A drama to beat all dramas

TO the hidden hands of this dispensation must fall the glory of staging and directing from behind the scenes a brilliant piece of theatre which at least temporarily has drawn attention away from other problems.

Although, as this drama reached its climax it dissolved into outright ridicule -- when one of its central characters, Maulana Abdul Aziz, was caught while trying to flee from the scene in a burqa -- it has still managed to upstage other issues like the on-going saga in the Supreme Court and the All Parties Conference set to begin in London on Saturday.

Two relatively unknown maulvis -- Aziz and his smooth-talking younger brother, Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi -- catapulted to international stardom while this drama lasted goes to show the sure touch and directorial ability of our backstage players.

Hand it to them though for turning out to be superb comic actors. Vowing martyrdom and suicide bombings and God knows what, their rhetoric and threats were so effective that it was generally believed that short of a pitched battle they would not be evicted from their mosque and seminary (transformed over the last couple of years into a fortress, under the benign eye of the Musharraf administration).

When the end came it was a tragedy turning to farce as Maulana Aziz, the head cleric, surrounded by a crowd of girl students, disguised himself in a burqa in an attempt to get out. Even the best of Hollywood directors would have been hard put to round off this drama with such an ending.

Although Pakistan has never been short of jokers (both military and civilian), when it comes to the comic arts, secular politicians are no match for their religious brethren. Consider Maulana Fazlur Rahman. Can any secular politician come close to matching his antics? Now this bravura performance in burqa by Maulana Aziz of Lal Masjid.

What to make of Maulana Aziz’s questioning, or rather grilling, on Pakistan Television after his arrest? He looked tired and done in as if deprived of sleep. He accepted many things (such as the possession of illicit arms) and his humiliation was plain to see because he was still wearing the burqa in which he had attempted to flee. (At the time of writing these lines, his brother, Maulana Rashid, was still holed up in the Lal Masjid).

It can be safely assumed that the government will milk this ‘triumph’ for all it is worth, portraying it as another victory against ‘extremism’. Gen Musharraf receives a shot in the arm. The image he has cultivated in the West of being the last bulwark in Pakistan against the rising tide of Talibanisation will be further strengthened. On CNN on Wednesday evening this was the line being peddled -- that Musharraf was performing an important role against extremism.

If more blood had been spilt, if Lal Masjid had turned into a nightmare, something like Mrs Gandhi’s assault on the Golden Temple, it would have been a different matter. But the maulvis, their strings pulled by God alone knows whom, saw to it that their valour did not match their thunder. As such, they have played into the government’s hands. After six months of unadulterated disaster (in Islamabad disaster going by the name of ‘mishandling’), finally some good news for Pakistan’s embattled general. He badly needed a triumph, no matter what the cost. He has got one. Other problems -- the judicial crisis, plans for a phony election -- will not disappear. But for the time being they have been pushed on to the backburner. Unless I am seeing ghosts in the shadows and blowing things out of proportion, this episode, and its denouement, could even have an effect on the proceedings in the Supreme Court.

For, let us not forget that of all the buildings in Islamabad, the Supreme Court is the most sensitive to the weather outside. If the lawyers of Pakistan had not been up in arms, Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohamad Chaudhry would have been history long ago. Like Maulana Aziz now, and Dr A. Q. Khan some time ago, he might even have had to appear on television to confess to his ‘sins’. (To all appearances, in the Musharraf republic one of the conditions of mercy is an abject appearance on television.) But if this hasn’t happened, it’s only because of the weather outside.

But the basic question is somewhat different. It is not enough to ask why the Lal Masjid brothers were trying to run a state within a state, or why they were taking the law into their hands. They had no business to do either but that’s hardly the point. Why were they allowed to take the law into their hands? Who set them up as moral vigilantes? Who allowed them, or facilitated them, to carry on their charade for so long?

We have seen how when the government made its intent clear: Maulana Aziz was transformed almost immediately from a leader of jihad to a comic star. Why did the government get serious only now? Why was it biding its time since January when girl students from the Jamia Hafsa seized the Children’s Library?

Granted that the Red Mosque brigade went a step too far when they raided a purported massage parlour and took several Chinese nationals into custody. But how did these vigilantes arrive at that point of confidence where they could contemplate such a step? The Musharraf government has moved heaven and earth, and in the process made a fool of itself, to take care of a troublesome Chief Justice. But for six months it allowed a bunch of bearded vigilantes to run amok and make a mockery of the state. Why?

So what was really going on? Beset on all sides by different problems, did the government simply sleepwalk its way into this mess? Or were hidden hands playing the Red Mosque brothers and pushing them to a point where they could be dealt with in such a manner as to bring maximum advantage to the government?

Cynicism abounds and it is only reinforced by the impeccable timing of the Lal Masjid Brigade’s exploits. Whenever the Chief Justice’s case in the Supreme Court took a serious turn, the Ghazi brothers could almost be counted upon to come up with a diversionary exercise. On their own or at someone’s bidding?

Even now, this crisis came to a head only a day after the government’s lawyers made complete idiots of themselves in the Supreme Court by filing documents against the Chief Justice which the court found so scandalous that it threw them out and penalised the advocate-on-record held responsible for the filing. Bigger heads should have rolled because the idea of filing these documents was someone else’s. But that’s a different subject.

Cynicism can also be measured by another circumstance. While there is not an ounce of public sympathy for the vigilantism of the Red Mosque brigade, there is not an ounce of sympathy for the government either. Indeed, a poll would probably show that the Ghazi brothers and Gen Musharraf share about the same degree of public suspicion and disapproval.

Civilian governments in Pakistan are much maligned. Part of the military’s cleverly-spread credo is that civilian governments are incompetent and that in their hands the ‘national interest’ (whatever this means from time to time) is never safe. A civilian government -- Benazir Bhutto’s or Nawaz Sharif’s -- would never have allowed this mess to grow in the first place. The Ghazi brothers would never have been given so much rope.

The West seems not to understand that religious extremism in Pakistan is a product of military rule. Gen Zia promoted this phenomenon. Gen Musharraf has sought to profit from it by presenting himself as an ‘enlightened’ alternative.

The cause of ‘enlightenment’ would be served by a return to democracy. But who’s interested in democracy? Stuck in Iraq and now in Afghanistan, the United States wants an ever-compliant ally in Islamabad. Musharraf fits this bill. That is why the US has no interest in seeing him go.

Does this mean that we are stuck with an ageing dispensation? This should be for the people of Pakistan to decide, but are they capable enough of exercising this right? This question, above all others, remains to be decided in what promises to be a seminal year in the history of Pakistan.

http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/ayaz.htm

London: worth it or a waste of time?

By Ayaz Amir

THINGS to do with Pakistani politics, especially the grand knights who pass for its leading figures, are best viewed from a distance. At close quarters they are all too likely to induce morbidity and depression. The beat of distant drums: always more impressive.

It has to be said that there is no cure yet known to medical science for Pakistan’s disease of verbosity. If only Gen Musharraf was given to excessive talking (in his nearly eight years in power he has set new standards on this score) it would be a problem that could still be handled. But the disease runs across the spectrum.

Place a mike before a Pakistani politico, or put him on television, and Polonius’s dictum about brevity being the soul of wit will be stood on its head. Our poets can encapsulate large truths in few words; not, for the life of them, our politicos. So it proved at the All Parties Conference at the Gloucester Millennium Hotel in Central London. The speeches could have been better focused and they could have been shorter.

Instead of reliving past battles — as over the 17th Constitutional Amendment and the response to the killing of Nawab Bugti — democracy’s cause would have been better served if the paladins there assembled had remained focused on how to prevent Pakistan’s current military redeemer (fourth in a line which doesn’t seem to end) from getting himself ‘re-elected’ by the present soon-to-be-dead assemblies.

This and no other is the central question of our politics today. Other issues, including that of general elections and how best to fight them, come later. Do the opposition parties have a plan regarding this central question? If they do, it is a closely guarded secret.

Smothered in the text of the wordy resolution (it could easily have been cut by half) passed by the conference was a weak paragraph affirming the intent of the parties to resist the generalissimo’s ‘re-election’ by the present assemblies by all means at their disposal, including resignations.

