[Music] a spicy topic is on the Rani show pakistan in 2025 if you take the average Pakistani and place them in Mumbai Delhi or Bangalore what do you think are thoughts that would appear i think they would be bewildered by the number of Hindus they see around them and realizing that Hindus don't have horns on their head and many of the stereotypes that they had been taught are utterly false if we try personifying the Pakistani military as one person how would that person look back at itself the army has now become the state uh the moment democracy starts getting some roots they chop it off they still think had they done that genocide they did in Bangladesh much better Pakistan would not have been broke which is what they are now trying to do in Balojasthan on the face of it it is a disastrous thing to yet the Pakistan army is doing it because they think this will make Pakistan great again truths over Baloasan it is suddenly become really serious suddenly a train is hijacked with 400 people politicians who say that there is no police there is nothing they've passed an order that highways will be closed at night if you lose control over highways you've lost control how China is viewing Pakistan I think they've given up on the money they have spent they still see some strategic value it's a dog that keeps snapping at India's heel pakistan on the other hand continues to look at China as a sugar daddy in Pakistan they say how Imran Khan's career be remembered for shaking up the military establishment like no one in Pakistan has ever done in 2007 I was in Pakistan mushara was just imposing his second coup and they put Imran jail and within four or 5 days apparently he started crying and stuff like that and they let him out i didn't think he will be able to handle jail he has surprised everybody but I don't see a future for him the Pakistan army has to decide can they live with Imran Khan or not susan Sarin is one of the most respected geopolitical observers in India but his subject is Pakistan pakistan as a country and I know that we have an immense amount of viewers from Pakistan pakistan is a country that's witnessing a lot of inner turmoil as we speak in 2025 this is a 101 on the geopolitics of Pakistan as well as an update on what's happening as we speak these are the kind of stories and facts that traditional news media may not show you we've also tried to make this conversation as simple as possible so that we have a maximum amount of teenagers and college students also listening into this particular podcast i think it's very important to be informed about what's happening in the subcontinent so whether you're a viewer from India or Pakistan or anywhere in the globe I promise you that you won't find as detailed and as simple an explanation as this podcast contains it's Mr for Susan Sarin who makes his TRS debut with this special on Pakistan enjoy the episode [Music] a spicy topic is back on the Rani show sansa welcome to TRS thanks for having me over uh you are one of India's experts on Pakistan we also have a Pakistani audience we have a big global audience now I think it's important for the truth to come out um I think it's important for it to be packaged in a way that everyone can understand it i know that no one my age watches the news anymore i know that younger people are actively not watching the news uh look at this particular podcast as a means to educate teenagers people in their 20s and people in their 30s on everything about Pakistan in 2025 comfortable with this thought absolutely okay so we're going to begin with the pace round first i'm going to ask you some questions to set context sorry about the lack of hi hello at the start of the conversation it's okay okay my kids are like that so it's fine hope you had a splendid time before the podcast uh okay but getting back to it some quick questions to you sir uh don't need to unpack them entirely this is just for context setting for the rest of the podcast uh question number one how will Imran Khan's career be remembered in three sentences up till this point uh success then jail and uh shaking up the military establishment like no one in Pakistan has ever done okay uh we're going to break down Imran Khan's whole tenure a lot in short do you think that the greatest chunk of his legacy is yet to be created i think his legacy has been he has been a terrible administrator but I think his legacy has been that he has shaken the pillars of power in Pakistan like no one before him that I think is his going to be his truest legacy he might actually betray that legacy if he comes back to power by sucking up to the army once again but if he doesn't then he would have delivered a solid blow for civilian supremacy in Pakistan what are four dirty truths about the Pakistani military corrupt uh quite brainless uh keep doing the same thing over and over again thinking the results will be different and uh they are very brutal just for the sake of contrast could you give me four beautiful aspects about Pakistan uh very difficult to find anything beautiful right now uh because look I I must admit I have a certain bias now biased because I've lost friends to terrorism sponsored by Pakistanis u and biased because of what has been happening in Pakistan uh over so many years what they've done to their own people but yes there is a certain old world charm left in Pakistan in the sense you don't see it in India anymore uh nobody has the time people are much busier in India so you see a certain amount of old world charm you see a certain amount of uh hospitality uh which is actually a very Punjab ccentric north Indiacentric kind of a thing u so there is that aspect of it uh I really can't think of anything else in order to understand the average Pakistani better it's a bit of a hypothetical question if you take the average Pakistani and place them in Mumbai Delhi or Bangalore what do you think are three thoughts that would appear in their mind i think they would see uh India's march ahead that is one uh I think they would be bewildered by the number of Hindus they see around them and realizing that Hindus don't have horns on their head uh and many of the stereotypes that they had been taught about non-Muslims or Hindus in particular uh are utterly false and third thing which they'll see is that many of the propaganda much of the propaganda that had been you know spread about India that all Muslims are you know in ghettos all Muslims are being butchered in India i think they will realize that that's not true okay uh getting back into the geopolitics of the times that we live in what are four truths that the average young person from a worldwide perspective should know about Baloasan it's a very hot topic in our region right now i know I'm asking you a very complex question and we'll get dive into the details but as of now just the context i think the four truths are that they it's uh a very secular society uh despite being very conservative a very secular society one place where Hindus were by and large kept safe never uh no pograms against them uh so one is that second a brutalized society a society which has been brutalized by the Pakistani state uh over eight decades uh promises made and promises broken with them uh the third uh thing is very committed to the Balo cause uh and we see that play out both in the political as well as in the militant uh domains we are seeing that happen um and the fourth is that it's it's a society whose riches or a land whose riches have been stolen by the Punjabis in Pakistan for their benefit giving very little to Balojasthan and I'll just add one sentence to it can you imagine that gas being taken out from a particular place and being delivered thousands of kilometers away in Lahore but not being given to the people who