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Islaw Khan · #1 Tuesday, October 13, 2009

The existentialist threat to Pakistan

By Farooq Ahmad Khan Leghari

1) Pakistan stands at a defining moment in its chequered history. Never before have we faced the challenges that confront us today — most stemming from our own weaknesses and thus of our own making and some from the machinations of outside powers. We are confronted by multiple crises each getting more alarming by the day. Poverty levels keep increasing as do prices of essential commodities and the lives of ordinary citizens have become brutish and devoid of any kind of justice. The federal and provincial governments are without direction and clueless, their main interest only in making megabucks through massive and pervasive corruption. Not a file moves in the echelons of government without a motive for corruption and wrongdoing. The undignified and shameless behaviour of our highest level rulers before the emissaries of certain foreign powers demean the entire nation. Provincial and local level rights are denied to the people of our multi-ethnic society; thus, creating dangerous fissures. No serious attempts are made to address the problems that people of the deprived areas face. Havoc continues to be played with the banking system, financial institutions and government controlled corporations, from the Steel Mills to Wapda and IPPs, through the so-called Rental Power policy from the wilful corruption and mismanagement of the sugar industry for the benefit of a few powerful political figures to the sale of valuable public property at a pittance through unknown intermediaries to the highest in the land. The sad and tragic story of corruption in our society is long but never ever has corruption touched the levels that stalk our land today, threatening to bring the entire edifice of the state down. The natural outcome of this cannot be anything other than the rapid growth of injustice and extremism — the erosion of our system of governance & loss of Sovereignty.

2) Yet in the midst of this sea of seeming hopelessness lie opportunities for our nation to pull itself out and break through the straitjackets woven around us by some powerful nations in their hubris and in collaboration with betrayers of national interests.

3) The Pakistan Enduring Assistance and Cooperation Enhancement (PEACE) Act, 2009 commonly known as the Kerry-Lugar Bill is a supreme example of the servility and shamelessness of our top-most leadership who secretly aided and acquiesced in the unbearable presumptions, language and conditionalities that leave Pakistan in the dock as a country whose armed forces and the ISI stand accused and “proven guilty” of initiating, aiding and abetting terrorism, whose two cities — Quetta and Muridke — are wrongly and unjustly identified as centres of terrorism, of a country to be held hostage to accusations of terrorist activity by India and Afghanistan, a country whose entire social, religious, educational and economic direction would be determined by the US congressional committees and their government, whose defence forces senior positions will be in the oversight and final endorsement of that government, whose entire nuclear programme and its personnel will be accessible to that government and whose federal and provincial departments and local authorities and favoured NGOs will be directly beholden to that government. Never publicly has even a “banana republic” succumbed to such conditionalities. Even the Chalabis of Iraq would not agree to such humiliating conditionalities and surrender of sovereignty.

4) The Pakistan People’s Party, now a mere shadow of Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s party, is celebrating the KerryñLugar Bill while Bhutto Sahib would be turning in his grave tormented by the evil that rules his party. But why has this come to pass?

5) When corrupt rulers of a country illegitimately acquire not millions but billions worth of wealth in US dollars, when they hide their ill-begotten wealth with the help of international money-laundering consultants in one shell company after another in foreign countries, when they obfuscate their criminal past by massive bribery through a corrupt judicial system, then they are easy prey to any foreign power that wishes to exploit them for their own purposes. Many of our top-most power elites, some currently in power through deals, others awaiting their turn, fall in this category. Were their ill-begotten wealth in foreign safe havens to be brought back, Pakistan would have more dollars than the Kerry-Lugar dispensation and whatever else we seek with begging bowls in our hands.

6) Who does not know about the infamous deal struck between Pervez Musharraf and Benazir/Asif Zardari in October 2007 under the active tutelage, nay command of the Neo-conservatives under Bush and Rice? The so-called National Reconciliation Ordinance was nothing but a shameful stratagem for whitewashing crimes of massive corruption against the nation and people of Pakistan, as well as crimes against humanity by people whose hands were tainted with blood. Musharraf wanted to prolong his stay in power, riding the PPP horse and that party’s leadership wanted to be rid of all corruption and criminal cases undertaking to do for their ‘masters’ whatever they willed. Asif Zardari continues to play that role.