What other means at their disposal do they have? The only weapon in their armoury is quitting the assemblies, thus dealing a fatal blow to Musharraf’s electoral college. But if the resolution was not more categorical on this point, it merely reflected the differing priorities of the bigger parties.

Among them only the PML-N ploughs a hard and uncompromising line — as well it might because it is out in the cold and it is the one party, for reasons well known, that cannot come to any arrangement with Gen Musharraf.

The MMA’s holy fathers, especially Maulana Fazlur Rahman, on the other hand, have a huge stake in this dispensation, enjoying the kind of importance they have never had before. Would they sacrifice it for the sake of abstruse arguments?

The holy fathers realise that if Musharraf goes, the major beneficiaries will be the larger parties and not them. Why should they then be the foot-soldiers in a campaign whose fruits fall into other laps? So while for the sake of appearances they make the right noises about democracy, they take good care not to be carried away by their own rhetoric.

One has to hand it to Maulana Fazlur Rahman for being a smart politician. He is seldom at a loss for words and so it was at the APC, although you could tell that even at his most vociferous he kept his options wide open.

The PPP seemed to be a study in embarrassment. Its delegates led by the hapless Makhdoom Amin Fahim were not their own masters, having constantly to check with their leader who was in Paris before agreeing to anything. Sherry Rehman, now very much the PPP’s English-speaking Nahid Khan (the original Nahid Khan more at home in vernacular things) was constantly fiddling with her elegant laptop, perhaps (unless I am grossly mistaken) sending e-mails to her boss about what was transpiring.

If the PPP’s aim was to keep things confused and uncertain, it succeeded because the wishy-washiness of the resolution owes as much to its studied ambivalence as to any confusion in the minds of the drafters.

The PPP’s greatest uneasiness was about the proviso of resigning from the assemblies. It wanted the words “the option of resignations” instead of plain resignations. This generated much backroom heat and anguish, and no doubt frenzied communications with the Mohtarma in Paris.

While these parleys were on a PML-N leader (whom I will not name) whispered into my ear that something “major” (or did he say dramatic?) was about to be agreed upon, his manner virtually suggesting that a new communist manifesto — calling upon the people of Pakistan to unite and assuring them that they had nothing to lose but their chains — was about to be signed.

At last the word “options” was struck out, leaving the PML-N delegates looking triumphant. It gives a good idea of someone’s plight when such straws are clutched for comfort.

Did the opposition parties have to travel all the way to London to advertise not so much their differences as their lack of resolve and purpose? In the event, what the conference highlighted were: the PPP’s readiness for a deal with the generals, Maulana Fazlur Rahman’s cleverness (whose skill must be applauded in running simultaneously with the government and the opposition), and the PML-N’s desperation for something (anything ) with which to hit the general and his government.

Small wonder, the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy, which throughout its fraught existence was hard put to show that it had caused a single leaf to stir, is dead, unable to withstand these convulsions. Question is: when was it ever alive? Its death now is a death many times postponed.

On Wednesday afternoon this death was formalised when Amin Fahim walked out of a meeting of APC heads, the pretext probably that the PPP could not sit with the MMA. As I was writing these lines a new alliance was announced, All Pakistan Democratic Movement, its convenor Raja Zafarul Haq, once upon a time hailed by General Zia (this was prior to the 1985 elections) as his “opening batsman”. Let me not say anything more as Raja Zafarul Haq is a friend.

At the press conference following the announcement of the new alliance, Maulana Fazlur Rahman was asked whether the MMA would quit the Balochistan government. His answer was vintage Fazlur Rahman. It was for us to determine, he said, whether being in that government would hinder the MMA from playing a vanguard role in the struggle for democracy. In other words: none of your business.

Nawaz Sharif’s problem is acute. He is sitting in London whereas the battlefield today is Pakistan. What he awaits is a miracle which somehow, sweeping aside all obstacles, takes him to Pakistan. Barring that miracle he chews the cud of disappointment. This prompts the question whether the fateful decision taken in 2000 to leave the country has been expiated in full? If only it was that easy to escape the consequences of one’s actions.

One comparison must be made. Compare the lack of focus and direction of Pakistan’s politicians with the extraordinary unity and clarity of the lawyers’ movement and it needs no genius to figure out why our political elite has lost credibility and the lawyers’ movement has come to command respect. The lawyers have done not only what they could but more than anyone thought them capable of.

Their movement and the example set by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry gave the country an opening, for the first time in seven and a half years putting Musharraf on the defensive. It was for Pakistan’s democratic forces to exploit this opening and turn it into a breach. In proving themselves incapable of anything of the kind they may have missed their moment.

Another opposition alliance, another anodyne resolution: could any yawn be bigger than this? People in Pakistan were expecting a clear call for action. What they have been treated to is a picture of more confusion and vacillation. As so often before, the political elite has let down the interests it purports to represent.

But the lawyers’ movement is still alive and the Supreme Court has still to deliver its verdict in Justice Chaudhry’s case. So perhaps all is not lost. If the political leadership has created a vacuum it is mistaken if it thinks no one will step forward to fill it.


http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/ayaz.htm

__________________
Time is like a river.
You cannot touch the same water twice,
because the flow that has passed will never pass again.
Enjoy every moment of life.

I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.

Their lordships at the bar of history

By Ayaz Amir
I AM writing this on Thursday morning when Aitzaz Ahsan, lead counsel for Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, is on his legs giving his final arguments in this most consequential of cases. When will the decision come? I don’t know, perhaps today (Friday). Time then to sum up some of its leading aspects.

In the 60 years of our tumultuous and mostly star-crossed history, nothing of greater importance has ever come before the Supreme Court. Other famous cases in the past – Tamizuddin, Dosso, Nusrat Bhutto, etc – helped legitimise one martial law after another. In doing so, the highest court in the land became a party to the twisting and distorting of our history, helping to turn Pakistan into a congenial playground for civil and military dictatorships.

In this case alone has the opportunity arisen to mend that history by putting a rein and bridle on military adventurism. For the central issue in it is not just about the person of Justice Chaudhry and the treatment he received when he defied the wishes of Army House, the source of so much of Pakistan’s many discontents.

It is about something far greater: whether Pakistan’s destiny – and this was put well by Fakhruddin Ebrahim, one of the lawyers defending the Chief Justice – is to be ruled by the power of the gun or the power of the law.

On their lordships’ shoulders thus rests a heavy burden. That their decision is set to enter the pages of our history goes without saying. But whether it will be remembered for good or ill depends upon them and their judgment and courage.

But some prognosis is justified. The government case, always resting on the flimsiest of grounds, has been torn into shreds. Aitzaz Ahsan has been brilliant and resolute throughout. Indeed, the Chief Justice’s entire defence team, including Munir Malik, Hamid Khan, Tariq Mahmood, fiery Ali Ahmed Kurd, has acquitted itself well. More glory to them all. Ebrahim I have already mentioned.

By contrast, Gen Musharraf’s legal team has cut a sorry figure. Sharifuddin Pirzada, permanent counsel to tinpot heroes past and present, was scarcely in his element, which is not surprising considering that he has always been at his best before courts of his choosing. Most of the talking on Gen Musharraf’s behalf was done by Malik Qayyum, a reflection in itself on what his team was reduced to.

As a judge of the Lahore High Court, Qayyum was the most loyal of judges to the Sharif family, all their family cases somehow finding their way to his court. Later when some compromising audiotapes became public he had to step down from his judgeship. The legal fortunes of Army House reduced to Qayyum and, for a while, to that deadliest of blunderbusses, Raza Kasuri. Says it all, doesn’t it?

The government side also had to endure the ignominy of having to withdraw the charge of misconduct from the reference against the Chief Justice. As Justice Jillani sitting on the bench observed: what was then left in the reference?

So it will be the greatest of surprises if the steps set in motion by Army House against the Chief Justice are not reversed and the Chief Justice is not restored to his post.

What will this mean for the country? We know the stuff our tinpot leadership, for all its outward heroic air, is made of. Wilting under pressure is to put it mildly. The restoration of the Chief Justice, if indeed that comes about, will be a psychological blow further undermining its already shaken confidence and composure.

But the issue in this case, as already stated, goes beyond personalities. Whatever the Supreme Court’s decision may be, this is the first time in our history that the arbitrariness of authority has come under judicial scrutiny. For three months and more, a military-led dispensation has had to endure the humiliation of having to answer for a misdeed. Such acts were never questioned before, certainly not in the Supreme Court. So whatever the outcome, history in some sense has already been made.

