The Role of the Supreme Court

In Pakistan, as in all Federations, the Supreme Court plays a crucial role. It is the sole and unique tribunal of the nation. The peace, prosperity, and very existence of the Federation rest continually in the hands of the Supreme Court Judges. Without them, the constitution would be a dead letter; It is to them that the Executive appeals to resist the encroachment of the Parliament; the Parliament to defend itself against the assaults of the executive; the federal government to make the provinces obey it; the provinces to rebuff the exaggerated pretensions of the federal government, public interest against private interest etc. They decide whether you and I shall live or die. Their power is immense.

It is our misfortune that from the country's first decade, our judges tried to match their constitutional ideals and legal language to the exigencies of current politics. The superior judiciary has often functioned at the behest of authority and has been used to further the interests of the rulers against the citizens. Their judgments have often supported the government of the day. This was their chosen path through the 1950s and during the Martial Law period of the 1960s and 1970s. When the history of these benighted times comes to be written, it will be noted that the superior judiciary had failed the country in its hour of greatest need. Chief Justice Iftikhar broke with past tradition and changed all that. The nexus between the Generals and the superior judiciary has snapped. An era of deference by the Supreme Court to the Executive has given way to judicial independence.

In the darkest hour in the history of our country, Fate had found the man who had the character, the will and determination to speak truth to the military dictator. Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Choudhary appeared on the scene like a deus ex machina and changed the course of history. Somewhere in the universe, a gear in the machinery shifted. As history shows, everyone must, from time to time, make a sacrifice on the altar of stupidity to please the deity. General Musharraf thought himself poised on the cusp of power, but was about to start sliding down a slippery slope and land in the dustbin of history.

One of the lessons of history is that when people lose faith in their rulers, when rulers lose their credibility and integrity, when they renege on their promises, when their veracity is shattered, and when hunger and anger come together, people sooner or later, come out on the road and demonstrate Lenin’s maxim that in such situations, voting with citizen’s feet is more effective than voting in elections. That is what happened on March 15, 2007. People everywhere in Pakistan took to the roads and set out on the historic long march to Islamabad. The world witnessed the “power of the powerless”. March 15 was the answer that led those, who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve, to put their hand on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day. Today, thanks to Chief Justice Iftikhar Choudhary, the “black coats”, the media and the civil society, hope is sweeping Pakistan.

Even revolutions have a “morning after”. The euphoria following the restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Choudhary and other deposed Judges soon gave way to the sobriety of the morning after. Today disillusion is fast setting in. People are getting impatient and are asking questions. The poor, the disadvantaged and the voiceless believe the reborn Supreme Court is on their side and expect redressal of their grievances, not from the parliament, not from the presidency, not from the Prime Minister, but from an unelected and unaccountable Supreme Court!

What they don’t realize is that the power of the Supreme Court is limited. The Presidency and the rubber-stamp Parliament are not in harmony with the spirit of the times. Mr. Zardari has lost the “mandate of heaven” and is leading this country to a perilous place. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani is a mere figurehead and exercises only delegated authority. The President, the Prime Minster and the Supreme Court are not on the same wavelength at a time when a revolutionary change, both political and economic, is not only needed but would appear to be inevitable.

The Supreme Court is under the constitution but “the Constitution is what the judges say it is”. This gives the Supreme Court awesome power but that power is limited by the doctrine of the separation of power enshrined in the Constitution. The court has the power to decide what the law is but it cannot make law. That power vests in the legislature. It can invalidate any law. It can strike down any law as being void or unconstitutional but it cannot legislate. It can mete out justice but it has to be justice in accordance with law. Not otherwise.

On September 29, 2005, John Roberts was sworn in as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of America. At one point in the confirmation hearings he was asked, “Are you going to be on the side of the little guy”? Roberts replied: “if the constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy is going to win in court before me. But if the constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then the big guy is going to win, because my obligation is to the constitution”. The Supreme Court would perhaps endorse these views.

It would, therefore, be naïve to depend on the Supreme Court alone to defend the rights of poor people, women, minorities, workers and peasants, and dissenters of all kinds. These rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order to uphold justice.

The American constitution gave no rights to working people: no right to work less than 12 hours a day, no right to a living wage, no right to save working conditions. No right to treatment by a doctor when in need. No right to take time off to mourn a death or to celebrate a new birth. No right to a place to live. The Supreme Court was helpless. Workers had to organize, go on strike, and defy the law, the courts, and the police to create a great movement to win an 8-hour workday, and cause such commotion that Congress was forced to pass a minimum wage law, social security, and unemployment insurance.

Women’s right to abortion did not depend on the Supreme Court decision in Roe vs Wade. It was won before that decision by grassroots agitation that forced states to recognize the right. The rights of working people, women, and black people have not depended on decisions of the courts. Like the other branches of the political system, the courts have recognized these rights only after citizens have engaged in direct action powerful enough to win these rights for themselves.

Our culture – our history, the media, the educational system – tries to crowd out of our political consciousness everything except who will be elected MNA or MPA as if these were the most important decisions we make. They are not. They deflect us from the most important job citizens have, which is to energize democracy by organizing, protesting, sharing of information, and engaging in acts of civil disobedience that shakeup the system.

No Supreme Court can stop the war in FATA or abolish poverty or educated unemployment or redistribute the wealth of this country or establish free medical care for every citizen or provide roti, kapra makaan promised by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto long ago. These revolutionary changes depend on the actions of an aroused citizenry. A bloodless revolution, but a mighty revolution – that is what we need today.

Much water has gone down the Indus since March 9, 2007. Today the good news is that General Musharraf has been hounded out of office and thrown into the dustbin of history. The bad news is that Mr. Asif Ali Zardari, his “democratic” successor, seems to have entered into a Faustian bargain with the Americans to pursue their agenda with disastrous consequences for the country. What can the Supreme Court do? That is the question. God protect us all.

The American Threat


Islamabad is a very good example of a place where everyone knows the truth, but everyone is afraid to say it out loud. Knowledge is not the issue today, it is saying it out loud. This government treats truth as an insignificant value which can be readily sacrificed to the will of power. The governing principle is: don’t tell the truth. Keep the people in the dark.

Citizens! We are betrayed. Nuclear Pakistan has lost its independence. It is now virtually an American satellite sans its manhood, its honour, its dignity, and its sense of self-respect. If you want to know what happens to an ill-led and ill-governed, small country which, under the leadership of its corrupt rulers who owe everything to Washington, attaches itself to a powerful country like the United States, visit Pakistan.

With the full knowledge and approval of our government, American predators and ground forces strike wherever they like and kill innocent men, women and children in our tribal territory. With the targets now spreading, an expanding US role inside Pakistan may be more than anyone can stomach. The anger level in the country is reaching a dangerous level.

