Russian Roulette, Poker and M.A.D. Modi

Modi and Zardari are doing more damage to themselves than any opponent could

“I’ve got a lot on my mind,” Maverick, “and women are the cause of it. My wife is in a London hospital undergoing scans and tests; my mother-in-law, a young 91-year old girl, is in a Karachi hospital having surgery on her leg that she broke in a fall two months ago but didn’t even see a proper doctor because the lunatic geniuses around her advised against it, telling her that there is nothing wrong with her. Not even an X-ray, can you believe? They believe in voodoo medicine practiced by native medicine men.”

“Don’t worry,” comforted my friend Maverick the Monkey. “They’ll be fine. What worries me is that human stupidity is getting worse compounded.” I detected a sense of resignation there. “Now the Indian government has gone bonkers and so has your former President Asif Zardari.”

“You’re right, Maverick,” I replied. “Not just have the Indians gone bonkers, our former President Asif Zardari has become suicidal and started playing Russian roulette with the army, fingering it and inviting intervention again. A coup this time could be the real thing and these jokers who pass for politicians would go into history’s trash heap. I’ve told you for years that it is the atrocious anti-democracy behaviour and performance of politicians that causes the army to intervene. But the army has not been the panacea for our ills either because army/military governments create more monsters and odious politicians and so the circus goes on, so our downward spiral continues. Pity, because there’s nothing better than true democracy. But you cannot have true democracy unless you have true and capable and honest politicians. You cannot have those unless you have an honest constitution that begets workable and truly democratic pro-people political and economic systems. That’s our conundrum.”

“Spot on,” agreed Maverick. “But I suspect I know why this present increased madness has taken hold. In just a year-and-a-half our army chief General Raheel Sharif has become the most respected and popular person in Pakistan because of the mature and measured manner in which he has gone about his business while leaving the politicians their proper room to operate in. But if turn the room into a rope long enough to hang themselves with, it’s not his fault. Political suicide seems to be genetic. Not only has the anti-terrorist operation in North Waziristan broken their back, but the operation against terrorists, militant wings of political parties, Mafiosi and criminals is breaking their backs and disrobing those individuals, organisations and politicians who support and fund them. Above all, Raheel Sharif has caused a regional realignment in which India is getting sidelined and Pakistan is coming centre stage. Hence India’s hysteria.”

So now you have Zardari playing Russian roulette against the army, Nawaz Sharif playing poker with he knows not who and Modi playing war games in his mind, not realising that an all out India-Pakistan war has only one outcome – Mutually Assured Destruction – M.A.D.

“Yes, Maverick, you’re spot on too. The general has reset and rebooted our relationship with the USA, UK, Saudi Arabia after Nawaz Sharif nearly wrecked it in impetuosity and Afghanistan after the departure of the ingrate Karzai and the advent of the educated Ashraf Ghani. And he has turned our friendship with China from ‘sweeter than honey’ to ‘iron clad’. Don’t fool yourself: without General Raheel Sharif the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor would never have been agreed. It was first mooted by former Chinese President Hu Jintao to former President Musharraf, but the instability that started from 2007 disrupted it. Zardari was least interested because he probably couldn’t see easy kickbacks and commissions in it. Ditto General Kayani. Plus not wanting to upset America and India. Nawaz Sharif was lucky to be the person in the right place at the right time as he was in May 1998 when our nuclear device was successfully tested, ‘encouraged’ along by a good and patriotic army chief. So India has gone bonkers seeing Pakistan emerging as China’s Axis to the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia. Now Raheel Sharif has brought India’s old ally Russia into the equation and the two have agreed to joint military exercises for the first time. Pakistan should soon be a very important member of the SCO while India’s SAARC minus one, obviously Pakistan, initiatives are meaningless for a meaningless organisation that was dead on birth. India’s new love affair with America in becoming its axis to Asia for the containment of China is going to damage it further, as anyone’s love affair with America has damaged it. We should know. Pity, because America has given us more assistance than any other country but treated assistance like chains of neo-colonialism for political interference and inhuman economic conditions that come with their loans and the loans of their Bretton Woods institutions. America has trapped us in an odious debt trap that only Houdini could escape from by giving deficit-financing loans to odious, undemocratic governments questionably elected. They will pay for it one day, like the EU is at the hands of Greece. If only enough countries, North and South, had enough honest governments with spine, they could form a Debtors Club against odious debt and the entire man-eating global financial system created by capitalism gone mad and banksters gone crazy would come crashing down.”

“I like the sound of it – ‘Debtors Club’,” said Maverick impishly. “Wasn’t it first talked about in the Eighties when you were publishing ‘South’ magazine out of London?”

“Yes, it was, Maverick,” I told him. “I even tried with the Chinese to launch the ‘South Bank’ like the World Bank. The project was adopted by the late great banker Agha Hasan Abedi with Dragoslav Abramovich of Yugoslavia as project head. But again the problem was the same as today: the world’s leaders were too dishonest and spineless to back us. It was probably ahead of its time. But now the Chinese have launched the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank or AIIB and many countries have joined it, except America needless to say. Just you wait till the Chinese launch a new reserve currency. Everyone will leave the dollar. End of dollar; end of dollar hegemony.”

“Wow, you really think big,” said Maverick. “That’s why people call you a ‘dreamer’, but I don’t disagree with you.”

“I take it as a compliment, Maverick,” I replied. “Dreams are the stuff reality is made of.”

