LAHORE, March 2: Supreme Court Bar Association’s former president Abid Hassan Minto has said that Pakistan has become an international security state after the 9/11 incident as it has more concern for international than internal security.

He was speaking at a meeting of the Lahore Press Club’s literary society held for launching a book on poet late Habib Jalib compiled by his younger brother Saeed Parvaiz here on Thursday with Pakistan Socialist Party president C.R Aslam in the chair.

PPP leader and MNA Aitzaz Ahsan, columnist and former MPA Ayaz Amir, PPP leader Aslam Gurdaspuri, playwright Munnoo Bhai, columnist and writer Ataul Haq Qasmi and others addressed the meeting and paid rich tributes to Jalib for revolutionary poetry of resistance.

Elaborating his point of Pakistan assuming the role of an international security state, Abid Minto said that long before the former Soviet Union’s invasion in December 1989 the military intelligence and establishment of Pakistan in collusion with religious elements had started interfering in Afghan affairs.

It was the occasion when the people of Afghanistan had changed their government that had started brining drastic land reforms like abolition of big land holdings in possession of jagirdars and warlords, distribution of their lands to landless peasants, progressive educational and social reforms like women’s emancipation and empowerment and withdrawal of all restrictions on their liberty.

He said that after the 9/11 incident Pakistan had become an active international security state when it started conducting raids and attacking places in search of persons accusing them of terrorists and belonging to Al-Qaeda.

Internally, he said, the military had a virtual control over most of the economic and political channels. The army generals, whether in uniform or retired, were in big businesses like the real estate, banking, and industrial concerns. They purchased expensive lands in housing schemes at throw-away price of thousands of rupees per kanal and sold the same at highly expensive rates of million of rupees per kanal.

No political party dared to check them, he said and added that the nation needed a poet like Habib Jalib with courage to question them. He recalled his reminiscences of his contacts with the poet.

PPP leader Aitzaz Ahsan was of the view that Pakistan has become a national security state and not a people’s welfare state as visualised by the Quaid-i-Azam as was evident from his speech on Aug 11, 1947, at the inauguration of Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly.

In a welfare state, he said, the government took care of the people while in national security state the military. He said the character of Pakistan as a state had been changed during the past 50 years.

He said the civil society had started losing its hold over the state from the day Gen Ayub Khan was made defence minister and a cabinet member back in 1954 and the military establishment had come in directly when Ayub Khan had declared Martial Law in 1958. Since then Pakistan had been made a national security on the plea that Pakistan’s security was in danger because of conspiracies of its enemies.

The military had no political, moral, legal and social justification to govern the country. It was deplorable that some political parties and religious elements supported the army to perpetuate its rule on the excuse of national security.

Mr Ahsan said the concept of national security was so much trumpeted that the people started believing that Pakistan was facing real danger.

He said the state never stabilised or fortified on the strength of its army. Had it been so the Soviet Union which had much bigger army equipped with even nuclear weapons would have not fallen apart and divided into 14 small states.

The concept of national security state had failed not only in Soviet Union but all over the world, even in Latin American states which had been ruled by the military in the past.

He said that after 1989 when Afghan war had started the concept of national security had been strengthened in Pakistan and the civil society subjugated. This was not acceptable to the PPP and the ARD and we wanted Pakistan to be a people’s welfare state and civil society to rule over the country.

Ayaz Amir said that Habib Jalib’s poetry was the poetry of resistance. Jalib had never compromised with the establishment, civil or military. He was the poet of the people as he always highlighted their woeful plight and the tyranny of rulers and their supporters.

He said the concept of state had undergone a great change in Pakistan which had started its journey with the western political principles. Now those principles were being discarded and the thought and mind-set of rulers had changed.

The new concept of state, he said, was not confined to Pakistan but it had overtaken the entire Muslim world. Expediency and not truth was the hallmark of new political concept. To challenge the expediency, the nation needed the rebellious and revolutionary poets like Habib Jalib, he asserted.

In his presidential remarks, C.R Aslam asked the people, particularly the younger generation, to study Habib Jalib who had made service of the down-trodden people, students, peasants and workers as his mission.

Despite lack of resources and poverty, he said Jalib had boldly resisted the tyranny of rulers and never compromised on his principles. He did not know expediency.