Goodbye to some of this

By Ayaz Amir
December,21,2007

AN all too temporary goodbye I hope because anything on permanent lines, as I told my masters in Dawn, would break my heart. For most of my adult life I have been associated with this newspaper, starting when the full glory of General Ziaul Haq’s benign rule was upon this unfortunate land.

Now it is the twilight of another patriarchate and because I have chosen to take part in this charade of a general election, meant not to secure popular sovereignty but give a further extension to a discredited authoritarian set-up, I have been told, hesitantly and reluctantly I must confess, that the higher principles of journalistic integrity dictate that I flee the haven that has been my refuge these past 24 years.

So journalism and popular politics do not mix although they are bread and butter to each other. I am not a politician who has come to journalism but a journalist who has occasionally dabbled in politics — not drawing-room politics, for which I have not much talent, but constituency politics. Simply because I have a constituency to run from, those coming before me having carved out a space for themselves in local politics.

One or two journalists in recent times have made their mark in diplomacy, none more so than our distinguished high commissioner in London. A few have clambered up politics’ backstairs, through the Senate (the most convenient backdoor of all) or by attaining party rank, friend Mushahid coming to mind in this respect. None, in my reckoning, has contested a general election in the last 50 years.

Which is not to say that contesting a general election deserves some kind of endurance prize. Mountain-climbing and skydiving are tougher and no doubt more fun. But that is not the point. I find it baffling that journalism should be considered at odds with popular politics. As I say, there is not much danger of too many journalists taking this road, everyone not having a constituency to run from. Holding a party office, on the other hand, is something else because political parties being the family fiefdoms that they mostly are, holding a party office really means being a factotum of someone or the other.

But it is hard to quarrel with drawing-room wisdom which all too often gives the impression of being the most powerful intellectual force in this country.

The great Habib Jalib stood for a provincial seat in the 1970 elections and although the electors of Lahore showed that they had more respect for his poetry than his politics, giving him short shrift in that affair, his entering that election did not make him a lesser poet. Gore Vidal once stood for Congress and, as might have been expected, did not make it. That did not stop him from churning out a stream of books and essays.

Eric Heffer, a Labour leader in the 1970s, had a regular column in the London Times as Roy Hattersley, another Labour frontman, had one in The Guardian. Tom Driberg in the 1950s was a popular columnist and a Labour MP (and also a flamboyant gay, to the no small alarm of naval ratings on leave in London). Churchill, when not in office, earned his living by writing books and newspaper articles. Mussolini (not that his example would appeal to many minds) was first a journalist and then a politician. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was both at the same time. But I doubt my masters at Dawn will be much taken by these examples.

Journalism and politics are ultimately about the same thing: public affairs and the managing of society, how best to achieve the golden mean. True, a conflict of interest arises if journalism becomes a tool of propaganda, there being nothing worse than putting journalism at the service of a particular political party, singing the praises of this leader or that. But journalism can be turned into a tool of propaganda even without wearing a party label or holding a party office or running for political office from the platform of a political party. There is no single road which leads to hell.

To politics I am drawn not out of any lure of high political office, which I don’t particularly cherish, but because of local necessity. A one-sided political field, with all the president’s men on one side and no credible challenge on the other side, drew me into the election race in 2002: to even out the political scales. Much the same logic obtains today in my district, the political scene again tilted towards one side, the president’s men holding all the cards in their hands, a similar situation to be found in many districts of the Punjab, and I daresay Sindh.

It would have been something to relish to sit out the contest from the sidelines and from there offer finely-worded critiques of what was passing in the country, something I have done often enough during the past 20 years or so. But under the circumstances it would have been, to my mind, a timorous choice, if a convenient one for all that.

Of how one attains eminence in journalism, Evelyn Waugh had this to say: “A great deal depends on how you spend the first days in the office. There are a certain number of people who can be idle for long stretches of time without appearing bored. To these fortunate souls comes in its season every form of worldly prosperity.”

Be that as it may, if you make it as a journalist, you are your own master, sucking up to no one except perhaps your editor if you are on the regular staff of a newspaper. But if you are a freelance, as I have been for much of my journalistic career, you are master of your own time, a luxury not bestowed on every mortal.

Politics by contrast, especially party politics in Pakistan, is a distressing affair. Since all our parties lack a democratic structure and leadership in most cases is handed down from father to son, or father to daughter, being close to the leadership, and being able to pander to its whims, becomes a political necessity. This may not be to everyone’s taste but there are intrepid souls who become masters of this art and rise to political glory less on intrinsic merit (although consummate flattery too is merit) than on the ability to hold on to someone’s coat-tails.

You need a tough skin to contest elections, a tougher skin to survive and maintain your own in the hurly-burly of party politics. The best courtiers are usually the biggest survivors. You see this in the PPP as well as the PML-N. As an MPA in 1997 I saw a Lahore mafia in action in the assembly, hooting the loudest for then Punjab commissar Shahbaz Sharif but whose members, not to my great surprise, were the first to strike out on their own when the Sharif order fell in October 1999.

We should make some allowances for circumstances. When times are harsh even good men and women see virtue in compromise. In occupied France during the Second World War not everyone was in the resistance. Many good people collaborated with the Germans or temporised with necessity. So too in Pakistan where temporising with necessity has become the greatest survival tool of all.

But I stray from the road. Contesting these elections, I am informed, spells the end of my long association with this newspaper. If it is to continue it will have to be in some other form. A harsh price to pay and, as I said, my heart is torn.

The old order: on its last legs

Friday, January 18, 2008

By Ayaz Amir

It is darkest before dawn and the coldest before the first arrival of spring. It is inevitable that on this subject, the iron law governing the change of political seasons, Shelley, a poet of revolution if ever there was one, be invoked: 'Oh Wind, if Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?'

Indeed, if this be the worst winter of our discontent since that fateful December of 1971 when Pakistan was torn into two and from its severed limbs a new, breakaway country was born, can spring be far behind? The grip of the old order has already loosened and things are fast spinning out of its control. Everything--from the economy to law and order--is in a mess and this precisely is what gives ground for hope regarding the future.

During the Cultural Revolution the Chinese were fond of saying (and I stand guilty of repeating this endlessly in my columns): "There is great disorder under the heavens and the situation is excellent."

A fever or a viral infection must run its full course before it leaves the body. Contradictions have to sharpen and reach a breaking point before the old breaks down, yielding place to the new. If the problems now hitting the country--from bread lines to massive power cuts, to the battles fought almost daily in the badlands of North and South Waziristan--were not so acute, would people be so angry and would their yearning for change be so strong?

Interviews to foreign newspapers or TV channels make good sound bites but they don't change the situation on the ground. In one interview the nation is informed of plans to quit if the next parliament were to make any move towards impeachment. In another we are told that the next government would have to ensure the continuity of present policies--a tall order for any government, for continuing with the disasters the nation is presently facing requires more than ordinary talent.

We are putting up with a surfeit of such interviews these days, suggesting pointedly perhaps that there is plenty of time to kill in the power corridors of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. A new chief sits in General Headquarters and as far as the caretaker cabinet is concerned it seems to have left things on auto-pilot. No one seems to have a hand on the wheel or the tiller, giving rise, to no one's surprise, to a huge sense of drift in our national affairs.

But mark the silver lining in these clouds. That despite the pervading darkness things are changing, is suggested, among other things, by the new army chief's warning to his officers to keep their distance from politics and politicians. This is as it should be although in the current circumstances, and especially considering the uses to which the army was put during the last eight years, it is no less than a thunderbolt for those wielding absolute power during this period.

