Message To Youth
London – 23 August 2003
Ladies and Gentlemen:
The world is a very different place from what we dreamed in those wonderful moments when the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold war ended.
The era of peace for which we prayed, became a time of war.
Civility was replaced with brutality.
Tolerance was replaced by terrorism.
Democracy in Pakistan was replaced by dictatorship.
Violent fanaticism replaced religious moderation.
The execution of Wall Street Journal Bureau Chief Daniel Pearl in Pakistan underscored the treacherous nature of this terrorist war. The reality of suicide bombings has struck our homeland—Christian churches, urban hotels; foreign diplomatic missions are all targets. And now the allied presence in Iraq adds a new factor to the politics of the Middle East.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
It grieves me that included in the list of victims of the World Trade Tower Bombings is the image of Islam across the world. Our religion is not what these people preach. Islam is committed to tolerance and equality, and it is committed to the principles of democracy.
Despite the strong commitment to democracy, most Muslims today are living in dictatorships. The Muslim people want freedom just as the people of the Communist world wanted freedom.
Islam was the first religion to emancipate women.
Yet a vast majority of Muslim women are discriminated against in different aspects of their lives.
Islam asked us to read, to seek knowledge and develop rational thought.
Yet I see a vast majority of Muslim students denied knowledge, denied literacy, denied access to centers of excellence.
Islam is a religion born in the heart of the trading world in the sixth century. The Holy Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) worked for and married Bibi Khadija who was a business woman.
Yet Muslim societies often rely on patronage, nepotism and lack of transparency in business, which suffocates the entrepreneurial skills of our people.
Islam is a message of Adl and Insaf. But Adl and Insaf are sacrificed at the alter of lust for power.
Islam is about human dignity.
But we see Muslims suffer indignities because dictatorship divides us and suppresses our own people.
Islam is a religion which declares the equality of all men and women. We see this equality trampled as political leaders are exiled or imprisoned. Muslim societies are facing a challenge.
Those who want to see Muslims suppressed and oppressed support dictatorship and one party rule. They want to see the future in the chains of the powers of ignorance, intolerance and dictatorship.
Today there is anger in the Muslim world. Muslims are dying in Kashmir, in Chechnya, in Palestine and other parts of the world. I want you to turn anger into motivation. I want you to fight for freedom, for democracy, for human rights so that Muslims can hold up their heads with honour and dignity.
The Youth of today know that Islam emphasizes the principles of consultation known as shura, consensus known as ijma and independent judgment known as ijtihaad.
The Holy Koran makes it clear that the workings of the democratic process—consultation between the government and the people through elected representatives and accountability of leaders to the people they serve through fair elections are at the heart of Islam.
Those who preach dictatorship, one party rule, rig elections, blackmail politicians, pressure judges benefit themselves by grabbing commercial, agricultural and residential plots undermine Muslim societies and darken the future of the Muslim youth. They are the enemies of humanity. While enriching themselves they impoverish the working classes the middle classes, the farmers and the labourers.
In the end, they will be defeated.
Whosoever indulges in cruelty gets a befitting response. Ayub Khan was thrown out by his subordinate. Yahya Khan was thrown out by his subordinate. Both President Ishaq and Prime Minister Nawaz had to go due to their subordinate in 1993. Farooq Leghari was also thrown out by the Prime Minister he had brought to power.
When people are unhappy and disgruntled, it acts as a catalyst to bring change. The cruelest of dictators go and this dictatorship will go too.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
September 11 will go down in history as a defining moment in our civilization. The attack on the World Trade Towers was a second Pearl Harbor that ended one period in time and heralded the beginning of another.
On that fateful day, the world tumbled out of a time when Communism was the threat, the fear, the bloc that was to be contained. The world tumbled into a different period when Islam and the Muslim Nations seemingly replaced Communism as the new threat, the new fear and the new world that was to be contained.
Since the world shook with the shock of the attack on the World Trade Centers, much has changed. Civil liberties suffered a set back. Many Muslims in the West live in fear of prejudice suspicion and discrimination. They face hate crimes. It is difficult to get student visas and even tourist visas. Moreover, now people can be arrested and kept with out trial for long periods.