live in that area and they having to wait for 30 40 years before the first gas is supplied to them that is the kind of exploitation that has been done in Balojasthan which is what is resulting in uh the kind of upsurge we are seeing today last couple of questions from the pace round they're both about the Pakistani military the first question is five topics that are being actively discussed amongst the higherups of the Pakistani military according to you and you dedicate your life to studying everything that's happening in Pakistan i think India is always going to be discussed by them right second I think they are really bothered about Imran Khan uh they don't know the current lot of leaders don't know how to handle Imran Khan they've tried various things they've failed third I think they're seriously worried about the uh Afghanistan situation and all the uh Taliban movement that is impacting upon Pakistan fourth they are terrified about what's happening in Balojasthan uh and and they are not able to understand uh what how the hell to manage it and in that Imran Khan thing I'll also add that they are losing their core constituency in Punjab which gives the bulk of the people into the Pakistan army so that's four and the fifth is of course they are seriously worried about uh the economic situation in Pakistan because without the economy you don't get the budgets and you have nothing left so I think these are probably the five issues that would be of most concern to them right now gotcha one final question which is that if we try personifying the Pakistani military as one person how would that person look back at their own life and what are the four mistakes they would list out i'm talking about how the military looks at itself the military looks at itself as the savior of Pakistan without realizing that they have become the biggest obstacle to Pakistan's stability and Pakistan's growth as a nation as a polity uh they have stunted the politics of Pakistan so it's called a bonsai democracy uh the moment democracy starts getting some roots they chop it off uh that's one legacy which the Pakistan army has they have looted the state like nobody else but they think they have actually defended the state uh they are quite brainless because look army guys are trained to do certain things they're not trained to be economists they're not trained to be sociologist but they try and do everything and they mess it up number four I think they will always remember what they've done in Bangladesh the kind of genocide they committed out there which led to the breakup of their country but they haven't learned anything from that and they still think that the genocide they did in Bangladesh had they done that genocide much better uh Pakistan would still not have been broken which is what they are now trying to do in Balojasthan which is going to be their fifth mistake that you are going to carry out another genocide in Balojasthan and that I think so if somebody is looking back over the years they will see that but I think they will also see that how the Pakistan army has now become become the Pakistani state uh you know the normally we have India has an army but nobody sees I don't know if you can even name the general in India today right uh nobody can name the generals in India in Pakistan everybody can name them so the the army has now become the state the judiciary the civilian politicians the uh the media you name the institution or the organization or you know any aspect of life they've all become subservient into the army so it's like a pritorian guard which is not even able to guard the country properly gotcha thought I was going to end the pace round but I have one key question before we move into the longer format of question and answers the final question is about China and how China is viewing Pakistan in 2025 could you explain this in three thought tangents i think China is seriously concerned about the stability in Pakistan i think they've given up on the money they have spent in Pakistan i don't think they're going to get returns on that number one number two they still see some strategic value in Pakistan uh one it's it's a dog that keeps snapping at India's heel so that's useful uh so it encircles India secondly they look at Pakistan as an important ally maybe one of their few friends uh in this region which gives them a kind of a towhold into the Middle East that's the second thing which they look at and the third thing they look at is in in Pakistan that maybe when they go ahead maybe in the future if Pakistan was to stabilize it could get some kind of economic value but for now they have lost whatever money they have spent out there uh and they're not spending any more money but so I think the economic side for now is gone the political and the strategic side is alive but I think the Chinese are seriously concerned about uh Pakistan's stability pakistan on the other hand continues to look chi at China as a sugar daddy they first had a sugar daddy in the US now they are looking at uh a sugar daddy in China so like some Pakistani once told me Pakistan has become a concubine state it's like a concubine of the Chinese okay very direct inputs you have sir it's a fact this is this is not my take on it this is some Pakistani once told me this and I kind tend to agree with him because it's all about how much money can you give me you know in Pakistan they say so it's like the same thing with them translate that to English can you uh show me the money and fix my mood wow okay um ran a lot of thought experiments in order to prepare for this podcast uh and I tried asking Chad GPD to predict Pakistan's 5-year future and 10-year future uh all I got was an unstable future that's the fixed outcome everything else is slow economic growth etc etc now that's one aspect of my preparation for this podcast the other aspect of preparation is the content creators the artists I meet through the course of the podcast um no one would say this on camera but even if you go to Dubai and you speak to the bluecollar Pakistani workers the laborers there the some of the people who are driving the taxis they'll all tell you that hey my family is in a good economic condition because I am in Dubai or Abu Dhabi and I'm able to send money back i would not have been able to take care of my family if I was working in Pakistan that's the economic truth of the country and this is a unanimous input I get from every Pakistani there's a lot of dispondency yeah in your eyes this is the long-term effect of the military being the actual showrunners in the country in large part because the military has uh instilled a level of instability in the country see the military thinks that I can I have made Pakistan stable if it was not for me Pakistan would have uh would have disintegrated right that's the military's lie but what has the military done every two or three years it conspires against whichever government has been elected by the people it has now in the last election for example in 2024 uh Imran Khan had won the election despite all odds okay and I don't think anybody really expected him to win an election now he wins an election and yet you change the election results in the night in the dark of the night you change the election results people who did not win more than 15 20 seats you gave them 80 seats and you've put them in government people like Shabbah Sharif and all they had lost the election right you've made them in government now they have no legitimacy this is not the first time they've done something like this so they have destabilized government after government they've brought in their favorites as a result there is so much political uncertainty in Pakistan that you know why would anybody want to invest in a country like that