nexus, this heartburn of Asia, wish to take us?

It should be clear by now to all and sundry that the duplicitous war-on-terror games of Uncle Sam are actually designed to spawn and spread terrorism, using shape-shifting bands of mercenary militants as free-floating agents of violence and chaos, the ever-changing barbaric brands being herded across borders under ever-new flags and banners to promote the geo-political ambitions of the US-led empire for absolute hegemony and the unquenchable greed of its big-money bosses.

Riding on the coat-tails of the US-led empire, and wedded many times over to US-controlled interests, can we expect Nawaz Sharif, our king-like prime minister who is also our foreign minister, to independently assert the interests of Pakistan? Don’t we see how the mafia of power-elite he heads is little more than an extension of imperial power and its corrupt networks of finance and development?

Have you ever wondered why our oh-so-democratic government defers to the diktat of the World Bank and the IMF as if they were commandments from God? Why the government and its slave-like bureaucracy love loans and grants wherever they come from? Why they don’t mind the INGOs and their partners spreading the chaos of neo-liberalism like new-age missionaries on one hand and Arab monarchies spreading fanaticism and mischief in the name of Islam on the other?

It would be naïve to expect that a government with its roots embedded so deeply in the imperial structure could dare to imagine a future outside it. Let’s face it; the so-called democratic Nawaz government is structurally configured to go along with the imperial script and so is the bulk of our parliamentary power-elite. Let’s face it; that’s where the heart of our democracy lies.

Unfortunately, rather than watching out for the interests of the state and citizens of Pakistan, our government is more worried about pleasing an assortment of imperial masters; from the US President-elect Trump to Qatari and Saudi princes to Modi. So, had Nawaz Sharif sent Sartaj Aziz to Amritsar for Pakistan to be humiliated as per the imperial script? Is our government insidiously strengthening the hostile imperial narrative against Pakistan instead of defending us from this poisonous onslaught that is clearly intended to literally kill us?

 

             The writer is a freelance columnist.