Nation and army are one when it comes to national defence. Even when folly has been let loose and blunders committed -- and we have seen more than our share of both over the years -- the nation has tended to give the army the benefit of the doubt.

When soldiers lay down their lives for the country -- as so many of them have done in Swat and South Waziristan -- the nation mourns and honours their supreme sacrifice.

So should it always be. Every nation worthy of the name honours its men and women in uniform. But what should be an indissoluble link is undercut when the army, forsaking its real duty, strays into territory it has no business entering. When the army seizes political power and seeks to run the country -- as on four disastrous occasions in our trouble-prone history -- it forfeits public trust and becomes a target of popular anger.

Pervez Musharraf's seizure of power, with the help of a posse of compliant generals, was bad to begin with. But that original sin was compounded when the army was misused for political and administrative purposes: soldiers and officers put to reading electricity meters and checking water connections; a battalion/regiment earmarked to run the affairs of each of the 105/106 districts of Pakistan.

Generals happily performed the political duties that in the past lay in the domain of the deputy commissioner: vetting candidates for tehsil and district nazims in the local elections of 2001. Corps commanders willingly performed the role of cheerleaders in Musharraf's more comic than infamous referendum of 2002. The army-controlled intelligence agencies -- ISI and MI -- helped form the King's Party, the famous Q League, the same year, headed by Musharraf's principal Quislings and the country's leading experts in written-off bank loans, the Chaudhrys of Gujrat.

A fine army, one of the finest in our region, was thus brought low, increasingly attacked and disparaged by a people whose trust and respect it had to maintain for the sake of its morale and self-esteem.

It was first whispered about in Quetta that officers from the Infantry School and the Command and Staff College no longer felt comfortable visiting the city areas. Then the unthinkable happened: officers and even men avoiding to venture out in uniform in towns and cities of Punjab, the first redoubt of patriotism and the source and centre of all the myths regurgitated in the name of the ideology of Pakistan.

This indeed was the unthinkable and Musharraf was responsible for it. More than his crimes against the constitution, he deserves to be hauled up for his crimes against the army.

It was this army stuck between two stools -- its military and political duties -- which was expected to fight the Taliban. No wonder when Musharraf ill-advisedly and without preparation launched army units in North and South Waziristan the result was disaster and humiliation, and deals with the rebels concluded, for the most part, on rebel terms. Musharraf could not handle the Lal Masjid affair in Islamabad. He turned a blind eye to Maulana Fazlullah's FM radio station in Swat, the seed from which a full-blown insurgency was soon to grow.

From that low point in its fortunes the army's image has risen, almost phoenix-like, from midsummer onwards this year, when finally it initiated hostilities against Fazlullah's Taliban in Swat and later on took the fighting to South Waziristan. If it was Musharraf's command which brought humiliation to the army, it is the heroic performance and sacrifices of our brave officers and soldiers in recent battles which have restored the army's standing in the eyes of the people.

The army should embody the best in our national life. Things indeed should be such that looking up at the army we should be able to say, yes, this is how the rest of us should be. But it is only possible for the army to be such a role model if (1) it and its intelligence agencies -- which, sadly, have an exaggerated idea of their competence -- eschew once and for all the folly of political intervention; and (2) the army takes immediate steps to curb the culture of commercialism infecting some of its upper ranks.

Of political interference enough said. The culture of commercialism has been as destructive of the military spirit as successive army coups. Every army looks, or should, to the welfare of its troops. But in the form of Defence Housing Authorities in Karachi and Lahore, and now in Islamabad, we are seeing a passion for the acquisition and expansion of real estate which is not so much welfare as commercialism gone wild.

Which other country in the world has such defence housing authorities? Not the US, the UK, Germany, France, China, Russia or even India. A modest house for every officer on retirement is a desirable proposition, although I doubt if the Pentagon or the UK Defence Ministry are into this kind of thing. But multiple plots for senior officers, with commercial plots also thrown in, is not necessity but a school for scandal.

Under Musharraf this culture thrived, which was perhaps his way to keep his senior generals happy. But surely in the era of South Waziristan and the climate engendered by the great sacrifices rendered by our young officers and soldiers there is a need to rethink a tradition which is scarcely uplifting.

Defence housing authorities would have a justification -- nay, a pressing moral compulsion -- if they were meant primarily for those laying down their lives, or suffering grievous injury, in the call of duty. If every jawan and young officer martyred in South Waziristan and Swat were automatically entitled to a plot in a defence housing authority, who would be so callous or insensitive to object to it?

But this is not the case here. As anyone with even half a mind functioning knows only too well, defence housing authorities have done nothing so much as encourage a mindset of greed and grabbing, welfare the fig leaf behind which this tendency has grown.

But what's wrong with a housing society, you may ask? If private citizens can organise them -- civil servants, engineers, lawyers, judges et al -- why not the armed forces? Good question, except that the army is not satisfied with running a simple housing society. It has sought -- and in the case of the DHA Islamabad, seeks -- an act of parliament to cover its adventures in the real estate trade.

What it thus gets is special and privileged status, outside ordinary municipal jurisdiction, making an authority so entitled almost a law unto itself answerable, in effect, to no authority except General Headquarters. Looked at from any angle, this is a form of military expansion into the civilian realm. Which prompts the question: with the army controlling so much in Pakistan -- some visible to the eye, some not -- why does it seek to control more?

Karachi and Lahore are facts of life not easily to be tampered with, or disturbed, short of a social cataclysm of which the gods perched high on the Himalayas give us no sign. But DHA Islamabad is slightly different. Musharraf issued an ordinance in 2005 to create this Authority. Being who he was, he could do as he pleased. But the Defence Ministry is seeking parliamentary ratification of this ordinance, now before the Defence Committee (DC) of the National Assembly. Why should the National Assembly put its imprimatur on a dictator's handiwork?

If the DC were legislating for all housing societies it would be another matter. But conferring constitutional cover on what after all is a private housing colony comes up to no definition of parliamentary necessity. The DC has met once on this issue, giving for some hard-to-fathom reason an impression of unholy haste to see this ordinance through. Why? Malik Riaz's Bahria Town -- why does his name crop up in all real estate matters? -- is in partnership with DHA Islamabad. Let him and DHA fend for themselves.

There is another catch. DHA Islamabad seeks to appropriate some areas falling in Rawalpindi District. In this specific matter the National Assembly cannot oust provincial jurisdiction without the province concerned being consulted.

In any event, the National Assembly should be spared the embarrassment of giving statutory cover to a private arrangement, unless of course on seeing the name defence it chooses to be guided by the fiction that national security is involved or the defence of the Republic is at stake.

Ayaz Amir

There's a sense of déjà vu about all this. We have seen it all before. The Soviets went down the same road and what did they have to show for their efforts? They were no more successful in pacifying Afghanistan than the Americans are now proving. Eventually they had to get out, that being the most sensible thing about their entire Afghan adventure, begun amidst high hopes in December 1979 and ending in humiliating circumstances in February 1989.

It takes a leap of faith, and a fistful of salt, to believe that what didn't work for Brezhnev's Kremlin is going to work for Obama's White House.

