La Verite En Marche

HOPE OF A BETTER PAKISTAN

by Roedad Khan

As I waded through the Wikileak documents, I was reminded of the wisdom of the Arab proverb: the word you have not spoken is your slave; the word you have spoken is your master.

The publication of Wikileaks secret and confidential dispatches has become a cause celebre throughout the world and has hit Pakistan like a Tsunami spreading in fast and unpredictable ways. Pakistan has been shaken up like a sleeping person from a tranquilising dream. A terrible shower of cold water has fallen over the people of Pakistan. This is Pakistan’s bleakest hour. Truth – unvarnished, unalloyed, unedited, has hit “democratic” Pakistan, exposing its fake sovereignty, its fake independence, its fake leadership, in fact all its Potemkin institutions.

In every independent country there are certain articles of faith – national sovereignty, independence, patriotic leadership that protects, not betrays national interests – that people accept unquestioningly, often indeed, in the face of inconvenient facts. The Wikileaks documents have shattered that faith in this sad country. It has thrown tonnes of dirt, filth, shame on the leadership of Pakistan. The shit, as American say, has hit the fan. Pakistan has been betrayed by her elected representatives, betrayed by her rulers, stabbed in the back by power-hungry generals, tripped up by her so-called ally in the war on terror. 

But first, a few general observations on the dispatches themselves. The cables contain narratives of meetings with President Zardari, Prime Minister Gilani, Chief of Army Staff General Kiyani, discussions with prominent politicians, including members of the opposition and private citizens. It is the single largest unauthorised disclosure of secret and confidential documents which chronicle events that have contemporary significance and have a present impact on vital matters of public importance. Also captured in the reports is the internal power struggle, shifting loyalties and Byzantine intrigues. The reports tell us what the ambassador saw and heard from her vantage position: the clash of personalities, the conflicts among the key players, their ambitions, their hopes, their prejudices, their fears, and their frustrations.

Here are a few samples of what our leaders told US Ambassador Anne Patterson: General Kiyani thought of removing and sending President Zardari into exile during the long march days; Asif Ali Zardari disclosed that Benazir Bhutto had come to Pakistan after getting “clearance” from the US; Zardari had promised immunity and safe passage to Musharraf before becoming President; Musharraf wanted to sack Kiyani because he was not helping. Are you with me? 

Faryal Talpur has been named as Zardari’s successor and next president of Pakistan! General Kiyani says Faryal will be a better president than Zardari; Zardari showed Benazir’s will to Anne Patterson to convince her that he is the genuine heir; PM Gilani approved the drone attacks; General Kiyani wanted to remove Zardari and elevate Asfandyar Wali Khan as president; The ISI chief tells the Americans Zardari is corrupt. Are you with me? Moulana Fazlur Rehman asks Anne Patterson to support his PM candidacy; The JUI chief hinted his votes in NA are up for sale; Asfandyar Wali Khan asks for US help to convince Nawaz Sharif and Zardari; Kiyani tells Patterson, he dislikes Nawaz more than Zardari; Zardari says Amin Faheem had spent most of the 2008 election campaign in Dubai, was simply too lazy for prime minster. Are you with me? UK airport Chief Marshall Sir Jock Stirrup called Zardari a numbskull who knows nothing about running a country; US Embassy says the Zardari government is weak, ineffectual and corrupt; Bureaucracy is settling into third-world mediocrity; Nawaz assured US, he supported them; Militants driving agenda in Pakistan’s war on terror; Nawaz wanted to bring A Q Khan in politics; Mumbai attacks closed the door on Kashmir discussion between India and Pakistan; General Kiyani didn’t wish to takeover government. He said he would have taken over during the lawyer long march if he wished to; Zardari told the US, we won’t act without consulting with you. And many more such disclosures yet to come.

The United States posted some of its brightest and best diplomats to Pakistan for the obvious reason that Pakistan possessed considerable importance to American foreign policy. It is therefore not surprising that the Ambassador’s reporting is truthful and of a high quality. There is also commendable absence of bias. It would, of course, be unfair to find complete impartiality as the object of the dispatches is to defend and further the interests of the United States. And most important of all, the emphasis is on what the interlocutor told the diplomat, and not vice versa.

The portraits of President Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani that have emerged confirm what the people of Pakistan think of them. Both come off as servile, obsequious, lackeys of the United States, insecure, highly dependent on American support, too willing to sacrifice national interest in order to secure American help for themselves and remain in power.

Zardari and Gilani keep the people in the dark, tell them lies, and treat truth as an insignificant value which can be suppressed, distorted, and readily sacrificed to the will for power. But truth is on the march and nobody can stop it. All else will pass, but the truth will remain. I know that precisely because the interests involved are too great and the men who wish to stifle the truth are too powerful, the whole truth will not be known for sometime. But there is no doubt that very soon every bit of it, without exception, will be divulged. No matter how deep you bury the truth, it burrows ahead underground and one day surfaces again everywhere to spread like some vengeful vegetation. It carries the power within it to sweep away all obstacles. And whenever the way is barred, whenever someone does succeed in burying it for any time at all, it builds up underground, gathering such explosive force that the day it bursts out at last, it blows up everything with it.