“Now I understand,” agreed Maverick. “The CPEC, Pakistan’s regional realignment and successful war against terrorism and the beginning of its rise as a positive regional player rather than a nuisance has made India hysterical. Add to that Modi’s failure to turn India into a Gujarat that his voters were expecting of him, not realising that there’s a world of a difference between running a province or ministry and a country. Failure leads to jingoism in order to distract and divert attention from itself. That is why the Indian defence minister said that India would “fight terrorism with terrorism”, stupidly admitting that India fosters terrorists and foists terrorism on other countries and itself. And then its junior information minister said that India will strike Pakistan where it wants, when it wants. Ban Ki Moon wept. But the jingoism of Prime Minister Modi in Bangladesh was a sight to be seen. What an idiot, admitting and showing off that India had broken Pakistan and caused Bangladesh to be made. He had the freedom to talk such nonsense because his host leader of Bangladesh is the daughter of the traitor who got into bed with Indira Gandhi against Pakistan. Not that we in Pakistan – Yahya, Bhutto and the people who supported their perfidy – didn’t open our gates to the enemy. So now you have Zardari playing Russian roulette against the army, Nawaz Sharif playing poker with he knows not who and Modi playing war games in his mind, not realising that an all out India-Pakistan war has only one outcome – Mutually Assured Destruction – M.A.D. Who said that Pakistan is a boring country?”

“I’ll tell you why the normally soft-spoken Zardari has gone off his rocker,” offered Maverick. “First, his one time friend and partner in crime Zulfiqar Mirza turned against him, not unlikely with encouragement, and started spilling more beans against Zardari than anyone could collect. There are more beans to come. Then the model Ayyan Ali was arrested at Islamabad Airport trying to take a shit-load of dollars to Dubai to launder. Any guesses for whom? Then a launch was caught stashed with more dollars than you or I could imagine. Any guesses for whom? Hit man Saulat Mirza had spilled beans earlier. Then came the raid on the Karachi Building Authority that could lead to oodles of proof of land grabbing and illegal construction. Zardari understood that the noose was tightening around him so in desperation he went on an anti-army rant. His supporters accused the army and paramilitary Rangers of going beyond their remit: fight terrorists only and don’t do the job of civilian investigators. Stupid, because if you want to truly finish off terrorism and criminality you also have to finish off their funders and supporters otherwise your efforts will be bootless and the army will be made to look a failure, which is probably what the politicians want. If the civilian authorities fail the vacuum is filled by an institution that can fill it. But now it is incumbent upon the army to investigate the allegations of corruption against some generals and officers being talked about by retreating politicians. Charge them if evidence is found, try them and punish them if convicted. Just starting the process with the same gusto will cause the army to occupy the highest moral ground and make it easier and more credible for it to pursue political terrorists, criminals, fraudsters, riggers and murderers.”

After his histrionics, Zardari asked for a meeting with Nawaz Sharif. First Nawaz agreed but then suddenly cancelled it. Better to wait for his turn later than making it come today with Zardari. Realising that he had lost his ‘insurance’ Zardari was left with no option but to call other opposition leaders to Iftar

As Maverick paused for breath I said: “The noose is tightening around MQM chief Altaf Hussain too. The two prime witnesses in the murder of Imran Farooq have been caught and after our investigators are done with them they could soon be enjoying the hospitality of Scotland Yard. Thus his rising rants.”

“Zardari, sensing danger, also went on an uncharacteristic rant against the army, even mocking General Raheel Sharif with a not-so-veiled taunt that he is there for only three years and, playing God, added that politicians are there forever, betraying his sick dynastic mindset. Earlier, kid son Bilawal Zardari who is Chairman of the PPP was imported back to chair the PPP central executive meeting that supported father’s diatribe after the party’s working committee had earlier tried to distance itself from it. Problem is, young Bilawal is only half a Bhutto born on the wrong side of the bed with the Zardari family name. Even though he inserted his mother name in the middle to make it Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, he is still a very faint hope for many still don’t accept him as a kosher Bhutto. This is how the feudal mindset of dynasticism works.

“After his histrionics, Zardari asked for a meeting with Nawaz Sharif. First Nawaz agreed but then suddenly cancelled it. Better to wait for his turn later than making it come today with Zardari. Realising that he had lost his ‘insurance’ Zardari was left with no option but to call other opposition leaders to Iftar, but the ones who really matter to him are the MQM that largely controls urban Sindh and the ANP which has pretty big support in Karachi from the large number of Pakhtuns living there. Could the PPP plus MQM plus ANP play the ‘Sindh Card’? What does it look like to you? The Big Three of Sindh ganging up to declare UDI that India exploits like it did Bangladesh? Now you see that the timing of Modi’s rant was not all that stupid. Problem for Zardari is that he has lost his vote bank in rural Sindh and the other two don’t amount to much in the national scheme of things. It’s not like the whole of East Pakistan’s majority was behind Mujibur Rahman in 1970. Zardari is committing suicide and he’s going to take the MQM and ANP with him if they are not careful.”

“But what of Nawaz Sharif?” said Maverick. “Zardari was his insurance too. If the PPP hadn’t supported him in the joint session of parliament during Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri’s dharnas last year, it would have been curtains. Now that insurance could be gone too and if Imran and Qadri resume their protests after Ramadan and the PPP doesn’t support Nawaz Sharif or even joins them to run with the hound, its curtains.”

“Whatever it is Maverick,” I said making to leave to telephone two hospitals, “we’re in for a tumultuous few months. Let us pray.”