When a judge is asked to take “Judicial Notice” of some fact, the plea being resorted to is that they should accept as correct, a fact which is so well known, that no proof of it should be considered necessary.
In the lines that follow, it will be my assumption that the readers will take “judicial notice” of facts which I consider to be so well established, so as not to be challenged purely for the sake of argument.
Only fools and incorrigible optimists will deny that today Pakistan stands at the lowest ebb of its unfortunate history. Thus, it would be natural to ask how we got here?
The short answer to this question is that our leadership, whether civil or military, has proved to be incapable or uncommitted to pursuing national interests, or it was venal, or both. With this type of leadership, it does not take a genius to guess where the country would end up. All such leaders need to do is to “work harder” to take the country where they are pushing it. And this alone would be enough to run any country into the ground.
The crux of our misfortune lies in what our leadership has long considered to be its sole right vis a vis their country.
The political leadership, very early, was driven by the ancient feudal tradition of ” jus prima noctis”. This was the tradition which allowed the feudal lord to spend the first night with any bride from among his serfs i.e. a legalized rape of his charges.
Our politicians have long believed that being elected to office not only gives them the right to govern the country but that they had also been elected to screw it. And where the constitution becomes an obstacle to the free enjoyment of this right, the constitution needed being suitably amended to bring it line with the unfettered exercise of this sacred right of ravishment of the state. In this argument our “intellectuals” have mostly stood with the politicians.
In old times it was the feudal lords who furnished men and material for the king’s army. Thus, they never faced a challenge from the army while asserting this right of ravishment. That is not the case with the Pakistan of today. Here we have an army which is independent of the feudals i.e. of the politicians. And every time the politicians got going with the screwing, the army thought that if this was all there was to it, they could do a better job of it because they were responsible for the security of the bride [i.e. Pakistan]. This being the case, they could at least be depended upon to be careful enough not to visit such gross inflictions upon it, as would bleed it to death.
And thus, the political and military leadership of the country has alternated in screwing their land. The politicians, backed up by the intellectuals, have continued to assert that the constitution gives them the sole right to despoil the country they govern. The military has argued, on the other hand, that the way the politicians went about it, they would bleed the bride to death, and they have a duty to keep it alive. And each time this bleeding reached a point of unacceptability, the rank and file of the Pakistani public has prayed for military intervention, and every time such an intervention has taken place, it has fallen behind it.
No General would have dared to take over, were it not for the political set up driving governance to the verge of criminality, and sometime beyond it. In every case the General who took over, governed better than the setup he displaced. Yet no General governed well enough to justify his takeover. In every case of taking over the General also ended up adopting the same corrupt mechanism and methods of self-perpetuation, which had earlier discredited the political set up he displaced.
During all this time the “intellectuals” of the land have singularly failed to put their finger on the crux of the malaise afflicting Pakistan and have reduced the argument to one of civil versus the military. In this they revert to the textbook to uphold the politicians’ right to do with the country what they will, because the book says so. They have refused to emphasize that it is the consistent and willful failure of the entire “elite” which has failed Pakistan so spectacularly, to have brought the country to its knees. And this elite includes the politicians, the army, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, big business, and the intellectuals themselves. In short, the civil versus the military argument is a cop-out for the elite which has ruined the country.
In this story of woe and fall the single most egregious act was the removal of a red line beyond which lay the red-light area. This red line was erased by the NRO. With this NRO the whole state was made a part of the red-light area–a den of corruption and prostitution of national interest. The NRO, which quite literally validated corruption and gave it formal acceptability, was Musharraf’s gift to the country [advantage Army]. His sole motivation for the NRO was to remain at the helm. This motivation was driven by his high opinion of himself. To remain at the helm, he was willing to undergo any sacrifice, including getting into bed with the most notorious blackguards of the land. And with this NRO the army crossed a redline too. From hesitant corruption, it crossed over to its overt indulgence.
The direct effect of the NRO was the raising of the chief thug of Pakistan to the Presidency. This ushered in an era of unprecedented national rape without let or hindrance. As Zardari grew fabulously rich, it did not spook the envy of the Sharif Family which played the “friendly” opposition to him, confident that under the terms of the “Charter of Democracy” when their turn came, Zardari too would prove to be equally friendly and amenable to their depredations, as they were to his. And thus, when the time came, only the rapists changed hands, but the rape of the land continued unabated. To ensure that in pursuit of their criminal designs the politicians will not be interfered with, the constitution was duly amended. With the destruction of all other institutions which could have been a hindrance to them, all was now in place to take the country to the cleaners.
By the time General Raheel took over the army, the country was faced with two lethal threats. It had been so ruthlessly plundered that taking ever more loans was the only way open to meet the expenses of running the state, and potentially, leaving it hostage to its creditors. On the other hand, the country was being bled to death by various terrorist gangs. With these, the government was in dialogue. The belief was that friendly give and take would resolve this problem. The government was seriously convinced that it would succeed in coming to a modus vivendi with the militants whereby the latter will be converted to a “freindly” adversary, on the same lines as the “friendly” political opposition.