The World Trade Center attacks have shaken the Muslim world. Since that fateful day, both Afghanistan and Iraq have foreign troops on their soil. There is speculation on which Muslim country will be next for regime changes.
The Muslim world is in an inertia. A hyper power invincible. It need not be so.
A greater understanding is needed between the Muslim world and the West. Politics does not know a vacuum and the political pendulum swings from side to side.
America, British and Europe are open societies. Muslims need to come out of the inertia and use the open-ness of the democratic systems to build a world of greater understanding.
To do so, we need to be democrats. We need to shun sectarianism, terrorism, ethnic violence and political prejudice.
And we can do it if we follow the path of Quad-e-Azam and Quad-e-Awam. These great leaders of our nation taught us the politics of Federalism, Democracy, Constitutional protection, rule of law, equality and emancipation of the people from backwardness and poverty.
The youth of today, better educated, better equipped with computer technology at its fingertips is best placed to reject dictatorship and fight for democracy to save Pakistan and our coming generations from fratricide, civil war, violence, bomb blasts and suicide bombing.
It is shocking that worshipers in Quetta were killed in a mosque. Young Police officers in training were killed. The foreign Minister says militants are non state actors out of state control.
If militants groups are out of control, it reflects poorly on a military ruler with an army to command.
The writ of the state can be restored.
The PPP Government ended the Army operation in Karachi. It restored law and order across the country. It closed the Islamic University in Peshawar to prevent Al-Qaeda Politics from undering internal security. It cracked down on sectarianism in the Punjab.
I may be a lady but there was security for ordinary citizens when PPP was in government. Now a military leader with full force can not control the situation.
Democracy and Development go hand in hand.
The records of the PPP government prove this.
PPP government was overthrown because PPP government is a symbol of a strong, stable secure Pakistan which also happens to be a nuclear power. Tin pot military dictators preside over weak and dependent states because dictatorship kills the soul of a Nation.
When I was Prime Minister, the PPP heralded the information age by introducing fax machines, digital pagers, optic fiber communications, cellular telephones, satellite dishes, computers, Internet, e-mail and even CNN and Fox into Pakistan. Before that Pakistan had to wait 20 years to get a telephone connection.
Under the PPP government Pakistan integrated into the global economy providing jobs for its youth. We became one of the ten emerging capital markets of the world, attracting billions of dollars in foreign investment, particularly in power generation.
We eradicated polio in our country. We dramatically reduced infant mortality. We increased literacy by one-third. We built over 48,000 primary and secondary schools in two terms targeting rural Pakistan.
Women’s Bank.
The World Bank called our energy program a model to the entire developing world.
WHO gold medal.
It was a remarkable transformation of a society. It was a transformation that our underprivileged wanted.
It was a transformation that attacked ignorance and illiteracy and injustice. It was a transformation that was bringing Pakistan into the modern era as a model to more than one billion Muslims around the world of what moderate, enlightened Islam could accomplish for its people.
And thus to the fanatics and the extremists, we became the enemy, the threat, and the obstacle. To at the crossroads, a democratic Pakistan was one fork in the road, dictatorship the other.
With the eclipse of my government, the Taliban seized Kabul and imposed their will across Afghanistan. They invited in Al-Qaeda declared war on America and the rest is history.
If the PPP government had remained in Power, no-one would have died in World Trade Center attacks, in the retaliatory war against Afghanistan. Nor would the definition of terrorism have changed to the detriment of the Palestinians. People of Iraq could have avoided war as the issue of weapons of mass destructions would be viewed against a different background.
These dramatic changes happened because the PPP government was dismissed bringing tragic repercussions in its wake.
On the India front, PPP signed the only nuclear confidence building treaty between our nations, the agreement not to attack each other’s respective nuclear facilities. We established military contact between the Pakistani and Indian leadership modeled after the hot line between Washington and Moscow during the Cold War. We opened our borders to travel and tourism, and adopted a South Asian preferential tariff agreement that established a free-trade zone between Pakistan, India and the other nations of the region.