And all because of two primary factors: (1) the courage shown by Chief Justice Chaudhry who instead of bowing before military authority chose to stand up to it; (2) the extraordinary fortitude and unity of the legal fraternity which rose to the Chief Justice’s defence and started a movement against the military-led regime which in the steadfastness shown has few parallels in our history.

Left to himself the authorities would have made mincemeat of the Chief Justice, humiliating him and seeing to it that his deposition was upheld. Of this we should have little doubt. If Qadeer Khan, our Oppenheimer, could be humiliated, what was so special about Iftikhar Chaudhry? In those circumstances, it is not too far-fetched to imagine, even the Supreme Court would have deserted him, such being the calculus of power, and the power of precedent, in our collective experience.

But if events turned out differently it is solely because the lawyers of Pakistan – not the most well-fed or the most heavily-pursed, it must be said, most of whom kept away from this struggle, but ordinary lawyers.

They are the heroes of this struggle, they and the people of Pakistan who supported them, turning out in huge numbers to welcome the Chief Justice wherever he went, indeed showering him with more rose petals than it has been the lot of anyone to receive in this country. Such is the power of example. Justice Chaudhry said no and the people acclaimed him as their hero. Unless I am grossly mistaken, he is the single most popular person in Pakistan today.

This is where this case has broken new ground. Previously, from Tamizuddin onwards, the judiciary was all by itself, no one aroused, no one rushing to the barricades. As such, bowing to expediency seemed to be the sensible thing to do. Instead of challenging the generals, judges became their collaborators. Usurpation was no sooner set in motion than it was given the fig leaf of respectability by the judiciary. As for the legal community, some of Pakistan’s best lawyers found themselves in the service of military rule.

This time things were different. The atmosphere, as has been noted, was completely transformed. It is from this atmosphere that the judiciary has drawn strength. If the Supreme Court has been able to examine this case judiciously, and with patience, it is because of the climate outside.

We know how quickly, and with what glee, Justice Javaid Iqbal took oath as acting chief justice. We also know with what alacrity the Supreme Judicial Council endorsed Gen Musharraf’s action against the Chief Justice. The tide began to turn with the lawyers’ revolt and, later, with Justice Bhagwandas (who was away on holiday at the time) taking over as acting chief justice from the prematurely-happy Javaid Iqbal. I think it will take us some time to realise the debt we owe Bhagwandas.

As for Justice Ramday, what a pillar of calm and assurance he has been, conducting the proceedings with great composure and, often, much wit. Without him, I suspect, we might have seen a fractious bench, pulling in different directions. So it is scarcely surprising if for once people at large are hopeful, instead of cynical, about an impending decision of the Supreme Court. Long may it be this way.

So we can see where we are. Never were circumstances more favourable for the judiciary to stand up for its rights and the rule of law. It is for their lordships to read these signs across the skies. It is for them to inscribe their names in letters of gold in Pakistan’s often unhappy history.

Pakistan’s future hinges on the triumph of constitutionalism and democracy. The extremism we see erupting across the country is a product of years and years of military rule, jihad being a card which GHQ has played from one army chief to another. Only now the chickens are coming home to roost. Pakistan can know no peace unless the army does what it is supposed to do instead of doing that for which it is wholly unfit.

Terrorism will flourish as long as the military rules the country and as long as the military remains shackled to American interests. Just as Iraq was not a hotbed of terrorism before but thanks to the American invasion and occupation has become a seething cauldron of violence, our tribal areas were peaceful and no soldiers had ever to be stationed in their difficult terrain. Now thanks to American dictation, the army has been pushed to performing tasks that left to itself it would never have taken up.

Any decision of the Supreme Court’s will not bring an end to these follies. But the empowering of the judiciary if Justice Iftikhar is restored will ensure some small counterweight to military adventurism. This is an outcome devoutly to be wished for.

http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/ayaz.htm

__________________
Time is like a river.
You cannot touch the same water twice,
because the flow that has passed will never pass again.
Enjoy every moment of life.

I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.

Depart gently into the night

By Ayaz Amir
AT our first lesson in live grenade-throwing in the Pakistan Military Academy, Kakul, we were asked a simple question. What if, inadvertently, a live grenade, its pin pulled out and therefore about to explode in a few seconds, fell from somebody’s hand by mistake?

We gave different answers but the correct one was that, sacrificing yourself, you fell on the grenade, covering it with your body, to save the lives of your comrades.

That was more important than trying to save your own life. Capt (later Brigadier) Shahid Aziz, our platoon commander, could have said “…more important than trying to save your miserable little skin.” He did not but his meaning was obvious. Why do soldiers sacrifice their lives in battle? For something called honour, for the sake of country, etc. Whatever name you put on it, it is always for something larger than one’s self.

Consider then a commander-in-chief, a chief of men (with apologies to Cromwell who was called by this title), if his heart and mind are bent only on his self-preservation, the larger good, the collective good, not figuring in his calculation at all. Wouldn’t be considered much of a chief of men, would he?

What does this nation want? A predictable system of government based on the Constitution and the rule of law; a measure of self-respect so that the Pakistani people could take some pride in being Pakistanis; and an end to foreign — for which read American — dictation.

The people of Pakistan have no exaggerated idea of their country’s importance. National megalomania was perhaps once their failing, not any more. Even so, to the extent possible, they want to be their own masters. They want to settle the problems of Waziristan, etc, their own way, not according to how the United States tells them. Indeed, by now they are heartily sick of a government which gyrates to foreign music.

But what does our chief of men want? He wants to be Pakistan’s Hosni Mobarak, or like a ruler of one of the Gulf states, going on and on forever, no matter what the cost to the nation.

Parallel tracks, incompatible aims: the nation’s interest at variance with personal ambition, indeed at war with it. Army House is looking out only for itself. No danger in those hallowed precincts of anyone falling on a primed grenade.

Will this approach work? Consider the nation’s mood which is a long way off from it what it was eight years ago. Across the country (try this out in any bazaar conversation) people no longer evince much patience for the sham called military democracy. They have had enough of it and want to move on, especially now that My Lord the Chief Justice and the lawyers of Pakistan, more power and glory to them, have showed them a different road.

The 13-member Supreme Court bench headed by Lord Justice Ramday (whose name posterity will remember) has served the nation well. At last, after so long, the people of Pakistan have something to be proud of. The promised land is still far away but dictatorship has been dealt a blow, such a blow as it has not received before, and the people of Pakistan are full of hope (without which nothing is possible).

In the process a new iconography has been born. Pakistan’s new heroes are Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, Justice Rana Bhagwandas (to whom we owe a lot), Justice Ramday and his fellow judges, their lordships of the Sindh, Peshawar and Lahore High Courts who rallied to the CJ’s defence, judges who resigned in protest, the CJ’s lawyers, Munir Malik, Kurd et al, and Aitzaz. This is the new aristocracy ennobled in the eyes of the Pakistani nation.

Aitzaz, always well known, has risen so much in stature because of his advocacy in this case that his party leader, Benazir Bhutto, is finding it difficult to pronounce his name. Newspaper rumour has it that she is even in two minds about awarding him a party ticket for the forthcoming elections. Oh dear. Apart from women scorned, hell, it seems, also hath no fury like a Mohtarma caught in the coils of envy.

But I digress. As I was saying, the nation is in no mood to put up any longer with Army House-controlled democracy. Speaking for the bar, Munir Malik has already announced that after examining the detailed judgment when it comes, the Supreme Court Bar Association will challenge the general’s ‘re-election’ (when was he elected?) by the present soon-to-expire assemblies.

So the lines are being drawn. What then is to be done?

The judiciary has redeemed its honour, washing away the sins of the last 50 years. What about other institutions? One of the tasks of Hercules was to wash the Augean stables. The army’s stables can also do with some high-powered washing.

Time was when ordinary people respected the army. I say this with a heavy heart: respect has given way to harsher feelings. All because of one man rule which has harmed Pakistan and damaged the army.

How is lost respect to be recovered? By closing the gulf which has opened up between the army and the people. This is possible only if the army learns to respect the Constitution instead of seeing itself put at the service of personal ambition.

