A chilling reminder

Is it now only a question of time? When and not why?

The speech of the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) General Raheel Sharif on the occasion of the Martyrs’ Day at the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi on April 30 is a chilling reminder of the vast gulf that separates the military’s narrative from that of the government. It was also an unequivocal reiteration of the role that the armed forces have played in safeguarding the constitution, democracy and the freedoms that we have become so accustomed to misusing.

The speech contained two key policy statements. Theoretically, this should have come from the head of the government. There could be a million reasons why the COAS was forced to state what fell within the domain of the prime minister, the foremost being his inability to announce the priorities of the national agenda and his reluctance to do so for persistently compromising the national interest to further perpetuate his political stranglehold.

The COAS advised the insurgents to unconditionally accept the constitution and subservience to the rule of law and return to the national mainstream. In the event they refuse to do so, he warned: “There should be no doubt regarding dealing with traitors of the state. The proud people of Pakistan and its armed forces know full well how to consign them to hell”.

These are the same traitors whom the prime minister has legitimised by declaring them as ‘stakeholders’ on a par with the state of Pakistan. They are also the same traitors whom his government, the members of his negotiating team and leaders of some other political parties refer to endearingly as “our Muslim brothers’, “our angry brothers”, “our Pakistani brothers”, or just “our brothers”.

They are the same traitors the government is bending over backwards to appease and accommodate even while they continue unleashing a deadly spate of violence that has already consumed over 50,000 lives and maimed thousands of others. They are the same traitors who do not hold allegiance to Pakistan’s constitution, its laws and its system of governance.

They are the same traitors who do not hold allegiance to Pakistan’s constitution, its laws and its system of governance. They are the same traitors whose death at the hands of the Pakistani troops is dubbed as ‘shahadat’ while this status is not accorded to those brave officers and soldiers who die fighting for their country. They are the same traitors whose goodwill is so integral to the government’s policy that it constitutes a committee of its own ‘Taliban’ to negotiate with them.

And they are the same traitors whose death at the hands of the Pakistani troops is dubbed as ‘shahadat’ while this status is not accorded to those brave officers and soldiers who die fighting for their country. They are the same traitors whose goodwill is so integral to the government’s policy that it constitutes a committee of its own ‘Taliban’ to negotiate with them. In the process, the government provides them with critical space and time to regroup and launch their deadly incursions against the state of Pakistan, its armed forces and its people.

The other unequivocal policy statement concerns the State of Jammu and Kashmir. The COAS said: “Kashmir is Pakistan’s jugular vein. This is an international dispute and there are United Nations resolutions awaiting implementation. Its resolution in accordance with the aspirations of the Kashmiri people is absolutely vital for regional security and sustainable peace. The sacrifices of the Kashmiri people will not go waste. Pakistan’s armed forces desire peace, but they are forever ready to befittingly respond to any aggression”.

I have not heard a political leader from this government, or the ones that preceded it, making any such unequivocal statement about the outstanding issue of the State of Jammu and Kashmir. On the contrary, their attitude has been mostly apologetic. Their representatives have preferred to remain quiet even in the face of an overtly aggressive stance that India has adopted at various international forums.

Even when they have been forced to respond to some Indian forays, they have talked about the desirability of the issue being tackled bilaterally by India and Pakistan. They have refrained from projecting the international nature of the dispute or the need for the United Nations to enforce its resolutions.

The COAS has not only talked about the dispute in a candid and forthright manner, he has also projected its international relevance as it awaits to be addressed in accordance with the United Nations resolutions.

In a further display of insensitivity, instead of staying back home to be part of the Martyrs’ Day Ceremony, the prime minister conveniently proceeded to London to evaluate his illicit financial empire. There appears no end to his insatiable lust for more.

The government has been taking undue pains to publicise that the military and the political leaderships are on the ‘same page’ when it comes to dealing with the challenges that Pakistan faces, be it from terrorism, or from across our Eastern and Western borders. The prime minister went overboard at a recent function at Gwadar where he proudly presented the COAS ‘standing on my left’ and the Balochistan chief minister ‘standing on my right’ as a testimony of the military and the government being on the same page.

None of that appears to be true. As a matter of fact, the opposite is the likelier scenario: the vast and almost unbridgeable gulf that separates the two leaderships.

In all probability, the COAS was forced to make these two policy statements at the Martyrs’ Day Ceremony after having lost hope that the government would do the needful and take a position that would be in the best national interest of Pakistan. Now that he has made the statement, how is the government likely to react?