7) We have been hearing cacophonies of the return of a democratic order, of having got rid of dictatorship, of the ‘sovereignty’ of parliament. But is this really true? The presidency enjoys the same powers that Pervez Musharraf had, and more, because the so-called president is the head of the ruling political party as well. The ‘sovereignty’ of parliament today is no different from Musharraf’s era, whatever the prime minister and others may continue to parrot. Cannot honourable US legislators see through this sham, corrupt system, or are we so naÔve as to believe the wonderful language for promoting ‘democracy’ enshrined in the Peace Act? Or is it that they treat us, the people of Pakistan, with contempt just because our grovelling rulers so desire to stay on in power?

8) The US is a great nation, its people are good people. All sensible Pakistanis want to have good relations with the superpower that can offer so much for the betterment of humanity. Many Pakistanis would identify with and share mutually-held beliefs and values. We are not extremists. Islam is not terroristic. Al-Qaeda is not Islam. And the Taliban represent an odd mixture of tribalism and unenlightened beliefs. Unfortunately the US neglect and abandonment of Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal instead of helping that war-torn country with the likes of a ‘Marshall plan’ was its great failure of the 20th century. An even bigger folly was to load its dice with the minority peoples of Afghanistan; thus, turning the Pashtun majority against the ‘occupying foreign forces’ and lending longevity and strength with the peoples support to the Taliban (and thus indirectly to the remnants of al-Qaeda). And Pakistan has had to suffer the consequences.

9) When President Obama took office and extended the hand of friendship to the Muslim people, there was a wave of jubilation among the people of Pakistan as well. When the idea of a long-term sustainable relationship with Pakistan and its people was mooted from within the US system, the people of Pakistan rejoiced and the US esteem skyrocketed. But all that started eroding when Pakistan’s successes against al-Qaeda network were pooh-poohed, and when Pakistan’s military and the ISI were unjustly and continuously accused of abetting terrorism despite the martyrdom of more than 2,000 of our men in uniform against the extremists and the massive shifting of our armed forces to our western borders to contain the Taliban from infiltrating into Afghanistan. Public confidence in American pledges has now been shattered with the Peace Act of 2009.

10) The people of Pakistan are grateful to the US for helping us but will not exchange their freedom for money. Our sovereignty is not for sale, not for $1.5 billion or $10 billion or $100 billion or more. Our people want an end to corruption. They desire good governance. They want justice and democracy. They do not want military intervention. We want to live in peace with all our neighbours, especially India and Afghanistan. But neither do we want sermonising, unjust accusations. Nor to be spoken to with a forked tongue, with the Pentagon publicly lauding our tremendous contribution in the struggle against terrorism and the State Department and Congress accusing those same contributing organisations for duplicity and protecting terrorists in Muridke, Quetta or Karachi. We are the worst affected by terrorism, mostly puppeteered from India and Afghanistan and the US surely knows about it.

11) It was a sad spectacle to see President Obama and Prime Minister Brown sit alongside one of history’s most corrupt men, tainted with serious allegations of high crime intermixed with similarly tainted ministers and officials along with some honourable members of the Obama cabinet at the ‘Friends of Pakistan’ moot in New York recently. Did nobody advise the Secretary of State and the President about the past of such ‘luminaries’ of our society? Or have the Neo-cons also wormed their way into the new administration?

12) Pakistan does face an existentialist threat today. The current state of directionlessness, of corruption, mismanagement and bad governance cannot go on for long. This only produces more extremism which threatens our body politic as well as neighbouring countries. Unwise policies sought to be thrust on us because weak lackeys are willing to play ball breed counter reactions in our people. We are losing the battle for the hearts and minds of our own people throughout Pakistan. The PEACE Act exacerbates the problem. If Pakistan is in disarray and not wisely dealt with what will become of Nato in Afghanistan? And India will not be far behind.

13) The time has come for the people of Pakistan to face up to the critical conditions that threaten our very existence. For parliament to show that it is really sovereign and capable of protecting Pakistan’s sovereignty, for civil society, for political parties and for political leaders not to be cowed down and meekly submit but to stand up and say ‘no’ to the NRO, say ‘no’ to corruption and mismanagement and one Man’s Rule; ‘no’ to the conditionalities and intrusive colonial era language of the Peace Act 2009. And the US and western powers have to deal with us as real friends for our mutual desire to eliminate terrorism and its root causes. The policy goals of rolling-back Pakistan’s nuclear programme while India continues to be blessed with the most sophisticated technology, violating long-held US and Nuclear Supplies Group laws must come to an end.

If we are a friend then we must be treated as a friend. Only then can the stated objectives of the Peace Act be fulfilled, the root causes of terrorism eliminated and the Existentialist threat to Pakistan and the entire region removed.

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