The Army and the Government of Pakistan were seen to be on the same page as long as their views converged on the following two points:
- The war against terrorism was a minor matter which could be resolved through negotiations between the terrorists and the government.
- . The plunder of national resources was not a national security issue as long as the Army high command could also partake of it.
Things changed with the change in the Army high command. What was immediately understood by the new Army Chief and his generals was that not only was the rising tide of terrorism the gravest national security issue, but also that this was an existential threat to the state. And bit by bit, it seems, the Army also understood that equally, if not more lethal than conventional terrorism itself, the issue of economic terrorism was at least an equal threat. And that if this were allowed to go unchecked, it will erode the innards of the state to the extent that state will implode upon itself and cease to exist without the enemy across the border needing to fire a single shot.
It may be quite safely conjectured that when the Rangers were invited into Karachi to clean up the city of random crime and terrorism, the invitation was made because the government had lost its hold on the city. The hope seems to have been that the Rangers will clean up the mess which the government had created through malfeasance. It was hoped that with the success of the operations of the Rangers the government performance will improve because it will not have to share space with interlopers who show up and fill up such space when governance falls away.
Probably no one could imagine that the Rangers would do such a thorough job of it as they have done, and expose more than they were expected to expose.
I think that neither the government nor the Army expected that during the course of their myriad investigations the Rangers would uncover money trails having links with the terrorists at one end, and politicians at the other.
With the exposure of these linkages, and the insistence of the Army to follow its operations to their natural conclusion, any make-believe civil-military cooperation in the war against terrorism started to strain at the seams.
The exposure of money trails showing a nexus between terrorists and MQM and between PPP and the terrorists was no shock to anyone even remotely interested in how things were being run in Pakistan.
The real shock was the exposure of the sheer volume of the sums of money being daily laundered out of Pakistan. Sums which can, and will, break the economic back of the country.
If the Army were to follow its operations to their natural conclusion, its operations could not have remained confined to Karachi and Sindh. They would have to percolate into Punjab. And nowhere in Pakistan would the issue of plunder of national assets have remained confined to such plunder as was plowed back to the terrorists, but it would also have taken into its sweep mega thefts by government functionaries and their front men, which were bringing Pakistan to its knees. And the Army operations, per force would have had to spread all over the country. And this would have eventually netted all the political bigwigs.
But the prime perpetrators of these crimes against the country [the politicians] are thrice protected.
- The Army, the only functional national institution, has no power to proceed against them.
- Every national institution which should in the ordinary course of events have had the power to proceed against them stands emasculated and nullified.
- The 18nth Amendment has castrated, and made sterile, the Office of the President and the Governors who are the prime representatives and guardians of the interests of the state. And under the same constitutional amendment the imposition of emergency, or governor’s rule has been made all but impossible.
And of course, the political opposition has been co-opted into the scheme of grand national theft. Thus there is no one left, de facto, to hold the government accountable, except on paper.
The only institution left to check the government is the army which, de jure, has no such power to do so.
This makes for an anomalous situation to say the least. Shorn of all accretions of verbiage the army vs the government stand-off can accurately be defined as under:
- The Army seems to be insisting that economic terrorism is a crime in two ways i.e. by infusion of money into terrorist networks, and more broadly by creating economic mayhem in the country which could bring down the state; and that it wants to charge and hold the perpetrators accountable.
- The position of the government, who are the prime perpetrators of these economic crimes, is that this is not within the powers of the army to do. In other words, with all state institutions rendered powerless, and the Army’s lack of legal mandate to move, makes plunder, free of all impediments, the de facto the right of a “democratic” government.
Seemingly the position of the government is unassailable. What seems to have cemented this still further is the PM’s recent trip to Washington, because it is after this trip that he has gone on the offensive. It seems the government has all its bases covered. No institution of the land can hold it accountable for its crimes, nor put a stop to them. And he has a pat on the back from his masters abroad.
But the PM and his government and the “opposition” which is entirely supportive of him, have, in their false sense of comfort, lost sight of a most fundamental issue, because of which they are standing on very thin ice.
This country is at war. It is a war more deadly than any it has fought. It has lost in this war more officers and men than it has in all its previous wars combined, and it has spent more money in fighting this war, than it has, in all its earlier ones. And the civilian toll, overall, is incalculable.
Such wars, because of their very nature, are never formally declared. But after the massacre of our children in Peshawar on 16 Dec last year, this war was so declared. As a result of this declaration of war a National Action Plan was drawn out. This Plan defined and delineated the areas of responsibility of the Army and the Government. It is now a year that this so-called Plan was put into action. The government has failed to fulfill even one of its assigned tasks. This may be an act of omission brought about by indifference or sheer incompetence. But what is beyond conjecture is that the government is willfully obstructing the Army from following the money trail which funds terrorism i.e it is willfully IMPEDING the war effort. And in wartime obstructing the prosecution of war is treason. It is also willfully impeding the Army’s efforts to staunch the flow of plunder to shores beyond— plunder that can bring this country to its knees, this is treason plus.
The politicians who are funding terrorism and are perpetrating economic terrorism against the state are protected by a mangled constitution; they are protected by a subverted and bought political opposition; they are protected by the absence of functioning law and order institutions, and they are protected by the shambles that is our judiciary, but what they are not protected against is a provable charge of treason in a time of war. The Army is the prime institution guarding national security. The Army has all the evidence it needs to charge the government for willful obstruction of its war effort. For this the Army must hold the government to account. And this time there should be no sabbatical to Jeddah.
This time it should be a long sojourn in Adiala leading to every thieved penny paid back into the national coffers.
The government has checked the war effort of the Army. But the war power of checkmate lies with the army. It should not allow a stalemate to occur. It should use its inherent war time power, to take to the cleaners, those who need being taken there, clean up the dirt accumulated at the top, and force some decency and governance back to the country. It must realize that it has put itself into a position where retreat is not an option.