Since 15 years of my endeavours to change Pakistan, I have seen the policy makers keep on emphasizing on the importance of economic prosperity. I rememeber I was sitting with an army colonel in his office at one point during the time of Imran Khan & I mentioned Gazwa-e-Hind. He looked at me & said the most unexpected thing. He said Pakistan's future will be prosperous if construction continues. He meant building infrastructure & constructing more buildings is a sign of healthy economy. I didn't know what to say further. I expressed my concerns about Modi's extremism. He said "Modi is stupid & when he acts off-we give him a lesson & force him to behave". This was in 2021.
In the last few decades, Pakistan has witnessed record number of terrorist attacks on its soil. Most have been incriminated to be committed by Afghans/Bugtis but despite all measures, the attacks have continued. Due to this perpetual state of terrorism-Pakistan continues to face poor investment &/or export potential. Local production is suffering. Agriculture & Industry are decelerating. PKR continues to lose its value. We were in an official economic recession & we continue to remain in an ecnomic crisis. Problem is not lack of material resources or human resources or education. Problem is the inability to give others a promise that his/her investment will remain "safe" in Pakistan. Problem is a volatile environment. Even though Pakistan Army has acheived tremendous success in procuring peace in Karachi from the point when Altaf Hussain had made it hell with his covert militancy-we still have miles to go. CPEC as established by China was promised to be a game-changer. Yet, the fruits of this are yet to be enjoyed by Pakistan. Rekodiq was supposed to alleviate the poverty of Pakistan. We still do not see any productive outcome. Sindh is fast becoming a reservoir of oil but petroleum remains a coveted luxury in Pakistan. Reason is that Pakistan does not as yet have the ability to process crude oil. Most of Gulf employs "Pakistani engineers" to process crude oil. But when it comes to processing Pakistani oil, we justify the use of very expensive foreign western companies that literally leave us with peanuts in profits by the time they are done with plundering our oil resources. Pakistan has been exporting its very brilliant petroleum engineers to all of the world but refuses to keep them here & use them to "process crude oil of Pakistan" for use by Pakistan so that Pakistanis can have a more affordable price of petroleum. What happens therafter is that we have to "import" petroleum, pay in USD & spend a large amount of foregn reserves on a produce that could be availed locally if "Pakistani engineers" are used to process the crude oil. Politicians make commission money off giving tenders to foreign companies so we remain a petroleum-starved economy. This is not the only mess I have seen.
Rekodiq is another mega crisis. CPEC is another. I will need to write separate articles on each one of them. But, today the topic is not economy. Topic is different. Topic is that a strong defense can lead to a strong economy but a strong economy may not lead to a strong defense.
So, in short, fighting Gazwa-e-Hind will be more "profitable" economically than just constructing buildings. Here is how?
I think due to the RSS-imposed proxy war on Pakistan, we have been in a state of Gazwa-e-Hind since the time of our creation as a country. Attack on Kashmir's self-determination after independence was part of this Gazwa-e-Hind. We acheievd partial vctory & decided to leave the fate of Kashmir to US-vetoed UN. Thus, to date we are suffering as Kashmir is suffering.
Let's imagine a past where our ancestors & current political leaders had not resorted to United Nations for the freedom of Kashmir. Let's imagine that after winning the war in 1965, we had not signed the treaty that forced Fatima Jinnah to contend the Generals. Let's imagine if we had held onto the conquered territories in 1965. Who gives away half of the rivers to an opponent who was just defeated in a major war? Look at Putin today. Despite maximum support from NATO, Zelensky is now forced to listen to Putin who will not rest till he holds onto the conquered territories. Lets's analyze WW2. Did US & the allied forces give back the conquered territories to Germany? Is France part of Germany today? No. When you win a war like we have many times in the past-you decide the geography of the world. Reality is that we failed to change the geography in 1965 so we were hit hard in 1971 with an engineered civil war that "changed our geography". If we had not listened to US in 1965-we would never have lost East Pakistan today. Let's jump to 1999. We apparently fought & won one of the hardest battles of the world in Kargil. But what did we do? We did what Bill Clinton wanted us to do in exchange for some IMF/WB debt? We refused to claim conquered territories & retreated "after winning". Did this make our economy better? If Musharaf had defied Nawaz in 1999, we would have been able to grab India by its neck destroying RSS's ability to continue its destructive agenda against Pakistan. This would have made economy stronger & the country stable.
