A Vision Lost

Seventy years, a span that should be marked by progress, by strength, by the realization of a dream. Instead, it has seen the collapse of hopes, the decay of promises, and the corrosion of a vision that has turned brittle, worn down by betrayal and failure. Not one democratic government in Pakistan has lasted long enough to fulfill its term, every single one snatched away by martial law, swallowed by the heavy hand of the army, which has come to rule the land not as guardians but as masters. And while this power shifted, corruption did not merely survive, it took root, entrenched itself in the very foundation of society, entwining every institution, every handshake, every deal, like a creeping, invasive vine. Bribery became the way of things, a second, unspoken currency that exchanged hands without shame. Safety and peace are relics of another age, eroded by time and a flood of crime. Our enemies are not foreign shadows but men within our own borders, growing bolder each day, as immovable as they are unpunished. 

The courts, the so-called “pillars of justice,” have become toothless, soulless chambers where justice is nothing more than a husk, abandoned by those who were meant to protect it. We see this every day, yet we are helpless. The police force, once tasked with safeguarding the people, is a broken tool, clumsy and ineffective, corrupted and incapable of enforcing any semblance of order. And in this chaos, while the streets fill with violence, we, as a people, are stripped of our most basic needs. Gas, water, electricity, the essentials of any functioning society, are often luxuries here, appearing for brief moments only to vanish without explanation, leaving people scrambling in frustration. Even the airwaves that connect the modern world, our WiFi, our digital lifelines flicker in and out, unreliable and unstable, as if mocking our attempts to join the global stage. 

The wealth of the nation is held by a tiny circle of elites, while the middle class, once the heartbeat of society, has been almost erased. The gap between the rich and the poor is a chasm, a canyon so vast that those on one side have become invisible to those on the other. The law, once envisioned as fair and just, now wears a different mask for every face, offering protection to the powerful, and punishment to the powerless. It is a twisted force that shields the guilty and punishes the weak. And what of our religious leaders? They, too, have turned hypocritical, clinging to authority with hollow piety, preaching virtues they neither practice nor understand. They have profited from the faith of the masses, selling fatwas like commodities, twisting morality to suit those who can afford it. Our society is filled with sham marriages, with so-called “halala centers” that operate without fear, and with every crime and every ill pinned on minorities, innocent scapegoats for a nation that is too cowardly to look at itself in the mirror.

In this fractured society, jobs are scarce, opportunities even rarer. People in positions of power, who hold the nation’s fate in their hands, are unqualified, unworthy, and untrustworthy, incapable of even the simplest form of leadership. Politicians, who swore to serve the people, flee to foreign lands at the first sign of threat, abandoning the very citizens they promised to protect. They stash their fortunes abroad, built from the people’s stolen wealth, untouchable by local laws and immune to justice. Our passport is one of the weakest in the world, a pitiful symbol of a nation that has lost respect, even within the Muslim community. We carry it with us as a badge not of pride but of shame, knowing well the low regard it commands across borders. 

Our national airline, once a proud symbol of Pakistan’s skyward ambition, now hangs in tatters, sold off piece by piece. Our steel mill, too, is on the auction block, a monument to our former industry reduced to a relic of broken dreams and squandered potential. We have no path forward, no roadmap, no guiding light. Our leaders offer us only empty promises, hollow reassurances that don’t even inspire disbelief anymore. We have nothing left, no more faith to give, no more energy to invest. Our trust has dwindled to nothing; our belief in change has shriveled, a dried husk of what it once was. Medicines on our shelves are often counterfeit, while our educational institutions churn out graduates with degrees that hold no weight, no respect beyond our borders. Our doctors, educated in universities that the world no longer trusts, find their qualifications worthless overseas. And so, we must ask: is this what our forefathers fought for? Is this what Jinnah envisioned, or have we so thoroughly lost our way that his dream is now a mockery, twisted beyond recognition? 

The fog thickens, obscuring any sense of truth or vision. The criminals, the ones who drain this nation of its lifeblood, are not shadows but faces we know well—faces that remain untouched, untouchable, protected by their wealth and influence. We are paralyzed, forced to watch as they roam free, secure in their power, immune to consequences. We know them, yet we cannot touch them. This fog, this thick, blinding fog, blankets our land, erasing our past, obscuring our present, and choking out any hope for the future. 

We have become a nation adrift, lost in a dark sea without a compass, with no clear direction and no hint of the shore. Our identity, once proudly proclaimed, has faded, worn down by years of humiliation and betrayal. Where once we held a place on the world stage, we are now invisible, our voices drowned out, our respect eroded to dust. Our leaders, our protectors, our representatives have all failed us, their promises as fleeting as wisps of smoke. We are a people drained, our hearts heavy with despair, our souls weighed down by the burden of broken dreams and empty pledges. We look to the horizon and see only darkness, only fog, only shadows. And so we ask ourselves, with trembling hearts and weary minds, if there is any hope left for us at all.

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