The virtual collapse of state machinery and abdication of authority in Pakistan reminds me of the Twilight of the Mughals. “The symptoms of social collapse are progressive decline in standards of conduct, public and private, and the superiority of the centrifugal over centripetal forces. When the administrative machinery breaks down, law and order is the first casualty. And when respect for law and authority declines, the devil of force leaps into its place as the only possible substitute and in the struggle that ensues every standard of conduct and decency is progressively discarded. Sometimes synthesis takes place from within; sometimes it is imposed from without. If the original breakdown of authority is caused by a ferment of ideas, a genuine revolution like the French may result. If it is simply due to the decrepitude of authority, the solution is the substitution of a fresh authority, but whether that substitute is external or internal depends upon local circumstances”. This is apt description of present day Pakistan. And it is scary.

“The single greatest threat to (Pakistan)”, Obama said recently, “comes from Al Qaeda and their extremists allies”. This is not true. All our major problems, including terrorism, stem from the American invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. It has turned our tribal area into a protracted ulcer, a quagmire – a place where Pakistan is spending blood and treasure to protect American interests.

“The United States”, Obama said, “has great respect for the Pakistani people”. Bombing our villages and killing innocent men, women and children, Mr. President, is no way of expressing friendship or earning the respect of our people. Who says we are friends? There can be no friendship between the strong and the weak. There can be no friendship between unequals, neither in private life nor in public life. “The strong do what they can”, the Athenians told the intractable Melians, “and the weak must suffer what they must”. This is where Pakistan stands today. With the help of power-hungry Generals, like Musharraf, and corrupt civilians now in power, Americans have turned independent, sovereign, proud Pakistan into a “pseudo - Republic” and a “rentier state” and allowed venal dictatorship to take root. Angry. So very, very angry. Unable to speak due to mega-anger washing over every pore and fiber of my being. My anger at the people in power today is not blind rant. It is a righteous, concentrated stream of anger.

The Farewell address of George Washington will ever remain an important legacy for small nations like Pakistan. In that notable Testament, the Father of the American Republic cautioned that “an attachment of a small or weak toward a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter”. “It is folly in one nation”, George Washington observed, “to look for disinterested favours from another…it must pay with a portion of its independence for what ever it may accept under that character”. No truer words have been spoken on the subject. Pakistan is paying and will continue to pay a very heavy price for the folly of attaching itself to America.

This is the bleakest era in the history of Pakistan since 1971. The independence of Pakistan is a myth. Pakistan is no longer a free country. It is no longer a democratic country. Today Pakistan is splattered with American fortresses, seriously compromising our internal and external sovereignty. People don’t feel safe in their own country because any citizen can be picked up by FBI agents in collusion with our government and smuggled out of the country, making a mockery of our independence and sovereignty. To apply the adjective sovereign to the people in today’s Pakistan is a tragic farce. American military personnel cross and re-cross our border without let or hindrance. They violate our air space with impunity and kill innocent men, women and children. Everyday I ask myself the same question: How can this be happening in Pakistan? How can people like Zardari be incharge of our country? If I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I’d think I was having a hallucination.

In the backdrop of this grim situation, American marines are pouring into Pakistan, unchecked and unchallenged, in pursuance of their neo-colonial designs, America has set up bases and fortresses scattered across our country. Why is United States acquiring Pearl Continental Hotel in Peshawar? Why is it acquiring hundreds of houses in all our major cities including Islamabad? What is all this in aid of?

Today Pakistan is virtually under American occupation. Its presence in Pakistan is large, unwelcome and highly disruptive. America has disrupted the solemn agreement between Mr. Jinnah and the tribesmen in FATA, and in the process it has destabilized the area. Americans have granted themselves leave to chase their elusive enemies in Pakistan territory. Our so-called democratic rulers have allowed them to bomb our tribal area, an intrusion no patriotic citizen can tolerate for long.

America, for all of its nascent idealism, began as an instance of brutal European imperialism, with the extermination of indigenous peoples and the enslavements of Africans. The invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan were, therefore, not isolated episodes. They were the culmination of 110 – year period during which Americans overthrew 14 governments for various ideological, political and economic reasons. The first foreign leader to be overthrown (January 1893) was Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii.

In Puerto Rico, Americans crushed the elected government of Louis Munoz Rivera in 1898 after he had held power for just 8 days.

In Philippines, American fought poorly armed Philipino rebels in a war of resistance which lasted for three and half years. More than 4000 Americans and 35000 Philipinos were killed.

President Jose Zelaya was the most formidable leader Nicaragua ever had. His attempts to regulate American mining companies, and his insistence on seeking loans from European rather then American banks, led the United States to overthrow him in 1909.

In 1911, Miguel Davilla of Honduras was overthrown in an operation staged jointly by the United States Navy and a band of rebels led by the American mercenary Lee Christmas.

The CIA staged its first coup in Iran, when Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh nationalized his country’s oil industry. Mobs paid by the CIA rampaged through Tehran in the summer of 1953. Mossadegh surrendered. “I owe my throne to God, my people, my army – and to you”! A grateful Reza Shah told Kemit Roosevelt, the CIA operator, who had masterminded the coup.

When President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam refused to promise the Americans that he would not negotiate with communist – led insurgents, he was overthrown six weeks after his meeting with McNamara and Lodge and was killed.

President Salvador Allende of Chile was overthrown in an American-sponsored coup. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger met afterward with the country’s new leader, General Augusto Pinochet.

These are just a few examples of the most direct form of American intervention – the overthrow of foreign governments – a seemingly unending process which continues till today. Pakistan, it appears, is next on the hit list. It is now abundantly clear that Pakistan, the only nuclear power in the Islamic world, will soon be denuclearized and emasculated.

Why is there no public outrage? Why is the opposition keeping so quiet? Why this conspiracy of silence? One thing is clear. Today the true guardians of Pakistan are the people of Pakistan. People power alone can save Pakistan. Time and again – in 1789, 1848, 1871, and 1968, to name only the most historic years – mass protests have kicked out foreign intruders and their agents. Our rulers and their masters in Washington know that the street is all they have to fear. Confronting them has now become a patriotic duty. Today there is no other path for our country, but the one, which led to the restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Choudhary.

Does Constitution Matter?


“Constitution making was a stupendous task”, Mr. Jinnah observed. “It may take 18 months or two years”. 62 years after Mr. Jinnah made this optimistic observation, Prime Minister Gillani conceded that the Constitutional system in the country “was a hotchpotch, neither parliamentary nor presidential”. It has been a 62-year journey and Pakistan has not arrived yet!

In George Buechner's drama recreating the conflicts of Jacobin France, a deputy of the National Convention described a constitution as a "transparent garment clinging to the body politic". One of the most serious injuries the State can inflict on its subjects is to strip the body politic of its "transparent garment" and commit the people to lives of perpetual uncertainty. This kind of existence, as the people of Pakistan know very well, is like a journey, full of dangerous obstacles and risks, undertaken in total darkness.

