The Army
Would Not Dare, If There Were No Lotas and Turncoats
By
Kamran Shafi
ISLAMABAD:
Some weeks ago I had asked how best to describe a military government
which is what this one is for all intents and purposes.
Why
poor Mr. Jamali cannot even preside over a cabinet meeting without
his boss hovering over him – that thinks it is the cats
whiskers and better; that has its finger in every pie; that lectures
us on every conceivable matter from the economy to what is best
for the country politically, cannot even run a simple exercise
in field tactics.
I
mean Wana of course, which is on the boil again as predicted by
many including yours truly. In the face of the direst criticism
of course, from the government’s flatterers and ‘article
writers’ I must quickly add. The answer has come to me:
Incompetent, inept, and astonishingly inefficient. Wana is not
the only example of this, sadly. Read on.
“No
political crisis in Pakistan” says our General. But of course
there isn’t any political crisis in Pakistan, if you want
to fool yourself and keep repeating the mantra.
“Alls
well, of course alls well”, aided and abetted by sycophants
and toadies, and, yes, ‘article writers’ who massage
your ego just to keep their miserable little jobs and those checks
from the PID rolling in.
In
any other half-civilised country there would have been a huge
political crisis with only half of the tamashas we see
in Pakistan on a daily basis; the government would have resigned
in disgrace long hence; or been driven from power by the people
15 times over by now.
Consider
please: On the very day that our commando made the brave statement
quoted above, on the very page of the newspaper he was quoted
in, there was another news item: “Parents demand terrorism
trial for rapists of infants”! Munir Masih of Gujranwala,
the father of a two year-old baby girl, and Parveen Barkat of
Lahore, the mother of a seven year-old girl, both Christians,
were speaking at a press conference arranged for them by Shahbaz
Bhatti an “activist (working) for Christians rights”,
at Islamabad.
They
charge, respectively, that their little daughters were raped and
nothing has been done to apprehend the criminals despite the fact
that this matter was agitated in the Punjab Assembly.
Whilst
the two year-old victim has reportedly been injured so severely
by the beast who assaulted her that she will require at least
six genital and bowel correction surgeries, we do not know of
the injuries suffered by the seven year-old, which should be horrendous
too. We must ask, however, what the governments of the Punjab,
and of the Islamic Republic are doing about these unspeakable
crimes?
Whither
your good governance, fellows; whither your law and order? “Pakistan
best place for foreign investment”, eh, chaps? I can just
see foreign investors falling over themselves, standing in queues
outside our Embassies and High Commissions clamoring for visas
to come to the Land of the Pure to invest.
Neither
is this all. Gilgit, in the Northern Areas was one of the most
peaceful places in the country, nay in the world. Until, that
is, the beauty Ziaul Haq sent in hordes of Sunni Chilasis to murder
and loot and rape the Shia residents of the Gilgit valley almost
20 years ago.
How
well I remember the tortured cries of my many Gilgiti and Nagarkutz
friends as they tried to explain their pain and anguish. Well,
Gilgit is on fire again, three poor innocent passengers of a bus
getting shot to death by a ‘law enforcing agency’
for no fault but that they were riding the bus during curfew hours.
I
can also see hordes of tourists mobbing our missions abroad begging
to be let in to the Fatherland so that they may go to Gilgit and
savour the curfew first-hand.
Neither
is this all, in the litany of this government’s rank incompetence.
As if there were heights of loose and ludicrous governance still
to be scaled, the day had to come when a Corps Commander of the
Army would be attacked in broad daylight just a stone throw from
where the most powerful of Sindh live!
The
day had to dawn too, when 7 soldiers and 3 policemen, all innocent
but for the fact that they were doing their duty of guarding the
General were gunned down and many others injured, and not one
attacker was killed or captured! All the direct result of the
government trying to be all things to all men. Whilst stating
loudly its firm intent to fight terrorism, supping with those
who are the Godfathers of the terrorists.
This
is not all. Exactly one day after the latest Wana tamasha,
the Jamaat-i-Islami, one of the General’s supporters in
parliament, calls a strike in Dir to protest the Wana action and
spreads hate and disaffection against the Federal Government.
This is not all: on exactly the day that the JI acts up, the MQM,
which supports the General’s government in the Center and
in Sindh, asks for the Chief Election Commissioner to be arrested!
Can you believe this, readers? The government does nothing, of
course, petrified of the MQM as it is.
This
is not all: according to press reports, Qazi Hussain Ahmed the
JI chief, said the most incendiary things about the Ismaili community
at a public meeting on May 25th to the effect: “The rulers
have given total authority to the Aga Khan Foundation for establishing
a new education system in the country.
“The
same task was assigned to the Ahmedi community but the people
of Pakistan launched a movement against them and finally they
failed in their plans”. He then warned the AKF and the Ismaili
community that people would also launch a movement against them
if they continued to impose a secular education system in Pakistan”.
Whilst
I do not know what brief the AKF has from the government to establish
a secular education system (which I wish they would!), this is
not only an attempt at bringing the peaceable and philanthropic
Ismailis, as good Muslims as you and I, into the public’s
disaffection, it unnecessarily drags the Ahmedis into the controversy.
As
if they are not already persecuted enough! (Now that they ARE
officially a minority, why can’t we leave them alone, for
God’s sake?) Yet the government runs on, blind and deaf
and mum, taking no action against a person who has so blatantly
threatened the Ismailis. It is to be noted that exactly five days
after his hurling fire and brimstone, two diagnostic centers run
by the AKF were burnt to the ground.
Finally, one has to say that the movers and the shakers and the
handlers of the General’s government have brought him, his
fellow travelers and, willy nilly, the rest of us poor sods, to
such a pass that we are firmly stuck between a rock and a very
hard place. While whispering in his ear that nobody did it better,
they are keeping him away from what is actually happening in the
country. Well, the long and the short of it is that if this latest
attack on a most senior military commander will not open his eyes
to reality, nothing will. In which case we are really headed for
the chopper. So help us (please), God.
“What
is so inherently wrong in our system or psyche that does not allow
democracy to take root or flourish” asks Chaudhry Shafqat
Mahmood, former twice-over minister, member of parliament et al,
in his article ‘The failure of our democracy’
of May 21st.
I’ll
tell him: the scourge of democracy in this country has been turncoats
and lotas and lotas and turncoats. If there were no turncoats
and no lotas, the Army would not have dared step in when it did
almost half a century ago, and then made a habit of riding into
power on the backs of more lotas, more turncoats.
Other
reasons are secondary, Chaudhry Sahib. Turncoats and lotas, lotas
and turncoats; that is your answer.
