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Thursday March 28, 2024

Who’s leading the army down this path?

By Ayaz Amir
December 25, 2015

Islamabad diary

It was too good to be true, that the custodians of all our frontiers, geographical and ideological, had turned a page, and that in the throes of Zarb-e-Azb, the operation against terrorism, what we were seeing was a new mind and a new approach.

For a while all this seemed true and the nation fed up of cowardice and dithering hailed the armed forces and virtually proclaimed General Raheel Sharif, the army commander, as messiah and saviour. There were the politicians who could take no decision and had made appeasement of terrorism their holy creed. And here were soldiers and airmen rising to the challenge and earning the nation’s gratitude.

There was something surreal in this imagery because for most of Pakistan’s history the armed forces were famous less for meeting the nation’s expectations and more for suspending constitutions and imposing military rule. To this tradition was added in Gen Zia’s time the promotion of ‘jihad’ as strategic policy.

When the Soviet army, licking its wounds, left Afghanistan, the first testing-ground of ‘jihad’, the experiment was carried lock, stock and barrel to held Kashmir. Peace did not come to Afghanistan nor did liberation to Kashmir. But Pakistan, from one end to the other, became a nesting ground for extremism and sectarianism, all in the name of Islam. Of that military-sponsored policy this was the deadly blowback.

But at long last when Islamic radicalism and extremism threatened the very foundations of the state, the army, under Gen Raheel’s command, turned on the products of its earlier lab experiments. And the nation, forgetting the army’s role in those experiments, cried out in an excess of gratitude, hailing, as already stated, Gen Raheel as a latter-day Prince Saladin.

This operation which has rolled back the tide of terrorism and brought peace to Karachi is now in danger of losing its way because the Rangers and the Karachi corps, which are carrying out this operation, are losing the sense of where to stop.

Their remit was terrorism and extortion and target-killing. And they’ve been very successful in this. But success proving heady, they have stepped beyond their mandate, expanding the boundaries of their remit by carrying out raids on the vague and unproven grounds that corruption money was helping to finance terrorism. The Zardari crony, Dr Asim Hussain, was picked up in this connection.

Dr Asim Hussain may be many things but an abettor and financier of terrorism? This strains the imagination. The PPP and the Sindh government of Syed Qaim Ali Shah may not be everyone’s idea of sterling administration. It may be guilty of many sins but supporting terrorism is a charge not even its fiercest critics would level at it. The PPP for all its faults has been a victim of terrorism. The politics of fear in Karachi was played out by other elements and these are well known, their history and doings a matter of record. The PPP should not be accused of imaginary crimes.

There have been stories in the media, sponsored or not, about Dr Asim’s alleged corruption. But does this come under the remit of the Rangers and the Karachi corps? The constitutional authority for the Rangers to operate in Karachi comes from the Sindh administration. Has the government of Syed Qaim Ali Shah tasked the Rangers to go after corruption? If it hasn’t, how has Major General Bilal Akbar of the Rangers arrogated this authority to himself?

Consider also the manipulation of the truth. The perception has been spread that the Sindh government is trying to curtail the powers earlier bestowed on the Rangers. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Sindh government is merely saying that these are your powers and this is your mandate. Please don’t go beyond it. Yet if you feel the necessity of doing so, please be so good as to inform us and take us into confidence. This is being twisted to mean as if the Sindh government is defying the centre and the army just to protect one man, Dr Asim Hussain.

The Sindh government in writing to the centre and defining the terms of the Rangers mandate is going strictly by the constitution (Article 147). By rejecting its summary and imposing its own conditions, it is the centre which is violating both the letter and the spirit of the constitution. Would the stance of the centre have been the same if it was the Punjab government which was involved and not the Sindh government?

It should have been for the prime minister to step in and heal this breach. That would have required leadership and courage because it would have meant explaining things to the army command, the ultimate power behind the Karachi operation. Two explanations can be given for the PM’s mute and mum attitude: 1) that the capacity to talk frankly to the army is simply not there or 2) that the PML-N barons are happy to see the army lose its way in Karachi.

And what game is the interior minister playing? Who is he to hold out dire threats to the Sindh government? A man in his position should be helping to calm matters. He gives the impression of working on an agenda of inflaming them. To what end? Not long ago he was chief apologist for the Taliban and mourner-in-chief for TTP head, Hakeemullah Mehsud, when he was killed in a drone strike. Today he sounds more pro-army than the ISPR DG, Gen Asim Bajwa.

The first unwritten rule of war is to not lose sight of your main aim. There are many things wrong with Karachi, many things wrong with the country. But the Karachi operation was against terrorism, extortion, kidnappings for ransom and target killings. It was not about corruption. Even if it was, the Rangers are not equipped to deal with this problem.

When the Rangers opened too many fronts and strayed into territory that was not theirs they courted controversy. The Sindh government hasn’t made the Karachi operation controversial. This achievement belongs to the Rangers and the Karachi corps.

Asif Ali Zardari may have his own reasons for making such an issue of Dr Asim Hussain. But the Rangers have also done their bit to reduce the enormous gains made in the course of the Karachi operation to the fate of one man.

For the PPP this is a godsend. Since destiny put Zardari in charge of its affairs the PPP had lost all sense of direction and purpose. In the row over the powers of the Rangers it is rediscovering some of its lost spirit.

What about the army command? Why has it allowed the situation to drift in this fashion? Until now General Raheel had a sure touch. Is he losing it? From the army’s point of view, the Karachi situation is being mishandled and the Rangers which have done so much good are in danger of wading into uncharted waters.

Sure, corruption is a great evil. Who says it isn’t? And in the annals of corruption PPP leaders have made a name for themselves. But is corruption confined to Sindh and the PPP? Are the rest of them all pure as the driven snow? Is there no amassing of wealth, by fair means and foul, in the land of the five rivers?

Suppose the Model Town massacre had occurred in Karachi. Ask yourselves honestly, would the Sindh government have survived the outfall? If the Asghar Khan case had been about the PPP would its leaders not have been called to account by now? Given the lopsided nature of our federation, it is easy to be principled about Sindh; less easy to be principled about Punjab.

Let’s not also forget the way public opinion is being manipulated in Karachi, the trading and business communities being fed the impression that the PPP is against the Karachi operation as a whole. The PPP government, with no help from the centre, is trying to keep the operation within constitutional limits. If the Rangers are so keen to break those limits they should begin from the beginning: trying this experiment across the country.

Email: bhagwal63@gmail.com