Constitutions are codes of norms which aspire to regulate the allocation of powers, functions, and duties among the various agencies and officers of government, and to define the relationship between these and the public. In modern times, countries have a constitution for the very simple and elementary reason that they wanted to begin again in the changed circumstances and so they put down in writing the main outline, at least, of their proposed system of government. This has been the practice since 1787 when the American Constitution was drafted.

Almost every State in the world today possesses a codified constitution. Constitutions are like door locks. These are clearly unnecessary to honest people who pass the door, and equally are useless against the determined burglar. But they can and do deter the casual strollers who might otherwise come in and help themselves. Moreover - so this line of arguments goes - Britain, New Zealand, and Israel have no codified constitutions but nevertheless follow with remarkable consistency and continuity what constitutional rules they do possess. Hence it is concluded - constitution are otiose: if the power holders exercise self-restraint, the written constitution is unnecessary. And if they do not then it is useless. However, the American constitution-makers were, convinced of the unique effectiveness of written law. A dictum of Jefferson's best expresses this attitude. "In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution". Paper promises whose enforcement depends wholly on the promisor's goodwill have rarely been worth the parchment on which they were inked.

Constitutions are influenced by what people think of them, by their attitude to them. If a constitution is regarded with veneration, if what it embodies is thought to be prima facie right and good, then there exists a force to preserve the constitution against attempts to abrogate or suspend it. The chequered constitutional history of Pakistan makes it abundantly clear that Pakistan is one of those countries where constitution is treated with contempt and where the army is treated with more respect and fear than the constitution. Our constitution is not a realistic description of what actually happens, so is mostly fiction, bearing no relationship to what goes on. It contains fictive or decorative passages and omits many of the powers and processes met with in real life.

It is natural to ask, in the light of this discussion, whether constitution really matters in Pakistan which seems to be in a state of perpetual revolution. And isn't constitution - making an exercise in futility? Who is there to defend it? What is the sanction behind it? Nobody sheds a tear when it is torn up. Why have a constitution which can be torn up, abrogated, suspended or held in abeyance, with impunity, every time the army strikes?

Addressing a press conference in Tehran, President Zia ul Haq said: "what is the constitution? It is a booklet with ten or twelve pages. I can tear them up and say that from tomorrow we shall live under a different system. Is there anybody to stop me? Today the people will follow wherever I lead. Is there anybody to stop me? All the politicians, including the once mighty Mr. Bhutto, will follow me with their tails wagging".

Successive military governments have disfigured, defaced, and defiled the 1973 Constitution and changed it beyond all recognition. A written constitution makes sense only if the armed forces obey the Constitution and accept the supremacy of civilian rule without any mental reservations. It makes sense only if people genuinely believe in the sanctity and supremacy of the constitution and are prepared to protect and defend it. It makes sense only if people have confidence in the independence and integrity of the Supreme Court which is the guardian of the constitution. A written constitution makes no sense if what it says is one thing and what actually happens in practice is another. It makes no sense if it is periodically abrogated, suspended or held in abeyance, with impunity, by people who have sworn to defend and uphold it. It makes no sense if it is treated as a parchment of dried leaves and torn to pieces whenever it suits the army. If that is how we are going to treat our written constitution, why have a written constitution at all? In fact, why have a constitution at all? Whither, then, are we tending?

My mind goes back to the heady days of 1973. I witnessed the birth of the 1973 Constitution from the official gallery in the National Assembly. On April 12, 1973 at a special session of the National Assembly 137 members affixed their signatures to the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. After authenticating the constitution, marked by a 31-gun salute, President Bhutto remarked: "The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is the Constitution of the people of Pakistan and they are best suited to speak for it. The document is their property and they are best suited to protect it. It is our hope and belief that under the inspiring guidance of God Almighty, the people of Pakistan will speak for their constitution and will protect it for all times to come". In a similar address on the radio - TV network, Mr. Bhutto said: "Today we bid good-bye finally and for all times, to the palace revolutions and military coups which plagued Pakistan for nearly two decades". Fate willed otherwise. On July 5, 1977, General Zia ul Haq, Chief of Army Staff, staged a military take-over, arrested Mr. Bhutto, sacked the Federal and Provincial governments; dissolved the assemblies; and suspended the Constitution. The evening before, I saw Mr. Bhutto for the last time at the American Ambassador's reception. He was smoking a cigar and was huddled up with the Afghan ambassador.

Constitution making is a hazardous business in Pakistan. On the eve of the 1973 Constitution, Mr. Bhutto said: "Today we have passed through the dark tunnel, and I see the Golden Bridge". Tragically, what he saw was not the Golden Bridge but an optical illusion and a mirage. Six years later, on April 4, 1979 to be precise, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Prime Minister of Pakistan and architect of the 1973 Constitution, was taken to the gallows on a stretcher and hanged. “To such changes of human fortunes what words are adequate? Silence alone is adequate”.

“No constitution”, Dicey wrote many years ago in his `Introduction to the study of the law of the constitution`, “can be absolutely safe from revolution or from a coup de`tat”. When I raise this matter with Late Justice Dorab Patel, he said, “how do you expect five men alone, unsupported by anyone, to declare Martial Law illegal?”

Hopefully all this is now behind us. With the triumphant return of Chief Justice Iftikhar Choudhary, in honour and dignity, to the Supreme Court, on wave of popular support, the relationship amongst the three pillars of the State shifted dramatically. The nexus between the Generals and the superior judiciary has snapped. An era of deference by the Supreme Court to the Executive has given way to judicial independence, if not judicial supremacy. The Supreme Court, the Guardian of the Constitution, has undergone a major transformation and will never be the same again. It has been baptized in the waters of public opinion. After years of subservience, it is on its feet and holding its head high. The days of subverting the constitution and treating it like a scrap of paper are over. Let there be no doubt about it. So does Constitution matter? Yes, it does.

Supreme Court Reborn


The Supreme Court, in its landmark judgment, on Friday last, declared all the actions taken on or after November 3, 2007 by former military dictator General (R) Pervez Musharraf as unconstitutional and invalid. How could one resist the temptation to be present on such a historic occasion? History was in the making. I was lucky enough to have witnessed, from a ringside seat in the court, the brick by brick demolition of the unconstitutional edifice erected by General Musharraf. This was the crowing event, the apotheosis of all that we had fought for. The mood around me in the court verged on ecstasy. I never thought I would live to see that day. My own overwhelming sense of triumph and happiness was mixed with relief. After all those years on the streets of Islamabad, it was over. In another sense, it had just begun.

War, according to the famous aphorism, is too important a matter to be left to the Generals. The work of the Supreme Court is similarly too significant in a country such as ours to be left only to the lawyers and law professors. It is scarcely possible to understand our history without an understanding of the part played in that history by the Supreme Court. Today the court is both a mirror and a motor – reflecting the development of the society which it serves and helping to move that society in the direction of the dominant jurisprudence of the day.