Bleak and grim thoughts but the facts, alas, support no other conclusion. Barack Obama is sending 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan to be deployed over the next six months. Then the US begins withdrawing from Afghanistan after 18 months. Does this add up to a winning strategy? Osama bin Laden, if he is still around, and Mullah Omar, very likely the Ho Chi Minh of the Afghan resistance, are not likely to be impressed.

Cut away the rhetoric and in Obama's West Point speech the two crucial things were only these: 30,000 more troops and the beginning of withdrawal in eighteen months. This is the clearest signal anyone could get that even as the US prepares to put more troops on the ground, the outlines of an eventual withdrawal can already be detected on the horizon.

Will this deter the Taliban? The prospect embedded in Obama's speech is only likely to embolden them. The 68,000 troops the US has in Afghanistan and the 35,000 troops provided by its assorted allies are fighting a war about which there is no shortage of predictions that it is already a lost war. Will 30,000 more troops reverse this tide? Will the failures of the last eight years be finally redeemed?

The Soviet Union's Afghan experience is not the only spectre looming over this conflict. The other spectre, more haunting for the US, is Vietnam. Obama was at pains to stress Afghanistan was not Vietnam. There was an international coalition fighting the war in Afghanistan, unlike in Vietnam. There wasn't the kind of popular resistance in Afghanistan that there was in Vietnam. And Vietnam, unlike Al Qaeda, had not attacked the US.

He was noting only the dissimilarities. If only he had dwelt a bit on the similarities. The US was stuck in Vietnam fighting a war whose purpose was less clear with each passing day. As victory seemed elusive American commanders in the field kept asking for more troops, to turn the corner that never really arrived. Eventually, the US had half a million troops in South Vietnam. It was bombing Hanoi and Haiphong in the North and the war had been extended into Cambodia to cut off Vietnamese supply routes and deny the Viet Cong safe havens. In the context of purported safe havens in Pakistan, this sounds familiar, doesn't it?

The Americans bled, just as the Soviets were to bleed later in Afghanistan, but victory remained as elusive as before. Short of nuclear weapons, the US tried everything, throwing more bombs -- just think of this -- than the total tonnage of bombs used in the Second World War. There was even a Hamid Karzai in the form of the South Vietnamese dictator, Ngo Dinh Diem, who was accused of presiding over a corrupt regime and of not waging the South Vietnamese side of the war as effectively as his American godfathers wished. In the context of the criticism levelled at Karzai, this too sounds familiar, doesn't it?

There was a good deal in the speech about strengthening Afghan capacity and training Afghan troops. In Vietnam it was called Vietnamization, the building of Vietnam capacity, so that when the Americans withdrew the burden of confronting the Viet Cong, the Taliban of the time, would be borne by the South Vietnamese regime and army.

The Vietnam Accords under the cover of which the US withdrew from Vietnam, in circumstances not much different from the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, were concluded in 1973. Two years later the North Vietnamese army attacked the South. The 'capacity' the Americans had taken so much pains to build evaporated not in months but in a matter of a few weeks. Is Afghanistanization, the building of the capacity of the Karzai regime, likely to lead to any different outcome?

There is a fallacy at work here, spreading confusion. There can be no capacity-building, much less the still more foolish notion of nation-building, under the shadow of military defeat. Arms have to prevail in the field before words can inspire confidence. American arms are not prevailing in the field and 30,000 more troops, judging by Vietnamese and past Afghan experience, are unlikely to make much of a difference. So under the shadow of this looming failure what capacity-building are we talking about?

If Obama had said that no matter what the cost in blood and treasure the US would hold the line in Afghanistan, it would have been a different matter. The approach might have been criticised but American resolve at least would not have been questioned. But Obama suggested no such thing. His speech implied no open-ended commitment but the eventual trimming and rolling back of the present commitment. If anything, this will spur Afghan corruption as an insurance policy against rainy days.

It is important to take this point to heart if Pakistan is to chart the right course for itself. For too long we have gone with the flow, driven not by our own necessities but the compulsions arising from our American alliance -- forged in haste and, for the most part, unthinkingly by Pervez Musharraf. It should take little genius to figure out that as America's difficulties in Afghanistan mount, and victory is no more within reach as it was for the Soviets, there will be growing pressure on us to do more.

This is where we need to preserve our cool. Any operations we undertake in our tribal areas must strictly be calibrated to our own reading of the situation rather than be a knee-jerk response to American pressure or demands.

To label Pakistan as an American satellite is to do injustice to ourselves. We have been less pushed around than readily allowing ourselves to be pushed around. If we have been foolish about many things it was folly we chose for ourselves. No one pushed General Zia into the Afghan 'jihad'. He was messianic about it himself, a full year and a half before the Americans came into the act. No one drove Musharraf into America's arms. Later he did his best to window-dress the decisions he took by saying that Pakistan had no other choice. But it is not too farfetched to suppose that a political government -- much as we choose to malign our civilian leaders -- might have opted for a more calculated response.

So we must learn to think more clearly for ourselves. We are in this war together with the Americans. Geography leaves us with no other choice. But in this new Vietnam war we must not become another Cambodia, a country which has still not fully recovered from what America did to it 30-40 years ago. Our military must do what is necessary in South and North Waziristan and perhaps beyond. But, under American pressure, it must not allow itself to become over-extended.

The higher direction of war is where our greatest weakness lies because while our military, recovering from the malaise of the Musharraf years, has finally got its act together, giving a good account of itself both in Swat and South Waziristan, our political front, given the weaknesses of the government, is not as well covered as it should be.

This leaves the military -- principally, the army -- very much on its own. There should be a surer political hand on the tiller but with the Presidency mired in rumour and scandal and the Prime Minister yet to acquire the look of a war leader, we have to throw up a collective prayer as much for a spell of rain -- because the present drought if it lasts will have killer consequences -- as for a miracle of slightly more inspired leadership.

Islamabad diary
Ayaz Amir

There's a storm gathering and when it breaks the central pillars of the temple we call the government of Pakistan will crack, throwing out some incumbents and heralding a period of uncertainty and disorder from which something good, after all our years of despair, may yet emerge.

The NRO of black memory is just the thin edge of the wedge. The hearing of the NRO case in the Supreme Court has already taken an interesting turn -- an interpretation which the Presidency is sure to dispute because from its point of view the turn is anything but interesting.

And as the case proceeds more and more vistas are coming into view. Fresh horizons are breaking forth and where it all comes to rest -- and, respecting the SC's directions, I shall be the last person to comment on a sub judice matter -- we don't know. But the opening salvoes indicate where, if we are lucky, things might be headed.

We are already in a state of disorder but it is still not enough to merit the Maoist injunction (or was it a desire?) that when there is great disorder under the heavens the situation is excellent. Ours is a rotting state of affairs and rotting fruit is no good unless it falls to the ground, to be trampled under foot and provide space for fresh buds to emerge from the naked branch -- if the rites of spring, when the time arrives, are to be properly celebrated.

I stand converted (for what my conversion is worth). Democracy is not an abstract virtue to be embraced in any form or shape it may assume. Weimar democracy in Germany led to the rise of Hitler. Neville Chamberlain's democracy led to the surrender at Munich and encouraged Hitler to test the will of the western powers. French democracy on the eve of the outbreak of the Second World War contributed immensely to the dissipation of French national morale.

