Times since May 2 have been quite incredulous. Barely had the nation begun to assimilate the bizarre happenings of the stealth night operation at an Abbottabad compound that they had to suffer the ignominy of the presence of US officials in their midst. The manner in which the Pakistani civil and military hierarchies were shown sitting before the American masters heaped humiliation upon hurt. It was like the mafia operatives were arrayed before the don pronouncing the judgement: “Go, do more, kill more of your people, give us a reason to look into your fresh demand for goodies”.
The demand for goodies is two-fold: the right, originally granted vide the NRO, declared void ab initio since, to continue ruling the country and a fresh consignment of dollars for services rendered to advance the US agenda in this part of the world – a cause for which the incumbent leadership was originally inducted into power. Even the Americans themselves would not have been able to do a better job than the bunch of servile sycophants who have been entrusted with the heinous task of enslaving this nation and its coming generations.
The abject submission of our civil-military combine before the demeaning US demands is not only haemorrhaging Pakistan badly, but is creating ominous fissures in the national body politic with people thinking in terms of extreme measures to reassert national sovereignty. The thought process is pregnant with germs of generating a movement that may be charged to bring down the entire edifice of corruption and graft that sustain the personality-centred policies of the incumbent government, fully aided and abetted by a corrupt, greedy and complicit opposition. The fear is that, at its ascendance, it may also ignite a blow-back effect creating serious impediments for the continued sustainability of the national strategic interests.
The US is doing everything that any barbaric aggressor would do. It is using the Pakistani air space, installations and intelligence for launching its operations that are critically in conflict with our national paradigm. It is crudely flaunting and using its brute power, plunging the country into an irretrievable cycle of violence that has consumed over 35,000 lives since the start of the so-called ‘war on terror’. Utterly oblivious to the murderous effects that its operations are creating for Pakistan, it continues unabated in its quest for subduing a proud people, in the mountainous out banks, with incorrigible legacy stretching back into centuries. It neither has the moral right to indulge in indiscriminate killing of people most of whom are innocent, nor has it the legal sanction to assert its diktat over a predominantly unwilling people.
Since 9/11, the US and its leaderships have lied blatantly and shamelessly at the international stage to undertake aggressive missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere to re-shape the region in consonance with their hegemonic designs. The attack on Iraq came after that outlandish presentation before the UN Security Council by none other than the US Secretary of State alleging presence of WMDs in the country – an allegation that has not been proved in spite of the US occupation of the land for over a decade.
Afghanistan was attacked because the US thought that planning for the 9/11 tragedy had taken place in its inaccessible mountainous region – another claim that still awaits confirmation from sources other than some flimsy handouts and video messages, supposedly from members of the al-Qaeda leadership. The assault in Afghanistan is menacingly inching towards an all-out effort to subdue Pakistan, an exercise that initially started by inducting a corrupt government and continues with lacing its overtures to the civilian and military hierarchies with the inducement of sustainable patronage – an undertaking that the US has never been able to live up to in the past.
Pakistan has been pushed way up a blind alley. The leaderships – the ruling elite as well as those lined up to take their turn – remain engrossed in their self-serving and self-aggrandising ploys, topped with meaningless polemics. Having been deprived of even the last vestiges of legitimacy, they understand that their survival can only come through further enslaving a country that has long been denuded of its pride and sovereignty – as, indeed, of its right to exist. There is no prospect of co-existence of the state of Pakistan with this coterie of corrupt and complicit political elite who are unwilling to look beyond the domain of their personal survival. They have effectively enslaved this country and it may take generations before the stigma could be finally washed away – if at all.
Having made the parliament, the executive and the state institutions captive to their machinations, and having sold the strategic state interests and space for a few dollars, the ruling elite have ended up exposing the armed forces and the intelligence agencies to unprecedented risks at the hands of known and un-known adversaries. Any continuation of this woeful aberration is bound to imperil Pakistan’s security parameters permanently. The May 2 affair, for which a powerless commission has been constituted after a lapse of a month with a highly debatable mandate, should have been an eye-opener. A failure to take remedial steps led to the PNS Mehran debacle. Still, no respite seems to be coming as the ruling-combine remains engrossed in further deepening their tentacles into a body that is lacerating profusely.
There is no salvation with the governing system in its existing form and with its corrupt proponents – sitting in the government or, deceptively, on the opposition benches. A comprehensive and credible change is the only way left for turning a new leaf in the chequered history of Pakistan inscribed with a woeful trail of treachery, deceit and dwarfish fixations.
The writer is a political analyst. He can be reached at [email protected]