In Pakistan, as in all Federations, the Supreme Court plays a crucial role. It is the sole and unique tribunal of the nation. The peace, prosperity, and very existence of the Federation rest continually in the hands of the Supreme Court Judges. Without them, the constitution would be a dead letter; It is to them that the Executive appeals to resist the encroachment of the Parliament; the Parliament to defend itself against the assaults of the executive; the federal government to make the provinces obey it; the provinces to rebuff the exaggerated pretensions of the federal government, public interest against private interest etc. They decide whether you and I shall live or die. Their power is immense.

In every period of political turmoil, men must, therefore, have confidence that superior judiciary, the guardian of the constitution, will be fiercely independent and will resist all attempts to subvert the constitution. It is our misfortune that from the country's first decade, our judges tried to match their constitutional ideals and legal language to the exigencies of current politics. The superior judiciary has often functioned at the behest of authority and has been used to further the interests of the rulers against the citizens. Their judgments have often supported the government of the day. This was their chosen path through the 1950s and during the Martial Law period of the 1960s and 1970s. When the history of these benighted times comes to be written, it will be noted that the superior judiciary had failed the country in its hour of greatest need.

In the darkest hour in the history of our country, Fate had found the man who had the character, the will and the determination to speak truth to the military dictator. Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Choudhary appeared on the scene like a deus ex machina and changed the course of history. Had Fate not intervened, he might have retired, like any other Chief Justice, leaving behind an indifferent judicial record. But somewhere in the universe, a gear in the machinery shifted. As history shows, everyone must, from time to time, make a sacrifice on the altar of stupidity to please the deity. General Musharraf thought himself poised on the cusp of power, but was about to start sliding down a slippery slope whose end is bound to be disastrous.

When Chief Justice Iftikhar refused to resign, and decided to defend himself against the military dictator, he ignited a flame that soon engulfed the country. With that simple act of courage, he changed the course of history. The die was cast. A Rubicon crossed. Suddenly, “that uneasily dormant beast of public protest” - Musharraf’s nightmare, his greatest challenge – burst forth.

The “historic encounter” between Chief Justice Iftikhar Choudhary and General Musharraf reminds me of the famous confrontation between Chief Justice Coke and King James I. The year was November 13, A.D. 1608. The King felt greatly offended when told that he was under the law. “This means”, said James, “that I shall be under the law, which it is treason to affirm”. “To which”, replied Coke, “I said that Bracton saith, quod rex non debet esse sub homine, sed sub Deo et lege” (that the King should not be under man but under God and Law). Chief Justice Coke did not waver. He did not falter. He risked going to the Tower but he stood his ground.

The Iftikhar Choudhary court reminds me of the Marshall court in America. Marshall made the Supreme Court “a driving force” for change. Like the Marshall court, the Iftikhar Choudhary court has put it self in the vanguard of change. Marshall employed the law as a means to attain the political and economic ends that the people favored. The judge was to use his power to mould the law in accordance with the needs of the American people. Marshall moulded his decisions to accord with the “felt necessities of the time”. For Marshall, as for Iftikhar Choudhary, the constitution, like law, was a tool to serve the needs of the nation.

In Pakistan, the Supreme Court’s historic role has been one of subservience to military dictators. Chief Justice Iftikhar broke with the past tradition and changed all that. The nexus between the Generals and the superior judiciary has snapped. An era of deference by the Supreme Court to the Executive has given way to judicial independence. Isn’t it ironical that today the people of Pakistan, especially the poor, the disadvantaged and the voiceless, expect justice not from the parliament, not from the presidency, but from an unelected and unaccountable Supreme Court?

Today the political landscape of Pakistan is dotted with Potemkin villages. All the pillars of state, with the exception of the Supreme Court, are dysfunctional. Pakistan sits between hope and fear. Hope because “so long as there is a judiciary marked by rugged independence, the country and the citizen's civil liberties are safe even in the absence of cast iron guarantees in the constitution”. As early as 1837, Tocqueville wrote, "the President may slip without the state suffering, for his duties are limited. Congress may slip without the Union perishing, for above the Congress there is the electoral body which can change its spirit by changing its members. But if ever the Supreme Court came to be composed of corrupt or rash persons, the Confederation would be threatened by anarchy or civil war". Fear that inspite of a strong and independent judiciary, the present corrupt order will perpetuate itself because both the Presidency and the parliament are out of sync with the spirit of the times.

And what of Musharraf? “Short while ago, we saw him at the top of Fortunes’ wheel, his word a law to all and now surely he is at the bottom of the wheel. From the last step of the throne to the first of the scaffold there is a short distance”? Musharraf is gone, derided by the people and thrown by them in the dust bin of history. Musharraf subverted the constitution, imposed martial law, sacked and jailed the Judges of the Superior Courts and emasculated the judiciary. He must be called to account and punished. In the words of Chief Justice Hamoodur Rahman, “May be, that on account of his holding the coercive apparatus of the state, the people and the courts are silenced temporarily, but let it be laid down firmly that… As soon as the first opportunity arises, when the coercive apparatus falls from the usurper’s hands, he should be tried for high reason and suitably punished. This would serve as a deterrent to all would be adventurers”. Now that coercive apparatus has fallen from Musharraf’s hands, he should be tried for high reason and suitably punished. “Fiat Justitia Rual Coelum”, (Let justice be done even if the heavens fall). Heaven won’t fall. That is for sure. Pakistan will be Pakistan again. It will be morning once again in Pakistan.

Where have all the Angry Youth Gone?


Margaret Mead once said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has”. This was the historic role played by Muslim students in India under the dynamic leadership of Mr. Jinnah. They got together, organized themselves and changed the course of history.

I witnessed the emergence of the idea of Pakistan as a college student in the year 1940 in Lahore. Two years later, I joined Muslim university Aligarh which had by then turned into an “arsenal of Muslim India”. An atmosphere of mystic frenzy prevailed all over the country. As the vanguard of the Pakistan movement, students spread out all over India. They carried Mr. Jinnah’s message, mobilized the people and galvanized them into action.

The role of the student in national affairs brought back to memory the Global disruption of the 1960s when a wave of student protest produced a crisis of authority in nearly every country. Angered by what they perceived as a stagnant political statusquo, students took to the streets. The entire world shook.

French President Charles De Gaulle was its first casualty. He was not someone who could be easily scared. Comparing the 1960s with the harrowing days of World War II, the former leader of the French Resistance lamented that he now lived in “mediocre” times. Soon after De Gaulle deplored his “mediocre” times, all hell broke loose. An overriding public threat emerged in France. The President now had a clear “enemy”, the youth of France which he was poorly equipped to confront. “The police must clean up the streets. That is all”. “Power does not retreat”, the President declared. Soon self-doubt began to creep in on the ageing President. When Parisian students called a nationwide strike and were joined by factory worker across France, De Gaulle despaired that “in five days, ten years of struggle against the rottenness in the state have been lost”. For the first time in his life, De Gaulle suffered from insomnia, unable to reconcile his faith in the French “spirit” with the growing manifestations of popular protest against his leadership. Humiliated and exhausted, De Gaulle resigned.