Political dirty work normally undertaken in times past by deputy commissioners was performed during the golden period of which we speak by corps commanders. In the 2001 local elections corps and div commanders went about interviewing and vetting tehsil and district nazim candidates. The referendum in April 2002 was very much a military affair with the president donning all sorts of headgear--turbans and the like--over his military uniform.

Some corps commanders also followed suit. At a public meeting in Lahore Governor Khalid Maqbool who considering his longevity in office could well teach a course in political survival distinguished himself by shouting slogans as strident and vociferous as that by any political worker. All else about him and his stewardship may be forgotten but not his memorable performance on that occasion.

Army personnel were put to reading gas, electricity and water meters. There was also an attempt to have income tax forms distributed among shopkeepers and tradesmen only to end in disaster a few days later after stout resistance from the trading community.

By having to perform such tasks the army, frankly, was made to look ridiculous, causing no small pain to guys like me who once served under its colours, proudly I may add, despite the many follies committed in the name of militarism over the years. Thank God, following the change of command in GHQ, that most holy of holies from which so many of our problems have sprung, this process is being reversed.

Word is also out that army officers seconded for civilian duties are being recalled to the army. Although not as quickly as might have been expected because on checking with WAPDA headquarters, Lahore, I was informed that those army officers serving in WAPDA, and consequently helping to make a mess of the power situation, are still at their posts. Change may have begun but slowly, slowly.

Among the achievements of the old order was the complete smashing of the district organization setup. Today administrative chaos reigns in all the districts of Pakistan, partisan nazims, out to settle their own scores or pursue their own political agendas, pretending to run a non-partisan system. The godfather of this hodgepodge of a system, if system it can be called, was Lt-Gen Tanvir Naqvi, his pioneering efforts at the National Reconstruction Bureau (nothing in all our history is more hair-raising than such attempts at reconstruction) were aided and abetted by foreign donors.
While Lt-Gen Naqvi was smashing the district crockery, another military pioneer (now turned democratic cheer-leader), Lt-Gen Moinuddin Haider, was spreading much the same havoc in the ranks of the police force. As a result of the Police Order 2002 which he godfathered, complete chaos now reigns in the police department, separate wings having been established for different work, which looks great on paper but which in actual fact has made life difficult for the ordinary citizen.

When change comes to Pakistan, two things will have to be done immediately by any incoming government with the slightest concern for the nation's plight: finish, at a stroke, the district nazimate system and abolish, at a stroke, the Police Order 2002. I never thought I would have a kind word to say about the post of deputy commissioner but compared to the pestilence of the district Nazim it was a godsend.

The point of all this exegesis, however, is that the old order--the one with us for the last eight years--just cannot go on in the way its advocates are fondly hoping. If anyone in the inner sanctums of power thinks that the Q League stunt can be repeated and another Shaukat Aziz installed in office to sing the praises of the current dispensation and be a willing rubber-stamp, he lives in a world of his own.

The Q League is a metaphor for the kind of toady party conquering generalissimos have always favoured. Field Marshal (self-appointed) Ayub Khan had his Convention League. This dispensation has immortalized the Q League.

Here's a poignant extract from Ayub Khan's recently published memoirs: "The situation is that whilst the opposition has been whipping up lawlessness, our own party is disintegrating (emphasis added)…In other words, the Muslim League party has ceased to exist." This was when the movement against him had started.

But who remembers history? The Q League has mounted what is arguably the most expensive political ad campaign in Pakistani history to refurbish its credentials. But all the good this blitz is doing is to make any symbol associated with the party an object of public scorn and hatred.

It's become a political cliché to say that the caretaker setup both at the centre and the provinces is an extension of the old regime. You could change the faces and it wouldn't make the slightest difference. But again all the resources of government and all its powers of patronage are doing nothing for the Q League's image.

Many pundits are of the opinion that the coming polls, whenever held, will be heavily rigged. And that rigging plans are already in place. However, one crucial factor has changed. The army was fully behind the kind of electoral shenanigans the nation witnessed in 2002, winners in many constituencies turning into losers overnight. But with the change in army command this kind of benign interference should no longer be possible.
So let us not despair. Things are bad. Of this there can be no two opinions. But the good thing is that the very bleakness of this situation holds the promise of change. Only when things break down, as they are threatening to do with us, are men and women moved to thought and action. So let us pray the same be true of us.


Email: chakwal@comsats.net.pk

courtesy:http://www.thenews.com.pk/arc_news.asp?id=9

The News

(The articles of Ayaz Amir now appears in The News instead of Dawn...that's why i have started a new thread for his articles... his articles should be posted in this thread from now onwards...thankyou
PEACE)

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nahin nigah main manzil to justaju hi sahi
nahin wisaal mayassar to arzu hi sahi

Collaboration and resistance

Friday, February 15, 2008

By Ayaz Amir

The period which began with the coup of October '99 is coming to the end of its natural cycle. It has already been transformed to some extent and the great helmsman whose exploits the nation has endured these past eight and a half years is no longer at the zenith of his power. But this power is set to decline some more when these elections, now just two days away, are over and the results are in. The silent majority is seething with anger and we could be in for some major upsets.

These elections aren't turning out the way the helmsman's allies had figured. Banking on government resources, the Chaudhrys of Gujrat, Shujaat Hussain and once-upon-a-time prime ministerial hopeful Pervaiz Elahi (his ambitions dashed by the realization that the winds of public opinion are blowing in a different direction) had thought they had the outcome in their pocket, a sense of optimism belied by circumstances.

They had no idea there would be such a huge 'anger' vote against the policies--domestic and foreign--of the Musharraf order. And of course they had no way of knowing how Benazir Bhutto's assassination would generate a sympathy wave for the PPP and further augment the anger vote against all the symbols of a largely discredited administration.

The Q League was heading into these elections on the assumption that an all-powerful, still-clad-in-uniform president would look after their interests and see to it that it did well at the polls. These assumptions have come unstuck largely because the emperor is now without his military clothes. As initial signals from the new army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, suggest, the army, concerned about its tattered image, is in no mood to pull anyone's political chestnuts out of the fire, which leaves the pilots on deck quite alone.

Sure, the caretaker governments are extensions of the Q League. The district nazims, still armed with a lot of nuisance value, are out helping their kith and kin. But the public mood is against anything identified with the last eight years, which leaves the Q League in a very vulnerable position. Anyone still thinking it will do well at the polls is living in an isolated world.

But whatever anyone's assessment of the likely election results, the aftermath of the elections remains clouded with uncertainty because given the weakness of our constitutional structures, and given also the ambitions of those at the helm, we can't be too sure how all the pieces will fall in place.

In a democracy whoever wins a majority forms the government. In our semi-authoritarian setup things are not that simple. Electoral verdicts are not always accepted and they are open to abuse and manipulation. Or they are disregarded, as in 1970 when the Awami League had swept the polls in East Pakistan but it was not allowed to come into power. Even though shorn of some of his authority, the president is still powerful enough to pull some strings and play off one rival against another.

The rivals who count are Asif Zardari (PPP) and Nawaz Sharif (PML-N). Can they forge a common understanding, thereby isolating Musharraf? Or will they provide another opening for those for whom all openings have closed?

Nawaz Sharif is all for a common understanding because he is very clear about who his target is: Musharraf, the man who ousted him from power. But what about Zardari's priorities? Is he all out for power, in which case he may even contemplate cutting a deal with Musharraf, or is his priority democracy, meaning thereby maintaining his distance from Musharraf? Zardari thus holds the key to the puzzle, not Sharif. History's sardonic eye is on him. Will he play for small gains or will he have his gaze on the long shot? Hard to tell.

The agreement the Americans had laboured so hard to broker between Benazir Bhutto and Musharraf envisaged both coming together in a broad, 'liberal' coalition that, having greater political legitimacy, would be better able to fight the 'war on terror'. Is that agreement still in place, and is Zardari still faithful to it, or has it been overtaken by events? Again, we don't know for sure.

