Each time I put out an article, I receive the inevitable comments, observations, and questions. I try and answer the latter the best I can. But after my last post, “Pakistan, And the Road Ahead” I received questions well in excess of what has been the usual response. I have thus collected and grouped such questions and made an attempt below to phrase them in a clear manner, and to answer them.

Q. You have predicted that the rupee will keep falling against the dollar, and that the cost of living will keep rising exponentially. What is the basis of these predictions?

A. I have been saying this for well over six years. The basis of these predictions is fairly simple. The treasury has been looted. Empty. You have no option but to print more and more money. The more money you print, the more its value will fall, and the more of it you will need to buy the goods you need. Every few months you will need to raise salaries and allowances to meet the increasing costs of living. Each time you do this, increase in money supply will further reduce its value, and increase cost of goods. This is a spiral that will keep on feeding on itself.

And as the value of the rupee falls, so that of the dollar will increase relative to it.

Some economists have attempted to point this out in the past, but they were shy with their prognoses. None of them hit the nail squarely on the head as they should have done. And today you have someone like ex Finance Secretary Waqar Masood Khan, who was a part of the problem, coming out to spread his pearls of wisdom when the train has already left the station. What good is it writing now?

Q. And you have predicted that soon people will be out on the streets, rioting, and that the government will be overthrown. What is the basis for this prediction?

Ans. When the masses have nothing left to eat, what are you going to tell them? Eat cake? When people suffer hunger and deprivation they have no option but to come out. This time they come out, leadership and funding will be provided to them by politicians trying to save their own skins. Billions of rupees looted from the state will be spent to further undermine the state, so that their own hides can be saved. They will fund all and sundry. Khadim Rizvi will be funded, and expected to deploy his “jinns”. And so will the “lifafa” media, who are already mad because their “lifafas” have stopped coming. This is one reason Chomsky says that true democracy is a system designed to disallow the formation of oligarchies. Too much money at one end, and too little at the other creates a situation which is inherently unstable. This creates a situation of war within a society.

But a ray of hope lies in the stinginess of the ones who have looted Pakistan. They may not part with the money they have stolen. If this is the case, there will be no funds to begin a movement to bring people out on the streets!

Q. You have virtually charged Zardari and Nawaz Sharif etc with treason and hinted that two army chiefs failed Pakistan by not exerting to stop the loot. What is your basis for saying this? Ans. I have never “hinted” at anything. I say out straight what I want to say. The two army chiefs I’ve talked about were de facto in charge of national security. They should have known that financial penury and the destruction of the economy of the state hands over to the enemy a victory without having to go to war. This is what was happening to Pakistan on their watch.

One of them [ Raheel Sharif] had no problem getting a hundred acres of prime land allotted, while the other [ Ashfaq Kayani] saw no impropriety in having one of his houses built smack bang in the middle of a golf course! But when it came to taking notice of the brink to which the state was being pushed, they took the counsel of their timidity and convenience? Who do you think should have remained most alert to national security being undermined? Your batman? And this is not all. They also failed to spot the Sindh Card being played. It seems they were expecting an announcement of ” ready, steady, go” to commence the playing of this Card. Yet it has been played every day from the time Zardari took office, to the day PMLN has been booted out. It is still being played. Sindh has been devastated. What else is the “Sindh Card”? Sindh has been readied for blood. But these Generals could not see this. And then there was the war against the militants. Each time the army wanted the prosecution of this war to progress naturally into Sindh interior, or into any part of Punjab, the operation was disallowed. It was disallowed because such a progression of operations would have uncovered the nexus between the politicians and the militants, as well as the sources of funding to the militants. Obstructing war effort is treason. Why was this effort not taken cognizance of, and why were legal remedies against this treason not invoked? And lastly, who allowed Haqqani to issue 5000 visas to foreign operatives to fly into Pakistan and start operations here? One of the signatories in this loop which could authorize the issuance of such visas, according to my information, was the office of the Joint Chiefs. This office was taken out of this loop. Which authority in the army took this office out of this loop except Kiyani? Unfair question? Or an inconvenient one to answer? So we keep saluting these grasping Cinderellas merely on account of the ranks they held? What of their primary duty to see that the interests of national security were kept inviolate?

And as for charging Zadari and Nawaz Sharif et al with treason, pray tell me what charge would you consider appropriate for those who robbed your country out clean so that, barring your nuclear deterrent, your economy cannot sustain battle for even a week? And all this, so that about 200 people and their progeny can live out their lives on huge piles of gold stolen from their country!

Q. But you hardly criticize Imran Khan!

Ans. No I don’t. I am an unabashed supporter of his for two good reasons. Of all these “leaders” Imran is the only one who has given something back to Pakistan, while all the rest have fed on it with such gluttony, that they have left their country a mere carcass.

And secondly, Imran will reduce corruption by at least fifty percent, because that is the share of the loot that goes to the Prime Minister. And Imran is the only ‘leader” who is not, nor will ever be, on the take.

And if I feel he’s gone over to the other side, I’ll have no compunction training my guns on him.

I do criticize Imran for a critical mistake however, and that is for lack of imagination. He ought to have known the extent to which the police and bureaucracy had been infected, and should have had at least a rudimentary plan to fix it. But he did not.