Like in the rest of the world, students in Pakistan were on the barricades in 1968. It was a time of student dreams and of student revolt aimed at toppling an authoritarian military rule. The disruption started with a single incident. In the first week of November 1968, a student was killed in a clash between the police and a crowd of Mr. Bhutto’s supporters outside the Polytechnic in Rawalpindi. The Student community reacted violently. Curfew was imposed to keep the situation under control. There were daily encounters between the police and the students in major cities resulting in civilian casualties. Every such incident further inflamed passions against Ayub, forcing him to abdicate.

Fast forward to October 2006, when a young student made history in Pakistan. He stood up in the Convention Centre on International Youth Day and told the Emperor (General Musharraf) that he had no clothes. “Mr. President, I believe that this picture of the Quaid that is hanging in this hall (points towards the large photo on the wall) and that you are standing in front of, is asking you, "General, you are only the keeper of the borders of Pakistan. Who has shown you the path to the corridors of political power”? “Mr. President”, the young man continued, “You yourself said that you will take off the uniform on 31st October, yet for the ‘greater good of the people’, you broke your promise“.

That young man displayed exemplary courage. He spoke truth to power. That was the beginning of the end for Musharraf. The party was over for him when LUMS students, the best and the brightest in the country, the cream of the student community jumped into the fray along with their faculty, and joined the protestors. Out of such drops do squalls form? With such faint tremors do upheavals begin? A bloodless revolution, but a mighty revolution – that is what we need today.

With General Musharraf’s exit, we thought we had reached the summit. Alas! The ascent of one ridge simply revealed the next daunting challenge. After two years of hard struggle, we are back to square one like Sisyphus, the Greek errant in Greek mythology whose punishment in Hades was to push up hill a huge boulder only to have it tumble down again.

Sometimes, I look back with nostalgia on the days, soon after the reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Choudhary, when I saw the clouds part to offer a glimpse of the Promised Land. I thought people of my generation were the luckiest people in the world. After being in a cage we were suddenly let free. It was like a tiger had been let go. Now I have this strange feeling that we are going back to the times I thought we had left behind. And the thought that it only takes good man to do nothing. The irony is that the fox is among the chickens but the farmer, out in the pasture, doesn’t even know that he has a problem. Islamabad is preparing for another crisis. The fear of conspiracy against our hard-won independent judiciary hangs in the air. The first threats of counter revolutionary activity have already begun to appear. Attempts are being made to subvert the people’s will and overturn the judicial revolution.

But where have all the angry youth gone? These days they graduate directly from college to joblessness and are forced to resort to crime, drugs and vagrancy merely to survive. Many are fleeing the country and desperately trying to escape to the false paradises of the West and the Middle East. Sadly, they have lost confidence in the country’s future and the institutions that constitute its political apparatus. No wonder, they have mostly kept their distance from the arena of political conflict and aren’t protesting anything, let alone absence of democracy. There is no longer a serious youth political culture in this country today. And the reason for that is because this generation does not believe in its ability to alter, or even slightly disrupt, the statusquo. All you can do is face this cold reality, get a good job, and try to keep as warm as possible within the confines of your isolated, insulated home. Idealism died in this country long ago because the doctrine of “there is no alternative” killed it. We don’t dream of utopias anymore. So it is no wonder that nobody, neither young nor old, is showing up to protest civilian dictatorship.

Regrettably, students today describe 1960s as almost a historical blip, a period too extreme and traumatic ever to repeat. A rather high percentage of students are not interested in politics. Many university students are clearly very utilitarian in their thinking. Everything is based on ‘whether or not it is useful to me personally’. Many students support democracy, independent judiciary, Rule of law, in theory but do not want to risk their future to fight for it. They think about their personal affairs, how to get a job, how to go abroad.

Today Pakistan is very feverish and very ill. Our country is in deep, deep trouble. Jinnah’s Pakistan has been hijacked by people begrimed in corruption. What is worse, they have turned a sovereign, independent country into an American colony and a ‘rentier state’. The present leadership is taking Pakistan to a perilous place. The course they are on leads downhill. It appears as if we are on a phantom train that is fast gathering momentum and we cannot get off.

The ongoing struggle of the Bar and the Bench, supported by civil society, is part of an intense battle, for the resurrection of Jinnah’s vision of Pakistan, playing out across the country’s political and legal landscape. It is a struggle for the supremacy of the Constitution, the independence of judiciary and the fundamental question of Rule of Law or rule of man. The time has come for the youth to join this struggle and play their historic role once again. Now is the time they must stand up. Now is the time they must show up and be counted.

There is a generation of young students coming of age in Pakistan that is educated, hard working, innovative and imaginative. But too many of them are also disillusioned, betrayed, defeated and disengaged. We have a responsibility to help them to believe in themselves and in their power to shape their future and the future of their country. Who will inspire them with that sense of possibility? Who has that passion burning within him that will unleash youth power and set the nation alight? Who will lance the poisoned carbuncle and clean the country of all the mess? You don’t create such a man. You don’t discover such a man. You recognize such a man.

Setting Waziristan Ablaze


Why doesn’t our military leadership learn from history? Asked if he had considered the implications of Napoleon’s Russian campaign, the General replied: “We military men make history. We don’t read it”. They are certainly making history on our western border by waging war against their own countrymen.

The nation is beginning to see the rapidly unfurling consequences of General Musharraf’s fateful decision to join the “coalition of the coerced”. Dragged into a proxy war at gunpoint, America’s dreaded war on terror has indisputably arrived on Pakistan’s soil. Pakistan is slipping into a Dantean hell. The belle époque days for us Pakistanis are over. Pakistanis cannot continue deluding themselves by the romantic notion that they could go on living happily and peacefully under American umbrella. Pakistan stands on the brink of civil war. A perfect storm is looming on the horizon. Fasten your seat belts. It will be quite a ride.

The irony is that far from being an autonomous power waging her own parallel war, Pakistan has been reduced to no more than a lackey. Jinnah’s Pakistan, I regret to say, has ceased to be a sovereign, independent state. Today it is not just a “rentier state”, not just a client state. It is a slave state with a puppet government set up by Washington.

Euripides once famously said, “Whom the Gods destroy, they first make mad”. At a time when Pakistan is extremely ill-prepared for adventurism on any serious scale, with the war in Malakand still not conclusively won and over 30 lakhs internally displaced persons, men, women and children living under inhuman conditions in Mardan and Swabi, this government decided to open a second front against her own people in Waziristan. The match is lit, the blaze will soon spread like wild fire throughout the tribal area and beyond. That is for sure. The decision to launch military operation in this highly sensitive border region, is ill-conceived, ill-advised, ill-timed, would almost certainly turn into a prolonged bloody conflict and, in time, prove a massive self-inflicted wound.

