Who I Am Before Anyone Puts a Party Label on Me . || Israel ||

My name is Aftab Irshad. Some people already know me. My family knows me. A few others know me. That is enough for now. I am not writing this as a member of any political party. I am not joined to any party, and I am not standing against any party either. I do not have a political ID card made. I have not voted yet. So the whole talk of join this side or do not join that side does not even apply to me. I am also not in any government job. My connection to government is not bigger than the connection of any ordinary person sitting outside. I am not more inside the system than the next man on the street.

People love to sort a voice before they read it. They want to know which camp you sleep in. If you cannot be sorted, they get uneasy. I am saying it straight so that part is finished early. Being against one party or for another party does not change the thing I am trying to say. It does not add weight and it does not remove weight. Read the lines. Do not read the jersey you wish I was wearing.

I am building a platform. The purpose of that platform is not to earn a million dollars. It is not to get a seat. It is not to catch a ministry, a protocol car, or a photo with someone important. In Pakistan people hear “platform” and they immediately start calculating the profit. That calculation is old. It is also lazy. The real purpose is something else. I will do it step by step. I am not going to dump the whole map on the table in one night just so strangers can tear it up before the first brick is dry.

If someone reads this and the first reply in their head is “this is Gen Z, the new generation does not know Islam, these kids do not know these things,” then stop. That style is already old. Look around. We are in the camera age. Cameras are everywhere, phones are everywhere, and still the amount of lying has not gone down. It has gone up. If this much lying can live in an age when almost everything can be recorded, then what do we really know about older movements, older claims, older speeches? Eyes also lie. What you see with your own eyes can still be arranged. A clip can be true and still be cut. A face can be real and the sentence around it can be false. So do not use my age, or anyone’s age, as a shortcut to dismiss the point.

The Same Place, Again

Pakistan’s past and present both sit in the same place, and from here a lot of things already look impossible. We are in a time when people elsewhere spot a real problem, research it, build a fix, and turn that into a life. Do our entrepreneurs and researchers even get room to do that, or do we only talk?

The biggest problems here are not hidden. Law enforcement is weak and education is missing. That is not only the government’s fault. People also have to own what they ignore. A weak street, a weak school, a file that never moves: these do not fix themselves because a speech was loud. And inside the country there are plenty of things everyone sees and still cannot say out loud. That silence is also a system. It trains people to live with two versions of the day. One version for the house. One version for the crowd.

Israel, and the Line People Are Tired of Repeating

A lot of young Pakistanis are not against Israel. They want normal connections. Work, study, trade, ordinary contact. Plenty of Pakistani businessmen and politicians are not against this either. There are official reasons and unofficial reasons behind that, whether anyone admits them or not. The “Islamic Republic” line and the habit of Islamic hate did not just appear. They were taught, repeated, and kept in place.

Say you want a connection with Israel and the reply comes fast: congratulations, you are against the shared society, start from today. That was never the point. There are millions of things in the world that do not follow Islamic methods, and life still goes on. Egypt has ties. Jordan has ties. The UAE has ties. Bahrain has ties. Morocco has ties. Muslim countries already sit in that contact and still call themselves Muslim. So the local shout is a political habit, not a settled religious fact. People can read it and decide for themselves.

I am not telling you to switch your side for me. I am saying the ban on even saying the sentence is fake. Young people already know it. Business people already know it. A lot of politicians already know it and still feed the other line in public.

The Army, the Split, and What Is Actually Local

Politicians have been successful at turning people against the army, even when many of them are not actually against ties with Israel themselves. Our army is still one of the best. The current government has also taken its own steps. So why are we busy splitting ourselves? It is not some BlackRock-style setup running everything from outside. A lot of this is local. Local talk, local profit, local fear, local habit. Importing a foreign villain for every local mess is another way of not filling the gap.

I am not in the business of tearing the army down to sound brave online. That campaign has worked on emotion for years. It does not rewrite the work the institution carried, and it does not rewrite the unknown men under it. None of that requires me to join a side. The split we keep feeding is ours more than people admit.

Pakistan Became an Atomic Country, Believe That

Pakistan made the atom bomb. Believe that. Do not treat it like a rumour that only lives in school textbooks and then disappears when the argument gets uncomfortable. It happened. The tests happened. The world had to accept a new fact on the map whether it liked the fact or not.