With the dismissal of the PPP government, the ill concurred Kargil operation took place. Islamabad was humiliated into unilaterally withdrawing. Soldiers were abandoned to icy deaths. 3000 were secretly buried.
In 2001 an attack took place on the Indian parliament. Again Islamabad was humiliated into banning the militant groups under orders from Washington and New Delhi for better it would have been to have the political wisdom to rein in militants before advise consequences fell on the country.
As if this was not enough, Islamabad was accused of exporting nuclear technology to North Korea in violation of solemn commitments. And while the Palestinian Authority lay under occupation, with homes bulldozed, with Jerusalem unsettled and Golan Heights occupied, the dictator offered to unilaterally recognize Israel. He failed to even tie up the recognition issue with the OIC resolutions or the Saudi Peace Initiative or to ask Israel to remain neutral on Kashmir.
When I traveled to New Delhi in November 2001 to develop better relations between our countries, I was denounced by the military establishment. Two years later they are openly declaring their commitment to the PPP vision of peace. Leadership is about vision. There is a timing in politics. Those who realise the lesson too late fail to reap the harvest for peace or for our people.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
General Musharraf created a hung Parliament. He marginalised the democratic parties. He wants the people of Pakistan, people all over the world, to choose between military dictatorship or religious rule. There is a third choice: Democratic Governance. But the dictator refused to give them that choice.
Let us remember that building a moderate, stable and democratic political structure in Afghanistan and Iraq could have saved the Afghans and the Iraqis from a devastating war, from death, destruction and devastation.
General Musharraf first staged an unconstitutional referendum to rubber-stamp his dictatorship. The New York Times called it a dubious exercise. There was a five percent turnout, no voting lists, no fixed polling stations, pictures of eight year olds voting.
He followed it up with an election that the European Union called “a deeply flawed exercise”. Human Rights Watch said “the deck was stacked against the democratic parties”.
He passed 29 constitutional amendments in 2 minutes. It took America 250 years to pass 27 amendments. General Musharraf distrusts democracy. He fears the outcome of a free expression of democracy. He refuses to let me return home in safety.
He is a soldier who fears a woman.
He is a General afraid to face a woman leading her Party.
I wonder what the great General is frightened off?
He is frightened because he knows this unarmed lady has the moral strength of ideas and the support of the Pakistani people.
For 7 years my Party, my family and I were tortured to force me to quit politics. By the Grace of God the people stood by me and I stood by them. To fight for truth and justice is a holy duty for us to save our Nation from the clutches of military dictatorship and oppression.
History has taught us the very hard lesson that when Pakistan turns against democracy, it turns against itself. In 1965, under one military dictatorship we signed the Tashkent Declaration. In 1971 we lost half the country. In 1981 we lost Siachen. In 2001, we lost Strategic depth in Afghanistan. That is why it is critical that Pakistan keeps sight of its democratic values.
Islamabad’s Generals are betting that the White House needs them for the war on terror and the Iraq situation and will backburner the cause of democracy. Maybe they are right. But if Islamabad’s military dictatorship is allowed to exploit America’s strategic interests to legitimize its own illegitimate power, the threat to Pakistan from hostile neighbors, militant groups, suicide bombings can only increase. And we know from the example of Yugoslavia, what happens to countries that internally implode.
Therefore I appeal to the youth of Pakistan to come forward and unite for the restoration of democracy and constitutional rule.
I have great faith in the youth of Pakistan. I know the youth will redeem my faith in them.
You, the Youth, are our successor generation. To you we pass the torch of leadership, our democratic vision baptized in the sacred blood of our Martyrs.
Dear students, Dear youth, fight what you believe in. Fight for Democracy. Fight for our exploited and impoverished people.
Remember: it is better to live like a lion for one day — than live like a jackal for a thousand years.
I wish you all success and happiness, my dear daughters and sons of Pakistan.