In the PMA we were also taught another thing. Honest mistakes, however serious, could always be forgiven (especially if someone owned up to them) but no forgiveness, none whatsoever, could there be for two things: lying and cheating. Before becoming an officer, a cadet had to be a gentleman and a gentleman, we were told, did not lie or cheat.

Officers don’t take an oath to serve one-man rule. Their oath is to defend the country and the Constitution. Lost respect won’t be recovered if this is not kept in mind.

As for the political parties, in the maze of which forest are they lost? Maulana Fazlur Rahman (Maulana Diesel to his fans) while living up to his reputation of being a juggler, is throwing too many balls into the air. At the All Parties Conference in London I don’t know what seized him when he criticised the Chief Justice, saying that he could cut a deal with Musharraf and leave everyone stranded. What a thing to say!

The Maulana was probably looking at his own face in the mirror and judging the Chief Justice by that. And this was the man who kissed the Chief Justice’s hand when he first appeared before the Supreme Judicial Council.

And Benazir Bhutto? The one overriding passion ruling her seems to be to somehow get rid of the money-laundering cases hanging over her head, to achieve which aim she seems ready for anything, even a bargain with the devil, which is what a deal with the powers-that-be in these circumstances amounts to. Does she want this perception to grow? The legacy of Bhutto reduced to this. What a pity.

As for the Sharifs, what’s still keeping them in London is a puzzle waiting to be solved. If they want to seize the moment, they will have to make up their minds soon about returning to Pakistan – whether by plane to Peshawar or by motor launch to Gwadar. Only when their plans are firmed up and they are actually returning to the country should they approach the Supreme Court for protection, not before. Politicians must fight their own battles, as the lawyers fought theirs.

Dictators, even of the tinpot kind, don’t quit just like that. They cling to power until the bitter end hoping for some miracle to save them. How do they change their minds? How do they start thinking of ‘exit strategies’? When the national mood turns ugly and people are roused to action, as lawyers were roused to action by the deposition of the Chief Justice.

By any objective standard, Gen Musharraf has not been much of a leader in war (remember Kargil) or peace (look at the last eight years). But as his time comes to an end, he can do the nation a favour by realising that the play is up and the curtains have come down. Let him not go raging into the night. For once Pakistan can do with a gentle transition.

http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/ayaz.htm

__________________
Time is like a river.
You cannot touch the same water twice,
because the flow that has passed will never pass again.
Enjoy every moment of life.

I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.

Movement: Phase Two

By Ayaz Amir
GEN Musharraf’s election from these assemblies, soon on the verge of expiring, is the great trick being contemplated against the people of Pakistan. To pull it off, the Daughter of the East (darling of the West) has allowed herself to be harnessed to the presidential chariot.

It’s a great scheme. The Generalissimo gets to save his skin while Mohtarma gets rid of the corruption (and money-laundering) cases she faces in God knows which courts of which countries.

But, pray, what makes the two think anyone will allow them to get away with this? In which fools’ paradise are they living? Don’t they realise the seasons have changed in Pakistan?

Granted Pakistan’s political parties, most of them, are well nigh useless. If the last eight years have shown anything it is their total bankruptcy. Ghazis of rhetoric – guftar key ghazi – they have proven themselves slaves to inaction. It is a futile endeavour to look for clarity of mind or honesty of purpose in the cesspools surrounding them.

But there is a brave new world emerging beyond the political parties. The vacuum created by them is being filled by other forces: lawyers, civil society activists, and, yes, the media, now a power to be reckoned with by would-be redeemers and saviours. Musharraf wanted to have his way with the Chief Justice (CJ), wanting to bend him to his will. How bitterly he has been frustrated, by the strength of the lawyers’ movement (behind which stood the people of Pakistan), and the historic decision of the bench headed by Lord Justice Ramday and his fellow judges, their names forever honoured in our history.

Who is Gen Musharraf now trying to fool by saying that he always had good relations with My Lord Justice Iftikhar? Are we supposed to be taken in by this declaration of innocence? As Dr Ajmal Niazi asks in his Nawai Waqt column (by the way, a must read these days) where were these good relations when the CJ was being pushed around and held by the head on March 13?

As he further observes, this sentiment (about good relations) was delivered in a tone one wouldn’t use for those with whom one had bad relations.

Good if the belated realisation has dawned that fences should be mended with the CJ and, more importantly, with the Supreme Court as a whole. We need to turn over a new leaf and move on instead of re-fighting old battles. But turning a new leaf should not be about the revival of social contacts. To mean anything it should mean putting arbitrary conduct aside and, for a change, respecting the Constitution.

If Army House, even this late in the day, forgoes scheming and learns to do things according to the Constitution, the people of Pakistan, collectively, will heave a sigh of relief and friction between Army House and the Supreme Court, if there is any, will disappear. But if the intention is still to play tricks with the Constitution, soothing words about good relations are likely to be viewed as another exercise in deception and hypocrisy.

However weak and fragile Pakistan may look on the surface – and military rule has done nothing to correct this perception – Pakistan deep down is strong and resilient enough to deal, in its own fashion, with almost anything, Al Qaeda and the Taliban included. What it can’t deal with any more is five more years of Musharrafian democracy. That will really do this country in.

Doesn’t it tell us something about this government that India, in the person of its National Security Adviser, M. K. Narayanan, so eagerly issues it a certificate of commendation? Narayanan says that after the judicial crisis the worst is over for the Musharraf regime and that India is ready to keep on doing business with it. As well it might, this being the most India-friendly government in Pakistan’s history.

The United States and India want this government to survive. The people of Pakistan perhaps have different priorities.

So the divorce from reality on the part of both Musharraf and Benazir couldn’t be greater, for they don’t seem to realise that if this summer’s events have proved anything it is that Pakistan, for all its failings, is no one’s private estate, not any more.

Times have changed. The post-March 9 movement was a watershed. As Aitzaz Ahsan rightly points out, and as Munir Malik lets no opportunity go by without making the same point, that the moment Musharraf announces that he is going to the present assemblies for another five-year presidential term, lawyers, backed by civil society, will come out on the roads once again, pushing the country into the throes of another agitation.

The responsibility for that will be on Musharraf’s shoulders. For all the good these assemblies have done, they have lost the right to exist. Not one soul in Pakistan, not even the members themselves, takes them seriously. What right do they have to foist Gen Musharraf on Pakistan for five more years? No greater mockery of the Constitution is conceivable. Yet this is what the Musharraf-Benazir deal is all about: self-interest triumphing over every other consideration.

The people of Pakistan may be guilty of many things – none greater than tolerating some of the biggest humbugs on the planet – but they don’t deserve what they have: military saviours who refuse to fade away even when their time is up; paladins of democracy eager to jump aboard sinking vessels; holy fathers dedicated to the cult of hypocrisy (amongst them, a Maulana Bluff-and-Diesel more slippery than an eel); and down south in Karachi a breed of fascism hailed by the powers-that-be as a model of respectability.

If it were up to these humbugs, we would be lost. But the legal community and the higher judiciary, civil society as a whole, newspapers and television channels – now come into their own – give the country hope.

Musharraf may be desperate about his future but that’s his problem not anyone else’s. The nation’s problem is the unrest likely to sweep the country if he insists on going to these assemblies for longevity and deliverance. The last straw and after it who knows what.

There is disquiet within the PPP itself. But the PPP has fostered a culture of sycophancy and absolute docility, to the point where questions may be asked of Musharraf in the Corps Commanders’ Conference but not of Benazir within her party. So no fears of any mass revolt in that quarter.

But there is also uneasiness within the ranks of Musharraf’s own supporters. Afraid of the future, they are feeling betrayed, some even thinking of jumping ship and moving to safer havens (the PPP or the PML-N).

And what will become of this deal if the Sharifs return or are said to be returning? The Supreme Court has already been moved in this regard. As this case proceeds, the consternation within the Q League can be imagined. Even as Musharraf courts new allies, his old ones are getting the jitters.

America’s war in Afghanistan is already burning us. We don’t want to be another Cambodia sucked into an alien conflict. A great responsibility devolves on the army, the second of our national institutions, (the first being the people of Pakistan). It must bid farewell to politics, so as to give undivided attention to its primary and real duty of national defence. ‘Unity of command’ chants the Gen-in-chief. What kind of unity of command is it when the army hasn’t had a full-time chief since Oct ’99?