Hitler was eventually overcome not by the democracies alone, his armies encountering their most decisive defeats in the endless wastes of totalitarian Russia.

If the face of Pakistani democracy reflects the shine of Swiss bank accounts, and villas in Spain and rural houses in England, then there is something seriously wrong with both that democracy and our destiny. Let's face it: this democracy is breeding disillusionment and killing national hope.

Our army gave a good account of itself in Swat. Our officers and men are fighting valiantly in the harsh, nay cruel, terrain of South Waziristan. But where is the political direction of this war? Who is providing the inspired leadership and direction without which the army's efforts, and the huge sacrifices being rendered, will come to naught?

The idea that someone accused of stashing away laundered millions abroad can provide any kind of leadership is laughable, testing the limits of absurdity. So unless some of the pillars of Islamabad -- whose founding as our capital marks the time from where our misfortunes began -- begin to shake, and something like a dramatic exit starts shaping up, we are lost.

Innocents like me wondered where the push would come from. Centcom Commander, Gen Petraeus, has declared before a congressional panel that there seemed to be no sign of the Pakistan army having any desire to imperil civilian rule.

The traditional push leading to the ouster of civilian rule has always come from the direction of Rawalpindi. This time the aim is not civilian rule as a whole but just one aspect of it in the shape of the tallest and supposedly strongest pillar of government. But Triple One Brigade, for much of our history our highest constitutional authority, is not moving anywhere. The ordnance likely to come into play (as already indicated) is deployed on a different ridge.

Not that -- and let me hasten to add this -- there is any design, any calculated aim, behind this deployment and the fireworks likely to ensue. The new dynamic whose first outlines are already visible to eyes which can see is being beaten into shape by circumstances.

Storms gather not because of any conspiracies. They gather because they must, because so the weather gods have decreed. In the NRO case one thing is leading to another. Much of it is haphazard, fortuitous. But great changes when they occur often have fortuitous circumstances behind them.

Another cruel thing to note: this democracy whose coming was greeted with so much hope and enthusiasm just two years ago has lost steam and direction in just this short period. It is waddling along but it is sick at heart and its place, on current form, is on a hospital bed -- to be given a transfusion of blood and vitamins before it can rise again and be of any use to man/woman or beast.

We have seen the bankruptcy of military rule on four successive occasions. Musharraf was the ultimate doctor who cured us of any delusions we may have had regarding the efficacy of the military solution to our troubles. We are now seeing the bankruptcy of democracy. It is not a pleasant sight but perhaps it is useful in the sense that it is concentrating Pakistani minds to think of things which democracy must deliver if its altar is to be honoured and worshipped.

Our major problems are two: governmental ineffectiveness (which we can also call corruption) and the increasingly noticeable lack of direction as regards our war against the Taliban. For both these problems our current democracy has failed to come up with any answers.

Government at the centre is in a state of paralysis. National Assembly and Senate are debating societies and not very good ones at that either. The prime minister's tailor (or designer suit provider) seems to be the most effective member of his team, deserving the Nishan-e-Imtiaz for always turning him out smartly. If clothes alone could make a man we would have a Churchill for a prime minister. Enough said.

And where is our Taliban war headed? The resort to arms in Swat was inescapable, the growing audacity of the Swat Taliban leaving the army no other choice. In South Waziristan the army so far has been very successful, going into that harsh region and capturing tough positions more quickly than anyone had expected. But if this operation is not to end in stalemate and eventual fatigue it should not an open-ended, spreading to the entire tribal belt. One Vietnam is enough, in Afghanistan. Circumstances should not be created where a mini-Vietnam is recreated on this side of the Afghan border.

So on the shoulders of the military success achieved thus far some sort of political victory has to be built, or we will keep on fighting with no end in sight. And our cities, as has been happening in recent weeks, will continue to be the target of terrorist strikes. This war is spreading. We need to contain it.

Defeatism? No, rather a call to realism. We cannot afford to be tied to America's apron strings the way we are at present. We have to fight this war on our own, within our borders, without being seen as an American appendage. It is time to loosen, not tighten, the American connection.

Afghanistan should be none of our headache. Our generals who dedicated themselves to the doctrine of strategic depth deserve a long stay in a re-education camp. What are the internal processes in the army which lead to the production of such geniuses? The Americans and the Taliban, and Al Qaeda, should be left to their own devices. But such a course of action will only command credibility if we show zero-tolerance to our home-grown Taliban.

A farewell to Zia-style jihad: we have suffered enough because of the illusions it bred and the follies it led us into. The time to rethink and reinvent Pakistan has come. And it is arising from the throes of our present troubles, from this great disorder and confusion which surround us. Hope amid the ruins: that's more like it, but only if courage and wisdom are our companions.

Ayaz Amir

A three-member bench of the Supreme Court could have taken care of the dead sparrow that was the NRO. But aware of the possible implications of this case, my lord the CJ constituted the largest bench in our history, all 17 of their lordships.

So the tempest was brewing and now it has struck, leaving the Presidency bare -- naked to laughter (a phrase out of Shelley) and the elements. The Presidency or its occupant are not mentioned at all in the short judgment. But in this Hamlet we all know who is the Prince.

When the Supreme Court directs the government to write to the Swiss authorities that the money-laundering cases (SGS Cotecna, etc) should be revived, we all know who is involved in those cases. Even today when a billion dollars is of little account, sixty million US dollars stashed away in Swiss vaults is not small change. To whom does this treasure belong? How was it amassed?

So if the money-laundering and bribery cases -- for that is what they are -- stand revived against one Asif Ali Zardari, what becomes of His Excellency Asif Ali Zardari, President of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Supreme Commander of its Armed Forces?

This is a fine mess we are in. The dignity of the Republic! We shall have to redefine the term.

The NRO was the dry-cleaning laundry set up by Pervez Musharraf (of how many of humiliations must he be the source?). With it gone, cases stand revived against all of its beneficiaries. Their number runs into the thousands, the majority relating to criminal charges against workers and leaders of the MQM. That's a separate matter. There are important figures in the government who will now have to appear in court -- among them the Secretary General to the President, Salman Farooqi, and my friend Rehman Malik.

The president may enjoy immunity from criminal proceedings and from appearing in any court. But what becomes of the authority that he is supposed to command? His position was already diminished. It stands further eroded after this judgment.

He won't quit or step down. Of that we can be sure. He steps down and he will either become a fugitive from justice (decamping abroad) or he will be running from one court to another. If for nothing else, to secure himself from this fate he will stick to the Presidency, invoking Article 248 of the Constitution -- of which we are already hearing so much -- which grants him immunity. But this doesn't leave him with much of a shine, does it?

I almost said it doesn't leave him with much moral authority but any invocation of morality is almost calculated to stick in one's throat. Moral authority? When was the last time we saw such a thing in the Islamic Republic? A few days ago General Ashfaq Kayani, the army commander, was saying Pakistan was a bastion of Islam. Hmm. Isn't it time we left this fortress-of-Islam business to one side and got on with life? In our hands Islam could do with a little less of preaching and more of action.