then they have played around with terrorism thinking that jihadism is a great tool for foreign policy okay you played with that you messed around with the Americans when they were in Afghanistan you allowed this Taliban monster to be recreated now it's coming back to haunt you okay you allowed guns to be spread in the country now there are people there is a massive law and order problem if you look at the street crime statistics in Pakistan and they've gone through the roof part of it is because there are no economic opportunities left right everything which you can look at you can trace it back to certain policies that the army brought in and the interference of the army in Pakistan's political life in economic life today now they're making economic policy and what is the economic policy they are making and I'll just give you this one example they've decided that they're going to go in for corporate farming which means that they will have millions of acres of land which they will irrigate which water they don't have okay they'll build canals to bring water into that desert area and irrigate millions of acres of land in Punjab to then supply food to Saudi Arabia UAE China that's corporate farming model all the land will be controlled by the army those organizations which they have formed are controlled by the army so the civilians are out nobody is going to be allowed in the and sind is up in arms because they say you have no water you are going to take our share of water you are going to make s into a desert to make the desert in Punjab green now this is on the face of it it is a disastrous thing to do and yet the Pakistan army is doing it and why are they doing it because they think this will make Pakistan great again so you know all the problems in Pakistan in one way or another can be traced back to the army's interference in political life in Pakistan you know we've had countless economists on the show speak about India's economic history and the one truth I've learned is that an economist will feel a bunch of things in theory based on their own life's work but you never know about the practical aspect of how those theories play out with your own population with your own geography until those theories are turned into laws and real world changes ranir this is what happens a technocrat is a person who might be an expert in his field but there are a lot of other things so what does a politician do what is a politician's job he supposed to have basic common sense and an ear to the ground of what will work and what will not work what will be acceptable to people and what will not be acceptable to people now the most elegant economic theory will be a flop if it's not acceptable to the people if people don't have ownership of a theory it will not be acceptable to them you can't have that policy in place so you have to have policy in place which you know people can relate to so an economist will come out with policies a politician's job is to fine-tune those policies to make them acceptable an army guy when he acts as the politician he's not trained to be a politician he his his his brain is not wired either by training or by experience to behave like a politician you know you can do that that low cunning kind of a thing but you know there is a lot more which you need to do uh to make policies acceptable to sell them to people to give them ownership the army is not equipped to do that yeah i'm trying to see all this from an anthropological perspective in terms of what has gone wrong on a human level effectively what are countries if we see it from a an ancient man perspective these are tribes and the leadership is running the tribe now the leadership in our country is a combination of the bureaucracy the politicians the government etc uh all these people are trained along the individual pathways of life in Pakistan when a young person is uh trying to get into the military perhaps there's an element of hey you know I actually might be an administration at the age of 50 or 60 that's a fair that's a reality you're becoming part of the ruling class but is this known by the general population like the masses understand that the military runs the country absolutely absolutely how are they okay with it they're not okay with it but what is the choice they have in the last couple of years we have seen seen a massive reaction develop so in Punjab you know there is the unwashed masses who probably did not have a very high opinion of the army but still supported the army but the real support of the army came from the upper middle class the well-healed people in Punjab you know the lorei elite as they are called uh now these are doctors judges these are businessmen these are people who are in the bureaucracy these are professionals you know chartered accountants you name you know you the very well-healed people of society uh today what you are seeing is that across the board in Punjab there is a lot of abuse being heaped on the army and the army is being called out for all the problems it has created in Pakistan okay it is being challenged now what the army is doing is they're trying to suppress those voices they're bringing in all kinds of draconian laws to suppress anybody who says anything which is remotely against the army they're not going to succeed because things are reaching a point where there's a lot of disgust for the army now of course the army will trot out some people from the media and other organizations to propagate that the army is the savior of Pakistan the valiant sons of Pakistan who are fighting against the infidel enemy who is trying to sabotage Pakistan undo Pakistan you know all that propaganda is going on nobody is buying it right nobody's buying it not in the other provinces not you know in in Kaibar Pakuna Balojasthan Sind nobody's buying it not even in Pakistan occupied Kashmir even in Pakistan occupied Kashmir today the army is is being pillaried and most of all it's being pillaried in the Punjab so like I said earlier for them the image problem which they now suffer from is probably the most debilitating crisis uh they face okay if you were the chief of the Pakistani military what are four changes you would bring about nobody would make me chief of Pakistan military just hypothetical i would probably be court marshaled by the time I reached the level of captain because I would question many things uh but look if I was the chief of the Pakistan army I think what I would do is I would withdraw the army from politics and and everything which I'm telling you is mission impossible it's not going to happen because the Pakistan army is not wired like that you know when you think you are the ruling class you are not wired to let go of power but if in an ideal world if something was to happen the Pakistan army should not interfere in the politics of Pakistan they should not play the kind of games they have been playing let politics play its role in Pakistan that's number one number two they should encourage now again this is contradictory because at one level I'm saying you know don't interfere in politics but at another level I'm going to say take certain political initiatives and what are the political initiatives now one of the problems in Balojasthan for example is of missing people what the Pakistan army does is because they want to quell the Balo rebellion they go into universities they go into people's houses they pick up anybody who they suspect of siding with the separatists in Balojasthan the freedom fighters and they pick them up so there is completely illegal abductions of people are taking place these are people and many of them are students in Punjab University in Karachi in other universities and as young people yeah 18 20 year old kid will have a lot of passion you