But as the bloodletting did not dry up, the army’s patience gave way to Zarb e Azab, and north Waziristan was cleared clean out. The second arm of the pincer was to clean out Karachi. This led to the killing of many terrorists, and the arrest of others. Arrests led to interrogations. Interrogations led to leads. And leads led to the palatial homes of the politicians. Had these leads been followed, they would have uncovered a nexus between mega corruption and terrorism. And this would have led to the bundling out of the government, and the trials of those forming it. And thus, to save the politicians who have quite pulverized the country, the operations against the terrorists were scuttled by the government. When comes the choice between Pakistan and a clutch of thieving politicians, the politicians should have been expected to choose themselves.
By now it should be quite clear to any unbiased onlooker that General Raheel has been entirely disinterested in taking over the country. But he is equally committed to the security of the country. He is thus committed to seeing the war against the terrorists reach its final conclusion, without which the state remains in existential danger. But the politicians are equally committed against this war reaching its natural conclusion, because they see quite clearly that their lives of criminal privilege and their freedoms will conclude with it.
This, in a nutshell, is the ONLY point at issue between the Army and the politicians. Into this mix fell the Panama Papers scandal. This can of worms was spilled by a German newspaper beyond the reach of all of Nawaz Sharif’s group of perceived enemies. But worse. This scandal proffers links to proof of criminality against the Prime Minister’s family. If Nawaz Sharif falls, a huge swathe of dirty politicians go to jail with him. And so they have all ganged up to save his skin at the cost of the state. Nawaz Sharif is quite willing to see Pakistan burned to the ground to see the Panama scandal remain under wraps.
So, with the eruption of the Panama scandal, the government has trotted out a whole group of mercenary intellectuals and venal media persons, to take the offensive against the army. They have fallen back to defending the plunder and inequities of Nawaz Sharif by denigrating the army in order to preempt it from taking Zarb e Azab to its natural conclusion.
But there is one small problem here. It is not the Generals that have been in the thick of this war so much as the rank and file of the army. It is they who have been deployed in the field for more than a decade, ever since they were first sent into the tribal areas by Musharraf. And they have given an excellent account of themselves. They have willingly given every sacrifice that has been required of them. How do the Generals turn to them now and say that what they have given life and limb for was a mistake? How does the army cut this operation short without the Generals being justly accused by their men of having sold them short? This war against terrorists was justly sold to the men who fought it, as a war to ward off an existential threat against the state. How do the Generals invert this narrative and pretend to their commands that all was now well, when their men KNOW the truth? This will require cowardice and hypocrisy of a very high order. The fate of the country will depend upon whether or not the Generals will be able to muster both in sufficient quantity to ensure their country’s smooth demise at the hands of the terrorists and their facilitators, while keeping their demoralized and distrusting troops mollified.
P.S. Was there ever a real solution to Pakistan’s political problem? The answer is “Yes”. There would have been no such problem, had the politicians not taken it upon themselves to giving first priority to plundering Pakistan, the second to self-perpetuation, and last to governance. Or, had the army ONLY intervened to ward off situations of genuine national emergency, and reverted back to the barracks when the emergency situation had been addressed. The resort to military intervention should always have been purely temporary, lasting months, not years.
But whenever the Army took over, it always found itself on the back of a tiger. What would have given it the security to get off, and revert to the barracks?
The answer is very simple. The Army, if and when national interest made an intervention inevitable, should always have intervened on the behest of the institution as a whole as represented by the entire corps of Generals, and not just a small coterie of Generals. Every officer of the rank of Maj Gen and above should have been made to sign a resolution endorsing any action necessitated as response to the emergency in question.
There is strength in numbers, and it becomes greater if intent can be justified. A temporary foray out of barracks is proof of such intent. Besides, if the army moves as an institution, any move by it can be expected to be given ex post facto validity by any parliament which follows. People sitting in such parliaments are not fools. They would know that the army which had voluntarily reverted to the barracks, can with equal willingness come right back into the arena if it is threatened.
If the army is forced to move in the present circumstances, what is the minimum it should do? It should:
- Seal all exits, so that no crook is allowed to flee.
- It should ensure that the interim government charges the mega plunderers with theft and tried in summary courts.
- It should ensure that mega crimes like Baldia Town murders and those of Model Town be tried by summary military courts.
- Its first priority should be to give clearance on the basis of benefit of doubt to all such politicians who are on the fringes of wrongdoing, and those above it. And it should allow them to reorganize their parties to fight free and fair elections. In these elections, those politicians who have not yet been cleared, should not be allowed to participate.
- For the future, mega corruption should be included among national security imperatives. The National Security Council should be resuscitated which should meet once a month, and all incipient cases of mega corruption, on which there is intelligence, should be thrashed out in this forum.
- Immediately after the elections the Army should revert to the barracks. It is not the job of the Army to rule the country. And nor is it fitted to do so. Equally it is the duty of the Army, when all other institutions have been compromised or gutted, to move up to the plate, and salvage the country. If personal ambition does not afflict it, Army intervention will be applauded by a broad majority of the people. But if the Army overstays its welcome, it will be vilified by the same people who welcomed it in the first place.