Rule of law or wages of folly?

Islamabad diary
Four coups, long years in power, uneven war performances…a less than distinguished record for which the army is justly criticised. But it’s been slightly different these past last ten years: the army fighting a shadowy war about which the whole truth is hard to come by but about which one thing is certain: it has lost nearly 5,000 officers and soldiers in this conflict…more than in all its other wars combined. And this war grinds on. Despite the charade of talks few people are under any illusion that it is going to end anytime soon.
In the traditional army recruiting belt of north Punjab and parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, there is no village in whose graveyard the national flag does not flutter over the grave of a fallen soldier.
Yet consider the greatest irony of all: those who have been untouched by this war – right wing political parties who retain a soft spot for the Taliban, and right wing journalists not on the Taliban hit-list – rail against it the loudest, rendering themselves hoarse in the process, thereby portraying as useless the sacrifices of our soldiers and officers.
From the families of the dead, on the other hand, there has been not one call, not a squeak, in these ten years questioning the war’s validity or suggesting that their near and dear ones died in vain. If anything, they are proud of the sacrifices made, fathers and mothers saying that if they had other sons to offer for the country they would do so.
So the irony gets richer: dying are soldiers of the army, children of the fauji belt, or the poor of such places as Sabzi Mandi. Shedding crocodile tears and wearing the mantle of peacemakers are those who have lost nothing by this conflict. Indeed, their gift for appeasement, on full display these days, makes Neville Chamberlain, the modern father of appeasement, look like a Viking warrior.
So the point is: do the army’s sacrifices atone for its past sins or do our civilian leaders, tainted themselves by deep stains of military collaboration, want a higher level of atonement? Must the army sacrifice 5-10 thousand more soldiers before the country’s political leadership can say, yes, your sins stand washed away?
And who are these leaders? Who while they talk so feelingly of war and peace and the nation’s ultimate destiny, find it hard, nay impossible, to take one step into the tribal areas to show some solidarity with our fighting men. Gen Musharraf, to his lasting discredit, did not think it fit to go there. President Zardari emulated his example, Miranshah too distant for him, as it is proving too far away for Nawaz Sharif. An American president, a British prime minister, would not be able to survive such indifference. We obviously live by different rules.
The young officer posted in South or North Waziristan, Bajaur or Mohmand, how would he take all this? As he and his men risk their lives every day what would he make of all the desperate attempts to appease the Taliban, the very foe whose improvised explosive devices and ambushes have killed and wounded his men and comrades? As if this was not enough we have senior ministers using language which ministers in established democracies would never use against a former army chief. “Mard ka bacha ban…” (show yourself to be a man’s son)…is the latest addition to the national discourse.
Gen Stan McChrystal, American commander in Afghanistan, was quoted by Rolling Stone as saying things about his political bosses a man in his position should not have said. President Obama sent him home. That was it. There was no grandstanding about civilian supremacy or the rule of law.
Place all this in Pakistan’s particular milieu. Here’s an army chief, relatively fresh to his job, trying to play things by the book, doing everything in his power to attend to civilian concerns. And we have a cast of political characters who play cowboy on television and, in relation to Musharraf, wax loud and hard about the supremacy of the constitution. To which school of political thought do these politicos subscribe? To the very school which was the handmaiden of a previous dictator – Gen Ziaul Haq of blessed memory – and received its political training from him.
And so even a helpful army chief, who invites jibes about his helpfulness, is moved to anger. For, let us make no mistake, the army press release quoting him as saying that the honour and dignity of the army would be protected at all costs is a mark of anger – a way of saying that enough is enough.
Anyone wishing to downplay this warning is welcome to do so. But the army does not come out with such statements every day. It does so only when it feels it has been goaded or pushed to the wall too much, and when other means of communication fail….between the prime minister’s office and General Headquarters.
One doesn’t have to read the army’s secret files to know that the major thing weighing on its mind these days is the helter-skelter way in which the government is conducting talks with the Taliban – the army feeling that too much is being away without anything in return.
Chances are this vague sense of unease would have lingered awhile without coming to a head if the government had not been foolish enough to push hard on another front: Musharraf’s treason trial. Islamabad’s rumour mill would suggest that army circles were probably under the impression, or had been given to understand, that once Musharraf made a court appearance things for him would ease and he would be allowed to go abroad.
Not only did this not happen, we had the spectacle of two important ministers, Asif and Saad Rafique – both with a reputation for belligerence to uphold – tearing into Musharraf. Army circles, serving and retired, were not amused.
But the immediate context was provided by Gen Raheel Sharif’s visit to the Special Services Group headquarters at Ghazi near Tarbela. The SSG has been in the forefront of the fight against the Taliban. The Ghazi base was the scene of a deadly Taliban attack, leading to many fatalities, in Musharraf’s time. We should remember that Musharraf too was of the SSG, the SSG one formation where there is a closer camaraderie between officers and soldiers than other arms.
Furthermore, whatever else one may say of Musharraf, his manner with his staff and subordinates was easy, making him a popular commander. So there at the Ghazi base Gen Raheel was asked questions about the Musharraf trial. This to all appearances was the tipping point. The chief’s patience boiled over, the result of this the press release the same evening.
Those who say, and rightly so, that it is none of the army’s business to speak through press releases should bear two things in mind: (1) Pakistan’s history of coups, and the army’s physical capacity to carry out another coup should things come to that, this despite the nonsense we keep hearing about this being a new Pakistan with an independent judiciary and an independent media, juvenilia we should not take too seriously; and (2) the sad circumstance that holding Pakistan together today is not Islam or the 1973 constitution or any political party but the army.
Remove the army from the scene, demoralise it further, and Pakistan becomes a prime candidate for being the next Yugoslavia. Not a nice thing to say but worth filing away somewhere. Constitutional supremacy is a great thing, and we should be all for it, but it shouldn’t become an excuse for civilian irresponsibility.
The last time the PML-N upheld the banner of constitutional supremacy it ended up conducting itself like a Spanish toreador. We know what happened. Far from slaying any bull it found itself hoisted into the sky. Surely no one is keen to see that experiment repeated, that too so soon.
Email: winlust@yahoo.com