On Jan 8, 2024, when Qazi Isa, assisted by two of his sucklings, divested PTI of its electoral symbol, for all practical purposes he ruled the most popular political party in Pakistan, out of the electoral contest to be held on Feb 8, 2024. This was a body blow to Pakistan.
Qazi is one of the lesser touts in a galaxy of more glittering ones, but his stamp and signatures were essential to the delegitimization of the only force capable of holding the country together in a time of great strains pulling it apart. By doing what he has done, he has pushed Pakistan to the same brink where it stood in 1971, before it shattered.
The difference between 1971 and today is that in 1971 the intelligence assessment went wrong. They did not expect any party to win an outright majority, which would throw up a fractured parliament. And a fractured parliament would allow Yahya Khan’s boozing party to continue uninterrupted. But this was not what happened. So this time, when it is so clear that Imran Khan shall wipe the others out, no intelligence assessment was considered necessary. To ensure therefore, that there won’t be any risk of interference with the “Fauji” party, they have decided to bastardize the entire electoral process BEFORE the elections, rather than wait for the catastrophe and begin applying stitches after the results are in. And towards this end, they have put the most popular party out of the contest.
This is what happens when people who have never peeped out of the box, begin thinking out of it. I wonder if they have thought how they will sell such a brazenly illegitimate election abroad, and to a highly charged and resentful population at home. Nothing less than a rise in civil unrest, on the one side, and the ongoing insurgency on the other, should be expected from the path they have taken. This will eventually take a lurching country to its second and final break-up.
Only idiots should expect different results from the administration of the same poison to different victims.
After the dismemberment of Pakistan, the feelings among younger officers varied from anger to rage. Those gripped with rage fell into the Attock Conspiracy. Though their meetings often fell into cacophony, they were very clear about one thing: that if the generals who created the conditions for the 1971 War thought themselves deserving of their privileges, they were surely also deserving of being indicted for the defeat and surrender which came in its wake.
Therefore, a general who could not prove that he raised an objection against being pushed into that disastrous war, ought to be held guilty of complicity in taking the country into the disaster.
But there was the other view as well; that planning to overthrow the government and then moving to trials of the generals was a conceit based on the assumption of success. A much surer way was to make teams of ones and twos, operating independently, to shoot dead those whose guilt stood established beyond question.
Qazi Faiz Isa is an enemy of the people moved by malice. That this is malice aforethought is beyond question. Thus, being a cog in a conspiracy against the state makes his judgments invaluable because they open a window into the thinking in GHQ, which we have no way of scrutinizing otherwise.
Intimately connected with Qazi is Sikander Sultan Raja. A cog in a different end of this machine is Lt Gen Nazir Butt of NAB, who orchestrated Imran’s arrest, which led to the May 9 False Flag operation. And then there is Justice Amir Farooq and Judges Humayun Dullavar and Abul Hasnat Zulqarnain. And coordinating terror in the whole of Punjab is Mohsin R. Naqvi, its infamous Chief Minister and his IG Police, Usman Anwar [remember Zille Shah?] in partnership with IG Islamabad, Akbar Nasir Khan.
These are enemies of the people and the state. And there are more. They must never be forgotten. They are responsible for debauching Pakistan’s present and ruining its future. They rule the roost today. But time changes. We cannot say about tomorrow. But the least even the most helpless Pakistani must keep doing is to keep updating lists of the enemies of the people. Their day of atonement should not be found wanting of charges when it dawns, as it certainly will. At long last the blackguards should pay for their crimes against the people.