The speeches politicians make rarely offer any insight beyond the partisan and platitudinous. Future historians, parsing the speeches made by party leaders today, will not be able to discern much about the general state of society, with certain exceptions. One of those took place in the final days of 2013 when Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the scion of Pakistan's Bhutto family and the leader of the Pakistani's Peoples Party, declared war on the Pakistani Taliban – a terrorist organization with the stated goal of toppling the Pakistani state. He was critical of the Pakistani government's decision to negotiate with the Taliban and scolded the Oxford-educated Imran Khan, leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (Pakistan Movement for Justice Party) for closing supply routes to NATO.
Unlike the men running Pakistan's government, Mr. Bhutto is 25 years old. Despite his youthful age, Pakistani society would be wise to listen to his words: The country's economy is projected to grow by a mere 3.6 per cent this year; 49,000 Pakistanis have died since 9/11; two Shi'a pilgrims have already been killed this year; Ahmedi Muslims are still considered apostates and are targeted almost daily. In November, when the leader of the Pakistani Taliban was killed in a drone strike, some of Pakistan's leaders decried the U.S. attack and turned Hakimullah Mehsud into a martyr. When Malala Yousefzai was shot in the head, a Taliban spokesman called her literacy campaign an "obscenity" and members of Pakistani's religious and political elite began circulating conspiracy theories to the effect that Malala, not even a teenager then, was a CIA agent.
What is most ironic about Pakistan's sectarianism and its drift to the nonsensical is that it was created in 1947 by a Westernized, liberal barrister to protect the Muslim population on the Indian subcontinent. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, tutored at Lincoln's Inn and tailored at Savile Row, told the constituent assembly of Pakistan, in a speech religious leaders have tried to expurgate: "You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the business of the State." What makes this irony particularly glum is that Jinnah himself was a Shia Muslim and thus found a state in which killing squads openly target the Shia population.
Generational changes may be promising, but a shift in education policies is sorely needed. Pakistan has a huge youth bulge, with 35 per cent of the population under the age of 15. Almost half of registered voters, at 47.8 per cent, are between the ages of 18 and 35. This means that Pakistan's youth can make a difference at the ballot box, as they surely did by coming out in droves for Imran Khan last year. However, the sheer incompetence, corruption, and kleptocratic nature of the Pakistani state has disillusioned these youth: 94 per cent believe the country is headed in the wrong direction and less than a third believe democracy is the right political system for the country.
Worst still is that Pakistan's state education system reinforces anti-Indian prejudices and indoctrinates hate into children. The state system educates half of all schoolchildren and as the U.S. Commission on International and Religious Freedom notes, most Pakistani teachers in this system consider non-Muslims to be "enemies of Islam." All of this amounts to a severe distortion of education to the point of brainwashing. It is a surprise that Pakistan's Christian minority have been attacked in their Churches?
While current Prime Minister Nawraz Sharif is known as a pragmatic, pro-business conciliator and has made positive overtures to India and is negotiating with the Taliban, his work is cut out for him. Societal forces across the country are larger than any single political party and the dismal state of the economy, coupled with the radicalization of Pakistani youth, means that in 2014, "the most dangerous country on earth" may live up to its reputation.
Omer Aziz is a contributor to The Globe and Mail.