That Pakistan is in a state of war, nearly everyone says. I wonder though, because the battle lines cannot be clearly defined, if all who say this realize how very serious the situation really is? Do they actually realize that this is a war for national survival? That it is a war between two forces, one of which is utterly committed to the country because the country is an open field in which their greed and avarice is afforded unhindered play. The other force is made up of those who have nowhere else to go. It is a war between the “haves” who have dredged and plundered and pocketed all this country had to offer, but with their hunger unsated, crave for more; and those that have been so ruthlessly deprived of all that gives meaning to life that their morrows instead of promising hope, promise little but dread.
This is a situation whose seeds have been sown, over the years, by the dregs whom we are constrained to call the “elite”. And this “elite” comprises all those who were born in clover, or wormed their way into the ranks of the privileged. In short, people like us. This elite includes all the high and mighty who were supposed to give leadership to the country. It includes the Generals, the Judges, the Politicians, the Police, the Civil Servants, the Bankers, and the Businessmen.
For the first time after a long dark night, a part of this elite, the Generals, whose past has been a string of inglorious failures, seem to be holding out a new promise today. It is this promise that the public seems to have got hold of, and their dread of yesterday does not seem as frightening today. Thus there is hope again.
Whether there is any real substance to this hope, or it is yet another illusion, it is only for the Generals to decide. For every other institution of governance lies in the trash heap of national detritus.
The denouement of this war will be decided in the battle for Karachi. For Karachi is the jugular, the cauldron, and the test. It is Karachi’s suffocation which can lead to the strangulation of the rest of the country; it is here where adversarial forces are most organized and concentrated; and it is in Karachi where the army can learn most of its lessons. And these lessons will not only be operational lessons, but they will also allow the army to decipher various alignments e.g. how deeply is PPP committed to MQM, and what is the commitment of PML- N to Zardari and Altaf. Where does ANP fit in, and what about the Jihadi forces? Whose tune are they playing to? And where does the central government actually stand.
By this time, as the army has moved in to salvage Pakistan, especially to bring order to Karachi, to sift various strands of alignments between various forces ought not to be too difficult. The overall picture which emerges from these alignments should give the army a fairly clear picture of what and who is confronting them. And it is the overall scope of these opposing forces which will spell out for the army how far it has to be prepared to go. And thus it will have to decide what resources it needs to accomplish this task.
The greatest difficulty facing the army in this case, it will be seen, is not the enemy cells operating under direction from across our borders, but the help they are receiving from within. But that is always the case with enemy agents operating anywhere. They always have a local support base. What is unique to Pakistan today is that political parties, in or out of government, are a part of the enemy support base. And there are others who may or may not be directly involved with the enemy but are in direct support of those that are. Let us examine the following:
-From 1992 Altaf Hussain’s connection with RAW has been very well known to ISI. Why nothing was done to squash the head of this snake, is a commentary of how this country has been governed, by both the military and the politicians. When Musharraf, who gave new life to an MQM in its death throes, today tries to weasel his way around this accusation, he merely succeeds in looking stupid. It is this that he needs to dangle by the rope for, apart from the NRO which validated and inserted into the national bloodstream the leeches that have bled our country dry.
And since Musharraf’s time, the MQM connection with RAW, flourishing without restraint, could only have grown stronger.
-All this time PPP has been in bed with MQM. No proof is needed on this score. After all both were screwing the province in partnership. And it was a partnership based on community of interest. And the interest was plunder. To Zardari, the MQM-RAW relationship could not have mattered. Pakistan is Zardari’s motherland. What he has done to this mother is beyond being contradicted. A man who can rape his mother, can sell the same mother to any comer without hesitation. The foreign agencies this man must surely be in bed with may only be imagined.
-For the last seven years at least, ANP has also been in bed with Zardari and Altaf Hussain. Which of these three has been in the middle so that he has been screwed either way he turned is hard to say. Being fair men, perhaps they each took turns being in the center!