Senior military commanders (let no names be taken) already look at Zardari with a certain look in their eyes. It is a distant look, or call it a look with the eyes slightly screwed up. This look is not going to improve after this devastation visited upon the NRO and its beneficiaries. For who is the biggest beneficiary of them all? The Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. Not a pretty picture for the Republic or its armed forces.

In many respects, although certainly not all, Zardari has led a charmed life. So far he has stayed one step ahead of his past. Now finally it has caught up with him. If there was ever an Emperor without his clothes, we are witness to the spectacle now, part entertainment, part bitter tragedy. It takes guts to stick to the throne in such circumstances. But a certain kind of guts --we have to hand it to the man -- Zardari has always had.

It is our luck that down the years Pakistan has been led or ruled -- although, in all honesty, the proper word is screwed -- by a bizarre set of characters: Ghulam Muhammad, Iskander Mirza, Ayub Khan, Yahya, Zia, Musharraf. After Musharraf we deserved something better. What do we get? Zardari. There's a Shakespearean classic waiting to be written here.

We can cry ourselves hoarse that these are the workings of democracy. Zardari is elected president, which he is. But consider the malevolence of fate. The wheels of democracy turn and what do they throw up? The spectacle we are seeing. Why is our chalice half-laced with such deadly poison?

But life goes on. The president's companions hit by the NRO judgment will twist in the wind. Will they quit while this exquisite form of Chinese torture goes through its various progressions? My guess is, they won't. We are dealing with a tough breed of characters here. Salman Farooqi and my friend Rehman Malik didn't get to where they are by being over-scrupulous about things. Qualms of conscience? Leave that to the angels.

My friend Dr Babar Awan -- as a colleague in Parliament he is a friend -- holds a doctorate from Montecello University, a university whose existence even the keenest geographers have had a hard time discovering. Still the doctor insists his doctorate -- no doubt in higher jurisprudence -- is genuine.

It has now been revealed in a deposition before the Supreme Court by the principal defendant in the Haris Steel Mills case that Dr Babar Awan received four crore rupees, from any angle not a piddling sum, half in legal fees and half on the assurance that the Dogar Supreme Court -- alas, no more -- would deliver a favourable verdict. Instead of denying the allegation, or explaining it in some other way, as lesser morals might have done, Dr Babar Awan says this is all a Qadiani conspiracy against him because he is such a champion of the Khatam-e-Nabuwat movement.

This is a breathtaking defence but it just goes to show that it is not a squeamish lot we are dealing with. It takes a tough man to be a doctor from Montecello University. Dr Babar Awan is a confidant of the president's and is considered close to him. If this is the state of affairs with him, we get an idea of how it is going to be with the others. The art of the brazen con (ask my friend Ambassador Hussain Haqqani about it): there should be a doctorate for this too.

Who fills the breach opened up by the SC verdict? By rights it should be Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani. But does he have it in him? He's a nice guy but niceness alone has its limitations. It won't get us very far in these circumstances. For weeks, if not months, the word has been out that Gilani was resolved to reshuffle his oversized and under-performing cabinet. But if it was a Stalinist purge we needed what we have seen are a few ministers shifted here and there. If this is Gilani's idea of decisiveness we have a good deal of homework before us.

From now on, if the NRO beneficiaries are on trial, so is Gilani. Can he emerge from the shadows and be his own man? Somewhere in The Possessed Dostoyevsky says that the second half of a man's life is a repetition, or replaying, of the first half. The challenge Gilani faces is to prove this dictum wrong.

Tailpiece: Before the Defence Committee of the National Assembly is the Defence Housing Authority Ordinance 2005, issued by -- you've guessed it -- Gen Musharraf. The Defence Ministry wants this ordinance to be turned into an act of parliament. What on earth for? DHA Islamabad is a housing society which has entered into a partnership with Malik Riaz of Bahria Town. Most of the land is his. The DHA will only be lending its logo in return for a certain sum of money and an unspecified number of five-marla plots. Fine. But why should a private housing scheme, which Bahria Town is, get sovereign parliamentary status? National Security is not involved. The defence of the Republic is not at stake. So it scarcely makes any sense for the army's name to be dragged in the dust, and the collective intelligence of Parliament (if there is such a thing) insulted, for the sake of an individual.



Email: winlust@yahoo.com

Lampooning presidents, prime ministers and politicians is the very stuff, indeed the soul, of journalism. There is no such thing as positive journalism, a notion put about, mostly in a whining manner, by government information departments. Journalism is at its most responsible when it is explosive and incendiary, shaking people out of accepted modes of thinking. It is at its most irresponsible when it follows the dotted line.

Demagogues and second-rate politicians play to the gallery or dance to the tune of public opinion. The journalist with some respect for his calling looks at the other side of the coin. Priests and other doctors of the cloth may deal in the currency of faith. Indeed, where would they be without it? The journalist treads on less hallowed ground. His primary tool is language for without it he would be like a soldier unskilled in the use of arms. But his highest education is in doubt and cynicism, (which cannot be cultivated without the widest possible reading).

The journalist points the path to no celestial heaven. His Valhalla is in the here and now. Good intentions he leaves to professional charity workers, those in the NGO trade or to politicians contesting elections. For he knows where the best of intentions so often lead.

The world of the hooker and the policeman he understands. Pomposity and self-righteousness, cant and humbug, and all declarations of excessive virtue bring a smile to his lips.

Falstaff, Shakespeare's comic hero, was no journalist although if he had been around, with his jaundiced views on life he would be hailed as the unrivalled prophet of journalism. The high priest of the calling, however, would have to be the American H. L. Mencken (who flourished in the first quarter of the last century) who could make fun of presidents and politicians, and journalists, like no one else. To read Mencken even a century later is to get an education into what journalism, if touched by the gods, can be.

Journalism is flourishing in Pakistan today but of what kind is it? Is it a source of enlightenment or a primary cause of national confusion? Is it deflating pomposity and nailing humbug, or promoting hypocrisy and sanctimonious thinking?

Some idea of what this phenomenon is we can get from some of the knights of the profession. Modesty is not one of their primary failings. They give the impression as if they are somehow possessed of the ultimate truth`; that they hold a net of commandments in their hands and are thereby entitled to bestow the titles of virtue and sin, the mantles of heroism and villainy, in whichever direction their unqualified wisdom dictates.

In the hands of these knights a news report is not a news report unless it is laced with editorial opinion of the strongest kind, expressed in language which, more often than not, leaves much to be desired. We have known many forms of arrogance: military, civilian, and bureaucratic, not to mention the arrogance of self-appointed arbiters of the faith. The arrogance we now face is of a different kind and it comes from what can loosely be called media jehadis, who are as destructive in their own fashion as the Taliban.

Whatever the exalted view that they may have of themselves, what they have helped create is a climate of uncertainty in which the first casualty is democratic stability. They rail against corruption and talk of cleansing the national stables but their real target is President Asif Ali Zardari. We all know that with his colourful past and his familiarity with Swiss bank accounts, Zardari makes for an easy target. But the point lost on our new jehadis is that our national woes did not begin with him and will not end with his departure from the office he holds.

