By Ayaz Amir
We will of course protest and say this is unacceptable. The prime minister--poor, helpless, likeable Yousuf Raza Gilani--will go into another paroxysm of high-flying indignation. But nothing will change and our American friends will not be deterred because they know what feigned Pakistani indignation is worth.
The Washington Post was not far wrong. It touched a raw nerve when it suggested that a 'tacit' understanding had been reached between Washington and Islamabad whereby America could launch what missile strikes it wanted in the tribal borderlands while Pakistan was free to rail and beat its chest, which is what Pakistan is doing. Indeed, in defence of American interests we are proving to be amongst the world's most accomplished liars, every day our government issuing denials which no one believes.
Our responses can also be comical. Because from President Asif Zardari to Prime Minister Gilani the pious hope is embraced that these missile strikes, violations of our precious sovereignty, will hopefully cease when Barack Obama enters office. Such investment in unmerited hope can have few parallels.
The Americans can pat themselves on the back for the change they have helped engineer in Pakistan: replacing a yes-man---Pervez Musharraf---who had outlived his utility and had become a liability with a fresh yes-man---President Zardari---who is all too keen to do America's bidding and prove his usefulness to his American benefactors, who helped his rise to power.
Musharraf had no popular backing and his creation, the Q League, was an artificial construct, a king's party shored up by government help and patronage. Zardari heads a popular party and indeed, on present reckoning, the country's biggest party, the PPP. The rank-and-file of the PPP certainly don't want to toe any American line. If they were to be true to their culture they would shout that any friend of America's is a traitor. But the PPP leadership in the person of Mr Zardari is sold on proving its usefulness to America. Which is a strange role for the party of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto: playing Uncle Tom to America's master. But with an NRO-whitewashed leadership what could we have expected?
I am sure Musharraf's biggest regrets are (1) trying to get rid of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and (2) granting a blanket pardon to Zardari. The move against Chaudhry triggered the lawyers' movement which fatally weakened Musharraf. Zardari is wrong to downplay the significance of that movement. Without it Musharraf would have been under little compulsion to reach out to Benazir Bhutto and bring Zardari in from the cold. Without the NRO whitewash--the biggest dry-cleaning operation in Pakistan's history--Zardari would not be where he is today: lord of the presidency and, by virtue of commanding a popular party, more powerful than Musharraf in his tinselly uniform.
But Zardari's gain has been Pakistan's tragedy. Musharraf put the army, which was all that he had at his disposal, at the service of American interests. He did not rule the hearts and minds of anyone save those dejected remnants of the Q League who still pine for his restoration. Zardari has more going for him: a popular party and the stamp of public approval. He is after all an elected president, the army's 'crack' 111 Brigade--that great instrument of constitutional arbitration, its interpretation of the Constitution sounder than the Supreme Court's--having had nothing to do with his elevation. All these gifts Zardari has put at the service of the United States.
Musharraf can cry his heart out. He was never this effective. He was good enough for 2001; without his uniform not good enough for 2008. In any event, he was Bush's boy. Bush has passed from history. The USA of Obama requires a new Uncle Tom, with democratic plating, the role into which President Zardari is growing. As the Iraq war is downgraded and the focus shifts to Afghanistan, as Obama has promised to do, more will be required from Pakistan. Zardari, on prevailing evidence, is not likely to disappoint.
What a host of ironies the February elections threw up. The people of Pakistan, chumps as ever, thought they were knocking at the gates of a new redemption. Little could they have realised that they were merely tinkering with the old and giving it a new facelift. The people of Pakistan haven't been betrayed. That would be to put too apocalyptic a meaning on current events. They have merely been used to lend the semblance of popular backing to an unpopular cause. Pakistan's democracy is now hitched to America's war chariot which is not quite what the people of Pakistan were expecting when they marched to the polling booths on Feb 18.
The army, lest we forget, is a willing accomplice of these developments. It is not averse to the task of performing sentry duty for America and fighting its war. Indeed, under its new command, it has brought to this task a new zest. Musharraf never carried out such sustained operations as in Bajaur. He did not use F-16s in FATA. He carried out American orders but only up to a point. That is why our American friends had begun to nurse grievances against him. That is also why there was no end to the refrain "do more". Now we hear less of this refrain because the army under Gen Ashfaq Pervaiz Kayani, Allah be praised, is doing more and the Americans don't know how to hide their satisfaction.
Up to a point Musharraf knew how to play the Americans. The new combo we have, Zardari and Kayani, is not playing the Americans. They are playing the Pakistani people by leading a loud chorus about sovereignty when in fact Pakistani sovereignty, or what remains of it, lies fatally compromised because of Pakistan's servitude to American interests. There is no winning this war. The Americans eventually will get out. Invaders throughout history have not stayed in Afghanistan for long. We will be left holding the dishes as we did in 1988 when the Americans lost interest in Afghanistan after the Geneva Accords. Why are we so adamant about not learning from history?
Kayani has rehabilitated the army's image to a certain extent but not to change direction in FATA, only to fight America's war better. Of what use such rehabilitation?
But the sorry thing is that where there should be an anti-war movement there is none. Ordinary Pakistanis feel dismayed but there is no one to give voice to their discontent. Parliament is not the tribune it should be. From the MQM to the ANP to the Q League, every party is marching to the tune being played by the presidency and General Headquarters and composed by the US. The PML-N is betwixt and between, not happy with the way things are turning out but not shedding its reservations and not adopting a clear-cut or loud enough stand.
A counter-voice is thus missing. Those trying to speak out against the threat that this war represents are too small or weak to have an impact. So, this is turning out to be a land of the speechless, a land in pain but because of some conspiracy of the stars or of history (I can think of no other explanation) unable to give voice to its misgivings. The resulting void is being filled by the cult of the suicide bomber. Has Pakistan nothing better to offer?
Email: winlust@yahoo.com