What we can be sure about is that Zardari hobnobbing with Musharraf after the elections will really be the cake, proving perhaps once for all the definitive bankruptcy of the Pakistani political class. Zardari would like us to believe that he has come of age as a politician. We shall have to wait and see because although he has been very sensible about so many things after his wife's assassination his real test will come after the elections.

The holy fathers of the MMA threw Musharraf a political lifeline in 2003 when they helped pass the 17th Amendment which gave him constitutional legitimacy. But Musharraf was at the height of his power then and cobbling a deal with him then made some kind of political sense. But with his star on the wane, dealing with him now is akin to a form of political suicide.

This order is already yesterday's child, running out of words and ideas, with nothing to offer Pakistan anymore, that is, if it had anything to offer in the first place. These elections, however dodgy some of their aspects, provides the country an opportunity to move on. This order won't disappear all of a sudden because Musharraf as president remains very much in place. But provided current predictions about the elections hold, and the Q League disappears into the mists of history like its predecessor the Convention League did when the Ayubian era came to an end in March 1969, the opportunity will arise of making the representatives of this order irrelevant, provided of course the two main parties don't end up making lemons of themselves.

We seem stuck in a rut. Authoritarianism punctuated by spells of civilian authority followed again by some authoritarian figure riding into the political arena has been the nation's destiny since its birth. Far from anything being solved the mess keeps getting bigger and more complicated, self-proclaimed saviours turning out to be the biggest disasters of all. In sixty years we have simply failed, collectively, to build any enduring political institutions.

Most pundits are writing these elections off as an exercise in irrelevance. But what other avenue leading to some kind of change do we have? Ours is a weak and feckless political class and our political environment is not conducive to the spread of radical ideas. The only choice on offer is a 'soft' alternative.

Meanwhile we can also aim at some things. Our political mileu would be the better for developing some sturdier political principles than those we have lived by all these years. Our politicians are too used to standing in line and kowtowing to authority, no matter what the nature of that authority. This has probably something to do with our history. Punjab is the leading element in our national life and the Punjab, except for the brief intermission of the kingdom founded by Maharaja Ranjit Singh, was never called upon to play a leadership role. Now that history has thrust this task upon it, the Punjabi political class is just not up to it.

So from where do we get the administrators and political managers that Pakistan needs? There are no ready answers to this question.

Our great poets, some of them in words never to be forgotten, have raged against darkness and injustice. Where the Pakistani political class has produced collaborators, it has also produced dissidents. Our lawyers and, for the first time in our history, judges have raised the banner of revolt against unconstitutional authority. Their struggle, which has not been without its glorious moments, continues. If only our political leadership could rise to the level of our poets.

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nahin nigah main manzil to justaju hi sahi
nahin wisaal mayassar to arzu hi sahi

Expecting miracles from jackasses



Islamabad diary

Friday, May 30, 2008
Ayaz Amir


A strange nation we are, expecting wisdom from morons, radicalism from born opportunists, and virtue from knaves whose principal claim to fame is daylight national robbery.

What do we take the national scene to be, the result of a Nepalese revolution or a Chinese long march? Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan after a deal brokered by the Yanks in whose prowess she had invested all her hopes. Nawaz Sharif's return to the country came about as a result of Saudi royal intervention. Hard to detect the glimmers of any Che Guevarism in either of these Roman triumphs.

Musharraf took off his uniform not because a million men and women, torches in hand, had besieged Army House but because the Yanks were twisting his elbow and support for him within the army command was waning. The lawyers' movement played a vital part in weakening him but lawyers take on too much upon themselves when they portray themselves as the heralds of the changes that have swept Pakistan.

All the leaders of the movement – from Aitzaz Ahsan to Munir A Malik to Ali Ahmed Kurd – are my friends. They are possessed of admirable qualities but modesty or humility, alas, is not the most conspicuous among them. They expect the world to change but themselves refuse to change, still stuck in the heady feelings generated by their movement last year. If the tide flows it also ebbs. Critical points come and pass. Their movement has lost its momentum and something more than Aitzaz's driving skills – his uncanny ability to arrive at every destination at least ten hours late – is needed to regain it.

The people made their views known on Feb 18 but only because they were given an opportunity to do so. If they had not been given that opportunity does anyone think that they would have taken to the streets and stormed the citadels of power? In which make-believe world do we live? Our capacity for being pushed around is virtually inexhaustible and our political class, far from honing the tools of political resistance, has arrived at the last stages of moral and intellectual bankruptcy.

If the Feb elections had been shelved, Pakistan would have dug a deeper hole for itself but the masses would not have stirred. A nation that could endure Ayub Khan for eleven years, that knight of darkness – Ziaul Haq – for another eleven, and a certified mediocre like Musharraf, a disaster in both war and peace, for eight and a half years, can put up with anything. Still the fact remains that whether the Yanks played around with the props on our political stage or the Saudi Royals had a hand in altering some of the background tapestry, elections were held, Musharraf and his pack of political jackals were roundly humiliated, and political parties reviled and abused, and kept out in the cold all these years, swept to a dramatic victory.

So the people were not remiss in expecting great things to happen. What they have received instead is another extended lesson in the workings of political bankruptcy, the political parties in whom the people had reposed their trust proving epic failures at political management. Instead of dealing with real issues and trying to figure out how to get the country out of the hole in which it is stuck they are chasing shadows, evening out old scores and charging at toothless dragons that have lost the power to spout any fire from their raging nostrils.

Zardari, to his credit, is being the man that he always was: interested in power and money. Courtesy of the deal struck with Musharraf (through the Yanks) he has just won himself the biggest reprieve in Pakistani history, all cases against him – and it was not easy counting them – having been wound up. The people of Pakistan may yet be awaiting their miracle but he has received his.

My Lord Dogar, presently adorning the highest chair in the Supreme Court, is the agent of this miracle. And the people of Pakistan, chumps as ever, expect Zardari to put Dogar in the doghouse while My Lord Iftikhar Chaudhry, symbol and hero of the lawyer-cum-judicial movement, sweeps into the Supreme Court. This won't happen in the real world as long as Zardari is around. So what he is doing is smiling all the time and spouting some of the worst clichés about institution-building that the people of Pakistan have had to put up with for a long time.

The people of Pakistan – ordinary people, that is, because some have had a ball – have had to put up with much all these years. But having to endure lectures on politics from Mr Zardari takes the prize. Those in the charmed circle of the PPP elect – that is, in Zardari's good graces and therefore enjoying office or importance – go about with trained smiles on their faces. Sherry, I said, was becoming a competent minister. She is also turning into a sophisticated version of the dreaded Mohammad Ali Durrani.

But imagine the plight of those not in this charmed circle. They have to take in all that they are subjected to without wincing or saying anything in return. Our political parties, all of them, produce no rebels. They turn out courtiers instinctively aware that discretion is the better part of valour.

So the nation is being fed a series of fibs as extended as the thousand and one tales of the Arabian Nights: all about constitutional packaging, etc. Zardari misses not a step when reciting this litany. Farooq Naek, the law minister, as he goes through the same paces looks a deeply unhappy man. Things are whirling out of control and the economy is sinking and the rupee taking a further dip every day but the political charade being played out in Islamabad goes on, each day bringing a fresh twist to it.

And what is that other great party of the people, the PML-N, doing? Heaping fresh imprecations on Musharraf's head when Musharraf is no longer the problem. Far from being a den of conspiracy, the erstwhile Army House where he is still holed up has now a house of sorrow, another lesson in what happens when the pomp and glory of power have fled. Yet the PML-N keeps harping on Musharraf as if with him gone or better still impeached, the bright morning Pakistan has long awaited will have finally arrived.

