The wry taste of ultra-patriotism

The principal temple and the central fountain of Pakistani patriotism lies not on the mountains or along the shoreline of the Arabian Sea but in the imperishable land of the five rivers: Punjab the home of Pakistani patriotism and Punjab the unchallenged redoubt of that brilliant storyline, the ideology of Pakistan.
Right from 1947 until the present time most of Pakistan’s tragedies have been enacted at the altar of this patriotism. As a young captain harnessed to the chariot of the 1971 war I remember the slogan pasted on the back of every car in Lahore: “Crush India”. As we went about crushing India we managed to lose half the country. It says something of our extraordinary talent for amnesia that we have managed to virtually erase that event from our collective memory.
It is the same surge of emotion which leads the most vocal and indeed hoarse sections of Punjabi public opinion to anoint a misguided fanatic-turned-assassin into a public hero. There is no shortage of placards on Lahore’s roads extolling him and his glorious deed. And it is similar zeal which is in full cry as we go about raising thunderclouds of emotion in the Raymond Davis affair.
Let me enter an immediate caveat so as not to be misunderstood. Davis should be dealt with according to the letter of the diplomatic law. If he is without immunity then that’s it and to this position we should stick, regardless of pressure or threats from the seat of the American empire. But why must we make a tamasha (spectacle) of everything? Why can’t we handle this affair without fuss and without the drumbeats of patriotism sounding from every rooftop?
And why, as we go about fashioning a response, must we present a picture of national disarray? The presidency in a tizzy, wanting a way out of this crisis and not being able to find one; the prime minister, as always, not in charge and hoping for the whole thing to blow away; the Foreign Office on a different page from the presidency; the former foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, eager to turn this dilemma into the wages of heroism; and the guardians of national security not wholly able to avoid the suspicion that they are busy pulling the strings from behind.
When the jihadi media goes into overdrive – some of the semi-literate babbling about national dignity and honour we are being treated to being quite an exercise in creative literature – and religious elements protest before the Press Club, Lahore, raising fists in the air and shouting full-throated slogans, it is possible to detect in these spirited forays the footprints of national security.
Pakistan’s security establishment is a kingdom unto itself. In any given crisis or incident it is not always clear what it is trying to achieve. But since old habits die hard, the knights of this establishment always seem eager to make their presence felt. Almost as if to say, we are not to be ignored. Or ignore us at your peril.
To repeat the earlier point, if Davis is without diplomatic immunity, as seems to be the case, his prosecution should go ahead, regardless of anything else. But we can proceed along this path without too much frothing at the mouth. National dignity is better served by speaking softly. And protestations about national honour would sound more convincing if we could somehow put our permanent begging bowl to one side, for some time if not permanently.
Shah Mehmood Qureshi’s bravura press conference was bemusing: this is not the time to lower our heads but to raise them; I know that by speaking up harm can come to me but I will not bend when it comes to national honour; there is a lot more to tell and if the need arises I will do so. Oh really? Exaggerated as the comparison may seem, is he trying to sound like another Zulfikar Ali Bhutto? Silence would have suited Qureshi better but then silence is not a particularly Pakistani quality.
True, after Qureshi’s disclosure to a section of the jihadi media that it was the considered advice of the Foreign Office that Davis did not enjoy the kind of blanket immunity the Americans were asking for, an entire pack of PPP ministers – with the Amazon freshly-inducted into the information ministry in the lead – had ripped into Qureshi for daring to speak out of turn. But there were few plaudits for this yelping performance. As former custodian of foreign policy Qureshi should have held himself to a higher standard of responsibility and avoided playing to the gallery, despite any hard feelings he may have had about not being allowed to retain the foreign ministry in the cabinet reshuffle.
Robin Cook disagreed with Tony Blair on the Iraq war and delivered a masterly speech in the House of Commons, remarkable as much for its sharp logic as its understated tone. But I suppose this is a far-fetched analogy. That was the Iraq war and this is an American spook by the name of Davis. And that was Cook and this is...oh, well, let it be.
We know the spine of our Foreign Office. On matters substantial it does nothing without looking over its shoulder in the direction of Aabpara where looms the architectural disaster which is our sanctum of national security. It beggars belief that the Foreign Office’s stand on this affair was not coordinated closely with the gatekeepers of Aabpara.
Nothing wrong with that except that one hopes that this was only about this affair and not, through it, another attempt to undermine our already confused and fragile democratic order.
Of course we should not succumb to American pressure. From day one the US embassy and consulate, not to mention the State Department, have behaved foolishly and arrogantly, piling up the pressure on Pakistan in a manner almost designed to foreclose the chance of any flexibility from the Pakistani side. Now even President Obama has spoken and Senator Kerry has visited Pakistan. It can’t get any higher than this. Which makes it all the more incumbent on Pakistan to do what is right but without giving way to emotional excess.
We should have kept a closer eye on cowboys like Davis and restricted the numbers allowed into the country in the first place. We allowed Afghans a free run of Pakistan during the first Afghan ‘jihad’ and are still ruing the consequences. After 2001 we gave our American friends a too free run of the country. We tend to be immoderate both as regards as our enmities as our friendships.
This said, our American alliance is in our interest. We are not in a position to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Whatever the legal or diplomatic merits of this case, some way out of this imbroglio will have to be sought. Therefore we must allow passions to cool. And it would serve our American interlocutors better if they were to curb some of their zeal for shotgun diplomacy. Superpower or no superpower this is no way to go about securing a spook’s release.
Drone strikes in Fata have killed scores of civilians and we have turned a blind eye and deaf ear to them. In fact after Baitullah Mehsud’s death in a drone attack we stopped even the pretence of the ritual protest. But Davis’ gunplay took place not on a remote mountainside but in the heart of Lahore. Talk of the ugly American. He was violating the laws of geography. What the hell was he doing there? This is a question the Americans should ask of themselves.
Anyway, this is a mess and also a lesson for us. When we enter into a pact with the devil – devil being a relative term...for the Americans, I am sure, we are the devil – instead of being distracted by immediate gains, we must consult the tomes of national dignity and honour beforehand instead of waiting for the dirt to hit the ceiling and then crying about lost virtue and innocence.

Email: winlust@yahoo.com