-Then there were the TTP renegades who took refuge with any number of Jihadi parties in Karachi, and also hired themselves out to both the PPP and MQM. The total vacuum of governance could only have provided them the ideal environment to operate unmolested. And how well they killed our Shias. And how oblivious of these heartless killings remained both Zardari and Altaf, our two “secular” giants! And how benignly quiet has Nawaz Sharif remained!
-But where did PML-N stand in this amalgam of national bitches on heat for the moola? Nawaz Sharif never spoke a word. And he, even today has not done so. And if he has, he must have done so only to himself . His quiescence is his affirmation of loyalty to the 18nth amendment to the Constitution, which he in part crafted in partnership with Asif Ali Zardari. And this amendment is a recipe for the dissolution of Pakistan, which allows the government of each province to sell out Pakistan in its own most convenient way without interference from the central government. If anyone is in any doubt about this, hear Asif Zardari’s speech which he delivered before scooting off to Dubai. In this speech he made reference to this amendment, which most seem to have missed. His innuendo was crystal clear. He warned the army not to interfere in the merciless corruption going on in Sindh, because under this amendment, the Center is prohibited from interfering with any province on this issue. A truly great piece of legislation this, which has decentralized corruption and made it strictly a provincial matter!! What a tribute to “democracy”!! And hats off to Mian Nawaz Sharif for following the spirit of the 18nth Amendment in thought word and deed and keeping his mouth shut, something he always does best, when he is not eating.
Nawaz Sharif can never stand with Pakistan and the army against Zardari and Altaf. No matter how he may hate them, and how they may loathe each other, they are united in their core motivation. Pakistan and its interests can only be incidental to what drives them i.e. power and money. All else can be sacrificed for these twin gods. Nawaz Sharif does not have to be a genius to know the way the bulldozer is moving. After Altaf and Zardari and Sindh, it is his turn and that of the Punjab to get the taste of the boot. He has had a taste of this before and has not relished it. He will therefore do his utmost to avoid a repeat of proximity with it. As such he will do his best to sabotage the army operation. The army needs to be very clear about this. It should therefore expect much mischief from this round little man who seems obtuse, but for his piece of the pie can transcend the stupidity he is gifted with.
So how has the operation in Karachi proceeded to date and how are the forces in Karachi arrayed today? The following should be quite apparent to most.
-The army operation has shattered the status quo, and many an enemy agent, and thug, and thief has scurried for cover.
-Essentially the achievement of the army has been to kill a lot of enemy foot soldiers, and to have gotten hold of many more, including some of the level of their platoon commanders. And the ones in custody are spilling the beans. And it is this trail of beans which led Zardari to lose his nerve and flee.
-The operations to nab the company and battalion commanders in the network have largely proved unsuccessful. Since the central government either did not put all the miscreants on ECL, or enforced the ECL only half-heartedly, most of them have flown away for vacations abroad. And though this may have given the shits to their respective commanders in chief, one in London, and the other now in Dubai, their flights to safety have caused a severe dent in the overall credibility of the operation. The present Supreme Commander of these forces of inequity has in the meanwhile betaken himself to Medina for ten days of prayers, to solicit the Lord’s help to keep the status quo in place, so that the fleecing of his people may proceed apace without interference from the mad generals of his army who want to put a stop to this all round rapacity, despite the fact that the Constitution, as amended, clearly allows this.
-Because the momentum of the army operation seems to have been impeded, this can only help enemy forces to regroup. The army has therefore to make a decision to halt, retreat, or to move forward with full force and smash every obstacle in its way. This is a decision in principle that ought to have been taken before this operation was launched, because such decisions are not best taken midstream.
-The army by now should have enforced Governor’s rule on Sindh and put in place the best civil servants and police officers, and given them total support to bring governance back to the province, and most importantly to Karachi. One would have thought that the army would have realized by now that this vacuum in governance hugely facilitated the operation of forces inimical to the cause of the country. And this vacuum will now be of the utmost help to the enemy forces to extricate and to regroup themselves.