It is a sign of the state the PML-N is in that without giving the matter a second thought it overreacts to the appointment of a political nonentity like my old friend Salmaan Taseer (never mind if he is a smart finance man) as Punjab governor, turning Salmaan at least for 48 hours into a looming presence on the political landscape. Beware the time when Musharraf is finally no more because the time for excuses then will have run out. Whom them to blame for the nation's shortcomings or the ineptitude of the political class?

The PML-N also runs the risk of being perceived as a single-issue party. It has boxed itself so much into a corner over the judges' issue that it has drastically curtailed its room for manoeuvre. We will restore the judges, the party and its leaders thunder at every opportunity, when it lies not in their power to do so. The key to the restoration of the judges is in Zardari's pocket and he has other games to play and other accounts to settle.

The PML-N consoles itself with the thought that its graph is rising while the PPP's is plunging. That may be so but of what use a rising graph when it is hard to predict what is going to happen in the next five months, let alone the next five years. How long will the present pantomime last? Suppose it doesn't, will we head into an election or another night of the…I need not spell out the word. Zardari may be playing a negative game of his own but the PML-N's interest lies in seeing to it that the present experiment, centred on Pakistan's first attempt at coalition-building, lasts.

But for that it will have to break free from the shackles of the judges' issue. Perhaps it would if it got some help from the legal fraternity or even My Lord Chaudhry. But the legal community has run out of ideas while My Lord Chaudhry no longer seems capable of thinking outside the box. He has proved himself a great man in many respects but the gift that marks a Mandela from an ordinary mortal seems not to lie in his grasp. Someone with true greatness in his soul would have said by now 'all right I am ready to step aside provided Musharraf goes too, Dogar also goes, and the Nov 2 judiciary is restored' thus sacrificing self for a higher cause.

Iqbal, awakener of our souls, where has thy memory fled, where all thy songs exhorting us to emulate the flight of the eagle? At stake is the country's future, calling for vision and some measure of greatness. What we are getting is a dance by dummies and men of straw.



Email: chakwal@comsats.net.pk

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The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta,
held as a votive, not in vain, for the value
and veracity of such shall one day vindicate
the vigilant and the virtuous.
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Pakistan is key to America’s salvation in Afghanistan. Without the Pakistan Army actively engaged in the border regions called FATA, American and Nato forces in Afghanistan would be hard-pressed to sustain their ground.

Any innocent could be forgiven for thinking that given this crucial role some gratitude and some ungrudging help would come Pakistan’s way. But what the United States is pleased to offer in the shape of the Kerry-Lugar bill is peanuts: 1.5 billion dollars a year, for five years.

This is being dressed up as an act of unparalleled generosity, which is scarcely surprising given that those who give, even if very little, are apt to flatter themselves by making it appear more than it is.

But what is surprising is that we are proving to be the chumps that we always tend to be when dealing with America. Instead of looking cynically at the Kerry-Lugar bill and running a fine comb through it, we are behaving like a latter-day Uncle Tom, grateful for the small change (in relative terms) we are about to get, almost like a tip for services rendered.

America’s military effort in Afghanistan costs upwards of 60 billion dollars a year. This is the backdrop against which to see our 1.5 billion dollars, which don’t seem like an awful lot then.

In Swat, Dir and parts of Buner our army has suffered heavy casualties. If the US military had suffered a quarter of these casualties in the two months or so since the Swat operation started, there would have been a storm in Washington. But since it is Pakistan’s ‘peasant’ army suffering these losses it is a different matter altogether.

Washington, however, is not to blame. If we remain chumps when it comes to bargaining with the US, the fault is not in our stars but us.

If Richard Holbrooke, or his kind, assume the airs of civilian field marshals the moment they step on Pakistani soil it is because we allow them this freedom. If we invite being patronised, we will be patronised.

In truth we have forsaken the right to call Iqbal our national poet. What commonality is there between his poetry and our way of life? The way our leaders conduct themselves shows no sympathy or connection with Iqbal.

There is no shortage of fools in this country who in a spirit of absurd patriotism say we shouldn’t be seeking American assistance. We are engaged in a war, which has two dimensions to it. It is our war because religious extremism unchecked would have devoured the meaning of Pakistan. With the Taleban triumphant we could have become a Somalia or a Sudan but not anything like the Pakistan our founding fathers were trying to create.

But it is also America’s war. We didn’t ask America to jump into Afghanistan but for reasons of its own it did. And now it is stuck there, the seemingly quick victory of 2001 turning into an extended nightmare. A complete victory in Afghanistan the Americans cannot win. This they are now admitting themselves. The utmost they can hope for is a partial victory, or something that can be sold as victory: a gradual withdrawal, as in Iraq, without too much loss of face. This aim is unachievable without the open-ended help of the Pakistan army this side of the Durand Line.

Given these huge stakes, what’s wrong with Pakistan asking not to be taken for granted? The Kerry-Lugar bill with its absurd conditionalities we should not accept. We should engage with the US, learn how to make the most of its friendship, but we should be playing a smarter game of poker.

We should ask for—nay, insist on—trade concessions, on favoured access to the American market. Our textile industry, our largest industry, is near death point. It badly needs reviving. So what if the US is in recession? Which other country in the world is fighting America’s war the way we are? Britain has not more than two-plus brigades in Afghanistan. The focus of our entire army is now on the western front. We deserve fewer lectures and more actual help.

We should insist on a cancellation of all our American debt and insist on much, much more than the pittance now going through the US Congress. What if the Indian lobby on the Hill flexes its muscles? We should turn around and ask it to fight the battle of Afghanistan on its own.

This should not mean ending the fight against the Taleban. That we cannot afford because the alternative is unthinkable. But it should certainly mean doing things on our own and cutting the American presence in Pakistan down to size. The Americans are onto a good thing. They want to eat their cake and have it too. We should be pressing our own point of view.

This, however, would require a different man in Washington than the smooth-talker we have. Haqqani is a very clever man who has always put himself first. Anyone wishing to learn the timeless art of self-promotion can do no better than learn at his feet.

We need someone more in tune with the new realities emerging after the Pakistan army’s rethink about Swat, FATA and the threat from the Taleban, someone who can make a slightly different pitch, pander less to American prejudices and make out a better case for Pakistan than the peanuts packaged in the Kerry-Lugar bill.

We shouldn’t be punching above our weight. We tried doing that in Afghanistan and were hoisted on our own petard. Punching above one’s international weight is a British specialty, a compensation for loss of glory and empire. But we shouldn’t be under-punching either, as President Asif Ali Zardari manages to do every time he ventures abroad.

As if his previous misadventures in the verbal field were not enough we now have the spectacle of him being trumped by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

In Yekaterinburg (Russia) the first thing Singh said to him was, “My mandate is to tell you that Pakistani territory should not be used for terrorism against India.” Zardari could have countered with a suitable reply such as that his concern was to see that Indian consulates in Jalalabad and Kandahar were not used as staging posts for subversion against Pakistan. 
 But that would have required other gifts than he has.




Source: Khaleej Times Online

__________________
Regards,
P.R.

Army General Headquarters, Rawalpindi, is not the enemy — or, let us say, the main enemy — of Pakistani democracy. The Pakistani political class is its own worst enemy. Its incompetence, its inability to learn anything from the past and its unconquerable zest for intrigue are some of the factors paving the way for military takeovers. And, if the present political landscape is any guide, the political class is simply unable to overcome past habits and step into the future by creating a new political culture.

