I APPRECIATE a thoughtful article, ‘A hard country’ (Feb 16), by F. S. Aijazuddin. I specially admire the paragraph: “Similarly, there have been all too many cynics who have regarded Pakistan as a terminal case, closer to death than to self-fulfilment. Just skim through the titles of books on Pakistan written by Pakistanis who depend (or depended) on its continuance for their income and identity: Roedad Khan’s ‘A dream gone sour’; Ahmed Rashid’s ‘Descent into chaos’, Tariq Ali’s ‘Can Pakistan survive?: the death of a state’ and Sher Baz Khan Mazari’s ‘Pakistan: A Journey to Disillusionment’.”

The writer is correct when he says that we Pakistanis are also resilient and have the capacity to bounce back and rise like a phoenix from the ashes as it happened in 1971 on being cut into two pieces due to our own faults. When we Pakistanis are united and encounter inimical onslaughts, we demonstrate an  incredible unity despite our differences and fratricide.

We would fight with each other as we are killing ourselves more than our enemies would have killed us. But in the face of external aggression, our unity is phenomenal.

I further cite Mr Aijazuddin: “Anatol Lieven’s recent book, ‘Pakistan: A Hard Country’, is in better company. It deserves to be on the same shelf as Farzana Shaikh’s ‘Making Sense of Pakistan’, if only because neither of them reads like a requiem for a failed state.”

In the 1950s politicians were showing political instability but I am sure had Ayub Khan and his fellow civil and army conspirators not killed the infant democracy in Pakistan, we would have evolved into a genuine democracy like India by now.

The present political parties by enacting 18th, 19th and 20th Amendments, the NFC and submitting to majestic judicial activism of our Supreme Court have proved that, as you said in your editorial, ‘Democracy wins’ (Feb 16) now in Pakistan. Let our political parties participate in the coming elections and attain democratic adulthood.

ABDUL SAEED KHAN GHORI
Karachi