Whose national interest?

After the unimaginable events of the last month and half, most Pakistanis today find themselves in a state of trauma and confusion, apprehensive over what is still to come in our volatile region. The environment around us is changing at a furious pace, but our establishment, both military and civilian, remains firmly rooted to its reactionary, hidebound ways.

That augurs ill for our ability to address critical issues staring us in the face judiciously and decisively, at exactly the time when these qualities are most needed.

All our external problems take second place to our most urgent current concern, the terrorism unleashed by the Taliban – once the ‘students’ of our own establishment, now turned foe and making it and the nation pay a heavy toll. Add to it an ailing economy, the crippling energy crisis that is adding to the woes of the common man, rampant corruption eating away at the vitals and lack of rule of law where might is routinely right and where the police and paramilitary forces kill hapless civilians without any fear of accountability.

All this has been the result of decades of misrule under the military dictators, and army chiefs – for even when they weren’t on the throne, they ruled – with the exception of five and half ZAB years that happened after the country had been dismembered in 1971.

Our security apparatus has become a Frankenstein monster. We are a nuclear power, with all the attributes of a banana republic, and the world is now not-so-secretly making plans to seize our arsenal.

This is the world’s perception about us. And this has turned people like Nawaz Sharif – again once a product of the establishment – along with civil society into its bitter critic. The brutal murder of investigative journalist Saleem Shahzad has also drawn in the hornet’s nest of an angry media that has seen 70 comrades gunned down or tortured to death since 2000 just because their work was unsettling the powers that be.

The battle lines are drawn, and the actual power struggle has been twisted into the worn-out old song of the ‘national interest’ and a brand new phrase added, the ‘perpetual biases’ against the army and that, according to the ISPR release after the 139th Corps Commanders’ conference, “all of us should take cognizance of this unfortunate trend and put an end to it”.

In any other country with an allegedly parliamentary system of government, the army commanders, who fall under the domain of the Secretary Defence, would have been severely reprimanded, if not sacked for meddling in political matters, giving statements on unrelated issues, for hijacking the foreign policy and making it subservient to its diktat, and setting up an intelligence apparatus so powerful it is a state within a state.

But not in our half-baked democratic system, which is supposedly parliamentary, with power exercised by the president, who is supposed to be a mere figurehead, a ceremonial head of state, not because of the infamous 58-2(b) but because he is also the party supremo. And the president, under siege for most of his term, is kowtowing to the top brass with a vengeance at this stage to hold on to his tenuous foothold on power. ‘Time for mid-term polls over’, crowed PM Gilani recently, no doubt echoing his master’s voice.

Though it could be said in the PPP government’s defence, that it has been bitten so many times that they are now shy of occupying the space ceded by the real establishment, overall the politicians too have failed the nation again. The first question that arises is, why was it necessary to give the army chief a three-year extension and the ISI chief another one-year term? Was it not setting a bad precedent on the part of a civilian government, a continuation of the policies of the dictators of the past?

Then came the humiliating Abbottabad raid and later the equally perturbing Mehrangate. The commission formed by the government was still-born and came (as it was no doubt intended to) to nought, while in the second case, the naval chief regretted to attend the meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on defence, according to a newspaper report.

And therein lies the basic problem. The armed forces have always considered themselves superior to the ‘bloody civilians’ and in their power, luxurious life-styles and wealth they certainly are. But unfortunately one cannot say the same about their judgment (and prejudices), especially when it comes down to respecting the people’s mandate and accepting the civilian supremacy in all national policies, including the right to oversight in their own domain.

This time round, they say – as enunciated in the ISPR press release – that they want to relinquish their stranglehold and make the democratically government of the day to have its say on foreign and economic policies, but not many believe it – here or abroad.

How one wishes to share in the optimism that Gen Jahangir Karamat’s article in this newspaper reflects: “the ISPR statement has come after some game-changing events within the country and have led to justified outrage. The statement itself could be considered a game-changer because within its carefully constructed structure is the clear indication by the military that it considers itself to be within the overall civilian supremacy that a democratic structure demands.” Sounds too good to be true, though.

The writer is Sports and Magazines Editor, Pakistan Today.