Military ambition of course is also a factor. So powerful is the position of army chief in Pakistan that anyone occupying it can be forgiven for being afflicted with the saviour syndrome which has been the bane of our history: the feeling, often encouraged by self-seeking journalists and politicians, that he has heaven’s mandate to save the nation. Four attempts at saving the nation, from Ayub to Musharraf, have been our greatest disasters.

But, let us be clear on this point, military ambition alone is not the prime culprit. Politicians are the guinea pigs. Politicians are the testers who prepare the ground for the real action, stamping at the bit in GHQ.

But Pakistan’s political ponies never seem to learn. Through unchecked folly — folly unmitigated by any reference to the past — they go about heating up the political atmosphere. When democracy’s funeral is finally taken out on the shoulders of GHQ, even as a fresh stallion is ensconced in the stables of power, democracy’s professed votaries begin a long period of mourning which doesn’t end until the next fitful rendezvous with democracy. Which in turn leads to fresh intrigues, and so the cycle goes on.

The transition from Musharraf to the Feb 2008 elections wasn’t easy. The lawyers’ movement weakened Musharraf but it was not the lawyers’ movement which got Musharraf to take off his uniform. That was accomplished by outside pressure and murmurings of discontent within the army high command. And it was outside mediation which paved the way for Benazir Bhutto’s return to Pakistan, an event which further undermined Musharraf’s grip on power.

One thing led to another. Benazir Bhutto’s return opened the way for Nawaz Sharif’s return to Pakistan. The same Musharraf who had so easily thwarted Nawaz Sharif’s comeback on Sep 10, 2007, was helpless when the Saudis, after Benazir Bhutto’s return, insisted that there was no reason left to hold back Nawaz Sharif.

Musharraf’s days were numbered as the very fates began to conspire against him. Benazir Bhutto’s assassination was the last nail in his political coffin. The tide of public anger let loose by that tragedy was so strong that there was no way Musharraf’s anointed party, the Q League, could hold its own in the subsequent elections. Who was behind Benazir Bhutto’s death? We don’t know and, as with other tragedies of this kind in our history, perhaps never will know. But in the inchoate way in which the public mind works and arrives at its conclusions, people at large held Musharraf responsible for her death and made him pay for it when the opportunity arose on Feb 18, 2008.

But we seem to be a nation of ingrates. Or perhaps it is our political class suffering from this malady because it seems to be satisfied with nothing. It pined under Musharraf’s dictatorship but far from being happy with the return of democracy, it is busy nurturing fresh sources of discontent.

Pakistan’s real problems are real enough — from the state of the economy to the state of governance — but the political class, not content with these challenges, has honed an extraordinary talent for manufacturing spurious problems.

There is nothing real or meaningful about the storm caused by the media outbursts of a spent cartridge like Brig (r) Imtiaz Ahmed. How he has emerged at this juncture from the woodwork of things long lost and forgotten is not easy to say. But on the principle that once a spook always a spook, it is not past conjecturing that his resurrection is the work of the same elements who have been muddying the national waters by their talk of a minus-one formula and the like.

The sudden refocus on Air Marshal Asghar Khan’s petition pending in the Supreme Court for the last 14 years regarding the money doled out by the ISI to a list of anti-PPP politicians in 1990, is another attempt to wake up dead horses and use them as part of the campaign against the present democratic order.

The first target of this campaign is President Asif Zardari. The secondary target is Nawaz Sharif. The ISI list is meant to defame him. But the real target — as it takes not much genius to infer — is democracy itself. Elements thriving under authoritarianism, and therefore beholden to it, find the whole idea of democracy irksome and distasteful. That is why, as we have seen since 1988, no sooner is a democratic government in place — and it doesn’t matter whether it is the PPP in power or the PML-N — a whispering campaign starts against it.

For the army and intelligence agencies to conspire against democracy is easy to understand, their aim being to reclaim lost glory. Somewhat harder to fathom is why democratic elements choose to become willing players in the games whose aim is to run down politicians and discredit democracy. Why are they so ready to stand in the lists as their own worst enemies?

If all it takes to muddy the waters is the ranting of a Brig Imtiaz, or renewed talk of the ISI’s shenanigans way back in 1990, then not much can be said of the maturity or good sense of the political class of 2009. And if all it takes to upset the political applecart are a few verbal broadsides, then questions are bound to arise as to how secure and stable the present democratic order is.

And this has happened in the space of just the last fortnight, beginning with the quite needless scrap that we saw between the PML-N and the MQM in the National Assembly — a display of anger and vitriol on both sides that was wholly uncalled for — followed by the unleashing, from some hidden corner, of Brig Imtiaz about whose existence or non-existence most people would have been unaware of until all this happened.

Brig Imtiaz’s TV appearances — after years of deserved oblivion he is relishing the spotlight — and the renewed focus on the ISI’s 1990 payments have completely distracted attention from other things. Musharraf’s trial under Article 6 of the constitution and the question of repealing the 17th Amendment have receded into the background. If there is a department of dirty tricks behind the spectacle the nation is being treated to, its leading lights would be laughing up their sleeves, because the extent of the distraction must surpass all expectations.

This is not to deny that Pakistani democracy is facing a threat. But it comes not so much from GHQ or the mysterious underworld of the ISI and Military Intelligence as from (1) a spirited band of senior journalists and columnists, among whom I count some dear friends, who are doing all in their considerable power to spread uncertainty and confusion; and (2) trigger-happy politicians, from either side of the divide, congenitally unable to resist the temptation of shooting from their hips, especially when there is no earthly reason to indulge this passion.

Is this a perfect democracy? Only a fool will say it is. Are angels dressed up as politicians? Question scornfully dismissed. But this much should be plain: whatever we have, with all its glaring shortcomings and imperfections, is a vast improvement on the discontent the nation suffered during the Musharraf years.

So is it too much to ask the media cowboys and the trigger-happy political sages to kindly take it easy? We have enough real problems to deal with and can do without having to wrestle with invented ones.

But if, in a continued rebellion against common sense, the political leadership and media pundits insist on charging at windmills, they should not be surprised if they are hoisted aloft on the arms of those same windmills.

Email: winlust@yahoo.com

Too much politics, too much hypocrisy Ayaz Amir

How many doom-and-gloom stories can any reasonable person endure? More than a nation at war we are a nation in perpetual crisis, vaguely discontented if there is no real crisis at hand.

In no other country of the world would a Brigadier Imtiaz Billa, a spook who put up his gloves years ago, be taken seriously. Yet in recent days the media almost succeeded in turning him into a TV celebrity, an outcome which must have taken him by surprise most of all.

This is just by way of example to underline something obvious about Pakistan: there is too much politics in this country. Why is this so? Why is politics the staple of everyday conversation? Because -- and here's the paradox -- there is too much religion in this country. By which, Heaven forbid, I do not mean the genuine article but religious cant and hypocrisy. The way we go on about religion an alien could be forgiven for thinking that the very concept of religion began in Pakistan.

This is General Ziaul Haq's revenge from the grave. Revile him as much as we may, there is no escaping the fact that a good deal of the fake piety on display in the official life of the Islamic Republic is a continuation of the legacy whose baleful seeds ---dragon's teeth?---he scattered.

In art the counterweight to too much restraint, or too much order and discipline, is romanticism, a natural urge to reach for the opposite: freedom and perhaps even decadence. This also works the other way round. If there is too much freedom, too much artistic chaos, the desire arises to return to the comforts of order and discipline. This is how Hegel and Marx explained the universe: the combination, or clash, of opposites creating a synthesis or unity.

But with us what is the Hegelian counterweight to too much false piety? Alas, nothing more creative than an obsession with politics. In any other climate excessive piety would have led to a loosening of restraint, something like the atmosphere of the Sixties in Britain and elsewhere, when the Beatles were all the rage and permissiveness became a common word. I was in school then and used to scratch my head trying to figure out what permissive behaviour and promiscuity meant.

