A good sixty years back, dog fights in some of our villages were not unknown as a form of high entertainment. The one thing that topped this was when a bear was pitched against dogs. The dogs were never less than two but could go up to four in number. Even this was often not considered enough for the fight to be seen as being “equal”, and so one of the hind legs of the bear was invariably tied to a peg, or its snout was covered with a mask so that its teeth were put out of play.
The political arena of the Pakistan of today frequently reminds me of these bear fights in the village. But there is one huge difference. In the village, the bear had no say in the matter of how it was to be handicapped. But the bear today, the state, has voluntarily hamstrung itself so that the dogs, which have eaten up all the chickens of the village and destroyed its livestock, are being allowed to have a field day, while the bear is flailing about crazed and confused.
With the coming to power of the PTI, the people of Pakistan had begun daring to hope for a better Pakistan. This did not happen. But what did happen though, is that Modi swooped down on Kashmir and swallowed up it in broad daylight. And Pakistan was too paralyzed to move a muscle. It was paralyzed because its treasury was empty. With the draining out of its wealth a better part of the credibility of its deterrence had also been drained out. Pakistan was a victim of economic war waged on it by its own leadership. It owes about a hundred billion dollars to the world at large with nothing to show for it except for the FATF sword hanging on its head and the mountains of wealth piled up by its “elite”. Had Pakistan been a stable, moderately prosperous country, Modi would not have dared do this. This situation was brought about directly by the economic hitmen who prepared the country for defeat without the enemy having to fire a shot.
This is known. The people concerned are known. Their betrayal of their country is writ large on Pakistan’s balance sheets, and on the drained faces of its wretched millions. And yet the state in a state of advanced shyness, instead of treating these criminals as the criminals they are, seems to have opted to be held hostage by them.
A very large majority of the people look upon theft of national wealth as theft which has affected them personally… deprived their children of a future with hope. They are quite clear that unless accountability is as swift and thorough as it is ruthless, there is a snowball’s chance in hell for the fortunes of Pakistan to be turned around. They simply cannot understand the compulsion of the government to treat the mega crooks in jail as prima donnas. It is beyond their imagination why they cannot be treated exactly as the jail manual mandates such treatment. This can be enforced with the utmost stringency by an executive order. Couple this with a rigorous enforcement of the ECL, and most of these crooks will begin laying golden eggs.
When Genghis Khan came of age, took over the stewardship of his tribe, and made his alliance with Prince Jamuka, he took two very important decisions:
- The first was a shift from hereditary aristocracy to meritocracy as the determinant of rank among his people.
- And the second was a tactical innovation. The Mongols being a tribal people, raiding was a very important part of their economy. In a standard raid, the raiding party typically surprised the target tribe, whose fighting men jumped on their horses and fled to save their lives. This allowed time to the raiding party to loot the enemy tribe before the latter got their wits back, reformed, and returned to the fray, by which time the raiders would often have beaten a retreat and were out of sight of their pursuers.
Genghis changed this. Instead of merely putting the enemy to flight and hurriedly returning to gather up the loot, he decided that it would be more profitable to gather up the booty at leisure. Thus, he would pursue a confused and disorganized enemy and defeat it, before returning to gather the windfall.
Unlike Genghis Khan the most recent saviours of the state, led by Gen Bajwa, did not root out the enemy which had hollowed out Pakistan. They allowed them to exist and their dereliction to duty facilitated the defeated enemy to form a fifth column, which they have now effectively become. Having deployed their depredations to destroy the state frontally and openly, they have now been allowed to organize their ill-gotten billions to destroy insidiously, what is left of the state and its hopes.
When I think of merit-based selection and advancement introduced by Genghis Khan, I am compelled, most sadly, to recall a story which I heard many times as a kid. This is about the early years of Islam when the Muslims were undergoing rigorous and unrelenting persecution. It is said that it was then that the Holy Prophet [pbuh] prayed fervently to Allah that He have mercy on Muslims and that Hazrat Umar [R.A], or Abu Jahal be converted to Islam and thus make Muslims more secure.
And then I think of today’s Pakistan and its many woes, and of Usman Buzdar being picked out by the PM to lead Punjab! And his insistence that Buzdar will prove to be the Wasim Akram of politics rattles me still further because he is quite clearly a Mansoor Akhtar of politics who looked good, but despite the many opportunities given to him, could score just one hundred which he managed only because he was dropped three times to get there.
And yet I am rescued from my personal doldrums when I picture the Mayfair Flats in my mind’s eye, and then I see Shaukat Khanum. The difference between the two symbols is so stark that it is only the willfully blind who will fail to spot it. And this difference is that of a leadership of thugs who stole from Pakistan all that they beheld, and of a man, who gave to Pakistan, all he could. And with all this if he also bestowed upon us Buzdar, he could be forgiven with the hope that he will wake up for this sooner or later.
Thus, as there is still breath in Imran’s body, and an iota of strength in his sinews, we can all dare to nurture hopes for the future of Pakistan.
P.S. Do see the following clip from the 1970s movie “Cromwell”. The scenes of the Parliament depicted in it closely parallel the fish market that is our National Assembly of today in which every crook and cutthroat daily attempts to leverage his position as legislator, to blackmail the state in order to get absolution for crimes committed against it, or to be put in a position in which such crimes could be committed!
Imran Khan and all those who are committed to salvaging Pakistan have to realize that this salvation will not come about unless the system which destroyed Pakistan is itself first removed from the body of the state by a surgical operation. The State and this “System” are incompatible. Only one can survive at the cost of the other. This “System” must go. The emergency situation which Pakistan has been under for some years now must be recognized, and such emergency needs to be formally imposed to deal with the huge number of problems Pakistan is facing. Whenever a State is overwhelmed, this is the remedy. Each day that this remedy is delayed is a vital day lost. Rather than delay action till people pour out on the streets, it is better to move now, and push the day of reckoning as far back as it is possible to do.
Some time, it is best for a state that its bravest and most committed son play Cromwell on the state, and inflict on it the deep surgery it needs for a healthy bleed and for survival.