December 16 is a fateful day in Pakistan’s history. The massacre of 134 children in Army Public School in Peshawar in 2014 and fall of East Pakistan in 1971 have left deep scars on national consciousness.

The unceremonious surrender in Dhaka and the shock of the secession of the eastern wing raised many questions about the functioning of state institutions. The APS tragedy was followed by a drawn-out war against the Taliban. Six years after the APS tragedy and 50 years after the fall of East Pakistan what are the lessons that need to be learnt?

Because the Afghanistan-based Taliban, abetted by Chechen and Egyptian terrorists, were responsible for the APS carnage, the soul-searching needs to start with our security paradigm. The first question is why did Pakistan got entangled in Afghanistan and American-led wars in the first place?

A lot of analytic effort has gone into explaining Pakistan’s penchant for jumping in foreign wars. The reasons for siding with the USA in Afghanistan are complicated, multi-dimensional, and defy easy characterisation. One of the reasons given frequently was that Pakistan was looking for “strategic depth” in Afghanistan.

Learning the right lessons from the history of military ties with the US might have made Pakistan’s decisions more informed. Why did we fail to remember that strategic and economic relations of bigger powers take precedence over moral and ideological considerations?

We should be more guarded in declaring Pakistan’s decision to enter the American-led war as a manifestation of ideological affinity, especially since we received billions of dollars in the form of coalition support funds (CSF). To put it crudely, we were paid for an assignment. We also need to realise that India is a key ally of the US because of their mutual economic interests.

What did we get in return for a costly war in Afghanistan? The search for strategic depth has not landed us anywhere close to security. Pakistan has instead become a victim of murderous attacks on its soil.

Diplomatically, Pakistan has adversarial relations with the Afghan government that sees little difference between Taliban and Pakistan. Meanwhile, terrorist attacks against Pakistanis continues to this day. Last week there was a grenade explosion in Rawalpindi, injuring 25 people.

An open and transparent foreign policy with well-defined goals can bring a nation credibility. Pursuit of strategic goals through proxies is a recipe for disaster. The proxy war in Syria has not only made a negotiated settlement of differences among warring factions in Syria extremely difficult, it has also brought Saudi Arabia and Iran widespread opprobrium.

Double standards and realpolitik aside, public opinion in the world has little sympathy for proxy wars.

While Pakistan routinely shares dossiers with the UN and international human rights watchdogs to show Indian wrongdoings in Kashmir and elsewhere, the world does not cease to see a close link between Pakistan and terrorism.

The irony is that even the OIC does not seem to fully endorse Pakistan’s stand on Kashmir. When Foreign Minister Qureshi pressed the OIC to call a meeting of its Council of Foreign Ministers on Kashmir, Saudi Arabia was so piqued that, in an unusual move, it asked for repayment of a soft loan it had advanced earlier as part of a support package.

The frequency with which Pakistan has recently expressed its concern about potential false flag operation by India and cross-border shelling from the Indian side has increased manifold despite the fact that Pakistan is a declared nuclear power and one of the largest military spenders in the world.

A compelling message from the APS massacre and the fall of East Pakistan is that state institutions need to work within limits defined by the Constitution.

While importing military hardware may be a genuine necessity establishing a credible weapons manufacturing complex is indispensable. What makes Pakistan a perpetual buyer of military equipment? What factors limit Pakistan’s ability to become reasonably self-sufficient in manufacturing military products?

While firepower has visible limits, security is a total package. No security paradigm is complete unless it includes peace both within and abroad. There have been many examples of apparently intractable security issues being resolved diplomatically. Peace in Europe shortly after unprecedented bloodshed in World War II is an example of sanity worth emulating in South Asia.

As neighbours India and Pakistan have to learn to live to coexist peacefully. So, it may be in the fitness of things to give peace more chances. While Indian intransigence and fascist tendencies of the Modi government pose insurmountable hurdles in the way of peace in the region, a far more significant threat to peace is the status quo.

Ordinary Pakistanis have to pay a heavy price for a perpetual war-like situation. Significant resources are allocated for the security needs and whatever is left is distributed among the remaining sectors. The price paid by ordinary Pakistanis is less than evident because the opportunity cost of staying poor goes unrecognised.

Well-defined and well-executed measures are required to break out of the vicious circle of poverty and enter the circle of high skills and high productivity. Health and education, which are considered the most effective “enablers” of development and most important determinants of the quality of human capital are in a shambles in Pakistan.

The condition of the ordinary people has never been satisfactory. Covid-19 has proved to be the moment of truth for Pakistanis. It has pushed a sizeable part of the middle-class under the poverty line. Rising prices of essential commodities, inflated utility bills, lost livelihoods during the pandemic, mismanagement and governance issues have worsened the quality of life of ordinary people.

A compelling message from the APS massacre and the fall of East Pakistan is that state institutions need to work within limits defined by the Constitution. There is a widespread perception that civilian leadership and security establishment are rarely on the same page in designing a security policy. Many democratically elected leaders have been declared traitors and security risk apart from being dubbed as Indian agents. A security policy designed in an environment of such mistrust of civilian representatives cannot but lack consensus.

When state institutions overstep their limits, the result is chaos. If the political temperature rises further, it will most likely sap the little energy left in the incumbent government to take care of the people.

The writer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at COMSATS University Islamabad, Lahore Campus