Words of consequence

The writer is former executive editor of The News and a senior journalist with Geo TV.Syed Talat Hussain

The writer is former executive editor of The News and a senior journalist with Geo TV.

One swallow doesn’t make a summer but one statement can define a whole career. So it has been since the declaration of intent a week ago by COAS General Raheel Sharif, that he would retire at the end of his term. Spread against the hot-and-sour six years of his predecessor, General Ashfaq Pervaiz Kayani, and the odious nine of General Pervez Musharraf, the present chief’s words stand out exceptionally well.

But as with all publicly declared commitments, this too is not without consequence for the general and what he has come to represent in popular perception – a doer.

From now till it is time for him to hang his gloves, there are about nine crucial months in which General Sharif’s will and capacity will be tested like never before. He has a three-front challenge, where the speed of action as well as results shall become the way to assess the actual depth of his work and, what’s more, his contribution to stabilising Pakistan as the head of the country’s most powerful institution.

The first front is the note on which Operation Zarb-e-Azb will close on his watch. The decision to crack the last bastion of the TTP in North Waziristan was bold and much needed. The military thrust into the terrain, the ground operation, has yielded palpable gains in terms of regaining territory and disbanding the command structure of the militants. But as a military manoeuvre it must have complete closure – the announcement that it has formally come to an end.

All military commanders understand that an unfinished operation is, well, an unfinished operation. Regardless of what greatness is attributed to its various phases, the culmination point is the declaration that it is a job that has finished. In the framework of North Waziristan this means several things.

One, active combat has to come to an end and forces demobilised from different areas of their deployment. While some will remain at critical points for a longer duration, hubs of life like places of residence, fields, markets, built up structures, commercial routes and general roads must open for normal activity.

Two, return of the displaced must start in all earnest. For those who have forgotten the basic purpose of Operation Zarb-e-Azb, it is a military operation meant to purge North Waziristan of terrorists. It is not a military concept that can be stretched and applied, conceptually or otherwise, to all manner of terrorism all over the country. Its success’ first and most crucial test is the quantum of relief for those in whose area it has been launched.

For the people of North Waziristan, it is immaterial whether the whole nation is dripping with praise for the military operation. If they, the North Waziristanis, are out of homes, out of business and out of their fields, Zarb-e-Azb can hardly be the stuff of folklore. The yardstick to assess how much relief has been provided to the people of the agency obviously starts from how many are able to go back to their home and hearth. Official statistics on this count tell an unfortunate story: out of a total of a million people displaced on account of the operation only 15 percent have returned home. So almost 850,000 people from North Waziristan are displaced.

Even if we assume that the displacement figure of a million is over the top and the actual number is far less, 15 percent of the displaced returning home is still a dismally low number. Officials also claim that the military component of the operation in North Waziristan is now focused on some pockets close to the Pak-Afghan border’s inhospitable tracts, and the rest of the agency has been cleared of all hideouts. (Some 837 hideouts cleared and roughly 3,400 terrorists killed, officials say.) This claim implies that almost all of North Waziristan is combat-free as there cannot be combat if there is no sanctuary, no infrastructure, no organised terrorism left.

It is perplexing why the destruction of terrorism in North Waziristan has not led to the rehabilitation of its population – the first and foremost positive to come out of all military campaigns. It is a flawed argument that since most of this area has been destroyed, therefore the population cannot be sent back to ruins. People rebuild, machines don’t. Projects don’t start life, families and tribes do.

In the remaining part of his career General Raheel Sharif has to ensure that the people of North Waziristan are back in their areas – and there they are protected as well. Leaving troops in active battlefield and people out of their homes isn’t considered a high degree of success.

The second front General Raheel Sharif has to manage is Karachi. Significant headway has been made. The crime rate has been brought down. Politically motivated terror has been checked, and with Uzair Baloch getting netted it is likely that more prosecutable evidence of the noxious nexus between crime and politics will come out.

However, while all these developments may be significant, the original intent behind the Karachi Operation was not to just reduce the crime rate or catch high-profile criminals: it was to recast Karachi’s politics – for good. Gangs within the MQM and the PPP (in this order of preference and never simultaneously) were to be neutralised and a new leadership was to emerge to take charge of more civilized and corruption-terror-free parties. The space created by normal politics of urban Sindh was to be filled by parties like the PTI, PML-F and, in certain pockets, the Jamaat-e-Islami. The idea behind the original blueprint of the Karachi Operation was to make sure that this financial hub and economic nerve centre is reclaimed from the hands of brutal mafias who use politics as a cover to protect their vast underworld empires.

On this count, the Karachi Operation has been struggling. Traditional politics is back with a vengeance. The MQM with the same command structure has gotten a mandate right from the grassroots, getting a seal of legitimacy many used to suspect it never really had. Elsewhere in Sindh, minus a few setbacks here and there, the PPP continues to rule supreme. The alternatives, the PTI, the JI, the PML-F, never arrived.

Both the parties – the PPP under Asif Ali Zardari and the MQM under Altaf Hussain – have become central to the functioning of the democratic system that every party is sworn to defend. It is next to impossible to take the leaderships of these parties out of the equation of national politics without materially damaging the equation itself – a price no party is willing to pay.

The project of bringing about structural changes in urban Sindh’s political landscape has in fact only aggravated the landscape. The MQM and the PPP are more entrenched in Sindh’s politics than before. Now there is a desperate search for a silver bullet because General Raheel Sharif’s tenure ending. But if Saulat Mirza’s confessions did not bring down the MQM’s core leadership, it is unlikely that Uzair Baloch’s statements will bring down the PPP’s.

There is no short-term solution in sight for Karachi’s structural problems. What sort of Karachi General Raheel Sharif leaves behind is something that will determine how his contribution to the resolution of chronic national problems will be assessed.

And, finally, his third front: how to resist the temptations that would be dangled before him to induce him to stay on. Or take up another role. Jokers with tambourines and trumpets are already out singings songs of praise and worship. With their eyes wide shut, and mouths wide open, they are pleading and entreating that the man should linger a little longer – perhaps forever. They should be easier to deal with because their chorus is reserved for everyone and anyone in power.

The harder part will be to tackle the Sharif government’s habit of loading up a plate of offers like the offer to General Kayani to become the chairman of the joints chiefs of staff with enhanced powers – a native version of the chief of the defence staff.

Handling these three fonts will be crucial for General Raheel Sharif’s true metal to emerge. In a strange and ironic way, his task of leaving a genuine legacy built on substance has just begun.

Email: syedtalathussain@gmail.com

Twitter: @TalatHussain12