May 18, 2012
Ayaz Amir

We were making a point and we’ve made it: this from Ms Hina Khar, our winsome foreign minister, putting a paint brush job on our blocking of Nato supply routes after the American gunship attacks on our Salala check-posts. Fair point but making the point for six months and dawdling over it and then entrusting the matter to parliament, a sure recipe for turning even the moderately simple into a running farce.

I say this with the utmost seriousness: if you want to make anything look silly send it to a joint session of parliament. It’s not our fault; we are just made this way. Shouting and poetry are our forte, sensible debate and discussion, heaven forbid, is not. And not for us the foolish dictum that brevity is the soul of wit. The man who said it – Shakespeare in this instance – deserves a public hanging. Our idea of wit, played out regularly in the National Assembly, is a two-hour harangue recycling a list of numbing inanities. Driven to pulling out your hair…that’s what the NA does.

Not one memorable debate in that august house for four years: this has to be some kind of an international record. The Chinese could revise their definition of refined torture. Sitting through what passes for debate in this assembly would yield fascinating insights into this subject.

The Parliamentary Committee on National Security: behind the pompous title an empty parking lot. If we had to confuse the issue there was no better tactic than to ask the committee to set guidelines on Pak-US relations. Only problem is we ended up confusing ourselves, taking our endless rant about sovereignty and national dignity a bit too far for our own good.

The next step in spreading confusion was to send the committee’s mishmash of a report – overly long and in places downright stupid – to a joint session of parliament. Whether in a stage drama or a political matter making a point should be a neat affair: short and sharp. But we dragged out the point for six months and then when we saw the tide and American anger rising, we did a quick shuffle – make way Fred Astaire – swallowing our menacing talk of national dignity and pressing the panic button.

We wanted an invite to Chicago – by God, we wanted one – and who said Nato supplies were to be blocked forever? Fetching Ms Khar says this was our way of making a point: “I did it my way”. If our American friends are not impressed, they are hard to please.

But nagging thought: making a point or making an ass of ourselves? Take your pick. All at the altar of national dignity…the next time I hear this phrase I’ll seriously think of taking up bazooka training.

And, as ever, pulling the strings from behind, fine-tuning the musical score…our keepers of the flame, guardians of national ideology, traumatised by the Abbottabad raid and wanting to get their own back at the perfidy of our American friends. Fair enough, nothing could be more embarrassing than the smoking out of Sheikh Osama, a benefactor who was a problem for us as long as he lived but nothing short of a catastrophe in the manner of his death.

With Gen Kayani and Lt Gen Pasha – then leading national ideologue now, alas, put out to pasture – looking as if they had been struck by lightning, and brutally-violated national sovereignty very much the flavour of that dramatic season, the civilians were soon performing the gymnastic steps Kayani and Shuja, the corps commanders glaring at the back, wanted them to perform.

The entire nation went into national sovereignty overdrive, fearless knights and ladies of the media round table included. Chorus backup of course was provided by that other band of fearless champions, the holy stewards of the National Defence Council, dubbed unfairly by uncharitable souls as Gen Pasha’s own fusiliers.

What a heady time it was, swept on the tide of our own emotions, basking in the glory of our own illusions. What to talk of Nato and our American friends, we were ready to defy the furies, ready to take on the elements. Maulana Fazlur Rehman, that most subtle of gymnasts, got up to speak in the National Assembly and denounced everything connected with America in Afghanistan. So infectious was his example that when I got up next I too made heavy weather of American denunciation.

If only good things could last forever. We should have brought a closure to national outrage some time ago but we stretched the point too much until American patience, almost saintly up to that point, was pushed to breaking point. La Clinton (this is a Robert Fisk mannerism but please forgive me) while on a visit to India spoke of terrorism and Pakistan in the same breath, the US Congress started making threatening noises about money and assistance to Pakistan as the Nato summit in Chicago loomed nearer with no clear invite to us. We panicked and national dignity and sovereignty were seen floating out of the window.

Let’s have no fear: the heavens are not about to fall and matters will be settled but, sadly, not on the terms we had fondly envisioned. We should have kept our point-making a bit short. But then brevity with us not being the soul of wit, it had to be like this. We not only lost our audience but started irritating it.

Some shocks we never get over. Abbottabad is one such shock for the present military command. The national response they fashioned after Salala was in fact a delayed response, emerging from the sub-conscious, to Abbottabad…their moment to get even with the Americans. But they failed to take into account what Soviet communists used to call the balance of forces.

We are just we, not the Viet Cong or the armies of Ho Chi Minh. So there are limits to our defiance. And while Nato supply routes are important they are not the trump card we had imagined them to be. In effect, therefore, we have compromised with reality. A good thing too but if only we had done this a bit sooner than wait for weakness and helplessness to dictate our choices.

Some lessons in all this. No more judicial commissions, please, we’ve had enough of them. We have seen the Abbottabad and the Memo commissions functioning, if functioning is the right word. Lesser mortals would be embarrassed. Aren’t their lordships embarrassed? It is time this pantomime ended. And no more joint parliament sessions on matters beyond the reach – let me not say the comprehension – of parliament. For drumbeating, a recourse to parliament certainly, but for anything a shade more subtle, some other course please.

Much of the problem stems from our dysfunctional government. Its leading lights do all they can to keep their heads above the swirling political waters around them. They just don’t have time for other things. Defence and foreign policy they outsourced to Gen Kayani soon after coming to office. Kayani was doing a fine job until Abbottabad hit him. He is not the same man since.

So with a traumatised army command yet to exorcise the demons of the past, a dysfunctional government and a panting opposition, perpetually on the warpath, what choice do we have except to pray that between now and the elections the God-gifted talent which has kept us afloat for so long should not desert us, the talent of somehow managing to muddle through?

Email: winlust@yahoo.com

-The News