Ostensibly, when surveying the Pakistan scene there seems to be a thick haze of confusion. Nothing seems clear. But try peering through this haze and it is surprising how clear things really are.
Let us do this and the central issues bedeviling the country can be deciphered with remarkable clarity. The tools one requires to do this are not great intellect, specialized knowledge, or analytical skills. All that is required is basic honesty and a general cognizance of what is happening around us and to us, whether this knowledge comes to us through personal experience, knowledge gathered through experience of those we trust, the minimal bit of input from the media or general reading, and an honest and logical appraisal of all this.
If we do this exercise, the following should quite clearly stand out:
-Given the history of Indo-Pak enmity, it should be no surprise to us that India would do everything in its power to destabilize and hurt Pakistan, just as we would do to India, and indeed have been doing. So, no surprises there.
If any of the readers puts himself in the shoes of the chief of RAW and plans the stabilization of Pakistan, his main effort would obviously be focused on Karachi. It is there that he will get the biggest bang for his buck. Just the mere strangulation of Karachi’s water supply would be enough to make Karachi ungovernable. The strangulation of Karachi would lead to the strangulation of Pakistan more effectively than the expending of such effort elsewhere.
India has done precisely this and done it with great success. Since the 1992 operation in Karachi, it has been well known that many of the senior leadership of MQM have been on the payroll of RAW. Ghulam Ishaq Khan’s peremptory order to cut short this operation within 10 hours of its launching, brought it to a grinding halt, but by then considerable evidence of MQM’s involvement with RAW had been gathered. Today, after the documents uncovered by Owen Bennet Jones and the statement of the chief of RAW and Doval, this is not even a moot point.
-Then, General Baber tried to pick up from where the 1992 operation had been cut off, and met with considerable success, eliminating many of RAW’s sleeper cells. And then came Musharraf and resuscitated a moribund RAW. Not being satisfied with this, he came up with a blanket pardon for every high-level national criminal via the NRO. He thereby legitimated corruption and plunder by the high and mighty, destroyed the last surviving vestiges of honest values in society and mothered the lethal alliance between treachery and plunder beyond the pale of accountability. No other one person has done greater harm to Pakistan and prospects of its continued existence. And he is back here to play president again, if any proof of an addled mind still be needed!
-Musharraf’s stalwart services to the cause of unchecked plunder held natural appeal for the two great thieves ruling the political helm of Pakistan, whom Musharraf brought back to political life by the NRO. And these two got together, drew in all the other political parties and signed with them the infamous Charter of Democracy. Whether the written clauses of this Charter have been followed or not, the unwritten one has been most faithfully followed. This firmly upholds the central spirit of the NRO i.e. that it is the inalienable right of those elected, to commit theft of national assets, and to do so without impediment or fear of accountability! This is the central tenet that holds Pakistan’s “democracy” together. No agreement or understanding between such diverse political forces as ours, was accorded such sanctity. Till one year ago there seemed no hope of escape from this arrangement much less the prospect of seeing its demolition. But then things happened.
-Mian Nawaz Sharif became Prime Minister. Whatever else he might be, he cannot be held guilty of inconsistency. He lost no time locking horns with the army. It started with his pet TV anchors castigating the army, a fair segment of which was deployed, suffering daily casualties fighting the militants. A ground swell of animus started to build up among the junior ranks against certain TV anchors and by extension the government, whom they held to be ultimately responsible for instigating this gratuitous anti-army denigration. This did not seem to bother the generals much till the Hamid Mir affair exploded, and Nawaz Sharif broke cover and crawled out of the wood works to support Hamid Mir. This put to rest any doubts about who was behind the media effort to disparage the army. The last straw was when Nawaz Sharif promised Gen Raheel that he would go easy on Musharraf and begin attending to the real national security issues, to which the army was constantly calling his attention. But this Nawaz Sharif assurance was predicated on Musharraf first leaving his retreat in CMH Rawalpindi and attending his summons to the court. Musharraf did this, and Nawaz Sharif promptly went back on his word. It is not difficult to imagine what this turn around did to Nawaz Sharif’s stock with his generals.
-All this while, the army was fighting the militants, while the government was involved in “talks” with them, hoping to sweet-talk them into surrendering. Having invented the concept of ” friendly” opposition in politics, he extended this idea to engage with “friendly” criminals/ militants as well. It is a badly kept secret though, that PML-N had an unwritten alliance with various militant groups in Punjab. The “talk” strategy applied to the militants was an extension of this alliance.
-By the time of the militant strike on Karachi airport in mid 2014, the army had had enough. Gen Raheel merely informed Nawaz Sharif and initiated Zarb e Azb. The first brick of the carefully crafted structure of the Charter of Democracy fell out. And with the start and progression of the Rangers’ operation in Karachi, these bricks began to fall out thick and fast. Fears started to grow among the prime beneficiaries of “democracy” that this operation would start leading to exposes as foot soldiers of the crime syndicate started to be hauled in–exposes that would reveal the names of big wigs who were the real instigators of the mammoth crimes being unearthed. The central fear was that the army may sooner or later move in to pick up front men involved in inflicting economic damage on a fragile Pakistan by plundering the country’s assets and wealth. And after the front men it would be the turn of the fat cats; and after this the process would be repeated in other provinces, and the fat cats there, also started to get afflicted with fright and unease.
-Finally, “democracy” dropped a major shoe a fortnight back when front men invloved in major economic theft started being picked up in Karachi. Zardari decided that he could either sit back, watch, and await his turn to be picked up. Or he could go on the offensive and reassert the right vouchsafed him under the terms of the Charter of Democracy i.e. the right of all elected politicians to plunder without fear of accountability. He decided to go on the offensive, and openly challenged the army in hopes of cowing it down. When the army did not cow down, Zardari cowed down instead, packed his bags and fled to Dubai. Also fled with him, Phoolan Devi, his notorious sister and many an underling.
This is where matters stand today.