Surrenders? i only remember one nilgiri. So Harsh on poor Pakistan
and besides we can all take in every single negative of a country and display it as a sign of instability. I could do it with India also however that is not a sign of stability or instability.
I am harsh because there is bunch of "guests" watching always...and reporting back somewhere else.
Given what these types inflicted on me ....repeatedly and habitually without a 2nd thought ....when they had the one way opportunity simply by my interest to engage with Pakistanis... (and borne out merely by their troglodyte instincts and emotions)...I might as well give them full due resolution on what I have always thought about their specific control-freak ilk and thinking (since they seem so obsessed with what I say all along and what friends I make or who or what I am)
Goes for all of that sort... be they a pesky buzzard, nagging aunty, claimed agnostic, cordon-bleu font "higher ups"...or whatever rabble rousing general pitchfork mob with entrenched inferiority, superiority and sugar-daddy "patrons be preserved at all and any cost to others" complexes among others.
They
ought to show themselves and step into the ring on equal terms, heck I will give them advantage...rather than be faceless guests in audience. I feel I am owed at least that...but they won't.
It all reflects on certain anti-intellectual, anti-logical psychology in the end present in large proportions among Pakistan's elitists (esp those with actionable reins of power)....governing this whole stability and instability thing in the end (IMO). It has been grown, cultivated and doubled down and tripled down upon.
There that edifice stands looking like a diamond to all those sufficiently gaslit...but looking something else carbon-based altogether to those not gaslit.
With time more and more people are brutally shown the above divide and just what degree of chasm it is in the end, leading to the very establishment of this forum for reasons you already know, governing one of the most "allied" of allies ironically.
Faithful iron-clad Allies that cannot even be pinked you see...but left in some "all is ok" purgatory to assuage greater ego. Outright pinking is for a pagan (or similar easy inferior scapegoat) like me....the very same complex of the 10:1 continuing to be played out in fantasy vs reality as it has before (and amnesia or excuse inevitably applied). Differential treatment is the very hallmark of instability.
Just the other day an Iranian buddy of mine got talking with me about the pursuit of shatranj in the modern era, given its a shared historical heritage of the elder regional civilisations (of which Pakistan definitely has its stake in)....and the strength and number of our GMs today. We wondered why Pakistan is a void of GM's....and how and why this extends to other pursuits. Why does the typical Pakistani elitist excuse come up too?
My conclusion on that is there is simply too much mental energy expended among its top 1% or whatever top X% on identity and ideology issues deep down.... that are settled matters for societies more comfortable in their own skin and own history...root psychological "stability" you can call it.
Thus Pakistan simply does not get the rational pursuits of such energy prioritised and deployed for its own betterment. This all inevitably cocoons and entrenches as anti-intellectualism...among other things (When actioned out and called out).
Merely stating one is the 1st
muslim nobel laureate (in such a discipline as physics) attracts a grave defacement from the takfiri mob...that too precisely after one as great as that... is under it and cannot defend his identity.
This severe anti-intellectualism follows his worthy student doggedly, when he voices his opinion in newspaper columns persistently and consistently on what ails his beloved country (the half that remains, in the name of stability).
The same takfiri thinking that ripped away half the country earlier too to begin with....can rice eating fish eating gangu delta folks, unwilling to compromise on their underlying "hindu" language and "hindu" customs.... ever really be a proper muslim?...or need sermons and one-way wealth extraction by the asserted proper "Urdu with the right islamic script" piety folks?
What do? You call this stable?
This psyche extends to so many things I have already talked about and simply I don't want to continue...my interest regarding those w.r.t Pakistan has long waned and will not recover....the earlier experience just being one of many things helping to establish that (for that I do thank that place).
Let me be clear, none of this reflects on the Pakistani populace at large in some absolute way, not even close. Much like my own 1.4 billion Indians, I will never meet 99.9999999%+ of Pakistanis to form opinion on that. Sample some slice of them, there are say social media street scenes of regular folks, and they are by and large like regular folks world over in the end.
They after all didn't get together and organise, plan and execute a terror attack on Bombay now did they (that too under the most likely path to peace + resolution thinking PM India had at that time)...that was a specific group of people that bear out only some correlation on the larger country. Same goes for every country in the end in that the buffer I extend to all is the same by default.