There is another uncomfortable truth to confront. Zardari, whether one likes him or not, is elected President of Pakistan. And he was elected by no process of chicanery but by the freely-expressed wish of a large majority of the presidential electoral college, a choice not forced upon parliament and the provincial assemblies but a choice they freely made. We can regret the choice but we have to live with it.

If anyone, or a combination of any forces, is out to remove him (or get him), there is a path delineated by the Constitution: impeachment. If there are the numbers, and the resolve, to impeach him, this path is there to follow. But if the prerequisites are missing, then good sense and a sense of realism demand that the windmills of conspiracy should take a break and the new jehadis, wiping some of the froth from their mouths, should rein in their ambitions.

Zardari is going to do us no Roman favour. He is not going to fall upon his sword. He is not going to take a helicopter out of the Presidency and catch a plane for Dubai. This is not going to happen. So the temperature of things should come down. And we should return to the working of the Constitution and the logical playing out of the political process.

It would help if Zardari and government were to conduct themselves better and curb the urge, which periodically overtakes them, to shoot themselves in the foot. But even if this tendency is not checked it doesn't mean we cripple or traumatise the political system.

Zardari is no one's idea of an angel. But then what is the strength of angels in the Islamic Republic? Khan Roedad Khan is a friend but when he assumes the mantle of champion of civil liberties even the gods are provoked to laughter. Dr Mubashir Hasan has always been a serious man with the best intentions. We know where they led when he oversaw nationalisation in the 1970s.

Zardari has a past. But who in the current pantheon -- politician, tycoon or even jurisprudential giant -- is without some kind of a past or the other? All their lordships in the Supreme Court once-upon-a-time were counted as PCO judges, taking oath at the altar of Musharraf's first PCO. But no one is saying that because of that they should commit hara-kiri. On the contrary, the nation is wishing them well and urging them to do their best in the performance of their duties (although, at the same time, earnestly wishing that their lordships would refrain from the temptation of fixing the prices of such things as sugar and petroleum).

There's another thing we shouldn't forget. When Benazir Bhutto was assassinated many political parties thought that there was no point in participating in the elections. Even the PML-N, thinking that an election under Musharraf would be an exercise in futility, was in favour of a boycott. At that juncture the most powerful voice urging everyone to participate was Asif Zardari's. Bizarre as it may seem, if there has to be a father chosen for the Feb 2008 elections it is Zardari.

We should get our history straight. The lawyers' movement weakened Musharraf. But it did not strip Musharraf of his uniform and it did not lead to the restoration of the Musharraf-ousted judiciary. The judges were restored by the political process as exemplified by Nawaz Sharif's leadership of the long march. My lawyer friends may not like it but it was that (Nawaz Sharif's leadership), Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani's counselling and the strategic intervention on the part of the army chief, Gen Kayani, which restored the judges.

Politicians have been short-sighted in the past but for the most part they are behaving maturely now. Like every party, the PML-N has its share of hawks who see things in black and white. But the overriding sentiment within the party is that come what may, and whatever the charge sheet against an individual, the country cannot afford another derailment of democracy. The person who has done the most to hold the line is Nawaz Sharif. He may have been anything in the past, and his record may have much that may be open to criticism, but in the afternoon of his years it is hard to deny that he is conducting himself like a statesman.

All this is surely not to the liking of the new jehadis. But then it is their turn to grow up and start behaving maturely.

So true!!

__________________
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

You were not born a winner, and you were not born a loser. You are what you make yourself be.

Our national anger, of which we have an unusually large store, should be directed at clearer targets. Before working ourselves into a lather of excitement, which we do all too readily given the slightest provocation, we should be clear in our minds what we are getting angry about.

What did Indian army chief Gen Deepak Kapoor really say that has us so upset? His reported remarks were that India was modifying its military doctrine to include the possibility of a two-front war -- that is, against China and Pakistan. What's wrong with this?

From India's point of view -- and Gen Kapoor, after all, heads the Indian not the Pakistan army -- the possible threat India faces is from China and Pakistan, not the Maldives or Burma. Just as the possible threat we face is from India, not Uzbekistan or Sri Lanka.

If an Indian army chief were not to envisage the possibility of a two-front war, and mull over the means of waging it, he would deserve to be sacked. Just as Gen Ashfaq Pervaiz Kayani would be shirking his responsibility if under his watch the Mily Ops Directorate were to ignore the possibility of the Pakistan army being engaged simultaneously on both the eastern and western fronts.

Military planning is not about certainties -- for potential threats by definition lurk in the realm of the uncertain -- but contingencies, about situations that could arise. And one not forearmed, to state the obvious, is foredoomed. Whether India attacks us or not is beside the point. Given our history, and our history of distrust, it's only common sense, not strategic brilliance, to be prepared for the possibility, near or remote as it may be.

It was the Times of India which first reported Gen Kapoor as saying, "The plan now is to launch self-contained and highly mobile 'battle groups…adequately backed by air cover and artillery fire assaults for rapid thrusts into enemy territory within 96 hours." General Heinz Guderian would have approved. This reads like something out of a Wehrmacht blitzkrieg manual.

And it would be highly surprisingly, and the highest dereliction of duty, if General Headquarters in Rawalpindi were similarly not programmed to take the fight into Indian territory, should hostilities break out, not just in 96 hours but perhaps a bit sooner.

This may be like trying to seize the stars or clutch at the moon but if our war planning is worth anything our sights should be on our mechanised columns, backed by the full might of the air force, to be across the border in fairly quick order should war break out. Armies plan for victory, and rapid victory at that, not attrition or picnic parties.

In any Indo-Pak conflict -- may there never be one again -- we will be the David, or should be the David, to India's Goliath. If we are to prevail -- although I hasten to repeat that may things never come to this pass -- David's path should be ours, boldness and decisiveness our weapons. This is the only way to counter a bigger enemy.

We live in a dangerous environment. Thanks to Afghanistan and the American presence there, and the assorted engines of terrorism brought into being by previous fixations and earlier follies, our region counts as one of the most dangerous flashpoints on the planet. So the luxury of taking anything for granted is not ours. But even as we go arming ourselves against the worst, the least we owe ourselves is to read the minds and words of our adversaries correctly.

After so many years of independent existence we should be able to see things dispassionately. Gen Kapoor was not flaming the fans of war. He was not indulging in war-mongering, which would be silly in the present circumstances. He was carrying out a risk-assessment of the threat that India, to his mind, faces. Yes, he has spoken of better coordination (better synergy, in his words) between the three Indian services. What's wrong with that? Our services could do with better synergy. He has spoken of enhancing India's strategic reach into the Indian Ocean. Had our economy been in better shape, and if we not shown such a talent for making a mess at home, we would have been talking of spreading our reach into the Persian Gulf and beyond. And no one would have blamed us. Now what we have is a nuke capability in jarring contrast to our iron begging bowl.

China is attaining superpower status because of its growing economic might. It became a nuclear power in 1964 but is emerging as a giant on the world stage only now. As India's economy grows so will its great-power ambitions. The answer to this is not to sulk or go red in the face but, to the exclusion of other things, concentrate on our economy. Balancing our accounts is our number one problem, greater even than the threat from the Taliban. If our economic base remains brittle and our begging bowl is the only thing that helps us survive, no amount of military muscle will do us any good or make us look strong.