The conflict between the political leadership and practically all institutions including the army is rooted in the prime minister’s preoccupation with accumulating unchallengeable power in his person to the exclusion of others. This is not the first time that he has ended up in this blind alley. So was also the case in his previous two stints in power when he repeatedly took on other state institutions including the presidency, judiciary and the army in his insatiable lust for total control. That led to the ouster of his governments in the past and that may well be the case this time round also.

Let us put the sequence of events in place leading up to the current spat. It all began with the unwarranted statements of the two senior government ministers disparaging the army and the ISI for conveying their concerns regarding the manner the government was handling the case of the former president and the army chief Gen Musharraf.

This created a lot of agitation within the army whose response came when, visiting the base of the Special Services Group, Gen Raheel stated: “Pakistan Army upholds the sanctity of all institutions and will resolutely preserve its own dignity and institutional pride”.

That brought the two chief crooks together – the former president Asif Zardari and the incumbent Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif – in a display of comradeship in the face of perceived threat from the army. In the midst of the reported tensions came the attack on a senior journalist and his unsubstantiated accusation against the ISI and its Director General Lt. Gen. Zaheer ul Islam.

For an inordinately long time, his photograph was flashed across the television screen of the channel as if he were the proven culprit. There was even a demand for his resignation.

The prime minister, in a public display of brazen provocation, rushed to Karachi to visit the recuperating journalist in the hospital who is widely known for his anti-army and anti-ISI feelings. This was followed by visits to the hospital by the senior ministers of his cabinet. It appeared to be a pre-meditated case of singling some people out as more equal than others.

I say so because the country has lost over fifty-thousand people to the scourge of terrorism and the prime minister has never shown his caring side concerning any of the other deaths including that of some senior army officers. He has also not had the decency to enquire about the welfare of the bereaved families either.

The government has been caught in a brazen and premeditated act of leading the charge for maligning the armed forces and the premier intelligence agency of the country to serve its evil ends. Can this uneasy relationship, riddled with deep-set doubts and even rancour, be allowed to linger on in the midst of the state facing existential challenges? The obvious answer would be in the negative. If that be the case, how and where the matter is going to rest?

In a further display of insensitivity, instead of staying back home to be part of the Martyrs’ Day Ceremony, the prime minister conveniently proceeded to London to evaluate his illicit financial empire. There appears no end to his insatiable lust for more.

The unwarranted and unsubstantiated assault, aggravated by the government’s pregnant inaction, deservedly evoked a fiery response from the army and the ISI. The COAS visited the ISI headquarters within the next forty-eight hours in a show of unflinching solidarity with the principal spy agency and its command – a sentiment that he repeated in his Martyrs’ Day speech also.

Subjected to immense pressure, the defence ministry promptly sent a note to the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) asking it to probe the charges of anti-state activities by the concerned channel which, in turn, has already sent a letter to the channel asking it to explain its position within 14 days.

Simultaneously, a number of organisations started staging pro-army and ISI demonstrations throughout the country. In the aftermath of the strong reaction from the army, and gripped with a fit of jitters, the government has shown signs of backtracking as some of its ministers have come out with facile explanations of their statements. A retinue of them was also seen at the Martyrs’ Day ceremony sitting glum-facedly staring into blankness!

That is where the matter stands at this moment with either of the combatant parties waiting for the other to blink. While the army leadership has gone on with its job unflustered, it is the prime minister and his government that is in the grip of palpable panic.

The leader of the opposition’s meeting with the defence minister is a clear reflection of the danger the government fears from the army and those forces that are agitating against it and its nexus with the then-chief justice that resulted in substantially rigging the elections to the benefit of the PML-N. It is the same nexus that has put in extra hours to spearhead the ghastly campaign to cast slurs on the army and the ISI in conducting certain matters of the state.

The government has been caught in a brazen and pre-meditated act of leading the charge for maligning the armed forces and the premier intelligence agency of the country to serve its evil ends. Can this uneasy relationship, riddled with deep-set doubts and even rancour, be allowed to linger on in the midst of the state facing existential challenges? The obvious answer would be in the negative. If that be the case, how and where the matter is going to rest?

Howsoever one may look at the situation, the government apparently appears to be adrift a tidal wave that is gushing forth with full might that is likely to cause irremediable destruction. The momentum is likely to gain in speed and ferocity given the prospect of further blunders by the prime minister and his myopic and hate-driven advisors.