Pakistan needs stability, not turmoil. Musharraf may still have a role to play but not if he insists on inventing his own rules rather than abiding by the Constitution.

He can either be another Yahya Khan presiding over another cataclysm or he can still be remembered kindly as the bridge to a peaceful transition. The choice is his but the clock is ticking fast. Some basic decisions will have to be taken fairly soon.

http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/ayaz.htm

__________________
Time is like a river.
You cannot touch the same water twice,
because the flow that has passed will never pass again.
Enjoy every moment of life.

I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.

What price such a liability?

By Ayaz Amir
EMERGENCY, martial law, election in uniform, election from these assemblies, no return of Nawaz Sharif, a deal with Benazir on Gen Musharraf’s terms, general elections to suit the general’s convenience: this is the nonsense that Pakistan faces. And all because of one man and his paranoid desire to cling to power, no matter what the consequences. A fine gift to the country on its 60th birthday.

On a sinking ship any captain with a semblance of honour and sense of duty is first concerned about the safety of his passengers and crew. He is the last man to leave the ship. In our case this concept of honour has been turned on its head. A helmsman for eight years, not satisfied that he has been around for so long, is concerned only about himself. His ship is sinking but he wants everyone to go down with him.

This has nothing to do with the Constitution, or the 17th Amendment or any other legal document. This is megalomania pure and simple (my dictionary defining megalomania thus: obsession with the exercise of power…delusion about one’s own power or importance, typically as a symptom of manic or paranoid disorder).

It is also akin to Hitler’s mental condition in his bunker as the Red Army closed in, determined to take the German nation down with him. That is why he ordered a ‘scorched earth’ policy, the destruction of everything, including basic infrastructure, the last embers of his anger not so much against his enemies as against his own people who he felt had not been strong or Aryan enough to prevail against the odds. (A good thing for Germany his orders weren’t carried out.)

Wounded, stricken, paralysed…we are running out of words and metaphors to describe this dispensation in its last throes. No one has cornered or paralysed Pakistan’s imitation Cromwell. He has brought all this on himself – the author of his own misfortunes, his powers of imagination circumscribed by his fears.

He feels he is riding a tiger and will be devoured if he gets down. This is wrong imagery. We are a forgiving nation. We did nothing to Yayha Khan, who presided over Pakistan’s biggest disgrace. Nothing ever happened to that other military hero, Lt Gen Amir Abdullah Khan ‘Tiger’ Niazi, who surrendered to Jagjit Singh Aurora in Dhaka’s Race Course Ground. The tiger and his riding are only in Musharraf’s imagination.

Provided he can bring himself to trust the Constitution, provided even at this late stage he can think of something beyond his survival, he can still play a role in the transition from this wretched halfway house, betwixt military authoritarianism and democracy, to something more closely resembling democracy. But how do you treat a victim of his own fears? About ‘wehm’ or nameless suspicions it is said even the great Hakim Luqman had no cure.

Musharraf wants everything tailor-made to his fears. He wants to remain army chief. He wants to become president for another five years while still retaining his army position. He wants to be elected by these assemblies when their own tenures are about to finish. He wants general elections in which his allies are assured of victory. He wants to keep Nawaz Sharif out of the political arena. He wants to cut a deal with Benazir on his terms.

A thousand desires, each more pressing than the other. Alas, the time for them is past. For seven and a half years Pakistan lay at Musharraf’s feet. I do not exaggerate: he did as he pleased. The holy fathers danced to his tune and gave him the 17th Amendment, parliament was a rubber stamp and political parties were supine. Things have changed.

March 9 happened when Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry stood up to military diktat. Then May 12 when the MQM, trying to be more loyal than the king, overplayed its hand in Karachi, leading to the killing of move than 40 people. Then July 20, when the Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Ramday wrote judicial history by declaring invalid all the steps taken against the Chief Justice. This was the first such reverse suffered by a military ruler in Pakistan’s history.

The republic we await is yet far away. But something has happened. The Pakistani nation was so demoralised it had even stopped dreaming. That gift if nothing else now stands restored.

In this new mood the people of Pakistan won’t put up with such things as the imposition of emergency. As for martial law, the last option of tinpot patriarchs in the terminal stages of distress, its first casualty will be Musharraf, and its second the army when it shoulders the onus of a move bound to be reviled across the political and social spectrum.

This has not been a good period for the army’s standing with the Pakistani public. We don’t need this gulf to widen. And Pakistan can do without sinking to the level of Myanmar.

Lord in heaven, after 60 years of existence still stuck at the beginning, still trying to figure out our first steps. Don’t we deserve better than this? Was this the land of hope and freedom envisaged by Iqbal and Jinnah – a playground to some of the most incompetent straw-packed heroes it has been the lot of any Third World country to endure?

Top brass stacked with favourites, the criterion for promotion these past eight years loyalty rather than competence in the field. Look at the Vice Chief: a veritable replica of Genghis Khan. A good thing any test of arms is the last thing on the general staff’s mind, otherwise the kind of steeped-in-politics command we have right now would be hard put to maintain its own in the field.

Of what use our eastern cantonments? Time to dismantle them and turn them into defence housing colonies. Will F-16s and a new GHQ make us look better and more respected in the comity of nations? As for our nuke capability, for all the good it is doing us, the time may have come to hawk it as high-grade scrap on the international market.

The stupid games we play and have been playing for the last 60 years. The imposition of emergency for what? To save Pakistan or save someone’s skin? Pakistan will be saved and preserved by its people, not for the next ten years but a thousand years.

The space for freedom acquired over the last six months is a gift from no one. It has been won by the spirit and doughtiness of the Pakistani people: Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, Justice Rana Bhagwandas, the judges’ bench headed by Justice Ramday, the judges who resigned and those who showed solidarity with the judicial movement, the lawyers of Pakistan in the forefront of this movement, the leadership of the bar led by Munir Malik, the lawyers who defended the Chief Justice, especially Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan, Kurd who set the movement alight with his oratory, activists of political parties, ordinary people of this country who in their thousands greeted the Chief Justice.

Let me not forget Javed Hashmi who manfully endured prison and on his release by the Supreme Court has received a hero’s welcome. He speaks now in a language marked by conviction and seriousness.

Did the people of Pakistan do all this so as to endure another round of dictatorship? The future beckons. The Supreme Court is hearing the petition of Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif regarding their return to the country. The government is already afraid – afraid of the tumult sure to arise when the Sharifs finally return. The lawyers are gearing up to challenge any move to get Musharraf ‘reelected’ by these assemblies. The Q League is frightened and its leadership does not know what to do.

The country is reaching out to the future, bracing for change. There could be no greater sign of weakness or failure than the imposition of emergency. The generalissimo on more than one occasion has pooh-poohed this idea. Is this another solemn pledge about to be broken?

Over the last eight years we have had our ears filled with talk of commando courage. Isn’t it time to honour the code of the commando for once? There is no need to be afraid of the Constitution. There is a right way of doing things and if this road is followed, many of the things that seem threatening may not be that frightening after all. Every military ruler in our history has had to be pushed out. Why not do things differently this time?


http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/ayaz.htm

__________________
Time is like a river.
You cannot touch the same water twice,
because the flow that has passed will never pass again.
Enjoy every moment of life.

I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.

Fighting someone else’s war

By Ayaz Amir

THE war the Pakistan army is being made to fight in the two Waziristans is not our war. It is a war calibrated to an American agenda, Pakistan being asked to pull the chestnuts out of a fire the Americans have started.

Yet so helpless is this government, so tightly held in America’s embrace, that it can do nothing. Even if it wants to, it cannot break free from this suffocating relationship, more like bondage, which is costing us dearly and will cost us more as time passes.

This is a war for Pakistan’s soul, we are told, a war between the forces of moderation and extremism. This is self-serving nonsense served up as justification for performing mercenary duty in defence of American interests.

Mercenary? Yes, mercenary, the Musharraf regime receiving about 100 million dollars a month in return for its military services to the United States. (Where this money goes and how it is accounted for few people outside the defence ministry or General Headquarters know).

