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WATCHING the Pakistan team implode is never fun, especially if you are in the company of foreign friends.
So when Shahid Afridi’s team was being thrashed by India in the Asia Cup T20 series in Bangladesh, I silently wished my Indian and English friends could have been anywhere but with me in the TV room. And downright derision would have been preferable to the sympathy they expressed during the match.
Hafeez, as he was caught behind, swishing at a ball outside off stump, drew this consolation from James: “Oh bad luck, old chap!” And when Afridi stupidly ran himself out, Renu, our Indian friend, exclaimed: “Poor man! He tried so hard to get back.” All this while, I squirmed as a succession of our batsmen trudged reluctantly to the crease, soon to return to the pavilion, out in disgraceful ways they would not want their children to witness.
And for their short duration at the wicket, whenever a camera zoomed in on their faces, we could see the fear in their eyes. In fact, even without magnification, their body language betrayed their nerves. Where, I wondered, was Miandad’s cheeky swagger? Or Inzi’s calm confidence? In their day, Imran Khan, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis terrorised batsmen from around the world. Now we are left with just Amir as a genuinely quick-strike bowler.
We show no sign of halting our decline.
So when did we lose our mojo, not just in cricket, but in just about every field? Originally, the term referred to a magic potion or amulet, but now means that special talent or ability to succeed against the odds. It also implies being full of energy. Everything, in short, team Pakistan lacks presently.
Apart from cricket, we were top dogs in squash and hockey as well. And our bridge team held its own against the best in the world. I know that every country has its ups and downs in sports, but we show no sign of halting our decline.
In the 1980s, I met an American diplomat abroad who had served in Pakistan, and he asked me: “Hey, what happened to you guys? Pakistan was doing so well that we held it up as an example to other developing countries, but now it all seems to have gone belly up.”
I am from the generation that witnessed the rise and decline of our institutions, and while many reasons contributed to our present standing, I would ascribe the bulk of our problems to the use of religion for political, monetary and strategic ends. This excessive zeal first manifested itself in Zia’s rule in the 1980s, and soon wormed its way everywhere from cricket dressing rooms to TV studios.
Thus, it is no longer possible to conduct a public discussion on the pressing need to control our population.
Clerics insist that the more babies, the stronger Pakistan becomes. Mohammed Yusuf, a farm worker in Gujranwala, has 43 children, and says he wants to score a century. This is the one area where we can claim to have done well, with Pakistanis breeding like rabbits.
At 200 million and counting, our explosive population growth has obvious implications. There are neither school places nor jobs to cope with this tidal wave of young Pakistanis. And when we run short of gas, electricity and water, we are quick to blame the government, but seldom search for the root cause of our shortages: too many people.
Many developing countries seek overseas investors and tourists to boost their foreign exchange reserves and create jobs. For this, the host country needs to provide a secure and welcoming environment. In Pakistan, however, we have allowed crazed ‘jihadis’ to kill foreigners — as well as locals — at will, ensuring that Pakistan remains on the list of countries tourists are barred from visiting by official travel advisories.
Over the years, televised images of angry, bearded faces that form most Pakistani mobs have been beamed into homes from New York to Nairobi, and from Munich to Mumbai.
To the foreign eye, there is nothing to distinguish these pictures from the Taliban or fighters from the militant Islamic State group, or other similar death cults. To this audience, our claim that Islam is a religion of peace rings increasingly hollow.
In fact, this conflation of Pakistan with jihadi terror puts us constantly on the defensive. Our official spokesmen and diplomats are in full denial mode whenever some terrorist atrocity takes place in India or Afghanistan. To shift the blame, we are forever concocting conspiracy theories.
All this ducking and weaving takes up a lot of energy and creativity. And an education that propagates myths and unscientific mumbo-jumbo does not motivate the young to excel. Low performance at the workplace has become the norm.
Being a realist, I don’t see our trajectory changing anytime soon. But if we continue down our present path, don’t expect to find our lost mojo.
Published in Dawn, March 5th, 2016