If we had experienced something like the Sixties it might have done us a world of good, perhaps saving us from such of our travails as the march to war with India in 1965 and, only six years later, war and defeat in East Pakistan.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's period at the helm was only a brief interlude. He could have reinvented the idea of Pakistan and secured the country's future by making it safe for democracy. He had the opportunity but perhaps the times were hard or our good angels not sufficiently kind because events took a turn for the worse when Pakistan, not for the first time in its short existence, once more found itself under a military dictatorship. What is more, this one came with a sinister difference: it was steeped to its eyeballs in religious cant and hypocrisy.

As a result, it was not just physical repression which Pakistan suffered under Zia but moral and social repression. Instead of marching into the future, we travelled back in time. Talibanism in the form now familiar to us was a later phenomenon, but the attitudes giving rise to it were forged in the crucible of those dark years.

The army's thinking became more conservative, fertile soil for the 'jihadism' that was to shape its outlook first in Afghanistan and then Kashmir, something from which it has yet to fully recover. The richest irony of that period of course is that our American mentors, now so bent on culturally reconditioning the Pakistani mind, were at that time the loudest cheerleaders of what passed for the spirit of 'jihad'.

In the 1980s Americans in Islamabad (and I say this with a sense of wonderment) were amongst the most bigoted souls on the planet. About every subject under the sun they could endure scepticism, even cynicism, but the one thing beyond any criticism was the Afghan 'jihad'. That was an article of faith, faith raised to the power of dogma. The demons they are now trying to exorcise in Afghanistan were born of that attitude.

Anyway, if any country was ripe for a social revolution -- its Sixties and Beatle moment -- it was Pakistan after Zia's death. But instead of making a clean break with the past Pakistan slipped into a neo-Zia era, with the Establishment -- as personified by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Army Chief Gen Aslam Beg -- serving to put the brakes on any cultural revolution. No hundred flowers bloomed; no hundred schools of thought contended. The old dragons kept their vice-like grip on power. Pakistan remained imprisoned in the old strategic parameters -- Afghan depth, holding down the Indian army in Kashmir, the space for adventure provided by our nuke capability, etc.

The Americans, ecstatic at the end of the Soviet empire, had walked on from Afghanistan, forgetting all about it (something which they now rue). But we did not march with the times. We kept holding on to the old certitudes. It was only a matter of time before the Mujahideen morphed into the Taliban and the Taliban provided a congenial setting for Al Qaeda to grow and prosper.

We only have a two years' window. The Americans are not going to stay in Afghanistan forever. Support for the Afghan war is beginning to drop in the US. By the time Congressional elections come round next year, what is now a trickle could turn into something bigger. And by the time Obama's first term is about to end, and he is up for re-election, America's continued involvement in Afghanistan is likely to be one of the hottest topics of debate. We should be ready for that eventuality.

Our army has done a superb job of cleaning up Swat. Fazlullah's Taliban are on the run. The FATA Taliban are also under pressure, the noose tightening around Waziristan and the army mounting operations at selected points. But for Pakistan to be fully cured of the mindset which drove it into the battlefields of 'jihad', the turning of the military tide is not enough. It must be matched by a lasting change of mind. We need a social revolution so that we jettison some of the spiritual baggage which has served to cloud our thinking.

Pakistan will never be fully free in its mind unless the fake piety introduced by Gen Zia into our law books is completely erased. We have to go back not to where the nation stood on Oct 12, 1999, when Musharraf took over, but where it was on July 5, 1977, when Zia and his generals seized power.

The aim should not be to hound anyone but to clear our spiritual decks. All the laws Zia introduced at the altar of a fake piety, including the Hadood Ordinance, need to be expunged. The historic task before this National Assembly, elected with such high hopes in Feb 2008, is this.

Hopefully, as a consequence, our nation will learn to lighten up a bit and discover a higher combination of opposites than religion and politics. There is too much gloom in Pakistan, too much darkness. We are too moralistic, too judgmental, often too self-righteous. That is why we endlessly preach and endlessly worry about the future while not being able to live in the present and make the most of what it has to offer.

Not surprisingly, therefore, Pakistanis at times give the impression of being forever on the cross. We have our problems but since when has the human race, from the dawn of history until today, been free of problems? When they walk the streets of their towns and cities, Pakistanis -- both men and women -- don't act as if they are wholly free. In a social sense -- and here I have to use my words carefully -- they act in a constrained manner, as if a strict censor is watching their backs. Is it any wonder if they have cultivated the habit of doing so many things by stealth? This is no prescription for a free people.



Email: winlust@yahoo.com

General de Gaulle, who did not have a very high idea of American astuteness, once proclaimed his faith in America's ability to commit follies that were beyond comprehension. The Kerry-Lugar Bill certainly does not come up to such historical folly as Vietnam and Iraq. But it is a minor testimony to America's ability to deliver things that defy understanding.

Where our American friends were trying to build bridges of friendship they have succeeded in laying a minefield which has ignited outrage and mass suspicion across the length and breadth of Pakistan's brittle political landscape. The bill's details are now a matter of secondary importance. A professor of linguistics can come and put a benign gloss on them but most Pakistanis will not be convinced.

The general perception fostered by some of the bill's language is that it is an affront to Pakistani dignity and sovereignty. No amount of eleventh-hour massaging or spin doctoring is going to alter this perception.

True, Pakistani dignity may be a pretty battered concept. If we run through our list of historical achievements, there may not be much to be proud of. Still, one can live with diminished dignity if one's nose is not rubbed in the dust. This bill's sublime achievement is to do precisely this. For it reads more like a sustained indictment of Pakistan than a charter of friendship.

And when the corps commanders -- still in the eyes of many Pakistanis, the highest court of appeal -- too weigh in with a public rebuke of the bill (in itself quite an unprecedented step) then it becomes clear that we have a storm on our hands and that the principal test of leadership at this critical juncture is to defuse it. Congressional sensitivities can wait. The disorder at home must be addressed first.

Why has army sentiment come to this boil? The Kerry-Lugar Bill is not something popping suddenly out of the skies. It has been a year and a half, if not more, in the making. What was the government doing? Was it not aware of this witches' brew being cooked, and the frogs and spiders being thrown into it?

There has been no shortage of American officials and congressmen visiting Islamabad during this period. After all it is not the ordinary people of Pakistan who have had the honour of being lectured by Mr Holbrooke and others of his kind. Granted we don't have the brightest of people manning the higher echelons of government -- and this includes everyone. But even certified dimwits should have had some idea of what was going on.

But if our paladins allowed themselves to be caught short, the blame cuts right across the entire ruling spectrum -- from the presidency and the prime minister's office to General Headquarters. All of them, and some of us, should have done some of our homework earlier.

But all this is past. We should now be making amends for what we failed to do. But President Zardari, Heaven's revenge for our many sins, continues to live in a world of his own. His insecurities are well known: some to do with his past and his person, some with his inadequacies when measured against the requirements of his present position. Were he a private person his personal failings would be his own business. But since, alas, he is not a private person, his personal failings become a matter of national concern, especially when they give rise to the suspicion that it is these failings which drive him so desperately into American arms.

But if he is a disaster at home can the US rescue him? The Americans stood by Musharraf as long as he delivered what they wanted. When he became a political liability at home they started looking for other options. The same logic holds true even now. Americans will look up to Zardari only insofar as he is master of his house. But if the army turns against him, and public opinion is up in arms, Americans are not fools to keep investing in him.

Doesn't he realize this? So why is he opening up a front against the army? Why are he and his minions championing the Kerry-Lugar Bill when the present uproar against it is enough to demonstrate that there is little chance that the Pakistani nation will swallow it?