This is in addition to the nearly 700 million dollars annual subsidy Pakistan receives as part of the five-year military-cum-economic package concluded after 9/11. Into the equation must also be put the Bush administration’s political backing for the Musharraf regime. Indeed, what keeps Musharraf in power is control of the army plus American largesse.

But there is a price to pay for this alliance and it comes in the form of fighting a war against one’s own people. Close to 80,000 fighting men are now deployed in the tribal areas pursuing the ghostly shadows of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. In this undeclared war a thousand soldiers have already lost their lives. For what?

The ultimate sacrifice is of course part of a soldier’s covenant when he signs up for service. But the ultimate sacrifice is for defending the fatherland, not fighting alien wars.

Are there ‘militants’ in the tribal areas? For sure there are. But we have to be clear that the Nek Mohammads and Baitullah Mahsuds we have seen arise in the tribal areas are products of America’s war in Afghanistan. Just as the American invasion of Iraq has fuelled militancy and brought Al Qaeda to Iraq (when no sign of it was there before), the American invasion of Afghanistan has fuelled the fires of a genuine resistance and brought the flames of war into our tribal areas.

No ‘surge’ or anything like it is working in Iraq. American forces there are not only over-stretched, by now they are plain exhausted. I am reading Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s excellent ‘Imperial Life in the Emerald City’ which is about the American occupation of Iraq and the unbelievable stupidities the Americans went about committing there. If Iraq has turned into the second graveyard of American hubris after Vietnam, it shouldn’t come as a surprise, American folly and arrogance leaving room for no other eventuality.

What makes anyone think Afghanistan is going to be less of a screw-up? Have we forgotten our Afghan history? When was the last time Afghanistan welcomed a foreign invader? Like the American occupation of Iraq, the pacification of Afghanistan is also doomed. When Bush, the architect of what surely will qualify as one of the gravest disasters in American history, is in history’s trashcan, where he deserves to be, the Afghans will still be fighting.

But as long as the Americans remain in Afghanistan Pakistan has to face the heat. As American frustration with Afghanistan grows, Pakistan becomes the scapegoat for American failure. Indeed, as we have seen, everyone’s favourite whipping boy in the American presidential election seems to be Pakistan.

From Barack Obama to everyone’s uncle has threatened Pakistan with military strikes if ‘actionable’ targets emerge, meaning presumably if Osama bin Laden or Ayman Al Zawahiri are discovered having breakfast somewhere in the tribal areas.

General de Gaulle was never in doubt about what Americans were capable of. “You may be sure that the Americans will commit all the stupidities they can think of, plus some that are beyond imagination.” Are the Americans now serious about wanting to extend their imperialist war to the Mahsuds, the Waziris and what have you in the tribal areas? They can barely cope in Iraq while Afghanistan too is proving difficult to control. Opening another front will be a step too far.

Yet know what? American pressure tactics as applied to Pakistan succeed because the Musharraf regime is too weak to resist pressure. But who pays the price of this fatal weakness? Why, the Pakistan army which ends up fighting a war for which it has no heart or stomach, a war whose reasons escape most senior commanders.

Kargil was a disaster but it was mercifully short. In Waziristan the army faces a war of attrition which is sapping morale and draining strength. It is a war with no clear objectives and no end in sight. And all because the present military command, which also holds the country’s reins in its hands, is helplessly tied to American interests.

Look at the bind we are in. America’s other allies have contingents in Afghanistan which are minuscule compared to the troops Pakistan has deployed on its side of the border. And we are doing all this unthinkingly, mindlessly parroting the mantra that this is a fight in our interests too. It is not.

Pakistan’s first Afghan adventure under Gen Zia fuelled religious extremism. Its second Afghan adventure under Gen Musharraf is fuelling a reverse kind of extremism, directed against Pakistan. But we have to look at first causes. The first brand of extremism arose because the Russians were in Afghanistan. This second brand of extremism, its signature tune written by the suicide bomber, has arisen because the Americans are in Afghanistan.

If the first American-backed Afghan jihad was legitimate, how come the present one is illegitimate? An occupier is an occupier unless we are to sanctify double standards and turn them into a new commandment.

The English-speaking liberati of Pakistan is living in a strange world. The threat of Talibanisation it fears comes not from the suicide bomber. It comes from the conditions producing suicide bombers. Just as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian occupied territories are products of Israeli arrogance and intransigence, the Pakistani suicide bomber is a crazed product of American atrocities – yes, atrocities – in Afghanistan.

We risk becoming another Lebanon or Cambodia unless we disengage from Waziristan and break free from our present American alliance – a yoke round Pakistan’s neck, good for the ruling junta but disastrous for the country. But this bond we won’t break unless there is a change in the power equation in Pakistan. The local versions of Anwar Sadat must go if Pakistan is to turn a new leaf and step out into the future.

That is why we urgently need a return to democracy, the genuine article and not the sham stuff which has been the prevailing currency in Pakistan these past eight years.

We are not a banana republic, say our leaders. We are not indeed. Ours is a country of not inconsiderable size and, all said and done, we are the only country in the Islamic world with a nuclear capability. This last is not a badge we should be flashing around but it shows that when we set our minds to something, we can achieve it. Our problem is something else. We throw up leaders who behave like the leaders of a banana republic.

So we need to put our house in order. Musharraf is living in a fool’s paradise if he thinks he can keep wearing his uniform and make himself president from these assemblies for another five years. The time for that is past. Few people in Pakistan are willing to put up with this charade any longer.

We need the army to go back to its own job and we need the politicians to stand up and give a better account of themselves. The judiciary has stood up and what a sight it is. The nation now needs to ensure a return to constitutionalism and the rule of law.

http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/ayaz.htm

__________________
Time is like a river.
You cannot touch the same water twice,
because the flow that has passed will never pass again.
Enjoy every moment of life.

I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.

Ayaz Amir

THEY go screaming and kicking even when it is clear to all but themselves that their time is up and they have overstayed their welcome — that is, if they were ever welcomed in the first place.

Pakistan is caught in a similar situation. The era which began on Oct 12, 1999, is sputtering to its end. A new era has already begun. When the Supreme Court of Pakistan can spring captives from the custody of our intelligence agencies, hitherto answerable to no one except themselves, then it is a clear sign that times are changing.

But the trustees of the old order, those who enjoyed the fruits of power for the last eight years, are desperately holding out, clutching at straws, subjecting the Constitution to weird, self-serving interpretations, all in a wild bid to turn the clock back and give their lord protector in Army House some more time at the top.

This desperation of the Chaudhries, the Mohammad Ali Durranis, the Sher Afgans and what have you is only to be expected. When the wheel of history turns representatives of the dispensation about to be flung on the scrapheap of history always try to put up a rearguard action against the inevitable.

The republic we aspire to — the one envisioned vaguely by Iqbal and Jinnah — is still far away. Of this there should be no doubt. But its outlines we can already see and this is what is quickening the nation’s pulse. The Pakistani people had been led to believe their destiny was to suffer one tinpot fool after another. Now the canvas of their dreams and longings has become wider.

Solely because the Pakistani political scene after March 9 and events thereafter stands transformed. Military despotism has suffered reverses scarcely conceivable before while for the first time the realisation is dawning upon such self-appointed guardians of the national interest as Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Military Intelligence (MI) that their holy cow status is a thing of the past and they too can be called to account.

What the Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and comprising their lordships Faqir Khokhar, Javed Buttar, Nasir-ul-Mulk, and Fayyaz Ahmed has done in the ‘missing persons’ case is unprecedented in our history. ISI and MI have been compelled to disgorge people held in illegal captivity whose existence was all along denied. How the mighty are shaken.

At a public meeting in Liaquat Bagh, Rawalpindi, a few months back, a mother of one such ‘missing person’, somehow managed to break the thick security around the president’s person and fell on her knees before him. Holding his hand and crying out loudly she pleaded for the release of her ‘missing’ son. Raising the woman to her feet, Musharraf resumed his speech and in a voice breaking with sincerity said that persons said to be ‘missing’ had most probably gone to wage ‘jihad’ with the Taliban. None was in military custody.

Their lordships, however, have been indefatigable and have shown what the agencies have been up to. This very week just to get three persons released from MI custody, their lordships had to sit for hours and hours listening to the most outrageous lies. Their perseverance paid off and after the director-general (DG) of the Federal Investigation Agency was told that if one such person, Hafiz Abdul Basit (whose arrest was traced to the DG), was not brought before the court, he (the DG) would have to spend time in jail, Basit and two other prisoners (all detained illegally, and mercilessly tortured during their detention) were released the next day.

