12/10/2025
PICK ME UP, PEACE
By Sardar Shoukat Popalzai, President - Balochistan Economic Forum
In the restless heart of Pakistan, peace has become both a prayer and a pursuit. The country today stands at a crossroads, weary from political upheavals, drained by economic uncertainty, and wounded by the recurring tremors of extremism and militancy. Yet, amid the chaos, one can not help but ask: how long can a nation survive without peace, not the silence of fear, but the harmony of justice, dignity, and purpose?
The Weight of Uncertainty
Every day, from the borders of Chaman and Taftan to the bazaars of Karachi and Quetta, Pakistan breathes through anxiety. The rupee trembles, small businesses collapse under inflationary shocks, and the working class, once the backbone of the economy, is now forced to make choices between survival and self-respect.
Behind every shuttered shop lies a story of despair: entrepreneurs squeezed by taxation, industrialists crippled by energy crises, and a youth population desperate for opportunity. Pakistan’s economic wheel turns, but it grinds painfully, slowed by corruption, bureaucratic apathy, and political theatre.
The Politics of Power, Not Purpose
Our political stage today resembles an echo chamber of personal ambitions. Parties and individuals without genuine public mandate impose their dominance through manipulation and money. The tragedy is not just in who holds power, but in how they hold it: as a privilege, not a responsibility.
Governance has become transactional; vision, optional. While the provinces demand autonomy and the people crave accountability, the national discourse remains trapped in ego and intrigue. The ordinary citizen has been reduced to a spectator in a game played by a privileged few.
The Rot of Corruption
No nation can prosper where corruption is not merely an act but an accepted culture. In Pakistan, corruption is no longer hidden in backrooms; it has climbed the staircase of respectability.
From bureaucratic delays that demand a price to political offices auctioned for loyalty, corruption has become the silent partner of every contract, license, and decision.
This moral decay has paralyzed the state from within. The honest civil servant is sidelined, the ethical businessman suffocated, and the common citizen humiliated. Billions vanish in the name of development, yet villages thirst for water and hospitals wait for medicine.
Corruption is not just theft of money. It is the theft of hope. It destroys confidence, weakens merit, and destroys the soul of governance. Until this cancer is confronted head-on, Pakistan’s economic revival will remain an illusion.
Borders Without Peace
From the east, India’s hostility continues to simmer under diplomatic smiles. From the West, Afghanistan’s instability spills across our borders in the form of insurgency, extremism, and narcotics. Along the southern frontier, Iran’s cautious engagement masks growing unease over smuggling, militancy, and economic distrust.
Pakistan today is encircled not by enemies alone but by the consequences of regional mistrust, all worsened by our own internal fractures. Security forces fight bravely, but without political unity and economic stability, no nation can sustain endless vigilance.
The Fire Within
The gravest threat, however, comes not from across the border but from within. Extremism thrives where governance fails. Militancy grows where justice dies.
In Balochistan, the pain runs deep between forgotten promises and extractive politics. Yet, its people continue to hope, to work, and to believe that prosperity can be reclaimed through honest dialogue, investment, and inclusion. Peace, after all, cannot be enforced; it must be built brick by brick, opportunity by opportunity.
A Plea for Purpose
I have witnessed Balochistan’s deserts bloom with resilience, its mountains echo with courage. For over three decades, the Balochistan Economic Forum has stood as a bridge between tribes and technology between local dreams and global partnerships.
But bridges alone can not stand without a foundation of peace. We must return to the fundamentals: governance rooted in service, politics rooted in sincerity, and economics rooted in fairness. Pakistan’s salvation lies not in IMF packages or foreign handshakes but in the moral reconstruction of its own institutions.
Pick Me Up, Peace
To the politicians who trade in division, remember, no throne lasts longer than the suffering of a nation. To the bureaucrats who delay progress, know that time will judge you harsher than law. To the youth of Pakistan, your frustration is valid, but your strength is sacred. Build, don’t burn. Hope, don’t hide.
And to peace itself, I say: pick me up. Pick up my wounded land, my silent workers, my fearful mothers, and my tired soldiers. Pick up this nation that still believes, against all odds, that tomorrow can be better.
Because peace is not the absence of conflict; it is the presence of justice, opportunity, and the courage to make it real.
Only when we defeat corruption and restore morality in governance will Pakistan finally rise, not by chance, but by choice…..