On that, people should say a prayer for Nawaz Sharif. Look at it once, properly, without the party noise. He was the prime minister when Pakistan carried out the tests in May 1998, after India had tested and the pressure from outside was heavy. Taking that decision, in that week, with sanctions hanging over the country, was not a small political act. A lot of men in that chair would have delayed. A lot of men would have hidden behind committees. He did not hide. For that decision, a dua is not too much. I am not saying this because I belong to his party. I already said I belong to none. I am saying it because the decision sits in history with his name on it.

I also salute Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan. Let that sit in the same breath so nobody twists it later. The scientist who carried the enrichment work, who became the public face of the bomb for a whole generation, deserves the salute. People who try to delete him are playing a different game. People who try to say nobody else existed except him are playing another game. Both games are smaller than the thing that was built.

Here is the part that always gets flattened. Is the sky of Pakistan so empty that only Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan deserves the credit? Or is it so empty that only Nawaz Sharif deserves it? No. Many people put their share in. Scientists put their share in. Engineers put their share in. Officers put their share in. Workers whose names never reached a stage put their share in. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is part of the older start of the programme. Teams at the laboratories are part of it. The political decision in 1998 is part of it. The long years of building before that decision are part of it. If you pick one name and throw the rest in the bin, you are not writing history. You are writing a poster.

The Ones Who Never Got a Name

Then there is the part nobody prepared a file for. The work was secret. Because it was secret, a clean public history was not written. Data was not laid out for the next generation to browse. That was the point. If everything had been written down in normal language and normal files, it would have leaked. A country trying to reach that capability does not publish the diary.

Pakistan had people who were present in corners of the world most of us will never visit. Streets, rooms, transit points, places that do not make it into a proud documentary. Some of them gave their lives. Some of them did not even get a proper kafan. Some of them may have died without a recorded name. Their families may still not have the full sentence. I am not claiming I hold a secret list. I am saying the shape of that work was secret on purpose, so the absence of names is not an accident. It was the design.

It was a secret operation, or a system close to that. The kind of system where even top officers, even the real army chief of the time, did not know every man in every lane. That is how these things are built if they are built at all. First salute goes to those heroes. The ones who are still alive and unknown. The ones who were the real layer, who knew, and who then died. No detailed book is coming for them. Do not wait for the official paragraph. The system does not work like that.

Look at the system itself. If all of this had been open, step by step, with names and dates on a public board, then nothing would have stayed hidden, and nothing of that kind would have finished. People love transparency as a slogan. Some work cannot survive transparency while it is still being done. That is not a pretty sentence. It is still how high-stakes state work has always moved. Later, when the result exists, everyone wants the credit story. Earlier, when the result did not exist, silence was the method.

The Old System Is Not the Only System Now

The world is in another style now. The old system has not stayed the same. Files, borders, money, talent, information: the routes have changed. A country that only stares at the old door will miss the new corridor. That does not cancel the bomb. The bomb was a floor. It stopped a certain kind of erasure. It did not build the next economy by itself. A floor is not a house.

In my age, the person I have been most affected by, more than most public names, is Bilal Bin Saqib. Maybe I have learned a lot from the way he moved. Allah keep him safe. Ameen. He came through building, through social work, through the COVID meal effort in Britain that earned him an MBE, through water work, and then through the crypto and digital-asset push in Pakistan: the Crypto Council, the adviser role, the virtual-assets authority, the attempt to put Pakistan in the rooms where the next money system is being written. He has talked about serving that part pro bono. He has put Pakistan into conversations on blockchain, regulation, and even AI rooms that this country usually enters late.

People will argue about crypto. Fine. Argue. My point is not that every token is a miracle. My point is the kind of development he dragged into the national conversation. A regulatory door. A seat at tables Pakistan was not sitting at. A signal to young people that the next system is not only for other countries. Maybe that kind of opening is even bigger than making the atom bomb. I know how that sentence sounds. I am still saying it. The bomb answered one question: can they finish us cheaply? The new rails answer a different question: can a young country actually plug into the system that is being built now, or will it only clap for old victories? Both matter. They are not the same victory.