I must have cried (yes, cried) half a dozen times as I read about the day’s proceedings in the Supreme Court. Such things have never happened in Pakistan before. To see dictatorship on the retreat, suffering one reverse after another, and freedom (or a pale version of it) on the march is a heady feeling. And the president and his men still think they can get the president ‘elected’ for another term from the present assemblies. What world are they living in?When Basit arrived at his home in Faisalabad, the people of his locality came out to welcome him and raised slogans in support of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, “friend of the poor” as they called him.

Time was when our superior judiciary had solitary heroes, lone rangers like Chief Justice Rustum Kayani of the then West Pakistan High Court. There were other times when there were no judicial heroes at all, only bewigged time-servers, their loftiest mission the legitimisation of military rule.

Now, thanks to the lawyers’ heroic struggle and the support of the Pakistani people, all the judges of the present Supreme Court — Bhagwandas, Ramday et al but barring the two who must be ruing their behaviour on March 9 — are conducting themselves with a degree of judicial rectitude, uprightness, dignity and honour never before seen in the history of Pakistan.

The Sindh High Court, as always, is proving itself a beacon of light. The Balochistan and Peshawar High Courts are not far behind. The Lahore High Court remains in a class of its own. But when change comes it envelops everything. How long can Lahore hold out as an island of regression?

Partisans of the present regime describe the present conduct of the judiciary as ‘judicial activism’, this not without a touch of sarcasm or suppressed venom. This is no activism. It is the judiciary finally waking up to its responsibilities. The people of Pakistan expect much more from it and indeed if they could have their way would willingly see the entire edifice of the status quo demolished at the judiciary’s hands.

Far from recognising this new mood, this sense of heightened expectations, the regime’s ‘chamchas’ an endangered species if ever there was one, are trying to frighten the people of Pakistan with the prospect of martial law. If the president is not ‘re-elected’ from the present assemblies, this too in uniform, the walls will come down and Pakistan’s safety will be threatened, necessitating the imposition of martial law. This is the sinister raga they are singing.

This is blackmail pure and simple but of a pathetic kind because the time for such threats is past. Martial law had a threatening ring to it once upon a time, not any more. And it is a moot point whether the army itself is in a mood for such an adventure.What will be its purpose? Bail out someone seen increasingly as a liability? Not very likely. The army’s image has been battered enough during these last eight years. Can it afford any further damage?

Anyone with a modicum of judgment can see the writing on the wall except the knights who keep vigil at Army House. Gen Musharraf is doing himself, his senior commanders and the nation no favour by insisting on the impossible. He can’t get elected from these assemblies. The first move in that direction will be a signal for nation-wide turmoil. Why does he want to put the country through all this? He says it’s for the country’s sake. For once he should stop seeing himself as sole definer and interpreter of the national interest.

Two choices stand before him. He can resist change and in the process emulate the undignified exits of Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan. Or he can become the bridge from this order to the next and still write some kind of an honourable name for himself in this country’s troubled history.

http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/ayaz.htm

__________________
"A man can be as great as he wants to be. If you believe in yourself and have the courage, the determination, the dedication, the competitive drive and if you are willing to sacrifice the little things in life and pay the price for the things that are worthwhile, it can be done."

Autumn of the jackals

By Ayaz Amir

Friday, August 31,2007

FROM the sublimity of the lawyers’ movement (and don’t tell me it didn’t have a touch of the heroic about it) we are down to the spectacle of the country’s politicians — most of them — lost in a wilderness of their own making.

What should be their first priority? It has to be blocking Gen Pervez Musharraf’s ‘reelection’ as president from these assemblies if the victory of democracy is their aim. But what are they actually doing? Playing bizarre games as if power is already in their grasp and all that remains is to decide how to share it. Placing the cart before the horse, something like it.

They are overlooking a basic truth. If Musharraf is cornered, if he is now having to talk to the very politicians he earlier reviled, it is not because of the political parties or any struggle mounted by them.

It is solely because of two factors: the lawyers’ movement and a rejuvenated Supreme Court. This has upset the power equation hitherto governing Pakistani politics. Whenever the army rode into the political arena, the unconstitutional acts it committed, and there was always a long list, were validated by the superior judiciary. This was a very effective collaboration, between generals and judges, and the people of Pakistan had to live with the consequences.

Things have changed, utterly changed, a new Supreme Court arisen from the seeds of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’s defiance, his saying no to Musharraf, and from the lawyers’ movement which erupted in his support. It is this new Supreme Court, revelling in its new-found powers, which is causing nightmares to Musharraf and his coterie.

The political parties are trying to profit from this situation. They are feeding on the carcass brought down by the lawyers and the judiciary, in this respect emulating the conduct of the jackal who feeds on prey hunted by others. But to a great extent they are abdicating their own responsibilities.

If it had only been up to the political parties Musharraf would have managed his ‘reelection’ from these soon-to-expire assemblies without too much difficulty. Whether a deal with the PPP comes about or not, we know at least this much that Benazir Bhutto is keen on a deal. She is in no mood to forge a common front with other political parties although if she were mindful of her father’s legacy that’s what she should be doing. Perhaps her priorities are different.

As for the holy fathers, no one can teach them the virtues of ‘pragmatism’. Well-versed in the intricacies of this game, they cut a deal with Musharraf at the time of the Seventeenth Amendment and at least a part of them would do so again if the terms were right or the Americans were not that heavily involved in our politics. (In their present mood the Americans equate terror with most forms of Islam).

Nawaz Sharif’s clash was directly with Musharraf. He had to be out in the cold and Saudis or no Saudis would have stayed there had it not been for the lawyers’ movement and the rediscovered power of their lordships in the Supreme Court. So we need to keep things in perspective. The independence of the judiciary is the key to the triumph of democracy. It is only the judiciary protecting the rule of law and the spirit of democracy. But the judiciary must not be left alone in this task. The politicians must fulfil their responsibilities which, at this juncture, boil down to taking a correct stand on the question of the president’s election. There are other issues but these come later. To put the country on the right track, to correct the derailment caused by the Oct 99 coup, to ensure the supremacy of the Constitution, it is essential that the president, it could even be Musharraf if the Constitution allows him, should be elected by the next assemblies.

The legal community realising the gravity of this issue is already gearing up for another movement if Musharraf files his papers for election from the present assemblies. But what about the political parties? Are they looking ahead too?

We know about Benazir, still in thrall to the prospect of a deal with Musharraf. We know about the holy fathers although even they, being smart politicians, will flow with the tide if a democratic movement gathers strength. But what about Nawaz Sharif? Valuable time I think has already been lost by not taking the first available flight to Pakistan after the Supreme Court verdict. Choosing when to come and which city to land in is not a mathematical conundrum waiting to be solved by a party meeting first in Islamabad and then London. Such homework should have been done earlier. Any Saudi or Lebanese complications should also have been sorted out before approaching the Supreme Court.

If on August 23 after the Supreme Court decision, when the atmosphere outside was delirious, the Sharifs had announced that they were flying to Lahore the next day, or the day after, chances are all of Lahore (I exaggerate but you get the point) would have poured out to welcome them. No elaborate arrangements would have been needed for a reception. Spontaneity would have taken over.

The crowds will still turn out when the Sharifs eventually come but, I suspect, the element of spontaneity will have been lost. “There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune…” etc.

Anyway, speculation is rife that Musharraf is prepared to shed his uniform prior to seeking a vote from these assemblies. This is a measure of the straits to which he has been reduced. Even if he has mooted this point it is fair to assume that he won’t step out of uniform unless he has iron-clad guarantees regarding his ‘reelection’. He would have to be dumb to entrust his fate to the next assemblies. ‘Who has seen tomorrow’, as the Urdu expression goes. Who has seen the next assemblies? The Q League would have disintegrated by then.

But who can furnish him guarantees about his ‘reelection’? Not Benazir because the real issue is the attitude of the Supreme Court. Will it allow a violation of the Constitution? Will it go along with a farce conducted in the name of a presidential election? The charged armies of the legal fraternity would also not allow such an outcome.