know when when when mess discussions are taking place there are students who are saying things which only students will say you know because they don't probably know better or they feel very strongly about something nobody reaches out to those kids and tries to explain to them anything but what they do is they identify those people they pick up those kids and then they are disappeared now what happens to them is that they are tortured and then sometimes they are released sometimes they are never released sometimes you discover their dead bodies thrown on the wayside so all kinds of brutalities are visited upon these people this aspect of torture has been reported upon yeah yeah all the time you know this is this is one of the reasons why if you've heard of this lady Maharang Baloj uh this is the biggest cause in Balojasthan right now this this thing called the disappeared people the enforced disappearances that are taking place and all of these are done by Pakistan security forces look if I think you have done something wrong you have you have done a treasonous act you are a terrorist for example then I should arrest you produce you before a court file a charge sheet against you and then hang you i don't care right if you've done something wrong then of course punishment must be delivered but I just can't pick you up and just you know arbitrarily you know shoot you or hang you or torture you without any evidence whatsoever without any legal process the third thing the Pakistan army needs to do is they really need to start dismantling that entire infrastructure of terror and of these Islamist mafias which they have funded uh and I'm not just talking about the Lashkar Taibas and the Jes Muhammads you know which which they have unleashed against India but many of the other groups which they unleash against their political opponents inside Pakistan for example there is this organization called the Tarik Lab Pakistan it's a Bilvi Muslim organization used as a counter force against the Dioandi Muslims who were mostly terrorists so this is a counterforce which is so this kind of games which the Pakistan army has been playing has undermined law and order in Pakistan and destroyed you know the civic peace they need to desist from it and last but not the least they need to start making peace with their neighbors you know these irudentist claims they have Kashmir or on on on parts of Afghanistan or you know trying to make Afghanistan a kind of a fifth province without act in not dur but de facto uh they that Afghanistan must be under our thumb afghanistan must do whatever we ask them to do that kind of nonsense needs to stop so these these these multiple jihads that they have been waging they need to stop that so if I was the army chief I would do these four things but I'm not going to be the army chief and I can assure you that the army chief of Pakistan will not listen to any sensible advice this podcast is probably going to reach a lot of members of the Pakistan but it won't look it could reach anywhere but it's not going to filter down that oified military mind in Pakistan so it's not going to happen but yeah because on a human level there's too much yes man energy yeah it's it's partly because there's too much yes man energy and it's partly because u at a human level again you know when you become the chief of the Pakistan army or you become a general in the Pakistan army there's so much of sucking up which is happening all over the place that you know you you are in a completely different mind frame then you know and you think you are the repository of all the wisdom in the world and that you can do whatever you want to do because everything is you just need to wave that malaka cane which they hold just need to wave it around and things will fall in place it's not aing magic wand right they need to understand that there's also obviously a lot of money to be made of course because with power comes opportunity for money I think again on a human level that's the core aspect of why the army is not taking a step back from admin so let me give you an example so there was this friend of mine a Pakistani one of the most solid researchers on terrorism and I'm talking about 10 12 years back so he'd come to India and he wanted to meet a retired major general i can name him Afir Karim he is no longer alive but a fine gentleman uh he wanted to meet him and talk about you know India's insurg anti-insurgency anti-terror operations experiences so I took this guy to meet the general and we went to this place called Nida uh and uh while I was looking around for his house which was in these army uh you know one of those army welfare housing things an apartment complex this guy said are you sure you're in the right place i said of course I'm in the right place he says you mean to say a general is living out here in these flats i said yeah so we went to the general's house we rung the bell and general uh Absar Karim he himself opened the door and he welcomed us in and this guy was shocked then anyways he had a conversation for an hour or two and then when he started walking out he couldn't hold back and he said General Sab I want to say something to you but I hope you don't take it in the wrong spirit so the general said no no please go ahead whatever you want to say he says you know the house you stay in even a captain of the Pakistan army will not stay in a house like this so the general started laughing and he says well you know that's because I'm a soldier in Pakistan they are rulers so that's the difference between the two armies you know in the ethos of the army the way they think the way they operate uh the fact that you know they understand in India that they are under a civilian control in Pakistan they are in charge that's one secondly the amount of monies they make legally now apparently when a general retires he is given something like 100 or maybe 200 acres of land right and it goes down the chain at every at every rank there are plots given to these guys at very subsidized rates one is a commercial plot one is a residential plot so very often they will keep that and then they sell it and then move into something bigger and one estimate is that by the time a general retires he's worth something like a 100 crores at least right uh this is the legal money and illegally what happens is that if you go as the core commander in Karachi right so you are the boss in Sind now Karach is like the Bombay of Pakistan so you are out there so you'll have all these shady businessmen you know big guys but they deal in the stock market in Pakistan and the stock market in Pakistan from what I have learned is about 200,000 people who invest in the stock market so it's a very very shallow market right u so you'll have these big daddies of the stock market it's all a kind of a collusion who will come to the general and then tell him general s you know you invest in the stock market through me okay so the general will him and but this guy will say no no you invest you wait and see so he will give him five lakhs of rupees 2 3 weeks later this guy will come back give him 50 lakhs see general up this is the amount of money I've helped you make and by the time the general goes from there he's worth a few crores right basically it's bribery because once you've done that the general is beholden to you and he does whatever you ask him to do that's the second you know so there are various ways and means Pakistani generals for example in Balojasthan have been involved in smuggling they've been involved in drug running they've been involved in gun running they've been involved in extortion networks kidnapping networks they've been involved in all of this right big smuggling uh this thing sometimes they've actually been caught and