Q. But you recommend bringing people out of retirement to fill various slots. Has this ever happened?

Ans. This is the only way out and it has always happened whenever human capital is to be relied upon which is in short supply. In case of the imminence of war your own army brings thousands in from the ranks of the retired. Grant, Hindenburg, MacArthur, and Rundstedt were all brought in from retirement during WW2. Two of these became Commanders in Chief of their armies after being recalled, while the other two were given commands of theaters.

When poor governance is resulting directly because of lack of capacity, then it is people with proven capacity who should be looked upon as a national resource. And there is little option but to use this resource at a time of national emergency.

Q. And you also recommend imposition of emergency rule. Won’t this be bad for democracy?

Ans. I consider calling this “Return on Investment” political system a democracy, as downright sinful. This is a system designed to create a political brothel which it has. If you want to get out of this, there is no way out but to impose emergency rule. Without this, you cannot get your looted wealth back. This wealth will now be organized and deployed against the state, so you need to retrieve it for the very survival of the state, both for its economic survival and so that it is not nefariously deployed against the state.

If it is not retrieved, Imran Khan, the only real impediment in the way of the Zardari- Nawaz combine climbing back to power, will be undermined by them in partnership with much of the bureaucracy, and that will bring about the end of hope. Imposing emergency rule is the only way out for Pakistan at the present juncture. My great fear is that they will see this only when it is too late. Between now and then, they will use the “patchwork” approach to tide over erupting disaster. One patch at a time. But this won’t work. There are myriads of problems.

Problems not resolved don’t just stay inactive. They begin festering, and the disease spreads and builds up its own momentum. This momentum will first overwhelm the government, and then the state itself.

Q. Why do you always praise the Supreme Court and the C.J; don’t you think that judicial activism sets a bad precedent?

Ans. Quite frankly, I thank God for this brand of activism as long as I see honesty of intent in it. For the first time in my life, I am seeing justice being done and delivered. For the first time the rich and the powerful who routinely trounced every law of the state are seen quaking in their boots. For the first time the average Pakistani has learnt to think in terms of his rights. For the first time an average Pakistani can dare to think in terms of going to a Court in Pakistan, knocking at its door, and hoping he will be heard, and justice done.

If this be activism, I can only rue why it had to take over seventy years to come and bring some light of hope into our lives. I say this with due apology to the most powerful among the community of our lawyers who have taken avidly to the defense of the arch criminals of the land and to the fat wads of cash coming from them. It is they who least like judicial activism. This threatens to sink their fat clients, and thus their money supply.

Q. Last question. Do you think that Gen Bajwa and Mr Justice Saqib Nisar helped bring Imran into power, and if so, do you think this was fair?

Ans. Fair to whom? To Pakistan, or to those who have been undermining it for the last thirty years at the very least?

I have absolutely no evidence that Gen Bajwa and Mr Justice Saqib Nisar helped jockey Imran into power. But I have a suspicion not so much that they helped bring Imran to power, but more that they helped rid the country of the joint menace of the Zardari-Nawaz combine. And if my suspicion turns out to be correct, I can only worship them for doing so.

Had they not moved, the country would have made its last move. And that would have been to the gutter.

There are obviously people who would have preferred that. They are the ones who thrive in the gutter. But there are others who yearned for fresh air. And I am one of these.

There are only two “facts” which I know with fair certainty. The first is that since the time he was a Lt Col, Gen Bajwa had the reputation of being against the army having to do anything with politics, or for that matter, any involvement beyond the barracks, be this “bhal safai” or meter reading, or the like. I can only hope this information was correct.

The second is that about Feb/Mar 2017, Gen Bajwa received a call from Mr Justice Saqib Nisar to inform him that the judgement in the Panama case was due to be announced soon.

The C.J told the General that no matter which way this judgement went, a law and order situation would almost certainly come about. He wanted to know that should this happen, where was it that the army would stand.

Gen Bajwa made it abundantly clear that the army would stand squarely behind the decision of the Supreme Court, exactly as the Constitution would have it stand.

It is my belief that something happened after this which shook Gen Bajwa out of his skin, so that he came to believe that Nawaz Sharif and company were national security threats of high order– that unless they were stopped, they will barter Pakistan away. And this made him take a stand for Pakistan, with Justice Saqib Nisar standing firmly beside him.

What this new information was, I have no idea, but I can only speculate about it.

I think one bit of information may have come to him by way of the Chinese ambassador to the effect that Nawaz Sharif and company were so massively involved in corrupting CPEC so as to render it stillborn. Since this was a project expected to give a second life to Pakistan, and the army was its ultimate guarantor, such information would have been enough for any patriotic Army Chief to sit up and take notice.

The second possibility is that the General got hard intelligence of Nawaz Sharif’s ties with India which could have been classified as treasonous, without the hard evidence justifying a trial.

But I am being purely speculative here.

Yet speculation or not, Justice Saqib Nisar and Gen Bajwa have done more to salvage Pakistan, than any other two people working in tandem.

But Operation Salvage is incomplete at this point. And if this is left incomplete, it will scarcely be worth more than the ashes that will be left behind after the defeated forces reassert themselves.