Today the killing or capturing alive of Bait ullah Mehsud has become a top priority for the Pakistan government. Anybody who knows anything about Waziristan, will tell you that looking for Baitullah or Osama in the rugged mountains is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Baitullah, the central focus of the current American and Pakistani military operation in Waziristan, is not the first warrior to confront the administration in the mountains of Waziristan. The Faqir of Ipi led a similar revolt against the British in Waziristan in 1936. It set Waziristan on fire which lasted until after 1947. The British failed to capture Ipi and the operation had to be called off.

In the early years after Waziristan’s annexation, the British maintained only a skeleton administration in the agencies. All this changed in 1919 when they decided to build regular garrisons in Waziristan. Consequently, troop movements became routine which caused resentment among the tribes. Then came the fateful decision to send troops into the Khaisora valley in November 1936 which transformed Ipi’s agitation into a full scale uprising almost overnight and set Waziristan on fire.

The judgment displayed by the British and the poor intelligence upon which they based their decisions were chiefly to blame for the disasters that followed. This was the last major rebellion in Waziristan which stemmed from an abrupt change of policy. The tribesmen’s unrivalled fighting record, their ability to intervene in Afghan affairs and to involve Afghans in their own affairs, were factors ignored by the British that made Waziristan different from other Frontier areas. This disastrous attempt to “pacify” Waziristan was the last of several major incursions into tribal territory during the hundred years of Britain’s presence in North-West India.

When the British left, Pakistan had reason to be glad that it had inherited a secure North West Frontier. In September 1947, Mr. Jinnah took a bold decision to reverse the “pacification” policy, withdrew regular troops from Waziristan and entered into new agreements with the tribes. Cunningham, the new Governor of NWFP, appointed by Mr. Jinnah was a Frontier expert. His disillusion with the “pacification” policy was complete. “I think that we must now face a complete change of policy. Razmak has been occupied by regular troops for nearly 25 years. Wana for a few years less. The occupation of Waziristan has been a failure. It has not achieved peace or any appreciable economic development. It ties up an unreasonably large number of troops, and for the last 10 years there have been frequent major and minor offenses against the troops”. The change in policy produced dramatic results and paid rich dividends.

All this has now changed. Mr. Jinnah’s Waziristan policy which had stood the test of time has been reversed under American pressure. Our troops are back in Waziristan in aid of American troops looking for Bait ullah Mehsud and Osama! The result is a totally unnecessary and avoidable state of armed confrontation between Pak army and the tribesmen. Those who know the Frontier are deeply concerned. Our civil and military leadership is playing with fire. By reversing Mr. Jinnah’s Waziristan policy, at the behest of Americans, they have alienated powerful tribes in Waziristan and unsettled our western border which had remained peaceful for 62 years since the birth of Pakistan. Pakistan would be well advised to profit from the mistakes of its forerunners in Waziristan and to avoid any shift of policy which cares only for immediate advantage and takes no account of ulterior effect.

It all started when General Musharraf succumbed to a telephonic ‘ultimatum’ from Washington and promised ‘unstinted’ cooperation to the Americans in the so-called war on terror. The Afghans never stabbed us in the back when we were in trouble and at war with India. No Afghan government was as friendly to Pakistan as the Taliban government. By allowing Americans to use our territory as a platform for bombing Afghanistan, we antagonized the Afghans, especially the majority Pakhtun tribe who live in the Pakhtun belt along our border. For the first time in the history of Pakistan, a military government laid the foundation of permanent enmity with the Pakhtuns across the border. A civilian government has now compounded the problem by taking on our own tribesmen in Waziristan.

“What is to be done”? Said Voltaire. “I fear that in this world one must be either hammer or anvil, for it is indeed a lucky man who escapes the alternatives”. Waziristan has been on the anvil for centuries. Mehsud and Wazir tribes living there are no strangers to foreign military interventions in their country. On each occasion the tribes and the mountains won a strategic victory, the troops were forced to withdraw back into the plains of the Indus valley. The British soon learned that you can annex land but not people.

As they say, “it is a wide road that leads to war and only a narrow path that leads home again”. In the early 1900s, a crusty British General, Andrew Skeen, wrote a guide to military operations in the Pashtun Tribal belt. His first piece of advice: “When planning a military expedition into Pashtun Tribal areas, the first thing you must plan is your retreat. All expeditions into this area sooner or later end in retreat under fire”. Let us hope the current expedition ends differently.

Decision-making in today’s Pakistan is bizarre. Many questions swirl. Were other options available, only to be peremptorily rejected? Who decided to plunge Pakistan into a guerrilla war raising the specter of a war on two fronts dreaded by military strategists and the general public alike? Who took the final decision to open a second front in Waziristan? The President? The Prime Minister? The Cabinet? The parliament? The army? Who decides questions of war and peace in this country? In public perception, everything points to one inescapable conclusion: that the decision to open a second front in Waziristan was not an internal decision. It was taken in response to irresistible pressure from the United States.

Pakistan is caught between a hard place and many rocks. Today we are experiencing a failure of leadership that bodes ill for the country. Nobody knows who is in command. The result is the mess we are in today. How it will turn on the morrow? “The morrow, as always, is with the Fates”. One is reminded of Stalin’s angry expletive which he uttered when the German army was only a few miles from Moscow and the very survival of Soviet Union hung in the balance. “The great Lenin left us a great country”, Stalin told Mikoyan, “and we, his successors, have … up”. This is precisely what we have done to the great country left behind by Jinnah.

In the Footsteps of Napoleon Bonaparte


History has dealt the Islamic world a terrible hand. From the 13th century onward, the defining moments in the world of Islam were the Mongol invasions and the imperialist intrusion of the West and the advent of colonial dependency. It is significant how little the Western approach to the Muslim world has changed during this period. The modus operandi is the same. Praise Islam as the religion of peace and love but carry war and destruction to weak and defenseless Muslim countries if they refuse to toe the line. Praise the Holy Prophet but unleash the hounds of war against his followers, bomb innocent men, women and children, occupy their lands, change their government by force of arms and replace it with client regimes.

The new President of the United States, Barack Obama, unites within himself American and African Muslim heritages. On the day that Obama became President – elect, his paternal grandmother, Habiba Akuma Obama held a cerebration in her village. In his Cairo speech, Obama vowed to bridge the rift with Muslims, imploring Americans and the Islamic world to drop their suspicions of one another and forge new alliances. His overture to the Islamic world reminds me of Napoleon Bonaparte. Before embarking on his Egyptian expedition, he presented himself to the Islamic world as its greatest champion and a great admirer of the Holy Prophet. On June 22, 1798, he set out to conquer Egypt, a country he described “as the first theatre of civilization in the Universe”.

“Soldiers”, Bonaparte proclaimed,

“You are going to undertake a conquest, the effect of which, upon commerce and civilization, will be incalculable. The eyes of mankind are fixed upon you.

The Mameluke Beys, who tyrannize over the unhappy inhabitants of the banks of the Nile, will no longer exist in a few days after our arrival.

