By any measure, Pakistan is a remarkable country. What has gone on in and around Islamabad’s so-called red zone over the past 10 days or so has confirmed just how dramatic and unpredictable high politics in Pakistan is.

Notwithstanding the stakes, however, the drama that has unfolded is likely to deepen the disillusionment that a large number of ordinary people harbour vis-à-vis how this country is run and the role that the proverbial masses play in running it.

Even prior to the advent of 24-hour television, there was little pretence amongst the majority of Pakistan’s people that they could even access the structures of power that exist in this country, let alone change them. For a brief and heady period immediately after live TV channels exploded into our lives, a happy lie persisted that the media would be the fountainhead of change.

Many years later, an incredible number of ordinary people are still sitting riveted in front of their TV screens, but are more convinced than ever that there is no room for them in this choreographed script.

There is no space for the ordinary people who make this country tick

To an extent the people of Punjab may have felt that they were somewhat invested in the whole drama, given that they either watched the marchers from relatively close quarters, or, more significantly, suffered from the numerous blockades within and between cities that disrupted everyday routines. But this still counts as involvement by default; I doubt that too many ordinary Punjabis/Seraikis feel empowered by the whole affair, or believe that its outcome will mark a turnaround in their collective lives.

Pakhtuns were party by virtue of the fact that the PTI runs the government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It is the workers who accompanied Pervez Khattak on the trip from Peshawar to Islamabad on Aug 14 that were the most loyal participants of the ‘azadi march’, given that most of the PTI faithful hailing from Islamabad/Rawalpindi aped their supreme leader’s method of retiring to his home during the day and returning to the protest site after dusk.

Yet I doubt seriously that the Pakhtun nation as a whole is anticipating peace, prosperity and all good things in the wake of Imran’s epic crusade.

The Baloch, as a general rule, have little stake in Pakistani politics inasmuch as they are almost completely invisible within the mainstream. My sense is that Baloch political workers who would otherwise pay some attention are too incensed about the report just released by the Khuzdar mass grave commission to really care about the theatrics playing out in Islamabad.

The commission exonerated the military and the ‘agencies’ from any role in the Khuzdar killings. Unsurprisingly, it did not disclose who was responsible.

That leaves Sindh. While the two big parties from the province have been busy trying to play a ‘responsible’ political role in ending the stand-off, it is hard not to notice that Sindhis — less so Mohajirs — are completely excluded from the power game playing out on our TV screens.

As much as any other ethnic nation, ordinary Sindhis are alienated from the structures of power within which they are ensconced. Unknown to us, because the media refuses to report on it is the fact that over the past few months more than a handful of Sindhi nationalists have been ‘disappeared’ and killed in much the same way as has been happening in Balochistan. Needless to say, then, Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri are hardly representing Sindhi popular sentiment.

Indeed, given how high-stakes the Qadri-Imran show is, and just how much of a disconnect there is between a vast majority of Pakistan’s people and the drama on our TV screens, it does not take a rocket scientist to recognise that the players in the game are not limited only to the usual suspects within the country.

In recent years, Pakistan has garnered a tremendous amount of coverage in the international press during every political ‘crisis’ on account of its being a nuclear-armed state and the clear and ever-present danger posed by the militant right wing. Yet on this occasion reporting beyond the country’s borders has been sparse.

Meanwhile foreign governments have had surprisingly little to say; the State Department has only issued a couple of cautiously worded, and vague statements about the imperative of defending democracy replete with the right to assemble and protest.

Speculation about the role being played by the army, America and any host of other big players aside, the current episode has confirmed that there is no space in Pakistan’s power game for the ordinary people who make this country tick. Even the design and outcome of popular uprisings can be manipulated by the powers-that-be. There may already have been a happy (or sad) ending by the time this column sees the light of day. In any case, politics is the casualty.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, August 22nd, 2014