punished also so when you hold that much power with zero accountability that no judge in Pakistan can come after you no government in Pakistan has the balls to come after you right nobody in Pakistan has any can even say a word damn they're journalists who pretend to be you know upholders of fresh freedom and freedom of speech you will never hear them talk about Pakistan army they will use euphemisms riasat rias right now everybody knows they're talking about the army but they will never say army they will never say such and such general or they will never say such and such office in this particular thing so they are that terrified um and and probably that compromised that they will not even say it so when you have a situation like that then nobody is going to stand up against you so yes there is the yes man culture and yes there is this megalomania which comes in because of the kind of power you enjoy so I think the one key factor to know is that geographically it's the biggest state in Pakistan yes uh bordered by both Iran and Afghanistan has a big coastline as well yes uh very rich in terms of natural resources yes but those natural resources have been sucked out over the years and used to fuel mainly Punjab but also the rest of the country and Karachi and these places while Pakistan proper as an a Pakistani analyst calls it but in the sense that this is not really Pakistan in that sense and effectively the people of Balojasthan are primarily of tribal cultures okay so you you have to understand if you're talking about the geography of Balojasthan you have to also understand that the northern part of Balojasthan in the British days used to be called British Balojasthan that is predominantly Pashtun populated there are not many Balo living out there as an ethnic group the Balo are mostly in some parts of northeast Balojasthan and then you come down the central part of Balojasthan is mostly tribal there are big tribes like the Maris the Mangals the the Moxis these kind of guys and then when you come down to the southern belt the coastal belt uh which is called the Macakran belt that is the tribal there are still tribes out there but they don't have the same tribal structure which is there in the central and you know the northeastern parts of Balojasthan so you have to un when you talk about the geography you have to talk about the demographic geography in in that context sure uh okay it's also such a big coastline there so of geopolitical importance yeah because uh if you look at the coast the the port of Guadada or some of the other ports where even the Pakistanis have built some naval bases it is virtually on the mouth of the Persian Gulf and what is the importance of the Persian Gulf is that the entire oil trade from Saudi Arabia and from Iraq and Iran flows through the Persian Gulf right so if you are straddling the Persian Gulf you are in a position to control that entire energy flows out of Persian Gulf so it's a very vital geography okay um you enjoy history in general generally British occupied India okay which is right from our northeast up till Balojasthan why did it stop at that border i'm assuming it was because of Emma Abdali's Afghan Empire no they went into Afghanistan they tried to occupy Afghanistan in fact they had captured Afghanistan Kabul they had to fight three wars um and they would capture so look the problem with Afghanistan is that it's easy to go in and capture the place but it's impossible to retain it subsequently now this is what everybody when you know when historical mythmaking takes place everybody says that the Afghans you know expelled the British yes they did but then what did the British do they came back they regrouped and then they attacked Afghanistan again from two or three directions and they did what the British always used to do there was no problem in killing as many people as you wanted to kill so they carried out these massive raids they raised villages towns and they they made their point but they didn't retain Afghanistan what they did was they allowed a government of the Afghans you know whatever whoever wanted to you know they didn't meddle in that so they came back again it happened in the 1880s 1890s and then again in the 1920s so there were three Afghan wars which were fought it was just the the kind of terrain and the kind of people there are in Afghanistan and it's not look it's not worth it right what was the colonial model the colonial model was that you go into a place you occupy it and then you exploit it for economic benefit the Indian colonies otherwise paid for themselves you know India became the jewel like somebody says that London is an active crime scene because all the wealth they looted from India is you know on display in London now that that wealth has run out London is a dump right uh but this is what it was so Afghanistan really had no economic benefit for the colonial master and the British being the traders that they are they understood it so what did they do their primary focus was that the Russians further up were coming down south so then they decided that it is better to have the Afghans as a buffer rather than going into Afghanistan and directly confronting not only the Afghans but also the Russians so then they had a certain system where they would subsidize the Afghan kings and you know they had that kind of so they evolved a system like that which survived for about 150 years until 9/11 when that system broke down and once that system has broken down there is no real new system put in place so everything is up in the air and there is chaos so that was Afghanistan on the other side was Iran so there were problems with Iran as well But finally the British uh got into a deal with the Iranian the Persian kings and you had what is I think it's called the goldsmith line uh so they drew that line which is the border between what is Balojasthan now uh or what is Pakistan and Balojasthan and what is Iran and Balojasthan straddles three countries the Balo lands as they are so Balo are in the sense the Kurds of the subcontinent wow okay so the Kurds for example are in Iran they are in Iraq they are in Syria okay and they're in Turkey they're spread in four countries the Balot similarly are in Afghanistan they are in Iran the eastern part of Iran which straddles Balojasthan and of course in Balojasthan so so that is the kind of you know the the the the demographic uh geography political geography that where Biruchistan is located okay and the reason I asked you all this about Afghan history and Iran is to lead to a chapter on the BLA uh is it important to mention this timeline of history when talking about the 2025 context look you cannot divorce history from what is happening especially because that history was never reconciled if you don't reconcile to history then those historical problems will erupt in this day and age now which is what I keep telling people that look we are looking at you know suddenly a train is hijacked with 400 people it's that it makes news around the world but that's not the only thing which has happened and that was not the first thing which has happened right it's been continuing this latest insurgency is already 25 years old but now it has reached a kind of a point where it is suddenly become really serious and it is being noticed around the world because of the ferocity and the audacity of the attacks that are taking place you want to also mention the China Pakistan economic corridor no of course because that is see again one of the fundamental grievances apart from this uh grievance about the brutality of the Pakistani state the other major grievances is the one of resources and how Baloistthan's resources are taken out and used not for the benefit of the balo but for other people's benefit