But now as an example of that action by those few, you are simply never going to get another Indian PM like that again w.r.t Pakistan. It is full on Indira Gandhi mode (at a minimum) from now on....as that stiffness in spine is apparently the only recourse Pakistan establishment seems to understand.
It's same reason major ally US did not trust Pakistan establishment on the OBL raid. This speaks to the perceived stability of the upper echelon in the end.
Hence I only judge the visible manifestation as I see it of the elitists that have the most power...to exert on others and on their own people.
I have been lucky to meet and know some good Pakistanis that buck the trend (some considerably so) of those elitists and narratives and I would count you among that number.
It will be such people as that, which offer genuine stability of the best kind to Pakistan should they be allowed to occupy the mantle in sufficient number and strength.
But that is matter of being done rather than ignored endlessly or talked about and yawned about endlessly.
I am tired of theoretical and projected semantics in light of the backdrop of results and reality.
Such was an idle curiosity at best to test the waters, they have been found cold, murky and unwelcoming (overall) in Pakistan elitist case and have run their vain course several times over.
With countries/societies where the situation is far more tempered and fair in the basic handling and arbitration of free thought and discourse (from whichever friend or foe), I ultimately judge those to also be more stable too...along with my sustained interest there.
@VCheng @T-123456 @Joe Shearer
What is stability? Is it secure territorial integrity? Then i would say that India and Pakistan are even more 'Stable' than the UK which is repeatedly undergoing Scotland independence votes. Is the UK unstable since it went from half of the world to an Island divided in a century? Absolutely not. Is religious unity a sign of stability? then what happens when one region of the country has religious unity but the other does not? Does that mean half the country is stable and half isnt? or shall we condemn the other half and declare the country unstable?
We can use the fragility index or similar as starting reference on its components. UK is very much different given its constitution (regd its formation) is different. This is fundamentally why they let Ireland leave the union too and were also willing to let Northern Ireland leave too (if the northern ireland parliament voted for it, which they didnt).
It would be different if UK was the original reference for the country at large....it isn't...its a country of earlier countries in union. It is very unique situation.
OP my friend, Terms like Stability or failed state are mere terms. These are deceiving concepts that display nothing and tell no story but our perceptive story. For example an Afghan may argue that it more stable than any nation in the world for since 1930s it has been embroiled in one Civil war to the other and nations that faced 10% of such broke down. An Afghan that it is far more stable than India or Pakistan since despite all that, its territorial integrity exists. A man from Iraq would declare the same and openly declare that it is far more stable than Iran or China that are fighting multiple ethnic and religiuous infightings yet Iraw which lost central authority and became an open region, was able to pick its pieces together, most notably being the kurdish region.
No one (reasonable) is going to go all in on one component of stability. Hence the need for multi-component index and how you prioritise and debate those.
Failed states, stable states are only titles based on our perception. I can argue that Pakistan is very stable since it has been able to survive all that nilgiri pointed out and has survived the worst war in its history, Nilgiri can argue that India is very stable since despite its multi-ethnic nature and religious infighting, the state of India is under no threat. We can all pick up stability and we can all pick up instability.
Hence the need for debate on what are the components of stability that can be measured, analysed and compared.
If you were to ask me, gun to the head, what is a stable state, then i would answer the state which can provide protection, welfare, food, education, equality, opportunity to its people, that is a stable state and it can be for a small amount of period or for a long period for stability is not some badge we can give but a period of prosperity that one gets and that period can be both long or short. So, gun to the head, when a state does all that for whatever period it can, then it is stable, whether that state is democratic or monarch or sultanate is irrelevant.
Yeah well the USSR had:
protection, welfare, food, education, equality, opportunity to its people
...arguably (and measurably) in far large abundance than say India and Pakistan today (and much of the developing world in general today) right up to its very end.
But it had that end (driven by tremendous deteoration of stability after all) for a reason. Thus there is more to the story than just these.
Similarly there are countries that provide these components at far worse degree than India and Pakistan, but are arguably more stable than either....given there is enough "institutional"+ political power consolidated for various reasons and there is little to no churning (from inside and outside) to upset that. Some countries are just small enough to not warrant/create a whole host of things larger nations face....or carry inertias long enough from before that add further stability.