Gen Kapoor is also being berated in the Pakistani media for having said in November last year, "The possibility of a limited war under a nuclear overhang is still very much a possibility at least in the Indian sub-continent." There is nothing inaccurate about this, else why would we have such a large standing army? If there was no threat of a conventional war with India we would be well advised to disband half our forces and send them home. Sadly, the nuclear overhang has not made the threat of conventional war go away. Wisdom in any full measure has yet to dawn on the subcontinent.

Let's not forget, Kargil was not a full-fledged war engaging the bulk of the armies on both sides. But it was a serious conflict nonetheless which had every potential of getting out of hand, had not President Clinton eventually, at our urgent insistence, helped pull our chestnuts out of the fire.

For the foreseeable future we are doomed to have a touchy relationship with India, unless through vision and statesmanship, of which there are no early signs around the corner, we are able to transcend the dictates of geography and history.

But sixty years on the world stage is a long time to be around, at least enough to leave the apprenticeship of nationhood behind. As part of this growing-up it is high time we learnt to react with calmness to things coming from across the border, even if they happen to be blustery and provocative.

If we cast our minds back to the summer of 1998, India's nuclear tests were followed by some very provocative statements on the part of L K Advani and the like. As a result of those statements, our national morale was said to have been badly affected. Our response eventually, I am sure, was calibrated to the tests and not the statements. But the way this entire situation was played out in the media it almost seemed as if Pakistan was responding to the statements.

Gen Kapoor's two-front war assessment has been read in Pakistan almost as a declaration of war, and everyone responding to it has done so with a mixture of anger and heightened alarm. From Gen Kayani has come this warning: "Proponents of conventional application of military forces, in a nuclear overhang, are charting an adventurous path, the consequences of which could be both unintended and uncontrollable." The foreign minister has been livid as has been the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen Tariq Majeed.

Has all this wordiness been necessary? Are we such an insecure nation that a single misinterpreted statement can so unsettle us? If a riposte was necessary, a one-liner from the Inter-Services Public Relations would have served the purpose. Something like, "Everyone is entitled to his fantasies", delivered with an ironic curl of the lips.

Philip, Alexander's father, sent Sparta a message: "If I enter Laconia, you shall be exterminated." He received just one word in answer: "If". When French marshals turned their backs on him in Paris, Wellington merely said, "I have seen their backs before." The cultivation of calm and brevity would improve our tone as a nation.



Email: winlust@yahoo.com

Ayaz Amir

"Patience, stout heart, thou hast endured far worse than this."

-- The Odyssey



Odysseus would have had to revise his understanding of patience were he to have undertaken his voyages in the salubrious climate of the Islamic Republic. Adversity and facing up to it are part of the human condition. But the consistent ability to make simple problems worse and invent new problems all the time is a distinction that sets us apart from many other countries in what used to be called the Third World.

RAW and Mossad in their wildest imagination can't do to us what we are capable of inflicting on ourselves.

We just can't get things right and governance or the administering of things seems to lie wholly beyond our collective ability or our collective endeavours. Yes, we face a tough situation that would have taxed all of Odysseus's cleverness to fix. But what explanation for the collective death wish which seems to afflict our governing class, from one end of the spectrum to the other?

Does the responsibility for saving the democratic system rest only on our shoulders and not President Asif Zardari? Must only we, setting all reservations aside, continue to bleat about the system while His Excellency the President, and the minions supposedly most loyal to him, continue to do as they please?

For his own good, and his party's good, why is it so difficult for the president to rely a bit more on elected men from within his party rather than on the unelected drones who surround him and on whose advice, often at fatal cost to himself, he continues to rely, to the exclusion of any other sane counsel?

Nawaz Sharif, to the dissatisfaction of many in his inner circle, offers not one but several olive branches to the president by saying that he would stand in the way of any unconstitutional moves to replace him. And how does our foremost product of accident and circumstance respond to this? By taking a dig at him in his Naudero speech (on the occasion of BB's second death anniversary) and by blithely allowing his perpetually-switched-on megaphone in Lahore, Governor Salmaan Taseer (another product of circumstances, if ever there was one), to blast the PML-N leadership all the time.

If this be not part of the death wish we seem to be suffering from, what else is it? Is the president trying to be president or is he taking Samson as his model who when he went took the whole temple of doom with him? At whose behest is Salmaan carrying out his sustained attempts at demolition?

The president already has problems, and serious ones at that, on the judicial front. We may see some action regarding Swiss corruption and money-laundering cases in which his name is involved or we may not. But this is a potential time-bomb, a perennial spectre at the president's table, which if nothing else would dictate a measure of circumspection on the part of his team.

What do we get instead? A virtuoso performance by Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira who virtually baits My Lord the Chief Justice by saying that he should take suo moto notice of the reports -- since vehemently denied -- that the CJ and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had met in the dark of the night. It would take a man out of his mind to go on about anything like this but, to all appearances, we have such a worthy in the shape of the honourable Mr Kaira.

Knowing his flexibility I am sure he will put a spin on what he has said and put the responsibility for his almost incendiary remarks on other shoulders. Is My Lord the CJ likely to be amused?

And then what to make of events in Karachi? For the first time in the PPP's history the party had an absolute majority in the Sindh assembly after the last elections. This had not happened with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, nor with Benazir Bhutto. The PPP was in a position to form a government on its own. Wiser heads had counselled the president not to feed milk to snakes but he went ahead and is now having to live with the consequences.

Thanks to these policies the Lyari township of Karachi, for over forty years an invincible stronghold of the PPP, has witnessed an unprecedented outpouring of anger against the PPP and the president personally. Why? Because PPP workers were mercilessly targeted in a supposed law-and-order operation carried out in Lyari. Only a genius could have fomented such unrest in such a locality. But we have seen this miracle come to pass, thanks to some of the president's closest advisers.

On the question of Lyari, it is pertinent to ask who got Rehman Dakait (dacoit), Lyari's Robin Hood, killed? He was caught in Balochistan but killed in a staged police encounter near Malir. Rehman enjoyed the protection of powerful godfathers (discretion forbids me to take their names). But when the chips were down for him, it was his godfathers who let him go. Cruel as the ways of politics may be, it is still pertinent to ask at whose behest, or to please whom, did the godfathers so behave?

The crocodiles of Manghopir (just outside Karachi) can be satisfied. Feed them enough and they will bask in the sun. The snakes of Karachi are insatiable.

But since it is the entirety of the political spectrum which is, or should be, under the microscope, what to make of the democracy certificate conferred on army chief General Ashfaq Kayani by Mian Shahbaz Sharif? Talking to Hamid Mir in his 'Capital Talk' TV programme, the Punjab chief minister said that of all the army chiefs he had known -- and he recounted their names -- he had found Gen Kayani to be the most pro-democracy.

Can we please put a moratorium on such certificates? Bhutto elevated Gen Zia above six other generals to make him army chief. Zia's gratitude took the form of seeing Bhutto swing from the gallows not long thereafter. Benazir Bhutto conferred a democracy medal on Gen Aslam Beg during her first premiership and could only rub her hands in bewilderment when, with Ghulam Ishaq Khan's help, he ousted her a year-and-a-half later.