Fortunately, the independence of the Fourth Estate is now a fact of life and cannot be reversed. No one can prevent the truth from continuing its onward march. Truth shall win. And the men in high positions, who are combating the truth and stifling it, will find to their dismay that as the great Greek poet Euripides said, “Quo vult perdere Jupiter dementat”. Jupiter drives to madness those whose downfall he desires.

Where do we stand today? On August 14, 1947, we thought we had found freedom, but it has turned out to be another kind of slavery. The Wikileaks dispatches make it abundantly clear. The independence of Pakistan is a myth. Pakistan is no longer a free country. Today it is not just a “rentier state”, not just a client state. It is a slave state with a puppet government set up by Washington. I have been saying this for years.

Today Pakistan has all the requirements to make it the perfect American target for recolonisation. It has a rotten socio-political system in an advanced stage of decay and decomposition; its rulers are corrupt, authoritarian, unresponsive to the prime needs of the people, accountable to none; it lacks the will to defend itself because what its rulers represent is not worth defending; it is highly vulnerable to attack; a coup de grâce, or a coup de main, a powerful kick and the entire rotten structure will come crashing down.

“Amir!” Quaid-e-Azam told Raja Sahib of Mahmudabad in 1948, “You have no idea of the situation here. I am surrounded by traitors.” The situation we face today is much worse. Therefore, it is a political and moral imperative for all patriotic Pakistanis to expose the traitors, fight for our core values, resist foreign intervention in our internal affairs and destroy the roots of evil that afflict Pakistan. Let us put our hand on the arc of history, and bend it once more toward the hope of a better Pakistan.

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Source: COLUMNS PK

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A carnival atop a volcano

A carnival atop a volcano

by Roedad Khan

In the farcical system we have today, things are not what they appear to be. Realism does not exist in Islamabad because life in Islamabad is itself a fiction.

The Constitution says one thing. What happens on the ground is something quite different. Behind the constitution, there is an unwritten constitution which governs the state.

Prime Minister Gilani, known for his sartorial elegance, is obsessed by externals and is addicted to appearances with a passion for clothes, collar and cuff.

He shocked the nation when, just before midnight on July 22, he appeared on television, looking quite bedraggled, visibly nervous, overwhelmed by the “momentous” decision he was about to announce. His address lasted for a little more than two minutes. All he wanted to tell his people was that he had decided to extend Army Chief Kayani’s term by three years in recognition of his services to the nation or words to that effect! Many questions come to mind. Gilani says it was a simple administrative matter. If so, why did he have to make the announcement on TV at that late hour in such a terrible hurry?

Was it his own decision? Was it the supreme commander’s decision? Was it their joint decision? My answer is no. Everyone knows where such decisions are made. Everyone knows where the true pole of power lies in this country. But more of that some other time.

These are dangerous times in our country. These are also anti-elitist times. Angry mobs are howling for retribution. Pakistan is seething in ferment and in disarray. This is dangerous. Under an imbecile and feeble government, as we have today, there is but one step from discontent to revolution. A sad situation, but true. The country appears to be adrift. Nobody knows where it was headed without wise and mature leadership to guide or direct it. Pakistan, a fractured and despondent society, unable to imagine a decent future for itself as it plunges into listless desperation and radicalisation, stands on the edge of the abyss. Signs of danger abound, but like the proverbial boiling frog, we seem unable to rouse ourselves. In our political life, we wait until things reach the emergency room.

What is most intriguing is that the rhythm of life remains, more or less, unchanged. “Everything seems”, as Goethe said, “to be following its normal course because even in terrible moments in which everything is at stake people go on living as if nothing were happening”. In Pakistan, as in geology, things can look perfectly stable on the surface – until the tectonic plates shift underneath. The straws in the wind are there. Time will show whether there are enough of them to make a bale of hay.

Sixty-three years after independence, are we really free? Are the people masters in their own house? I am deliberately putting the case with all its bluntness to highlight what is at stake. Today say “Pakistan” and what comes to mind – military coups, sham democracy, an accidental and powerful president, a non-sovereign rubber-stamp parliament, and a ceremonial prime minister. Today Pakistan is not just a “rentier state”, not just a client state — it is a slave state, ill-led, ill-governed by a power-hungry junta and a puppet government set up by Washington.

If you want to see the chasm between the grotesquely rich and the abject poor, come to Pakistan. The privileged few own the country and all the sources of life; the rest just pray or die. Pakistan today is a land of opportunities for corrupt, unscrupulous, unprincipled politicians holding fake degrees, dishonest civil servants, smugglers and tax-evaders who have bank accounts, luxurious villas, mansions and apartments in the west. A great divide, a yawing chasm – some call it a new Iron Curtain – separates them from their less fortunate countrymen, whose life is “nasty, brutish and short”.

