And he roars with “conviction”. Once again he is logical and fluent in his latest piece: “Contriving Traitors.”
Reading him, I cannot but recall to mind that other great Harvard luminary, Alan Dershowitz, whose arguments against the Palestinians always appear flawless because of the mastery with which he first fixes the “facts” of the case he argues for, and then proceeds to traduce the victims of his harangue.
Babar Sattar routinely follows essentially the same ploy. He first posits an assumption as if this were the truth, and then goes on to build his case around one ” truth” he attempts to quell and the other he attempts to sell.
In the present instance the central point around which his article is built is the latest press conference by DG ISPR, in which the latter “indicted” the PTM. Without saying so in as many words, the DG clearly implied that the PTM was being funded by powers hostile to Pakistan to run a movement, the main target of which was the Pakistan Army.
And also, without saying it in as many words, Babar Sattar’s central message in his article was that the DG ISPR lied to the press in his press conference. Had Mr Sattar found himself in agreement with the DG, the raison d’etre of the article would have been non-existent. And there would have been no article for him to write.
I am not in a position to attest to the “truth” or otherwise of the DG’s innuendos, but am inclined to believe that given the external threats being faced by the country, it is more than possible that miscreants are being funded by the enemy to destabilize the country; I am certain that terrorism in Pakistan is being instigated from across our borders and those who are blowing up installations and people, are not doing it for free; that if the incidents of terrorism have fallen in the recent past, it is not because our enemies have begun taking pity on us, but it is because of counter-intelligence measures being taken by the relevant agencies; that whether Babar Sattar likes it or not, these are military agencies; and that being the case, it is more likely than not, that the DG ISPR would probably know more on the matter than either Mr Sattar or myself.
I am therefore driven to conclude, unlike Mr Sattar, that the DG was more likely to have been laying out the real facts in his press conference.
But Babar Sattar is a lawyer. A lawyer trained in Harvard, no less. For someone like him to build a whole narrative on an assumption that is ill founded at best i.e that the DG was hawking falsehoods, is not just wrong, it is criminally wrong.
He is playing the righteous knight in shining armour. When he declares: ” What we are witnessing today is the pinnacle of military’s control of state and societal institutions from behind the curtain. ” he has a vested interest in doing so. His interest is to show himself as the Pastor Niemoller of the day, standing up to the Nazi state. The more diabolical the military is painted as, the greater the stature of the “pastor’.
His reference to ” Punjabi ultra-nationalist hate on PTM leaders” and the ” “frothing Punjabi anchors” is totally uncalled for and out of line. Indeed, if anyone can be accused of “frothing”, it is Mr Sattar himself. If the military had indeed been as diabolical as Mr Sattar makes it out to be, the chances are that people of his ilk would most likely have found themselves sputtering, much less frothing.
The fact that he can keep castigating the powers that be, without a hair on his head coming to any harm, undermines the central thesis which he strains to propound, and has never let go an opportunity to do so. And thus, let Mr Sattar not pat himself on the back by telling himself that the military is too dumb to decipher his convolutions.
I feel his parents spent too much good money sending him to Harvard. For the type of “intellectual” shenanigans he likes to indulge in, any lesser institution of Pakistan would have been adequate.
P.s It is the single most important point made by the DG ISPR that Babar Sattar has chosen to duck i.e that if the PTM was as innocent and as non-violent as they profess themselves to be, why should this movement march to the beat of anti-army slogans? And let there be no doubt that these slogans are pernicious, to say the least. They are meant to demoralize and bring down the stock of the only half-functional institution of the country which is standing between the state and its being folded up. Let any Lt Col be ordered to march his troops to engage with the enemy, and the chances are he will get there; probably he will get there in time: and he will fight the enemy instead of shying away from him; and his officers will lead the troops, and die fighting if that needs being done. It is not for nothing that yet again the casualty ratio of the officer to the jawan is higher in the Pakistan Army than of any other army in the world similarly engaged. The least this should tell people like Babar Sattar is that more than any other institution of the country, those in the army are more likely to do what they are being paid to do. This is more than I can say for most lawyers. If Mr Sattar wants a real-life commentary on his own profession, all he needs to do is to attend a hearing when the plunder of Malik Riaz is being defended in a court of law. What he will find there collected in Malik Riaz’s defense is the glittering galaxy of the “brightest” lawyers this country has to offer. Babar Sattar would certainly know this. After all, he is a part of this galaxy and a beneficiary of it–and often of the state’s largesse.