So what is to be done? If we did not do our homework before we must do it now. A consensus must be developed on how best to deal with this Greek gift from Capitol Hill and we must do it fast.

The sensible thing would be to offer a prayer and let it go -- with as much grace as we can muster. Feelings no doubt will run high on Capitol Hill and we can expect our American friends to have something to say about Pakistanis not knowing what is good for them. But we should take these things in our stride. Our American alliance should not be damaged because regarding the wages of terrorism our interests, with some differences of emphasis, are broadly the same. For both our sakes, we should not lose sight of the larger picture.

The National Assembly must rise to the occasion and show a better quality of discussion than it has hitherto done on most issues. This should be no occasion to indulge in histrionics. This is something to be discussed calmly and dispassionately, for much is at stake. It bears remembering that if the political class had been more alive to its responsibilities the reaction coming from the corps commanders could have been pre-empted. Like it or not, they have entered where they saw a vacuum developing.

Of course we can go on and on and say that it is not for them to speak thus in an open manner. The army's reservations, if any, are best communicated through other channels. But when political procedures break down, or do not function as well as they should, and the political leadership abdicates its responsibilities, the army will flex its muscles. This is a hard fact of life which has surfaced time and again in our short and tempestuous history.

The point often lost on the political class is that the best way to keep the army in check is for the political leadership to deliver. But if politicians insist on conducting themselves like buffoons they won't be able to stop generals from teaching them their dancing steps.

The army's role in national politics should have been curtailed after the Feb 2008 elections. Instead we see it growing. Why? Because the political leadership is failing to come up to the expectations of the masses. Where radicalism of thought and action was called for they have settled for the politics of expediency and the status quo.

Pakistan's democrats have to realize that the margin of error for them is very small. Generals can afford to sow the seeds of disaster and get away with it. Politicians are not allowed the same luxury because they lack the army's divisions to support them in the error of their ways. The only safeguard for politicians is delivery and performance and if they falter in these, they forfeit their mandate and become fodder for military ambition. This is the way it has been and this, unhappily, is how it is likely to be unless our political masters rise to a higher level of conduct.

Democracy itself is no cure-all for anything. Russia had democracy and consider what it produced in the first flush of its enthusiasm: a clown in the form of Boris Yeltsin. American democracy in the recent past gifted the world George Bush and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Pakistani democracy has given us Zardari and Gilani and the many astonishing carpetbaggers who hang around them.

True, ISI and MI have made it one of their central tasks to conspire against politics and democracy. But why do politicians make it so easy for such conspiracies to succeed? Why are politicians so often their own worst enemies?

Zardari and the PPP government are climbing up the wrong mountain. The Kerry-Lugar Bill is not their salvation. Given the current state of public opinion it will destroy them. Why can't they read the writing on the wall?



Email: winlust@yahoo.com

A make-or-break moment for Pakistan

Kashmir 1947-48 was the only necessary war we fought. It gave us the parts of Kashmir now in our possession. The 1965 war was a delusional general's supreme folly. The 1971 war was a strategic black hole created by our political failures. Kargil should never have happened. If Pervez Musharraf deserves to be put in the stocks it is for that misconceived adventure.

The war our army is now engaged in is more full of meaning than anything attempted in the past. It is not about territory but the soul and meaning of Pakistan. Iqbal and Jinnah would have been unable to make any sense of bin Laden, Mullah Omar or Ayman Al-Zawahiri. How on earth did Pakistan allow itself to become a playground for characters out of mediaeval history? Our paladins -- mostly in uniform -- told us we were pursuing strategic depth. What we harvested was strategic disaster.

But what is past is past. We must now come to terms with the present. That is why this war is so important. Winning it reclaims the idea of Pakistan and creates space for a better future. Losing it leads to possibilities too horrible to contemplate: among them the erosion of national morale and the death of the notion that the army was the first line of national defence.

The stakes being so high, there is no choice but to win, and win decisively. Of course it is not going to be easy. South Waziristan's fighters, including the foreign elements, are amongst the most battle-hardened on the planet. They have been fighting for decades -- in Afghanistan, disputed Kashmir, now FATA. Add to this the nature of the Waziristani terrain and it is clear that the army has a job on its hands.

3-5,000 Hezbollah fighters defeated the Israeli army in Lebanon in 2006. At the height of the Kashmir uprising (starting from 1989) there could not have been more than 5-10,000 guerrilla fighters in the Valley. But they tied down close to half a million Indian troops, the bulk of which remain in Kashmir. At a conservative guess the Taliban in South Waziristan would be having 10-15,000 fighters, which makes them a formidable foe.

But there is no way out. This is not a war the Pakistan army has chosen to fight. This is a war forced upon us and there is no running away from it.

But the army can only fight, and fight successfully, if the entire nation is behind it, without ifs and buts. The Taliban have amply demonstrated that the only peace talks which suit them are those conducted on their terms. For now, war is the only continuation of politics which matters. There will be time enough for other things when our arms are victorious.

Previous operations in South Waziristan, undertaken when Musharraf was lord and master of the wreckage he helped create, were half-baked affairs -- ill-prepared units thrown hurriedly into battle. The army suffered grievous losses and the Taliban were emboldened. This operation is different in that some thought and preparation have gone into it. Which doesn't make it a cakewalk but at least there is a sense that this time the army knows where it is going.

Musharraf played to American susceptibilities -- with an eye more on Centcom requirements than our own. For that dishonesty -- and it was that -- the army had to pay a heavy price. But as the Swat operation has shown, the army has emerged from the Musharraf mould. It is now marching to a different tune.

Still, the imperative holds that if we are to emerge from this test successfully, nation and army must acquire the not-easy habit of thinking for themselves rather than looking at things through American eyes. While American friendship is something to be cherished, American guidance and tutelage are afflictions to be avoided like the plague. The US has started wars it is having a hard time finishing. It is not doing too good a job of managing Afghanistan. On the question of whether or not to send more troops to Afghanistan, Washington presents a picture of dithering and irresolution. Contrast this with the steady resolve our army has shown from Swat onwards.

Which only means that while our army can do with the right kind of help -- helicopters and precision-guided munitions above all -- advice and lectures can be kept on hold for later.

In fact, given America's counter-insurgency record -- Vietnam comes to mind -- acting on American advice in such matters is a recipe for disaster and a sure shot guarantee of alienating domestic opinion. So it might help if during these days while our army is engaged in Waziristan there were fewer American high-ups visiting Islamabad. The greater the number of American visitors the more suspicions in Pakistani minds about American intentions.

Just to show America's capacity for rubbing so-called friends the wrong way: as if the Kerry-Lugar Bill wasn't enough, two American congressman have hit upon the bright idea of adding another rider to this year's American defence budget whereby the secretaries of state and defence would have to certify that military aid for Pakistan was actually used for its intended purpose -- fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda -- and that it would not affect "the balance of power in the region". We are up to our necks in the fight of our lives and our friends (friends?) in Washington still can't let go of their suspicions about us.

Anyway, the US Congress is entitled to do what it likes. We have our own problems and it is our soldiers and officers taking on a resolute enemy and putting their lives on the line in the killing fields of South Waziristan. In the first few days of fighting our casualties have been pretty high, a testimony both to the toughness of the Taliban and the courage of our soldiers. We have to think for ourselves.

But where is the sense of duty, and propriety, of President Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani -- both accidents of history? Shouldn't they be venturing out of their bunkers and visiting the troops on the frontline? If Wana is too risky they could visit the adjoining districts. After all, piquant thought though it is, Zardari is the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. It would be interesting to find out how many people actually think he looks like one.

