PUBLIC debate on key issues related to politics, law and order, and national security seems to be stuck in a perpetual loop. In the last 10 or so years, we’ve had pretty much the same conversation on what to do with the TLP, what to do with ethnic secessionism, what to do with religious fundamentalism, what to do with the TTP, and what to do with a restive western border. In fact, some of these issues have been debated for much longer than a decade.

The repetitiveness also demonstrates the protracted nature of these problems. Multiethnic societies of all types, especially in the developing world, have struggled with questions of political stability.

Similarly, there is hardly any country where tradition, in name or content, hasn’t been repurposed in modernity for the sake of fundamentalist ideology that explicitly tries to change the nature of culture, law, society and the state, usually in the name of religion. In fact, in nearly every Middle Eastern country for much of the past half a century, the principle opposition to the state was from religious forces, which in some cases even won out (Iran, Syria being prominent examples of the latter).

All of this is to say that the political problems Pakistan faces are simultaneously complex as well as common. Categorical and straightforward solutions are hard to find. Anyone suggesting a quick fix is likely oversimplifying the problem.

But this is not to say that reasoned debate and analysis are not possible. The starting........

© Dawn