The central problem of the current swirl of crises bedeviling Pakistan today has arisen out of one act. And that is the putting into power the most despised group of street thugs by our high command at the behest of a foreign power. This cost the army the support of the people, and the high command that of its lesser ranks.
Unless this is first understood and acknowledged, Pakistan cannot even hope to BEGIN digging itself out of the hole which its army high command has dug for it.
In polite language these thugs are referred to as the elites. They carry water for the neoliberal agenda and have been undermining their country from within, making it ready for an assault from enemies abroad.
Imran Khan was not acceptable to the U.S for threatening to assert Pakistan’s sovereignty and veering it away towards seeking Pakistan’s best interests. And he was not acceptable to the elites because he was a threat to them and to the hoards of cash they had stolen from the country. These threats brought the thugs and the U.S into closer alignment.
To withstand the threat from this alignment, our army was our only hope. But when the time came for it to make its stand, its high command deserted its people, and went and stood by the enemy.
And as it was challenged, it did what poor armies always do in order to make their defense impregnable. It closed its eyes and dug in ever deeper. And as it took the path of reinforcing a failure, it merely managed to enhance both the depth of its sinfulness and the range of its criminality.
From murder to attempted assassination, abduction and kidnapping, registration of false cases, extortion, huge smuggling operations, illegal detentions, massive misuse of police, intimidation of the judiciary, runaway corruption, and the blatant shredding of the constitution, there is not a crime it is not suspected of either having facilitated, or having desisted from committing.
And as the burdens of its criminality have increased, it is holding on ever more tightly to the tiger it is riding, instead of drumming up the courage to acknowledge the first sin which set the ball rolling. Rolling it back from there is the only way out both for them and for the country.
But not being able to summon up the courage to pinpoint where the rollback should begin, they are summoning up their imagination instead. They’ve decided to dig the country out, beginning with a green revolution starting from Khanewal!
It should by now be quite clear how operation regime change must have begun. Almost certainly it must have started with the School of the Americas playbook, and Bajwa must have been recruited when he was yet a junior officer. And then he must have been allowed to “sleep” his way to becoming the Army Chief. It is then that he must have been activated to stab in the back the state which had till then, paid all his bills. And being a true son of the soil, he did this with a twist. He did this by catapulting to power the most hated bunch of thieves and cutthroats in our sorry history.
Till well after becoming Army Chief, I never heard Gen Bajwa ill spoken of. It was only after Nawaz Sharif was allowed to flee Pakistan that Gen Bajwa’s name began to crop up as the sponsor of this escapade. It soon began being said that this was arranged in exchange for a hefty bribe to Bajwa. The partial exposure of his wealth seems to confirm this.
From then onwards, both dust and dirt began to settle on him till his name virtually drowned in ignominy. It can now be fairly speculated that Bajwa must have received orders for regime change from Commander Centcom [for that is the normal chain of command for countries like ours] as early as mid-1921. I think that it was in preparation for this Operation that Lt Gen Faez Hamid was posted out of ISI. Though he was a great favourite with Bajwa, he had become pretty close to Imran Khan as well, and was also building his own empire of wealth and influence on the side. This was quite well known. Bajwa could therefore not have risked the Operation with Gen Faez still in office at the ISI. The risk was obviously too great.
I do not believe that apart from Bajwa any more than only a few other generals of the high command would have known the full extent of the operation. This was an operation driven by betrayal and rooted in the treachery of a handful of crooked men wearing posh uniforms. Period.
I would like to believe that the rest of the high command were incrementally sucked into the vortex of criminality, nodding their heads in agreement with small illegal measures proposed from one conference to the next, till at last these small measures had become a pretty daunting pile of complicity for the concerned generals to withdraw from. Theirs was a case of moral courage having deserted them bit by little bit. Never did they set out to betray their country.
Yet, whatever it was, and how ever it came about, the ruin that sixteen months of “political engineering” brought about by our high command can escape notice of only those who are willfully blind to the truth. In a mere 16 months of arrogance mixed with incompetence and driven by betrayal, they have brought a country growing at the annual rate of six percent, to two. And they are now trying to repair this damage through green initiatives, and incessant bloviating, drawing applause only from those clad like themselves. And those who are not joining in this applause are being abducted and shoved into jails.
Mine is an earnest appeal to the high command. Have mercy on Pakistan. Either come down with a full-fledged martial law on the country, and have all your green, blue, and yellow revolutions that you may have in mind as a panacea for our ills and your betrayal; or give the country completely fair a free elections devoid of any manner of fraud. But please do not pick this string up from the middle, sagging at both ends, by giving us a patently manufactured fraud, and hope to have this passed by us as democratic elections. This will cause destabilization which you won’t have a chance of putting right. Civil disturbance often leads to insurgency. Unlike conventional wars, those of a civil nature cannot be halted till one of the two sides is defeated. Our country will not be able to bear the strain, no matter who wins.
And yes, all our leaders have been dyed in criminality of one stripe to another. And all of them have enjoyed the blessings of immunity. In the spirit of fair play, you also deserve the same. So, sit down with the political leaders, and have an agreement of prior immunity signed with him. Only do not take our country down with your mixture of arrogance and fear. And should the political leaders be listening, I would appeal to them as well, that if the overweening arrogance of our high command deigns to take a second seat behind a late blooming of good sense, please give good sense a chance.
This is the only real chance we, the people, seem to be left with.