But this is history in the making. We win and we will have reached the other shore. We lose and we could with profit study the history and geography of Sudan and Somalia. But there will be no point in defeating the Taliban if things remain the way they have always been in Pakistan. Victory would make sense only if we turn immediately thereafter to the reconstruction of Pakistani society.

The tide of fake religiosity which was Gen Zia's gift to the nation should gradually be rolled back, starting with the Hadood Ordinance which deserves to be swept for all time into the bin of discarded things. We are of the faith and were born into it. We never needed the services of self-appointed doctors of the faith and other charlatans to reconvert us to Islam.

Education has to be treated as our number one national problem. We must have a one-track system -- a uniform system of education for all: the same books, the same examinations for all students up to the intermediate level. Yes, our books can do with improvement as can our syllabi. But we won't learn how to swim unless we wade into the water.

Once the problem of English-medium and Urdu-medium is tackled, there must be a complete end, without equivocation, to madressah education. For the entire Pakistani nation -- from the northern mountains to the sea, from Waziristan to the eastern frontier --there must be one stream of education. For Islamic studies -- that is, for those who want to pursue them -- there must be centres of higher learning. But, please, no confusion for young and unformed minds.

For too long the rich have been pampered and protected in the Islamic Republic. There has to be a redistribution of resources by investing more in education, health and public transport. Population growth must be checked or we are doomed. And the army would be doing itself and the nation a favour by curbing the culture of commercialism and defence-society-plots which has done so much to ruin its image.

So the race won't end once Waziristan is over. It will have barely begun.

The higher direction of war: where is it?

The resort to arms, as any armchair strategist will tell you, can never be an end in itself. You go to war to achieve a political aim. And if you don't have that aim -- if you are not clear what you are hoping to achieve -- picking up arms is the height of folly.

You can be the strongest military in the world -- as the Wehrmacht was on the eve of the Second World War, or the US armed forces are now -- but if there is no clarity in your mind about why you are going to war, or if your aims are open-ended and not rigorously thought through, in the face of a determined opponent your efforts are likely to be doomed.

Horace put it well: "Brute force bereft of reason falls by its own weight. Power with counsel temper'd even the gods make greater. But might which in its soul is bent on all impiety, they hate." In war impiety is the absence of reason.

America's Vietnam venture was bereft of reason. It made no sense at the time, it makes less in hindsight. Against a weak foe this impiety would have succeeded. But the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong were anything but weak. Eventually America had to drink deep from the cup of humiliation.

The invasion of Iraq was another exercise in folly (and therefore impiety). It had no aim beyond the display of arrogance. Meant to "shock and awe" the world, it has done incalculable harm to American prestige and power. Where the US strode the planet like a colossus after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Iraq has made it look like a wounded giant.

Afghanistan was a bit different. With the Taliban giving sanctuary to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, the invasion of Afghanistan, to much of the world, appeared as a legitimate response to the Sep 11 terrorist incidents on American soil. But with the US occupation of Afghanistan in its eighth year (two longer than the Second World War), and doubts on the rise in Washington about US war aims, America's Afghan enterprise makes less and less sense. Indeed, far from achieving anything, the US occupation is now the prime cause of Afghan turbulence.

Indeed, unfolding in Afghanistan is a popular insurrection, people drawn to the Taliban not out of love for their primitive philosophy but out of hostility to the foreign occupier. With more troops the Americans can probably hold Afghanistan's cities, as the Soviet army did before them in the 1980s. But that is not the same as imposing their will on the entire country.

General Westmoreland was the American commander in Vietnam who called for more troops until he had half a million men under his command. Gen McChrystal is the Westmoreland of Afghanistan who is also calling for more troops to stem the tide of Taliban resurgence. But just as domestic support for the Vietnam war plummeted, the same is now happening in relation to Afghanistan.

There is no shortage of armchair warriors in Washington urging President Obama to go with the McChrystal recipe of 40,000 more troops for Afghanistan. But the president is right to take his time. This is a critical moment for him. He makes a wrong move and it is him, not the sofa gladiators, who will have to take the fall.

Cambodia was a sideshow in the Vietnam conflict. Pakistan is not Cambodia to Afghanistan's Vietnam. It is the buttress which sustains America's Afghan enterprise. Take away the Pakistan army from this equation, and America's continuing presence in Afghanistan becomes untenable. Pakistan's role is thus not that of a satellite. It is the central point of the Afghan constellation. It is a failure of Pakistani leadership that instead of being in the driving seat of strategy formulation Pakistan is made to look like a supplicant holding on to America's coattails.

This is all the more strange when set against another phenomenon: whereas anti-war sentiment is on the rise in the US, over the last few months we have seen a burgeoning pro-war movement in Pakistan, expressed in the feeling that enough is enough and extremism must be countered head on. A small body of critics apart -- spearheaded by the Jamaat-e-Islami and Imran Khan -- all the signs suggest that there is popular backing for the army. After a long time (and may this never end) nation and army are marching to the same tune.

But where is the higher direction of this war? Who is laying down the political parameters of this conflict? We know that Gen Ashfaq Kayani, the army chief, is directing the military effort. There are no doubts on this score. But who is the political commander-in-chief, the Churchill -- and I will have to be forgiven this analogy, but just to make things clear -- to Kayani's Montgomery?

Gen Giap was the North Vietnamese military commander in the struggle against America. But the overall direction of the war was in the hands of the Vietnamese Communist Party, led by Ho Chi Minh and after his death by the collective leadership with succeeded him. As our army moves against the strongholds of the Taliban in South Waziristan, where is the higher direction of war? Where is the political leadership? Who will attend to the political aspects of this struggle?

The foremost political aspect relates to our relationship with the US. This is a relationship full of contradictions. The US is our ally -- or rather we are doing the donkey's work in this partnership -- but its continued presence in Afghanistan is turning out to be our biggest headache. We are engaged in a grim struggle to defeat militancy and subversion. But the US presence in Afghanistan is the principal factor now keeping militancy alive.

Vietnam knew no peace until the Americans withdrew from there. Afghanistan will know no peace, and Pakistan will not be able to insulate itself from its effects, until the last American soldier gets out of Afghanistan.

Clearly, the Americans won't get out of Afghanistan because we tell them. They will exit, when they finally do, out of their own calculations and compulsions. But the political direction of the war from our side demands that Pakistan not appear as a sentry man at America's door, because that compromises our position and fighting the Taliban becomes all that much harder. We should be seen as our own masters, acting in our own interests, not America's. But for this fine balancing act to succeed it is essential that we keep some distance from the Americans and engage in a dialogue of equals with them.

Equals, you might ask in some consternation? Pakistan and the US engaging in a dialogue of equals? Well, adversity is a great equaliser. What the US is now beginning to undergo in Afghanistan is a trauma. We may be a cash-strapped country with a perpetual begging bowl in our hands but America is stuck in a quagmire. Between a begging bowl and a quagmire there is not much to choose.

The objection to the Kerry-Lugar act is not that it compromises our sovereignty -- which is a pompous way of putting it -- but that it makes us look like a lackey receiving his wages. Pakistan may have done foolish things in the past but the Swat and South Waziristan operation are tokens of a new beginning. Our soldiers' sacrifices don't go with a lackey image.

The Americans are telling us what to do, which is strange given that they are not doing too well in Afghanistan. They should be listening rather than giving sermons. Being their allies, and taking more hits than they are, it is now time for us to tell them that their occupation can't last much longer. Sooner than they now think possible, it will have to be rolled back and other options examined. When they depart we will still be here. Bolstering Pakistan and its military should not be seen thus as a favour. From America's point of view it should be a strategic necessity.

But such exchanges are possible only if the political direction of this conflict is in firm hands. This is where our weakness lies: where there should be leadership there is a yawning chasm. The military is on its own and that is never a good thing.



Email: winlust@yahoo.com