Taming the nature of the beast
By Jawed NaqviThursday, Sep 20,2007
IT WAS way back in 1985 that the BBC commissioned Tariq Ali to write a TV play — The Leopard and the Fox, A Pakistani Tragedy. As rehearsals were about to begin, it was agreed that Zia Mohyeddin would play General Zia, and India’s Naseeruddin Shah would play Z.A. Bhutto. Then suddenly, under pressure from the British Foreign Office, the BBC decided to cancel the project.
I got my hands on it recently when Seagull Books in UK finally published what comes across as a fairly credible dramatisation of Zia’s coup and Bhutto’s dubious trial and execution.
The play runs into 106 short scenes. But in today’s context, with one former prime minister dispatched to a second exile in Saudi Arabia (an old Muslim habit, considering what Emperor Akbar did with Bairam Khan, his once trusted aide) and another bracing to wade into Pakistan’s political quagmire, perhaps the most important scene to ponder in the play is Scene 20.
It opens in Gen Zia’s office at the military HQ. It shows Zia involved in a serious discussion with General Azad, evidently an officer whose name the author has changed because of the BBC’s libel policy. The men are sipping cold drinks, just to give a flavour of the times, with Zia exuding a friendly demeanour.
Azad: In 1971 the army was finished. Finished! If Bhutto had hanged 20 generals in public, the people would have applauded.
Zia: You think I don’t know what Bhutto did for us? But it is no longer a private matter. Americans are very angry because of nuclear programme.
Azad: We pressured Bhutto to start our nuclear plans. Zaman (another changed name) said, ‘Sir, we cannot sit back, while India tests nuclear devices.’ So Bhutto told the world.
Zia: Correct. But what worries Pentagon very much is civilians controlling nuclear weapons. Unstable. Unstable. In Fort Bragg they made it very clear that even their president in the White House was not completely independent. He is always flanked by military advisors. General Barnes laughed and said to us: ‘You see, we have a permanent semi-martial law in our country. No one objects.’
(And so the scene continues with Zia trying to entice Azad as an accomplice in the arriving coup).
The most notable thing about the above scene is that it frontally tackles the crucial nuclear issue, which seemed to be missing from the discourse in Pakistan during the last several weeks when many hopes were raised and fears triggered by the brief return of pro-democracy street fighters.
Is there perhaps a clue in Tariq Ali’s TV play, which was written more than 20 years ago, as to why there may not be a truly desirable democracy in the country in the foreseeable future, one that is bereft of a covert or overt role for the army? Civilian and democratically elected governments endorsed Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, but their safety and security has been a headache for the Americans. Can the Americans trust Nawaz Sharif with nuclear weapons? Has he not changed dramatically since his assault on Jamaat-i-Islami activists during the Lahore summit of February 1999 to his newfound bonhomie with his former detractors, the Jamaat?
Or can the West trust Benazir Bhutto, who goaded and cajoled Nawaz Sharif to carry out the 1998 tests, before she began prescribing ways for nuclear prudence? Was the move to set up a National Security Council a ruse to keep the army involved in Pakistan’s quasi-democratic governance partly because of nuclear worries?
Did Nawaz Sharif lose brownie points with the Americans because he shot down the project? If so, what new mechanism is required to keep the army, perceived as America’s trusted conduit in Pakistan, happy in any new civilian administration, if one does fructify?
And finally, how broadly would the new arrangement be different from the existing one in Bangladesh, where military dictatorship has acquired a civilian face? These are some of the worrying questions that form a logical corollary to Ali’s Scene 20.Tariq Ali is not a soothsayer but the depth of his political analysis gives him insights that border on prescience. Take for example Scene 74 where he unwittingly constructs a seamless transition between something that happened 20 years ago to, say, the events of Sept 10. The play was written in 1985. But just see how he makes it relevant for today.
In this scene, General Azad, who comes across as a pro-democracy officer, is telling Bhutto to leave the country that very night if possible. Benazir, Nusrat Bhutto and a foreign correspondent close to the Bhuttos, called Cherry, are listening on.
Bhutto: But why?
Azad: Zaman wants you polished off. He wanted it before the coup. I stopped it then. Now there are no barriers. Trial’s a complete farce. Everything is planned.
Bhutto: How can everything be planned? The people have the capacity to upset many plans.
Azad: I agree, so do Zia and Zaman. But they noticed something. When martial law was declared nothing happened. Not a bird twittered. They laughed about it.
Bhutto: Not a bird twittered? What about the textile workers in Multan? They went on strike. Zia’s machine guns ended that. Sixty workers were killed. Hundreds wounded.
Azad: That’s small beer, my friend. The army was preparing to deal with a general strike. It never happened. Don’t resist now. Save yourself.
Bhutto: More important to save Pakistan.
Cherry: Are the two not connected?
Bhutto: Of course they are. That’s why I won’t run. Let them do their worst. Finally they will run.
Just who will “run” eventually from the field is not easy to discern sitting here in Delhi, for the ground reality in Pakistan is surely far more complex to hazard a guess. All one can say is that there is a pattern in Pakistan’s current turmoil to the day in 1979, when the Indian government had tacitly approved of Bhutto’s hanging.
There is no other explanation about why then Prime Minister Morarji Desai refused to intervene to try to save him. And why else would Gen Zia find it prudent to decorate Desai with Pakistan’s highest civilian award? This was not a stand-alone feature of the times; rather it was part of a series of political earthquakes that resulted from a huge backlash triggered by America’s defeat in Vietnam.
In the play itself, Bhutto is heard recalling in a speech to the National Assembly, the tragedy of Salvador Allende in Chile. The Cold War’s chess game in Iran, Afghanistan, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh too had begun around the same period.After the United States won that war with unexpected ease, the consolidation seen by Ali in 1985 should only be more complete than before. This is perhaps why India, one of America’s most important assets after the Cold War, and which is supposedly spearheading a global democracy project with Washington, has not said a word on the second exile of Nawaz Sharif. But equally true, that the tussle between the leopard and the fox will continue to move towards the evasive denouement. For that’s the nature of the beast.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/jawed/20070920.htm