The problem of the high command is very clear i.e that the cover of “regime change” supposedly brought about by the vote of “no confidence” took little time coming off, and what glared in its place was a criminal conspiracy by the high command at the behest of a foreign power, aided and abetted by the two foremost gangs of indigenous bandits and thugs.
This, even the blind could see for the treachery against the state that it so plainly was.
Too many shoes have by now dropped for one not to be able to trace the path of this conspiracy. The School of the Americas playbook combined with the two recent articles to appear in The Intercept make the role of a foreign master behind the conspiracy adequately clear.
The first sign that something unusual was afoot came in end 2019. This was when Nawaz Sharif took off for London for four weeks of medical tests which have yet to be completed, nearly four years on. This relief was obviously facilitated by Bajwa.
That was also the time when Bajwa’s mentor and father-in-law was often given to letting his guard down and expressing his annoyance with Imran Khan for keeping on Buzdar as Chief Minister of Punjab, apart from recounting many other shortcomings of the P.M.
It was only later that I came to know that Alim Khan, a land mafia don in his own right, whom both Bajwa and his father-in-law wanted to see installed as Chief Minister, was a bosom chum of the latter. Anyone could have smelled money here.
Another very curious development began to take place at about this time. The Military Intelligence Directorate [MI] began to recruit young graduates directly into its ranks. This was as if it was building executive muscle on the pattern of ISI, for which there was no need under the designated role of the MI.
Since the ISI was supposed to be reporting to P.M Imran Khan, the suspicion could not be avoided that Bajwa may well be retooling the M.I to make the ISI redundant to his purposes by using intelligence muscle indigenous to the army, or to counter the ISI, should the need so arise.
A couple of decades earlier when Benazir Bhutto brought General Kallue out of retirement and made him D.G ISI to secure herself against the machinations of the high command, Gen Beg outflanked this stratagem by empowering the M.I enough to make the ISI redundant. But Beg did not empower the M.I by supplying it with “thug” muscle-power, which Bajwa was doing.
Bajwa may well have needed to deploy this muscle against the ISI had Imran Khan dug in his heels and refused to endorse the transfer of Gen Faiz Hameed from the ISI.
In the event it did not come to this, so the new capability of the M.I was not put to the test. However, reliable sources allege that as the May 9 farce was enacted, this new “arm” of the M.I was adequately and nefariously used as agents provocateur.
It now seems that with the outbreak of Covid, operation regime change had to be put back. And though this epidemic put the country through a grinder, it allowed Imran Khan a breather. Viewed in this context, it seems that Donald Lu’s warning to Pakistan, known now as the notorious “cipher”, was meant as a reminder to Gen Bajwa to hurry up and deliver on the promises made.
And Bajwa did make haste and inflicted on Pakistan the twin houses inequity in the shape of the Zardaris and the Sharifs. And then he went into a series of multiple criminalities in order to sustain in power, a government which already stood thoroughly discredited since before its birth. Thus, the slender financial reserves of a country looted into bankruptcy were thrown open to these two gangs of bandits to stuff pockets already stuffed to the limit, while giving them the opportunity to also clean their slates by inverting the law which they had already subverted.
And the high command has the audacity to continue to demand respect of the ordinary starving citizen under the law which threatens to jail him should he bring the “fair” name of the army into disrepute! And they seriously continue to believe that they are owed this deference by the people because of the sole virtue of having changed from dhotis into khakis and becoming soldiers, with little more to show for it than their plots, both landed and subversive.
When Gen Asim Munir took over, he did so under the blight of general belief that he was the choice of Nawaz Sharif and Mariam Safdar, the most disreputable duo in an accursed land. And then we waited for him to “settle down” to see what his policies betokened. The widespread hope was that these would be radically different and opposed to those of his predecessor.
A fool’s paradise is the only thing which a Pakistani may enter without having to pay for the entry. And all the broken and broke fools rushed in riding on pure hope, because that too did not cost them a thing.
When Asim’s policies eventually showed themselves, they proved to be brutal and unconscionable without precedent, breaking every law and traducing every convention of usage and decent custom.
That he was the first choice of someone so discredited as Mariam and her daddy, should have told us all what to expect from him. But it was worse. He HAD to be a choice of the U.S. He was to have retired before Bajwa. To have been promoted, it would have been essential that either his service be extended, or for Bajwa to opt for retirement a couple of days earlier. For either of these to have happened, it was for Bajwa to initiate the case. And it is impossible to contemplate that he would have done so on instructions coming from Avenfield Apartments in London. And though there may have been a confluence of interests between Avenfield and Washington, it is much more likely that these instructions came instead from the Pentagon.
In the beginning of Sep while addressing a group of businessmen in Lahore and Karachi, Gen Asim Munir made many promises and gave some assurances. Among the latter was one of huge investments that were coming to Pakistan. I have little doubt that behind this was an undertaking from Washington. This was warranted to make the aftermath of the conspiracy a success. Only a fool [not that he is not one] would have given such an assurance otherwise. And the sheer confidence with which the current wave of brazen repression is being expanded in Pakistan, is confidence rooted in the support from the U.S. This is the logical extension of the straight line joining it to the regime change conspiracy.
And so is the General’s much vaunted anti-corruption drive which has gathered some insects and charged them, while the heavyweights luxuriate in the freedom to rule and loot all over again. And grounds are being openly prepared for one of these heavyweights, the brothers Nawaz or Shahbaz Sharif, to be catapulted into the P. M’s chair once again.
The sheer hypocrisy of this effort is not lost on anyone except on the high command which is taking and executing the orders to this effect, for none else is gifted with the shamelessness to carry this hypocrisy without a blush.