Do not turn this into a fan post. I am not his spokesman. I am saying where my own attention went, and why. When someone in this age actually moves a heavy door, you watch the method, not only the headline.

Fill the Gap, Do Not Hide Behind Why

Now look at things as they are. My purpose is not to tell you to change your side. I am not collecting converts for a party. I am not asking you to tear up your old loyalties to make me comfortable. Sides in Pakistan are a full-time industry. People earn from the fight itself. The fight does not need another volunteer from me.

The world is changing anyway. You can feel it in money, in work, in how young people learn, in how a skill in one city can be sold to a client in another country before the local office has updated its form. Pakistan still has the old holes. Law enforcement is weak. Education is thin. Those two holes eat everything else. They are not only the government’s fault. A public that will not own its part keeps the holes open.

So the useful line is simple. Fill the gap. Do not spend the whole day on why. Why are we behind, why did that leader fail, why is that institution wrong, why is that generation lost. Why is endless. Kami is specific. A missing skill is specific. A missing law that actually gets enforced is specific. A missing factory, a missing lab, a missing honest registry, a missing habit of finishing work: those are specific. You can put your hand on a gap. You cannot put your hand on a why.

This is also why I do not want the platform to be a speech club. Speech is cheap in Pakistan. Everyone has a take. Very few have a finished thing. Entrepreneurs and researchers in other places find a problem and stay on it until the problem moves. Here the talent often gets spent on commentary. I am not insulting commentary. I am saying commentary is not the meal. If the platform does not help someone find a real problem and take a real step, then it is just another room with lights on.

What I Am Not Asking You to Pretend

I am not asking anyone to pretend Pakistan is fine. It is not fine. The past and the present both show the same stuck places. Some things look impossible from here if you only use the old route. That feeling is honest. It is not the last word. Impossible is often just the name people give to a path they have not started.

I am not asking anyone to pretend one man made the bomb. He did not. Nawaz Sharif deserves the dua for the decision and the tests. Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan deserves the salute for the scientific burden he carried in public and in the labs. The unnamed people deserve the first salute, because they cannot collect it themselves. The teams, the earlier political start, the officers who kept the circle small: they are in the story whether a rally mentions them or not.

I am not asking anyone to pretend the camera age is the age of truth. It is the age of more pictures. Pictures are not the same as truth. A lie with good light still travels faster than a careful paragraph. That is why tone policing about generation and religion does not impress me. If you want to test a claim, test the claim. Do not test the birth year of the person holding it.

I am also not in government, not a candidate, not a party worker, and not a man with a hidden contract. If that disappoints the people who only trust a voice after they see a badge, I cannot help them. Ordinary is the point. An ordinary person is allowed to say that the nuclear decision mattered, that unknown men mattered, that a younger builder pushing digital rails matters, that normal contact with Israel is not a crime against faith, and that the next useful act is to fill a gap instead of polishing a why.

Step by Step, Not All at Once

I will keep this moving step by step. The first step is saying the record cleanly, in my own voice, without borrowing a party microphone. Pakistan is an atomic country. Believe it. Say a prayer for Nawaz Sharif for the moment he chose the tests. Salute Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan. Salute the people whose kafan never became a headline. Do not shrink the sky until only one star is allowed to shine.

The next step is the work in front of us, not only the work behind us. Bilal Bin Saqib showed one version of that next step: build, serve, then drag the country into a system that is still being written. Allah keep him safe. Ameen. Maybe what he opened is larger than the bomb in the life of a young Pakistani who will never sit in a weapons lab and still needs a future. Hold both facts. Do not trade one for the other.

And do not trade the present for an old slogan. Young Pakistanis who want ordinary contact with Israel are not announcing a war on faith. Businessmen who want the same are not announcing it either. A lot of politicians already live with that fact in private. The public line was built, repeated, and kept. Our army does not need to be the enemy of that sentence. The current government has its own steps. The split is the waste.

The last line is the line I actually want left in the room. The world is changing. You do not have to change your political side for me. You do have to stop using why as a place to hide. Fill the gap. Then fill the next one. That is the purpose. Not the money. Not the chair. Not the party. The gap.