so the China Pakistan economic corridor also falls in that grievance context that so the Chinese are coming in they are investing money out there and the baloj are not stakeholders in what is happening because there are no jobs for them and there are no jobs for them because the Pakistanis say you are not skilled enough to work out here okay okay they formed this port in Guadr guadada is a port now the the Chinese have invested tons of money and this economic corridor which runs is basically a network of roads and all sorts of other projects like electricity plants and they're supposed to build special economic zones and you know all of that but for now it is basically a road network which comes all the way from the western part of China into Punjab and then onto Balojasthan into Guad right so there is this road network and the idea is that this corridor will in a sense lead to one the development of western China by providing it access to sea because otherwise you know western China they have to travel all the way to the eastern seabboard to transport whatever they're manufacturing right now this way they get an access to sea which is a much shorter access they get an access to sea now the Chinese have invested money They've formed this port but what has happened in that port the Balo are not given jobs the Chinese live in these enclosures partly for security reasons and partly for racist reasons they live in these enclosed areas the local community has no stake in what is happening in Guad the local community was mostly fishermen you have blocked their access to the sea because of the kind of port development projects you have undertaken number one number two you have allowed Chinese fishing trollers to come in who have started you know carrying out a large scale fishing which means that the Balo fishermen who still use mostly traditional methods have to go deeper into the sea to catch their fish so there are huge resentments which are building up and people are saying that look this is our land our area you have given it to the Chinese and we are getting nothing in return no no jobs for us nothing for us yeah to pause it a little bit here it's basically the Pakistan military cracking a deal with Chinese officials saying hey by the way you can use our actually this deal was not cracked by the Pakistan military it was done by Navas Sharif and company originally as Zadari claims that he is the guy who initiated it but then Navas Sharif when he came into power in 2013 went ahead and signed all the contracts and other stuff everybody everybody has made money out of it except the balo the Chinese are making money handoverfist the Pakistanis have apparently made money through underhand deals right the guys who got short change in the process are the balo so this has added to their grievance and they see the Chinese they have two resentments against the Chinese one that you are supporting our oppressors the punjab Abies of Pakistan who are ruling over us you are their biggest supporter so we have to target you okay that is one the second is you in partnership with them are also exploiting us and stealing our resources you set up mining projects out here you take out all the resources from here what is our share 2% in a mining project why it is mines on my land you have a 50% stake somebody else has a 48% stake I get 2% why so you know those various grievances have all started adding up and have now you know put the Chinese in the crosshairs of the balo are we looking at a possible civil war in Pakistan look it's it's difficult to say what the future trajectory is going to be okay a lot of people have this thing Pakistan will break up in four parts now I don't know where this four parts thing comes up from it could break up in 20 it could not break up at all it could simply you know have a kind of an implosion where everybody's fighting everybody else and you have these thief terms within you know something like a Somalia if you look at what's happening out there that you have some punt land and you have Somali land and you have various other places every it's a mish mashup you don't we you know it's impossible to predict how things when the cookie crumbles how it's going to crumble right it's just not possible uh you can make projections and make some guesses but nobody really knows um I don't know maybe what's happening in Balojasthan is also already a kind of a civil war you can call it an insurgency but you can call it a civil war what's happening in the kyber paktunqua where the TTP guys are coming in in big way they've their footprint is constantly expanding uh they initially started in some tribal districts then they moved into the main districts uh South KP South Ka Pakuna province is virtually now a no-go area uh if you hear of politicians from that region who say that look once evening uh descends uh and nightfalls uh the state ceases to exist there is no police there is nothing right in Balojasthan I think yesterday or day before they have passed an order that highways will be closed at night now if you lose control over highways you've lost control if you don't control your highways is if you don't control your roads you don't control the damn country right so that is already a situation which is there now again it's be highly premature to say that the Balo are going to be winning their independence in 6 months 1 year 2 years i can't predict that what is even winning independence in the modern day how do you win independence uh see how you win independence is that the the power that was ruling over you no longer rules over you right now this can happen within a particular country in the framework of a particular country that you have sufficient autonomy and that province can decide things for its own in its own interest in its own way or you can say that I have nothing to do with this damn country okay uh I am a completely independent sovereign entity and I will call my own shots i will decide how my resources are going to be used pakistan or some Punjabi sitting in Lor or Islamabad is not going to decide that for me that is the definition of independence but unlikely look it's a long shot right now i think the freedom struggle in Baluchthan has reached a point where not many people imagined it would reach now let me give you a couple of you know hard truths one is that remember Balojasthan might be 45% of Pakistan's land mass but it's only about 5% of Pakistan's population okay but that 5% is totally alienated from Pakistan but practically and politically they are not now a couple of things are likely to happen pakistan is not going to adopt uh uh you know uh a generous approach and reach out to the balo to try and solve the matter they will use brute force which will lead to further reaction that is I think a given uh secondly what the Pakistanis are going to do is they're going to try and play their politics they already have this crook called Saruras Buki as the chief minister a man who has been known to be involved with death squads and all kinds of other nefarious things he has the blessings of that other crook Asf Zardari and his son Bilaval BH he has their blessings he is from their party right now he keeps switching parties uh so politically I don't see any initiative being taken place militarily they're going to try and crush the Baloj but the Balo are likely to fight back so one is that is a given uh now if all things other things were the same you know you could very easily predict that the Pakistan army will crush them but all other things are not the same one this is no longer a insurgency or a movement limited to a few districts it spread across the province among the Balo people apart from you know queaslings like Saras Bti and company the second is that Balojasthan is