Shahbaz Sharif was one of the persons instrumental -- I will not name the others -- in getting Pervez Musharraf picked up from Mangla where he was corps commander and made army chief in 1998 after Gen Jahangir Karamat had stepped down. Musharraf must have seemed very pro-democracy then but we know where it all ended.

Musharraf should be tried under Article 6 of the Constitution which prescribes the punishment for high treason. But before that, it would perhaps not be out of order if those who detected a democrat in him in 1998 should proffer a public apologia.

Which is not to say that Kayani has it in him to be like any of the others. He could well be the exception who proves the rule about our army supremos. All the same, he still has some way to go. There will be time enough for medals later. CM Sharif should concentrate on his bailiwick, Punjab, where he has his job cut out for him. (To give him his due, he is one of our better administrators.) But his military diplomacy, judging by his past record in this field, deserves to be taken with a fistful of salt.

As if to prove that we are all in the same bathhouse (the Urdu word hamaam has a sharper resonance to it) there is the spectacle of My Lord the CJ proposing Justice Ramday -- who after a distinguished career as a senior judge has just retired -- as an ad hoc judge of the Supreme Court. Why can't we let our stars have some mercy on us?

My Lord Ramday has played his innings and a good innings at that. If all the world's a stage -- although, it has to be said, it's getting a bit crowded -- more important than one's entry is the timing and manner of one's exit. We are given to prolonging, often painfully, our departures, simply not knowing how to bow and take our leave. Justice Ramday should be allowed to leave with dignity and grace, concentrating on his memoirs and his garden. It will be the proper example to set. Ad hoc Judge Ramday just doesn't sound right.



Email: winlust@yahoo.com

The National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) was a dead duck the moment the National Assembly refused to have anything to do with it. If it still needed another shot in the head, a division bench of the Supreme Court (SC) could have done the needful, no extraordinary issue of constitutional theory being involved in the outcome.

But we have not been that lucky, all 17 of their SC lordships hearing the NRO case whose detailed judgment -- written by My Lord the Chief Justice -- is now out, and about which the shrillest comments are coming from the already committed or the already biased.

This judgment is not for the fainthearted because it doesn't make for easy reading. This is not syntax at the point of a rapier; more a sledgehammer driving home its many obvious points.

Discrimination -- favouring a certain classification of people, to the exclusion of others -- was enough of a touchstone by which to fell the NRO and make short work of it. But in its wisdom -- and I readily confess there may be reasons for doing so not readily accessible to untrained legal minds like mine -- the SC chose to traverse a longer route, to arrive at much the same conclusion.

In so doing the SC has pointed the way, in part, to a quaint realm of thought. It says the Constitution has a conscience which nothing must violate, a point of view likely to sound strange to the many cynics inhabiting the Republic who are convinced that anything by way of both innocence and conscience the 1973 Constitution lost long ago at the hands of such conscience-keepers as Gen Ziaul Haq.

Zia's greatest collaborators were superior judges, as were Pervez Musharraf's when he seized power many years later. It is a sobering thought that all the 17 pillars of wisdom now in the SC took oath under Musharraf's Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) in 2000. The Constitution may have had a conscience even then but it wasn't strong enough to deter baptism in the waters of the PCO.

Nor was this all. Just as earlier coups had been validated by the superior judiciary, Musharraf's coup was validated too in 2000 in the famous Zafar Ali Shah case. Among the luminaries on that bench headed by Chief Justice Irshad Hasan Khan was an up and coming judge by the name of Iftikhar Chaudhry.

By which I do not mean to say that people remain always the same and do not change. They change all the time. Some of us as we grow old become worse, leaving the idealism of youth behind. Some of us grow better, leaving behind the thoughtlessness or follies of our younger days. But the least that should come with the remembrance of past omissions or mistakes is a measure of humility.

How well has Ghalib put it: Mein ne Majnoon pe lark pan mein Asad, Sang uthaya tau sar yaad aya. When I thought of casting a stone at Majnoon, I thought of my own head -- meaning my own follies.

In his note to the detailed judgment written by CJ Chaudhry, Justice Jawwad Khawaja writes as follows: "At the very outset it must be said, without sounding extravagant, that the past three years in the history of Pakistan have been momentous, and can be accorded the same historical significance as the events of 1947 when the country was created and those of 1971 when it was dismembered." He goes on to say: "It is with this sense of the nation's past that we find ourselves called upon to understand and play the role envisaged for the Supreme Court by the Constitution."

Without sounding extravagant? There's a touch of hubris about this declaration which almost amounts to saying that caught as we are in the midst of great events, it is history which calls upon us to make great decisions. A judiciary best fulfils its functions if it is faithful to the letter of the law and if it is honest in interpreting it; and if it doesn't play second fiddle to dictators and doesn't bend the law to suit their purposes. A sense of historical mission, which is what is suggested by Justice Khawaja's observation, is best left to the people and their chosen representatives.

And if it is history we should consider, it must be history in its entirety and not slices of history susceptible to selective interpretation. Nowhere is the judgment's take on recent history more evident, and perhaps more startling, than in its analysis of the meaning of the word 'reconciliation'. It says that the NRO was a deal between two individuals -- Pervez Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto -- for their personal objectives.

"We are of the opinion," says the judgment, "that the NRO was not promulgated for 'national reconciliation' but for achieving the objectives which absolutely have no nexus with the (sic) 'national reconciliation' because the nation of Pakistan, as a whole, has not derived any benefit from the same."

In attesting to the subjective nature of the NRO, the judgment quotes this from Benazir Bhutto's book, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West: "The talks with Musharraf remained erratic. He didn't want us resigning from the assemblies when he sought re-election. There wouldn't be much difference in his winning whether we boycotted or contested, but we used this to press him to retire as army chief. He cited judicial difficulties. It was a harrowing period. After many, many late-night calls, he passed a National Reconciliation Order, rather than lift the ban on a twice-elected prime minister seeking office a third time, which he said he would do later."

Is this an individual talking or a major political leader discussing the when and how of a democratic transition? The keystone, the flagstone, of Musharraf's rule was his position as army chief. And here when Benazir Bhutto is negotiating the removal of Musharraf's uniform -- in which she eventually succeeded -- their lordships are of the opinion that this deal between the two was just confined to their two selves and had no wider significance whatsoever.

This is a selective reading of the past three years which in Justice Khawaja's estimation have been as momentous as anything in our past. There were many things which came together to pave the way for the transition from Musharraf to the present order. Different chapters were written by different authors.

The lawyers' movement wrote one chapter, arguably the most important in weakening the mainstays of the Musharraf dispensation. CJ Iftikhar Chaudhry and the judges who stood with him wrote another chapter when they defied Musharraf. This was a first in Pakistani history. Judges had been collaborators of military strongmen. They had never stood up to them before, at least not in this manner.

There was a third chapter written by Benazir Bhutto and, much as we may dislike the notion, by our American friends when in tandem they prevailed upon Musharraf to shed his uniform. The judiciary and the lawyers' movement had an indirect hand in this in that they had created the climate in which Musharraf had become an enfeebled ruler. But this should not detract from Benazir Bhutto's role who played her cards shrewdly and engaged with Musharraf in a manner which persuaded him to hand over the army baton to a successor.