Pakistan Army is an institution. It has one basic job. That job is to ensure the reinforcement of peace in the country & to secure the borders.
In 1971, Pakistan's borders were compromised. Today as of 21st October 2025, Pakistan remains in pursuit of peace losing precious lives every day in terrorist attacks.
Consequently, the economic crisis has entered a state of perpetuality with a minimally functional CPEC, energy crisis, dwindling exports, negligible investments & a stagnantly-low value of PKR.
Let's rewind ourselves back to the time of Zia-ul-Haq. During his tenure, Pakistan was in a state of war with the Soviets in Afghanistan. Even though, Pakistan was at war-its economy was in a much better shape than today. Pakistan built a nuclear bomb under his tenure & achieved stable economic indicators. There were acts of terrorism during his tenure too but their occurance was negligible. It was the same RSS & the same RAW but the defense of Pakistan was strong. India was in a state of deterrence. Only hiccup during his tenure was that he could have liberated Kashmir easily but he did not. I still do not have the reason for it. Strong defense can breed strong economy. If this were not the case, China wouldn't be spending a fortune on defense today. Same India that is an enemy of Pakistan is also an enemy of China. But we do not see India "able to" execute terror attacks in China. Why? Because China has strong & powerful defense invoking an automatic deterrence.
Now let's talk about strong economies with relatively weak defense systems. Qatar is a classic example harboring one of the leading economies of the world. But it was a weak defense that led to Israel's attack on Qatar's diplomatic enclave in its heart. Would same Israel have dared to attack Qatar if it had a strong defense? No. Look at Libya, Iraq, Syria. Great economies that were able to get rid of their dependence on central reserve bank-what happened? All of them fell to ashes due to weaker defense. Now analyze the list of G7 countries. All of them are G7 because of their strong economies but the defining factor that made them strong economies is their strong defense systems. How often do you see acts of terrorism get committed on their soil like you see on soil of Pakistan? Do they not have separatist, proxy cells? They do. But the one reason why they have better economies is their ZERO tolerance for terrorism. In Pakistan, we lack ZERO tolerance. Last time I saw the nation rise up united against terrorism invoking ZERO tolernace was in December of 2014. When APS attack happened, the country was shaken up. Nation woke up united to fight against the invisbile enemy. Zarb-e-Azab was planned & executed leading to near-elimination of terrorism.
But, then down the road, while we made massive conquests as on 28th Feb 2019 & 15th August 2021 & now 10th May 2025, we are watching terrorism hemorrhage our children & our economy.
In a latest retaliation, Pakistan took decisive action against Afghans involved in facilitation of terrorism. But as soon as the fear of conquest of Kabul by Pakistan grew internationally, Pakistan was asked to decelerate & sign an accord. What is ironic is that signing of this accord is coinciding with a social-media-published attack in Dera Ismail Khan. This has to be verified by authorities. But, the likelihood of removing TTP/BLA from Afghanistan & Pakistan remains a big question mark.
I end my article with what I started it with. Something I have reiterated many times before. Gazwa-e-Hind has been hitting us since day 1. We are fighting back. yes...we are but we are not able to achieve a decisive victory because or our inability to prioritize our defense over our economy. One of the biggest reasons we lose wars that we win is because we cave in to foreign interests on one phone call that makes fake lollipops of economic prosperity. This is our unwavering trust in those fake phone calls that makes us lose the wars that we win in the battleground. These calls are being made to Moscow too every day with lollipos &/or threats. But Moscow is not budging. Why? Because it wants to claim victory with a geographical change of the world map. Soviet Union was imploded. Russia had to restart from the scratch. Today, it is able to rattle the strongest countries of the world against all odds & it is able to extract respect & red carpet treatment from them. Because it doesn't want to lose a war that it is winning & it has sacrificed for. Because it knows very well that history of the world has been written by conquerors & not by losers.
Today, we have to decide what are we going to be?
We could have attracted investors, marketed our exports globally, invoked peace by force by choosing to NOT lose what we won in our previous battles. But we did not choose so. Today we have a very unstable economy as evaluated by global economists. Number one reason is lack of a peaceful conducive environment.
Thus, my humble request to Generals of Pakistan is that I don't know how you do it-but you have to now "INVOKE" peace "by force" in Pakistan. Period. No more ifs & buts about it.
There will not be an inch of economic prosperity if there is another terrorist attack in Pakistan.
-Dr FAB, MD
Chairperson
Pakistan Islam Positive League