The people among whom you are going to live, are Mahometans: the first article of their faith is, ‘there is no other god but God and Mahomet is his Prophet. Do not contradict them. Treat their Muftis and their Imams with respect’”.

After establishing his headquarter at Alexandria, Bonaparte issued the following proclamation in Arabic:

“In the name of God, gracious and merciful. There is no god but God; he has no son nor associate in his kingdom.

“Inhabitants of Egypt! When the Beys tell you the French are come to destroy your religion, believe them not: it is an absolute falsehood. Answer these deceivers, that they are only come to rescue the rights of the poor from the hands of their tyrants, and that the French adore the Supreme Being, and honour the Prophet and his Holy Quran”.

“All men are equal in the eyes of God: understanding, ingenuity, and science, alone make a difference between them. As the Beys do not posses any of these qualities, they cannot be worthy to govern the country. Yet they are the only possessors of extensive tracts of lands, beautiful female slaves, excellent horses, and magnificent places! Have they, then, received an exclusive privilege from the Almighty? If so, let them produce it. But the Supreme Being, who is just and merciful towards all mankind, wills, that, in future, none of the inhabitants in Egypt shall be prevented from attaining to the first employments, and the highest honours. The administration, which shall be conducted by persons of intelligence, talents, and foresight, will be productive of happiness and security”.

“The French are true Mussulmen! Not long since they marched to Rome, and overthrew the throne of the Pope who excited the Christians against the professors of the Mahometan religion. Our friendship shall be extended to those of the inhabitants of Egypt who shall join us, as also to those who shall remain in their dwellings, and observe a strict neutrality; and, when they have seen our conduct with their own eyes, hasten to submit to us; but the dreadful punishment of death awaits those who shall take up arms for the Beys, and against us: for them their shall be no deliverance, nor shall any trace of them remain”.

Accompanied by his staff and the members of the National Institute, attended also by a powerful guard, and conducted by several Muftis and Imams, Bonaparte commenced the following interesting conversation with Suluman, Ibrahim, and Mahumed, the chief Muftis.

Buonaparte. “Glory to Allah! There is no other god but God, Mahomet is his Prophet, and I am his friend”!

Suluman. “The salutation of peace to the envoy of God! Salutation to thee, also, invincible warrior, favourite of Mahomet”!

Buonaparte. “Mufti, I thank thee: the divine Quran is the delight of my soul, and the object of my contemplation. I love the Prophet, and I hope, ere long, to see and honour his tomb in the Holy City; but my mission is first to exterminate the Mamelukes”.

Ibrahim. “May the angels of victory sweep the dust from thy path, and cover thee with their wings! The Mameluke has merited death”.

Buonaparte. “He has been smitten and delivered over to the black angels, Monkir and Quakir. God, on whom all things depend, has ordained that his dominions shall be destroyed”.

Suluman. “He has extended the hand of rapine over the land, the harvest and the horses, of Egypt”.

Buonaparte. “And over the most beautiful slaves, thrice holy Mufti! Allah has withered his hand: if Egypt be his portion, let him shew the lease which God has given him of it; but God is just and merciful to his people”.

Ibrahim. “Oh! most valiant among the children of Issa! (Jesus Christ) Allah has caused thee to follow the exterminating angel to deliver his land of Egypt”.

Buonaparte. “Has not Mahomet said, that every man who adores God, and performs good works whatever maybe his religion, shall be saved”?

Suluman, Muhamed, Ibrahim (inclining themselves). “He has said so”.

Ibrahim. “Glory to Allah and his Prophet! Who have sent thee into the midst of us to rekindle the faith of the weak, and to open to the faithful the gates of the seventh heaven”?

Buonaparte. “You have spoken my wishes, most zealous Muftis! Be faithful to Allah, the sovereign ruler of the seven marvelous heavens, and to Mahomet, his vizir, who traversed all the celestial mansions in a single night. Be the friends of the Francs, and Allah, Mahomet, and Francs, will reward you”.

Ibrahim. “May the Prophet himself cause thee to sit at his left-hand, on the day of the resurrection, after the third sound of the trumpet”.

Buonaparte. “The hour of political resurrection has arrived for all who groan under oppression. Muftis, Imams, Mullahs, Dervises, and Kalenders! Instruct the people of Egypt, encourage them to join us in our labors, to complete the destruction of Beys and Mamelukes: favor the commerce of the Francs in you country and their endeavors to arrive at the ancient Land of Brama. Let them have storehouses in your ports”.

Suluman (inclining himself). “Thou hast spoken like the most learned of the Mullahs. We place faith in thy words: we shall serve thy cause, and God hears us”.

Buonaparte. “God is great, and his works are marvelous: the salutation of peace be upon you, Thrice Holy Muftis!”

The snake, it is said, covers its prey with saliva before devouring it. Before launching the attack on Afghanistan, President Bush visited the Islamic Centre in Washington D.C. and addressing the gathering quoted from the Holy Quran: “In the long run, evil in the extreme will be the end of those who do evil. For that they rejected the signs of Allah and held them up to ridicule”!

Obama’s speech was impressive, but he delivered it in a country where an aging dictator is passing power to his son, where the country is crumbling to dust because of repression and stagnation. So words are not enough. What is needed is action, not just fine rhetoric. The Islamic world would judge Obama not by his intentions, not by his words, but by his deeds.

The Unnecessary War


Somehow, our history has gone astray. We were such good people when we set out on the road to Pakistan. What happened?

Marx once said: “Neither a nation nor a woman is forgiven for an unguarded hour in which the first adventurer who comes along can sweep them off their feet and possess them”. October 7, 1958 was our unguarded hour when democracy was expunged from the politics of Pakistan, perhaps forever, with scarcely a protest. The result is the mess we are in today.

“Liberty once lost”, Adams famously told his countrymen, “is perhaps lost forever”. We Pakistanis lost our liberties and all our democratic institutions in October 1999. Sadly, Pakistan also lost her honour and became a ‘rentier state’ on General Musharraf’s watch when he capitulated, said yes to all the seven demands presented to him at gunpoint by Secretary Colin Powell and joined the “Coalition of the coerced”. Regrettably, this situation remains unchanged even though the country is now under a democratic dispensation!

A lesson to be drawn from the works of Gibbon is that Rome’s enemies lay not outside her borders but within her bosom, and they paved the way for the empire’s decline and fall – first to relentless barbarian invaders from the north, and then, a thousand years later, to the Turks. Many early symptoms that heralded the Roman decline may be seen in our own nation today:, concentration of power in one person without responsibility and accountability, contempt for constitution and political institutions, absence of Rule of Law, high-level corruption and greed and last but not least, periodic military intervention in the affairs of state and prolonged military rule. When the history of Pakistan comes to be written, the verdict of history will, almost certainly be that military rule, more than anything else, destroyed Pakistan.