The fourth chapter was written in Benazir Bhutto's blood when she was assassinated in Liaquat Bagh. The lawyers and the judiciary had weakened Musharraf. They hadn't destroyed him. Benazir Bhutto's death rocked the Musharraf order by bringing the latent anger of the people to the surface. There was nothing that could save Musharraf thereafter, Benazir Bhutto proving more powerful in death than she had been in life.

And it was only with the coming of democracy that the judges detained by Musharraf were freed. And only with the so-called long march led by Nawaz Sharif that, after many travails, they were eventually restored. In other words, it was the political process and the climate of the times which led to their historic restoration. How can their lordships see themselves in isolation from all this history?

The NRO was a bad law and there can be no cavil with this. But it was part of a larger picture of which there is scarce a mention in the entire judgment.



Email: winlust@yahoo.com

Folly, not clash of institutions


Clash of institutions has a grand ring to it, suggestive of Cromwell's Roundheads battling the monarchy; or the children of the French Revolution slaughtering the French nobility; or Lenin's Bolsheviks storming the Winter Palace.

Would that this were the state of affairs in Pakistan. We could then expect something creative, a higher synthesis, to emerge from all this disorder. But we are not that lucky. This is less clash of institutions than elephants on parade: large egos on the march, the vanity of mediocrity on display -- dressed up, as Pakistani mediocrity mostly is, in the colours of national salvation.

If Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani is refusing to put a pistol to his head, if he is refusing to become another Farooq Leghari, and if the National Assembly (including the PML-N) is with him on the matter of not committing collective suicide, media samurais -- of whom there are not a few and who deserve the title of Ustad-e-Fidayeen better than any Taliban -- are dismayed, and almost on the verge of hysteria, because the triumph of prudence is the last thing they wish to celebrate.

For six months and more these laptop warriors have been spreading confusion and alarm, conning a public which they take to be gullible into thinking that political change is around the corner. But their deadlines having not been met, not once but repeatedly, it is not surprising if there is an air of increasing desperation about their battle-cries, which they expect the public to take as serious analysis. If their frantic outpourings are serious analysis, comic relief acquires a different meaning.

Two slogans have proved the most enduring in our history: Islam and corruption. Every humbug in authority, especially when besieged and short of real answers to our many problems, has raised the banner of Islam, none more loudly than Gen Ziaul Haq, who would be prince if ever there was a kingdom dedicated wholesale to the worship of hypocrisy. The more of a mess we have made of our Constitution the greater the reliance on Islamic references -- not for acting upon them, perish the thought, as for the sacred rites of lip-service and window-dressing.

To much the same use has been put the slogan of corruption. In every military coup, from Ayub to Musharraf, in every civilian coup, whether carried out by Ghulam Ishaq Khan or Farooq Leghari, the eradication of corruption has figured as the foremost priority. Ironic, then, is it not, that after every forced transition, every turn of the screw, the one thing to explode was corruption? So much for the good intentions, and so much for the heaven they led to.

At present too the idea of change -- that change is necessary if Pakistan is to survive -- has been hyped up relentlessly around the theme of corruption. Foremost in this campaign, although keeping themselves well hidden in the shadows, have been the self-appointed guardians of our ideological frontiers. They may have been less than adept at guarding our geographical frontiers -- the ones visible on a map -- but the ramparts of ideology, in their own definition of this term, they continue to guard jealously.

The laptop warriors may be doing their own thing, for in their ranks are to be found the odd knight of good faith genuinely taken in by all the talk about corruption, but the wrecking game they are embarked upon fits in neatly with the agenda of the ideological warriors who are just not comfortable with a civilian dispensation.

Angels from heaven can descend tomorrow and minister to the needs of the Islamic Republic, but the ideological warriors and the definers of strategic depth -- one and the same thing -- won't be satisfied. Why do they suffer the Constitution? Why do they endure civilian trappings? If they are so impatient with democracy they should make Myanmar their model and once and for all have done with the charade of democracy.

It is a measure of the success of the forces out to alter the political landscape that in just two years since the revival of democracy, they have managed to instil into the minds of the middle class -- which for all its presumed sophistication is the first to fall for such gambits -- that Pakistan's number one problem is corruption. If this bull is caught by the horns salvation is at hand. If not, the Republic faces ruin and destruction.

The lawyers' movement did much good in that it helped weaken the foundations of dictatorship, although I must hasten to add that by itself it wasn't strong enough to defeat that dictatorship. That outcome had to await the fruition of the political process as signified by the holding of elections and the assumption of office by a political government. Even so, the lawyers' movement was an inspiring sight while it lasted. To a nation caught in the throes of depression it gave a glimpse of what resolve and sustained commitment could achieve.

But there have been some negative effects too. One is the outbreak of a species of arrogance amongst lawyers finding vent in violent and yahoo behaviour. The frequency of such outbursts is serving to dim the shine of the lawyers' movement, the heroes of yesterday allowing themselves to be seen in a poor light. The second is the rise of a strange kind of innocence which seems to be divorced from any understanding of Pakistan's tempestuous past.

This innocence finds expression in the belief that the movement and the subsequent restoration of the judges were turning points in our history. In this somewhat exalted view of things, the restored judges have been cast in heroic colours, indeed likened to prophets of a new dawn in which justice and the rule of law will always prevail. It was no doubt in a like spirit of exaltation that Justice Jawwad Khawaja in his added note to the detailed judgement of My Lord the Chief Justice in the NRO case stated that the last three years in their momentousness "… can be accorded the same historical significance as the events of 1947... and those of 1971..."

Jinnah was the hero of 1947 and Yahya the anti-hero of 1971. While Musharraf can be made to run a close parallel to Yahya, whom should we take as the Jinnah of the last three years? In any event, this rendering of history can be faulted on another count. On our side of the divide, Jinnah was the sole architect of 1947. Lawyers and judges have not been the sole shapers of the outcome of the last three years. They played a part and often a heroic part in those events but not the sole part.

And it is salutary to remember that the judges did not restore democracy. It was democracy which restored them. As we go on about a new dawn this sequence of events should not be forgotten.

Furthermore, as laptop warriors foam at the mouth and serve up their beliefs and desires as news and analysis, faith that a new dawn is really at hand will be immeasurably strengthened if the guardians of justice take up two pressing challenges: (1) apologise in the clearest of terms, with a due sense of contrition, for the oath taken by them at the altar of Musharraf's PCO in 2000, and if some amongst their present lordships validated Musharraf's coup in the Zafar Ali Shah judgment, an apology for that too; and (2) take up instantly Air Marshal Asghar Khan's petition about the Mehran Bank scandal and the money distributed by the ISI in the 1990 elections.

If there is any hesitation on both or either of these counts -- and there can be very understandable reasons for exercising caution -- would it be too much to ask that discretion be the better part of valour in other things as well?

The inadequacy of the political class may be great and may be enough to drive one to despair. But if there is one lesson of our history it is that there is no alternative to democracy. It is within its fold and bosom that we must seek its reform and correction, and the salvation of the Pakistani nation.



Email: winlust@yahoo.com