not the only insurgency that is taking place you have another insurgency up north with the Tika Taliban Pakistan uh you have problems emerging in Sid and I don't see the Pakistan army saying that we will give up you know our uh greed for more land in Cholistthan that desert which I said they're building canals and they're going to make s into a desert to green Punjab so sin is going to go up in flames and there has been an a a kind of a separatist movement in synth for the longest okay for similar reasons partly for similar reasons partly because they want their own identity but also remember that the Balo uh organizations militant organizations just about 3 weeks back four weeks back uh had announced that four groups were coming together under a common platform and it was called the Barass uh and one of the groups is a Cindi group a Cindi militant group right so they are making common cause out there you already have a weak economy and you have troubles in P both the Gilgit Baltasan and PJK you have problems in both these regions uh a lot of which is not making the news but those problems are real and they are massive so you have that kind of a situation so I think it's a legitimate question to ask how long does a state hold on it's an army or a security force which is losing close to 10 15 maybe 20 people a day those are the estimates how long can they sustain this so now how do you get freedom you either get freedom because you are so strong that you are able to snatch it from the guy who's occupying you or your occupier becomes so weak that he can no longer keep his control over you i don't know how the cookie is going to crumble but I don't rule it out anymore okay to summarize this chapter please correct me if I'm saying something that's off first point it's unpredictable uh but it's getting worse that's all one can say right yes second point um Pakistan seems to be in a place where multiple in fact all its states other than Punjab seem to have tensions brewing and the local population feeling that they are not given the importance by the government i'll just add a caveat to it even in Punjab the controlling authority which is the Pakistan army is no longer um unquestioned like it used to be so there is a problem out there as well third the BLA specifically the Baloistan liberation army has been around for a while but they seem to have become more organized and more fiery in the last 5 years or so absolutely uh next point uh all this is happening in the middle of economic crisis so the army has to actually deal with military operations all over the country but because they've also taken up the role of managing the country uh perhaps it's too many plates to balance absolutely i'm sure that leads to its own and not enough brains to manage it yeah and finally I think the average Pakistani at least it seems to me that the average Pakistani is losing faith in the government and they able to see through what's happening which is why there is an exodus that's happening from Pakistan lots of people are leaving and and to that on onto the last point anybody with an option to go abroad is running away number one number two big business is also not investing money in Pakistan so when you are asking for foreign investment to come into Pakistan you should at least have the local guy also wanting to invest his money you can't say that I want investment from Japan in India but no Indian businessman is going to invest in India then no Japanese is also going to invest in India right it's the same thing in Pakistan they are trying to get people from outside to invest in Pakistan but what about the Pakistani investor is he ready to invest have you fixed the problems which have uh which have spooked investors inside Pakistan you haven't so how is that investment going to come so if no investment is going to come where is the growth going to take place if growth does not take place then how do you employ people how do you give jobs to people and if you don't give jobs to people people who are now getting educated where do they go they have to go abroad qed it's a good summary of this chapter i feel I guess so i thought we'd do an entire chapter on Imran Khan but perhaps we'll just touch upon it okay was he that one Pakistani who put his hand up in the middle of all this modern history that's happening did he actually have good intentions according to you with the country yeah look I think he was a bit of a megalomaniac he might have had good intentions but I think he was also a megalomaniac when I speak to Pakistanis about Imran Khan it's a very polarized reaction yeah obviously because either you are an Imran lover right and a big-time one and then you don't want to listen to anything else or you are an Imran hater and again a big time one so yeah there is no middle ground where you say that you can objectively analyze the guy so I'm not particularly fond of him but purely as an outsider I can analyze him so I would say that look he is he is a megalomaniac he is a very vicious very vindictive man uh he's not particularly intelligent but I think he has shown a kind of political cunning which not many Pakistani politicians I will give u and most importantly he has shown a kind of I don't know what do you want to call it uh obstinateness you want to call it uh I don't know I I don't have the word for it but he has shown a kind of a defiance you know or a single-mindedness which I don't think anybody expected him to have okay so that is something which I don't think anybody even factored in when they put him in jail they thought he'll break and I'll be very honest with you Ranir I I remember in 2007 I was in Pakistan mushara was just imposing his second coup i was there at that point of time and that I happened to attend a dinner where there were people I don't have the the permission to name them but one of Imran Khan's cousins some of his close associates all these people we were at a dinner together and out there uh there was this talk going on that Imran had run away from home escaped arrest and he was in hiding and there was this talk that he is now thinking of surrendering to Musharaf uh And then what happened was that he surrendered they put him in jail and within four or five days apparently he started crying and stuff like that he couldn't handle jail and they let him out and and he kept quiet after that so I never expected him this was my experience of the guy i didn't think he will be able to handle jail i'll be very honest with you he has surprised everybody by being in jail by taking on the Pakistan army like nobody in the Pakistani system has ever done right and he has got public support i don't think anybody expected that to happen so as as a prime minister he was very vindictive he was very vicious and he was very vacuous you know with the kind of plans he was coming up with his administration sucked he he was terrible uh in fact in many things he is responsible for many of Pakistan's economic problems he their relations with many of their important countries like Saudi Arabia like the Chinese many of their important relationships he on so yeah you know he did all of that but on the political side he managed to get this cult following which is remarkable right and it is much more now than a cult because it's there everywhere so you know the way you look at him is when you look at his administrative skills he sucks when you look at what he has managed to achieve in politics remarkable i know this as long as Aim Munir is the chief of army in Pakistan I don't see a future for Imran but I don't see Aim Munir staying forever so frankly the Pakistan army has to decide can they live with Imran Khan or not because they are not able to manage on their own now so that is their big dilemma they can't