They have a stake in the status quo or the system as they call it. While life at the top gets cushier, millions of jobless people and those at the bottom of the social ladder are forced to resort to crime merely to survive. Many of them are fleeing the country and desperately trying to escape to the false paradises of the Middle East and the west.

The rich are getting richer, while the poor are sinking deeper and deeper into a black hole of abject poverty.

THE COST OF CONFLICT: BEYOND THE DIRECT COST OF WAR

THE COST OF CONFLICT: BEYOND THE DIRECT COST OF WAR

by Semu Bhatt

The military costs emanating from this conflict include human costs and policy losses that are rarely factored in, argues the writer.

The obvious cost of the India-Pakistan conflict is the military costs, the defence outlay and acquisitions that the media and analysts tend to focus on. In reality, the military costs emanating from this conflict include human costs and policy losses that are rarely factored in. These costs have both direct and indirect components and vary according to the intensity and type of confrontation. 

HUMAN HAEMORRHAGE

The enduring impact of the war is the most taxing and yet rarely discussed military cost emanating from the Indo-Pak conflict. 

We all know that wars claim lives. As many as a combined total of 25,000 military personnel have been killed and over 40,000 wounded or maimed, during the four Indo-Pak wars. Even during "peace time", low intensity warfare along the border claims hundreds of lives every year. In India, 70-100 Indian soldiers are killed a year in this conflict -- a total of 6,300 since 1948.

POST MUMBAI: CONCLUSIONS

          An article carrying an excellent analysis on post Mumbai situation has recently come up from Gen. (Retd). Jahangir Karamat, formerly Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US, Chief of Pakistan’s armed Staff and one of the few generals who literally followed the constitution of Pakistan 

          Hitherto our army generals (the COAS-cum CMLA’s-cum Presidents) have been lecturing us only on dangers that this country faces and they as Supremos of Pakistan army are the only saviors, the only judge to decide on patriotism of an ordinary Pakistani. Anybody who opposed their government (which was in every case, without a single exception100 percent dictatorial) was either a mulk-dushman or agent of somebody who is outright determined to undo this land.

          In case one didn’t fit into any of the above categories, he was a communist, an Indian agent or many a time just a “persona non grata”. (I remember once our friend from Safma (South Asia Free Media Association) an ardent supporter of India Pakistan Friendship while speaking on this subject, was told by then Governor of Punjab, again a military general that to him the former appeared to be an agent of RAW and to this quipped our friend, “my dilemma is when I speak of friendship between two of us (India and Pakistan) in India am told, am an agent of ISI and here in my own country I become an agent of Raw. The fact is General Sahib! Am agent of Pakistan only and as a Pakistani I sincerely believe in friendship between the two countries".).

         In this context, am extremely delighted to read this post and find it extremely heartening that Gen. (R) Jehangir Karamat has the sagacity to utter the stark truth, a truth that most of our policy makers always tend not to recognize. Rightly says he, we just shove our eyes in the sand and forget that there is something happening, something which we need to redress.

by Gen. Jahangir Karamat ex COAS

By now so much has been said and written and has happened that there is a dire need to draw conclusions. Not just draw conclusions but to evaluate them, prioritize them and act on them.

The general consensus is that India and Pakistan need to talk. This is a decision that the political leadership on both sides needs to take. The how, when, where and what can be sorted out once this political decision has been made.

By now it is clear to all except the ostriches that Pakistan faces a serious internal crisis. This crisis is multifaceted and has many interconnected dimensions. It cannot be addressed unless there is an in-depth understanding of its reality. To do this it is necessary to develop a comprehensive picture of the scale and magnitude of the internal threat.

Recent writings, discussions and decisions have made it abundantly clear that Pakistan lacks a national intelligence coordination mechanism and a policy planning and decision making structure. This gap leads to reliance on intelligence agencies for not just intelligence but also the response options. This must change. Coordinated intelligence will produce the threat picture and the policy planning process will develop response options. From these options the decision maker will choose the course of action. This process will also respond to the criticism of intelligence agencies.

Political stability will be one facet of the response to the internal threat but the general conclusion being reached by most Pakistanis is that has to be the first step and it can be a comparatively easy step if personal ambitions and vendettas are shelved and simple decisions taken on restoring the parliamentary system, empowering the judiciary and election commission and removing controversial appointees.

There is a dawning realization that Pakistan should not seek an identity beyond our region in Arab lands. Our identity is in the greater South Asian sub-continent that includes Afghanistan. If we come to terms with this reality our bilateral relations with our neighbors will take on a whole new significance and urgency. For this a process of re-education has to start. Muslim countries and particularly Arab countries will remain our close allies and friends.

Finally it is clear that in a globalized world Pakistan's foreign policy has to be on a global scale and Pakistan should never be seen as a threat to global peace. To climb out of the economic quagmire Pakistan has to forge relationships on the basis of trade, economic activity, technology transfers, investment, education, health care and support at the international level. This should help in prioritizing relationships and developing public opinion that supports foreign policy rather than opposing it. This is what will redefine and drive our relationship with the West.

Courtesy: http://www.wichaar.com