Islamabad diary
Without the army coming out of its Musharraf-induced chocolate mode and Kayani-induced stupor mode some things would never have happened. Malik Ishaq, the self-confessed sectarian serial killer, would never have been bumped off the way he was. And not just him his entire team too – his Lashkar-e-Jhangvi lineup eliminated in a flash. The country woke up to the reality of the ‘encounter’ after it was all over. What is more, the feared backlash never came.
Without the environment created by Operation Zarb-e-Azb, the military operation against the dread battalions of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, the hanging of Mumtaz Qadri would never have taken place. A civilian government on its own would never have taken the risk.
And Mustafa Kamal and Anees Qaimkhani would never have found the occasion, or the courage, to open a charge sheet against their fuehrer – what else to call him? – Altaf Hussain.
The terror which Altaf Hussain and his party the MQM inspired was worse than any martial law, including Zia’s which was pretty ugly in its own way. Most of us seem to have forgotten how difficult it was to even mention the MQM in a critical context. In print we would refer to the MQM in roundabout ways, on TV again twist our tongues to make a passing reference to the party or its leader.
And when the fuehrer spoke all the brave lions of the media – who never tire of extolling their peerless sacrifices for the freedom of the media – were obliged to carry him live, his rants lasting for hours on end. This was a measure both of his power and of the media’s acute sense of realism, to put it no starker than that.
All this has changed. The MQM’s militant power lies broken and Karachi for all its problems, which are not going to disappear in a hurry, has begun to look more like a normal city, the pall of fear enveloping it lifted to a large extent.
True, the MQM retains its mass following, as once again demonstrated in the recent local elections. But why should that bother anyone? Let it win all of Karachi’s seats not once but ten times over. The problem was its mafia-style politics, the violence it practised and the fear it spread. The Rangers, under the aegis of the army, have taken care of that…to a large extent.
After previous operations the MQM always bounced back, even emerging stronger as it settled accounts with those who might have crossed its path. In Musharraf’s time many law enforcers who had taken part in the 1995 anti-MQM operation (when Maj Gen Naseerullah Babar was PPP interior minister) were systematically eliminated, often after gruesome torture.
This time it looks different. The MQM stands shaken to the core. Apart from what the Rangers have done, Altaf Hussain is said to be in failing health and he faces legal problems in the UK. The furies seem finally to have caught up with him. Power unlimited was his in his glory days and foolish the man who incurred his displeasure for the consequences were severe. Now his sun is setting and dark music, if you listen carefully, is playing in the background.
People who are taking this to be some kind of a morality play or sitting in moral judgement over Mustafa Kamal’s bona fides are, to my mind, off the mark. Mustafa’s return, engineered or not, is another sign of the army’s resolve – and it’s the army running this thing – not to allow a return to Karachi’s pre-operation past. That chapter is over.
We should make no mistake about this. It’s not just Raheel Sharif. The post-Kayani army command – the college of generals and corps commanders coming of age and earning their spurs in the ongoing operations, whether against the TTP’s religion-inspired terrorism or the MQM’s ‘secular’ terrorism – under no imaginable circumstances can allow a return to the pre-Zarb-e-Azb days. Too much in blood, treasure and effort has been expended for that to happen.
This is the new spirit of the army, forged in the heat of Pakistan’s longest and toughest war, far tougher than any of our piddling, over-in-17-days wars with India. Whoever comes after Gen Raheel Sharif if he is to retain the army’s respect will have to remain loyal to this new understanding. There is no room for any Ziauddin Butt, or indeed for any time-serving chief, in this war-tempered environment.
But the larger problem remains. The army is but one wheel, one facet, of the state. It can’t carry everything on its back. If the army is acquiring a new outlook, at complete odds with its ‘jihadi’ past, the nation is not taking part in this forward movement.
Look at it this way: the army has left the thinking of the Zia-Aslam Beg-Musharraf-Kayani eras behind. Its thinking now is borne of its new experiences. But there has been no change, no fresh turning of the soil, as far as civilian leadership is concerned. Pakistan is stuck with the political products of the 1980s. (And if anyone thinks the scions engaged in poultry and every other line of business are an improvement on their elders he better think again.)
This would not have mattered if this old material was capable of fresh ideas. After all, the freshest ideas in the American presidential campaign are coming from a 74-year old, Bernie Sanders. He is not likely to make it but that’s beside the point. At least he has enlivened up the proceedings, as in his own way has the irrepressible Donald Trump.
We face a lack of fresh faces and a poverty of ideas which is why the revamping of the state, the redoing of Pakistan is not happening. No one is even talking about it. The army has changed course. It has redone some of its old stripes. But on the other side of the divide there is little by way of anything new, unless the obsession with metro buses and orange trains is anyone’s idea of new. It’s the same deadwood of the past 30 years – yes, the apprenticeship of this lot took place all those years ago.
Thus while some things have happened – the Karachi situation improving and the frontiers of terrorism shrinking in the insurgency-racked tribal areas – time stands still in other areas. Madressahs remain breeding grounds of hate and bigotry and health and education remain neglected sectors. The gap between rich and poor is growing at an alarming rate. And then the well-intentioned wonder why so many people were to be seen at Mumtaz Qadri’s funeral.
We have succeeded in creating two Pakistans: one for the well-off, the privilegentsia, the other for the less well-off and the down and out. Such things as literary festivals matter to the privilegentsia. But the Pakistan on the other side of the tracks finds its greater inspiration in such events as the assault on the Lal Masjid and the funeral of Mumtaz Qadri.
If the task of the military is to root out militancy and rewrite the ‘jihadi’ narrative, the foremost task of Pakistani politics should be the lessening of the divide between high and low Pakistan. The military has woken up to its new responsibilities. Pakistani politics is still struggling to discover newer horizons.
Email: bhagwal63@gmail.com