manage on their own they can't let loose let Imran Khan out because they don't want to work under him because he is going to fix them like nobody else has uh that's the fear probably a real fear uh and that's where things lie has the PM of Pakistan traditionally been a puppet of the military not all of them no one as much as this guy Shabbash Sharif shabbash Sharif is a complete rubber stamp but his brother wasn't exactly a pushover in fact he tried to push the envelope with the army u many of the other prime ministers in Pakistan uh especially from people's party they were complete you know they were ever ready to suck up to the army in fact you had this guy Yusf Raza Gillani who was the prime minister in uh 2008 uh who became prime minister after that election uh and and he was the he's the kind of a guy who would tell the army that look we are here to serve you you tell us what you want we'll be more than ready to do what you want to do they hold no real power maximum the power they hold is at the local level that you know you can be the big boss in your local area the SHO will be at your back and call there is some local rival you know in your neighborhood you want to fix you can use the the state power to fix him but can you do anything beyond that can you make policy can you you know take politics in a direction which takes Pakistan away from the kind of hole it has dug itself in out of that hole into a different direction you can't do that so that power is only for self grandandisment not for national or public welfare okay so the crux of this whole podcast is that the Pakistani military is running the country yes there is a PM in power and depending on the nominal nominal there's a nominal PM in power uh and depending on the personality of that particular PM uh the Pakistani military treats them well or badly yeah depending on whether they are ready to follow instructions or whether they are going to defy instructions what did they have against Imran Khan that Imran Khan was ready to follow them on many things but they were on many things he would dig in his heels you know on the people he wanted to select the kind of things he wanted to do he would not listen to the army so the army was pretty cut up with him yeah um you know Sanjiv Sal on the show had once said that it's important for the government to withdraw itself from uh verticals where it's not needed in terms of you should just be responsible for drafting laws for the country uh but try not being involved in places you're not in now here we're talking about the Pakistani military which is involved everywhere everywhere the crux of this podcast is if the Pakistani military withdraws itself from actually trying to run the country that will serve the country better much likely and if you give it in the hands of politicians and administrators yeah the job of the army is security of the frontiers and some other you know maybe intelligence and stuff like that you'll take care of that you don't run the country you don't run the politics of the country you don't run the economy of the country but the only way that the Pakistani military will withdraw from running the country is if they voluntarily decide to withdraw or if a powerful PM says "Hey you better withdraw." Or if they lose a war if they lose a war they'll have no face they'll have no legs to stand on obviously by being in a position of power there's more money to be made obviously and that's what's in it for the Pakistan military generals yes but they couch it under you know this larger thing that we are the protectors of Pakistan which they are not got they've actually they've actually bankrupted Pakistan the way nobody else is so from a global perspective here's a country that's collapsing it's going towards self-destruction the world knows why it's going towards self-destruction i'm pretty sure Pakistani people know why it's going towards self-destruction yeah but you know what the problem is if now you are sitting in Washington and you look at Pakistan and you look at the situation in Pakistan you say "Yeah look here is this country with nuclear weapons 250 million people if this damn country goes under who is going to uh manage the fallout?" Right so what do you do you say yeah look these generals but let them do what they are doing at least they are keeping the lid over this problem at least this damn thing is not blowing up you know so that would be the calculation in places like Europe and in in in the US and some of these other capitals and I think a lot of people that is that is the intuitive way of looking at it okay they will not look at it in the counterintuitive way that the longer this lot continues to call the shots in Pakistan the deeper Pakistan's problems are going to be and that pressure in the system is one day just going to blow up it's not going to have find any release whatsoever it'll just blow up right nobody will look at that they'll you know politics is all about the immediate crisis taking precedence over the urgent or the important spicy episode Mr sar thank you uh one last question for you and you can answer it in short we ask any geopolitical observer this question you know what it's going to be are we heading towards a worldwide conflict we heading to a lot of um disruption in the world you know the old order which was a very comfortable order you knew what to expect where uh in the west for example you knew there is going to be democracy there will be rule of law there is none right so overnight your visas can be cancelled overnight uh you will use lawfare to uh to uh remove opposition politicians from the race this would happen in Africa this would happen in other third world countries uh India was accused of you know using laws against opposition members today we've seen in France it's happened it's happened in Romania in the US they tried to do it to Trump so that old order uh where the west would sit on a pedestal and tell everybody what to do what not to do is gone number one number two you have a new guy new sheriff or wannabe sheriff in town which is the Chinese they're technologically there they're economically there uh and that's that's a reality we can't ignore number three you have a somewhat resurgent Russia you have a lot of problems in the Middle East uh rising Islamism at one level but at another level you seeing enlightened leaderships in countries like the UAE Oman uh Saudi Arabia uh and that struggle is also going to play out you know in the future so a lot of uncertainty in the world and that old comfortable order that we were all used to is going we don't know how trade flows are going to play out we don't know how energy flows are going to play out we don't know how military alliances are now going to play out everything is up in the air unpredictable or is there a possibility of an actual conflict look in unpredictability there is always possibility the possibility of a conflict okay thank you for being on the show Mr s that's all i hope you had fun on today's Great that was the episode for today ladies and gentlemen whether it's geopolitics or economics or anything related to the realm of current affairs my personal opinion is that these subjects should be explained in such a simple manner that it's understandable by a 10-year-old that's the intention behind all of these episodes keeping that intention in mind please recommend guests please recommend topics i do believe that it's the duty of the modern-day content creator to bring you unfiltered and simple conversations just like this suggest your topics suggest your guests and thank you for listening in to TRS once again thank you for all the support through a time that's been slightly rough but we're climbing back up lots of love to you keep listening in heat heat