Musharraf may have the numbers but he doesn’t have the Constitution on his side. The Constitution was not of much importance before March 9. Things have changed since then. But even as far as the numbers are concerned, his party, the Q League, has begun to leak. Who knows how wide the breach in its side in the next 10-15 days?

So whatever the deal between Benazir and Musharraf, the rest of the political parties have to sit down and decide quickly what their strategy is going to be. There is no time to lose. The clock will start ticking from Sept 15, barely a fortnight away. Where the PML-N should have been concentrating on this issue, and leading the effort to forge a united front, it is still caught up in the nuts and bolts of the Sharifs’ return to Pakistan. It should be moving faster.

Pakistan has been marking time at one spot for too long. It should move on. The army too can do with a fulltime chief (hopefully the best professional available rather than a favourite chosen for his Musa Khan-like meekness or his presumed loyalty). We have to revisit the American-dictated war in our tribal areas. The sovereignty we have forfeited must be reclaimed. But this won’t happen with Musharraf around. After eight years in power he now represents the past. For Pakistan to embrace the future there must be a return to the Constitution (as its framers intended it to be and not as military expediency has distorted it).

The political parties need to show some imagination and panache, the kind displayed in the letter written to the Election Commission by a serving professor of pathology at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, Dr Anwar ul Haque, submitting that if Gen Musharraf, a government servant, can run for president he (the professor) should also be allowed to run for the same. Impeccable logic which the government has not found amusing. The professor has been transferred to the ministry of health, presumably to cool his heels. But he has made his point.

The first act of any post-Musharraf government must be to reinstate Dr Haque in his post.

http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/20070831.htm

__________________
Time is like a river.
You cannot touch the same water twice,
because the flow that has passed will never pass again.
Enjoy every moment of life.

I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.

By Ayaz Amir
THINGS are becoming topsy-turvy, the abnormal and bizarre becoming everyday reality. Our nuke capability was supposed to be the ultimate deterrent. It is turning into our biggest liability, we being put to the necessity, at every turn, of assuring both ourselves and the world that it is “in safe hands”.

Who is the most threatened person in Pakistan today, who should be feeling the safest but is not? Why, the chief of army staff, also doubling as the president, who has more layers of security around him than any Third World ‘strongman’ coming readily to mind.

The army operation in the two Waziristans is becoming a joke. Army units there dare not move out of their fixed positions for fear of being kidnapped by tribal militants. One day we hear of 10 captured, the next day 19, a few days later a mind-boggling 150 (the militants say 300).

I suppose every military convoy rash enough to move in Waziristan will need an additional convoy to guard its flanks and a fleet of Cobra helicopters to provide it with air cover. Baitullah Mehsud is one of the leading commanders of the Waziristan militants. He must be laughing up his sleeve. His major problem these days seems not to be about how best to resist the army but how to arrange adequate prison space.

How to guard the guardians? That seems to be our foremost problem at present. Not since the fall of Dhaka — and this is not said lightly — when our Eastern Command led by the heroic Gen Niazi set a new world record in meek surrender, has the army faced such embarrassment.

But the army command has different priorities, the foremost being how to get its chief ‘elected’ president for another five years. Commander Baitullah Mehsud can run as many circles as he wants around our troops in Waziristan. Mortar and rocket attacks can take place almost every day in different parts of Balochistan. Terror bombings can occur in the very heart of Rawalpindi Cantonment. But top of the national agenda is the president’s ‘reelection’.

I am putting commas around ‘reelected’ because when was he ever elected? Unless the referendum and the Seventeenth Amendment are to pass for a legit election.

Because of these pressing political preoccupations small wonder that the ISI chief, Lt Gen Kayani, instead of being distracted by Waziristan and sundry acts of sabotage is busy negotiating a deal with Benazir Bhutto.

There was a report in an English newspaper a few days ago that Kayani was among the hopefuls aspiring to become the next army chief. At least he will bring negotiating skills to the job, the post of army chief now more a political than a military position in our country.

The eastern front — with India, that is — has been pacified with Kashmir now the subject for the odd seminar (although even on the seminar circuit it is disappearing as a serious subject of discussion) rather an anguished point of dispute between our two countries. Posturing and muscle-flexing will not disappear and tall, mustachioed, and well-turned out Rangers at Wagah will continue to stomp their feet in an impressive manner. But we shouldn’t be misled by appearances.

Thanks to American tutelage, and American largesse whose lure our so-called establishment has always found hard to resist, the axis of the army now runs westwards, towards the treacherous hills and valleys of our tribal areas.

Besides Kayani, the other army chief-hopeful figuring in press reports is the 10 Corps Commander, Lt Gen Majeed, said to be close to Gen Musharraf, which I suppose should clinch the matter.

Anyhow, 2007 is proving to be a seminal year for Pakistan, with new vistas opening up and new winds blowing across the horizon. Regardless of Musharraf’s political fortunes, whether he manages to get ‘reelected’ or is dealt cruelly by the fates which monitor earthly happenings, a few things have already changed.

The Supreme Court has come into its own, now assuming the constitutional and guardianship role (relating to the rights of the people) it was always meant to play. The lawyers’ community has turned into a potent force for the rule of law. Just as it led the struggle after March 9, it is in the forefront of the effort to block the farce of Musharraf’s ‘reelection’ at the hands of the present assemblies. The media also has become a force to be reckoned with. The March 9 struggle would have turned out differently but for the (strategic) support provided by the media.

There is disorder across the land but this is a good thing because in our given conditions only from the womb of turmoil and disorder can anything good arise. The anguish of the Q League as Musharraf seeks an understanding with the PPP, the PPP’s opportunism as Benazir Bhutto seeks what crumbs of comfort she can get from Musharraf’s table, and the presidency’s increasingly chaotic and directionless attempts to master the present political crisis are all symptoms of the pains Pakistan is undergoing as it moves from the old to the new.

Musharraf is trying to save himself, little realising that the tidal waves buffeting him represent something greater than his person. The people of Pakistan have received an important education. They no longer have any patience for military democracy, the variety we have known all these years, or for palace intrigues, conducted here or in exotic climes, aimed at perpetuating the present order, now in the last throes of its existence.

A consensus is building up around several interwoven themes. There is a palpable yearning for the rule of law, the supremacy of the Constitution and the independence of the judiciary. And there is a popular groundswell against Pakistan’s American alliance which has succeeded only in lining the pockets of the rich and in opening up a gulf between the army and the people of Pakistan.

There is nothing negative about this discontent. It is not tinged with despair. The hopelessness and cynicism which used to be features of the Pakistani political scene have been replaced by hope and expectation, all because of the movement for the rule of law sparked by the events of March 9.

Looking to what the Supreme Court has done and is doing, people now expect a change for the better in their collective lives. These expectations are unrealistic and in the nature of things cannot be met. The Supreme Court by itself cannot perform all the labours of Hercules. But it is showing the way and it has put dictatorship on the retreat. These are not mean achievements.

When the curtains finally come down on the Musharraf order, as soon they must (this being a play whose time has run out), anyone coming to power will have to contend with this new optimism running across Pakistan. Benazir is firmly in the American orbit. Her ambition is to be Pakistan’s Nuri Al-Maliki or Hamid Karzai, her desperation to be rid of the corruption cases she faces leaving her with few other options.

But even Nawaz Sharif will have to be more fully in accord with the nation’s new mood, and he will have to leave some of his past behind, if he is to play a meaningful and enduring role in the trying times that lie ahead.

Excoriating Musharraf is not enough. It is also not enough to mouth the standard clichés all too familiar in our discourse about the evils of military authoritarianism. The people of Pakistan want substance not rhetoric of which they have had enough. And they want concrete models of action on the lines of the example set by Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and, subsequently, the rest of the Supreme Court. Empty sloganeering just won’t do.

Tailpiece: On Wednesday in the Express an absolutely brilliant piece by Zahida Hina on the immortal Quratulain Hyder. Moving and beautifully done. Unfamiliar with Hyder myself, I felt small after reading Hina’s account. In the schools we went to, Urdu literature passed us by, or we were ignorant of its riches, part of our national problem being the impoverishment of what we know as Pakistani culture.

http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/ayaz.htm

__________________
Time is like a river.
You cannot touch the same water twice,
because the flow that has passed will never pass again.
Enjoy every moment of life.

I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.