-The army probably knows exactly how things stand. But it cannot move because it is faced with a situation which no other army has ever been faced with i.e. a provincial government, backed by the central government, instead of standing for Pakistan, are standing behind the right to loot. It is now their fear of being called to account which must compel them to remain united and to try and sink the army operation. In short it is both the provincial government in Sindh, and the National Government whose interests nudge them towards alignment with the forces working against the country. Their unity lies not only in their commitment to plunder and for either to cover the back of the other, but more in the knowledge that the army has too much dirt against them all. They must therefore either stand together, or all must fall separately. This is the supreme tragedy of a country which always craved unity, but when at long last it found it, it did so in the commitment of the elected to stand together to protect their loot, which “democracy” allowed them to collect!
-The army needs to be acutely aware too that the forces opposing it will now be considerably strengthened from many directions so that Pak-China joint economic projects should be made to fail. This is a very serious geo-political issue now and flies directly in the face of U.S pivot to the east designed to contain and invest China. And Pakistan is virtually giving a free pass to China to break free of this containment! The U.S has destroyed countries for much less. With an ideologically driven India next door firmly aligned with the U.S the only chance Pakistan has lies with the army pursuing its operation with a commitment and efficiency which are ruthless.
The apparent loss of momentum in the operation of the army in Karachi is a bad situation for it to be in. The unchecked flight of huge funds from Pakistan, as also of the thieves who have stolen these funds, has not gone down well with the suffering people of Pakistan. And lest the army be convinced that the hopes of the people rest with it because of its glorious past, let it banish this thought and come down to earth. The army’s previous attempts to salvage the country have been little more than exercises in selfish ambition, resulting in disasters. The people today are looking towards the army not because of its past record, which has been indecorous at best, but the gaze is fixed on the army because, except for God who is invisible, there is no one else for them to look up to and hope.
Yet it also must be conceded that this is the only time that there is a basis for such hope. For the first time the army’s conduct has been such that none but the most prejudiced finger can be raised against it. Gen Raheel’s personal conduct, despite exercising much de facto power has been exemplary, and so has been that of his senior generals. Perhaps at long last God has decided to be merciful though we have done little to deserve such mercy. Perhaps in this game of kismet or roulette we have been dealt with a hand of Generals, who are committed to a cause higher than that of the extra plot of land. Perhaps the cause of Pakistan has finally started to beat in some hearts who have the power to change its destiny.
Perhaps hope has earned the right to live again.
P.S Irrespective of what God may have decided, the Generals must remain professional. They must deploy their most potent strategic weapon and not let anyone doubt that if needed, it will be used. Take a cue from our strategic policy with respect to our nuclear deterrent. Unless our enemy is entirely convinced that we shall use our nuclear bomb exactly when we need to, the deterrence value of this asset is lost.
Thus, Gen Raheel needs to inform both the judges and the politicians that the moment he thinks that he has no option left but to take over, he shall have no hesitation in doing so. That he shall do so without worrying about what the constitution has to say, because he will make certain that the constitution of tomorrow will validate what he has done for the cause of his country today, just as the Constitution of today had been crafted to validate the plunder of its architects.
This declaration, whether he makes it formally or informally, should be his ONLY fallback position. He MUST deploy this weapon not tomorrow, not today, but he should do it yesterday, and do so without any hesitation at all.
The moment he makes this intent clear he will see the alacrity with which the National Action Plan is implemented, and how the Sindh government hastens to implement each and every suggestion to the Apex Committees. He will see how Nawaz Sharif’s zipped mouth opens, and how vociferously he will start supporting army operations instead of breaking wind and conspiring against them.
In short, only if the Gen makes very clear that he is prepared to go the whole hog, is there any possibility that he may not need to do so.
There have been four army takeovers before today, there was never any hesitation by the army then. In each of these four interventions, the army failed to bestow any long-term benefit on the country which it had tried to “save.”
Today is the time that the country really needs being salvaged. It will be a supreme irony therefore if today it is pusillanimity that is to define the resolve of the army.