If you want to know what happens to a country when unbridled ambition of its rulers flourishes without proper restraint, when absolute power enables the ruler to run the country arbitrarily and idiosyncratically, when none of the obstacles that restrain and thwart democratic rulers stand in his way, when parliament is cowed, timid, a virtual paralytic, well: visit Pakistan. Today it is like a severely blinkered cart horse painfully pulling a heavy wagon on a preordained track to nowhere.

All the philosophers tell the people they are the strongest, and that if they are sent to the slaughterhouse, it is because they have let themselves be led there. Authoritarianism is retreating everywhere except in Pakistan. Why? In other countries there are men and women who love liberty more than they fear persecution. Not in Pakistan. Here the elite who owe everything to this poor country do not think in terms of Pakistan and her honour but of their jobs, their business interests and their seats in a rubber stamp parliament. Surrender rather than sacrifice is the theme of their thoughts and conversations. To such as these talk of resisting autocracy is as embarrassing as finding yourself in the wrong clothes at the wrong party, as tactless as a challenge to run to a legless man, as out of place as a bugle call in a mortuary.

How can you have authentic democracy in a country where defacto sovereignty – highest power over citizens unrestricted by law – resides neither in the parliament, nor the executive, nor the judiciary, nor even the constitution which has superiority over all the institutions it creates? It resides, if it resides anywhere at all, where the coercive power resides. It is the ‘puvois occult’ which decides when to abrogate the constitution, when to dismiss the elected government, when to go to war and when to restore sham democracy.

Are people Anxious? Dejected? Fearful? Angry? Why wouldn’t they be, considering the daily barrage of rotten news assaulting them from every direction? We live in a country that is terribly wrong and politically off course. What is worse, it is no longer a Sovereign or independent country. It is a lackey of the United States. When will this tormented country be whole again? When will this sad country be normal again? The engine is broken. Somebody has got to get under the hood and fix it. President Zardari is so swathed in his inner circle that he has completely lost touch with the people and wanders around among small knots of persons who agree with him. The country is in deep, deep trouble. An uncertain future leaves us stranded in an unhappy present with nothing to do but wait. Eventually, the cup of endurance runs over and the citizen cries out, “I can take it no longer”. A day will soon come when words will give way to deeds. History will not always be written with a pen.

In the backdrop of this gloom and doom, President Zardari, under American pressure, unleashed the hounds of war, turning the beautiful valley of Swat into a vale of tears. As a result of army action, millions of innocent people, men, women and children, young and old, were uprooted, rendered homeless and forced to flee. Was army action unavoidable? Was it absolutely necessary? Did the people of Swat have to pay this terrible price? And what for? All these questions remain unanswered.

“One day”, Churchill wrote, “President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what World War II should be called. I said at once ‘the Unnecessary War’”. Today Pakistan is at war with itself. The country is tearing itself apart. Why? One thing is clear. There never was a more unnecessary war, a war more easy to stop, a war more easy to prevent, a war more difficult to justify and harder to win than that which has wrecked Swat.

Let me state clearly that the war in Swat, like the war in FATA, is not our war. It’s a proxy war imposed on us by our corrupt rulers who owe everything to Washington. It is perceived in the Pakhtun belt as Genocide, part of a sinister American plan for the mass extermination of Pakhtuns on both sides of the Durand Line.

With temperature rising, living conditions in the camps and elsewhere, fast deteriorating, the army operation has morphed into a war that is hard to win and harder to justify to the people affected by it. On thing is clear. While Pakistan army wields a large hammer, not every problem is a nail. The lesson of history is: never fight a proxy war, never deploy military means in pursuit of indeterminate ends and never use your army against your own people.

No army, no matter how strong, has ever rescued a country from internal disorder, social upheaval and chaos. Army action can never quash the insurgency in Malakand division or FATA. It can only be managed until a political solution is found. No one can be bombed into moderation. This is a false and dangerous notion. Talibans can be deterred militarily for a time but tanks, gunships and jet air craft cannot defeat deeply felt belief.

President Zardari is playing with fire and acting like Conrad's puffing gunboat in Heart of Darkness, shelling indiscriminately at the opaque darkness. The enemy is nebulous and the battlefield is everywhere. He has no address and no flag, wears no uniform, stages no parades, marches to his own martial music. He requires no tanks or submarines or air force. He does not fear death. As the Soviets found in Afghanistan, the enemy doesn’t fight in conventional ways, but from behind big boulders and from concealments. He doesn’t have to win. He just has to keep fighting. Asymmetrical warfare is what they call it now.

The war’s end remains far out of sight but the battle for the hearts and minds of the people seems to have gone awry. If you want to know how the displaced persons feel, go to Mardan and listen to the wretched of the earth. You will hear the thrumming, the deadly drumbeat of burgeoning anger.

Sheep without Shepherd


Pakistanis look up to their President in a crisis because he has unlimited power to sort things out and get things done. He is, therefore, the center of their expectations. Crisis is a crucible in which the President and his administration are tested as nowhere else. No other event tries so vigorously the self confidence, judgment and prudence of the President. The consequence of his action or inaction may determine the fate of millions of his countrymen. “Voe to him if trouble does not fade and the clouds do not roll back”.

Mr. President! “When are you visiting Pakistan”? A foreign journalist is reported to have asked Zardari. He was in America when Swat was plunged into a civil war and set on fire. At a time when Pakistan is facing one of the world’s worst displacement crisis, with many still on the road and over 20 lakhs crammed into dusty camps, educational institutions or private ‘hujras’ in and around Mardan, Zardari, oblivious to the suffering of his people, extended his stay abroad. The response one would expect from a President never happened. Instead of rushing back to Islamabad to oversee an unprecedented crisis, he stayed on in America before heading for London and Paris. He came under extraordinary criticism for his languid leadership style and callous indifference to the woes of his people rendered homeless by army action. What the world witnessed was the dangerous incompetence and staggering indifference of a President to human suffering.

What is it that people really expected from their President in a national crisis? It is something that the National psyche needs. The people expect the occupant of the Presidency to share their suffering, to assure those trapped in the cross-fire, that they will survive; that they will get through it. He has to be a Chief Executive who is in Command, who reacts promptly, who mobilizes resources and alleviates human suffering. Above all, he must inspire confidence. And so, he has to be that larger-than-life figure. The change in intensity in the news media – cable channels are broadcasting round-the-clock horrifying pictures of thousands of people trudging along or packed like sardines in the tents, - has sharply increased the demand on the President. In such a situation, people want and expect more of a personal connection. That did not happen. People still remember how General Azam handled the flood crisis in East Pakistan. He struck a human chord and won over the hearts of the people of East Pakistan. They loved Azam and still remember him with affection. In stark contrast, President Zardari looked so cold, so unconcerned, so indifferent, so distant, so wooden and so bureaucratic. All the evidence points, above all, to a stunning lack of both preparation and urgency in the President’s response. Nothing about the President’s demeanor – which seemed casual to the point of carelessness – suggested that he understood the depth of the crisis. No wonder, people are furious, disgusted, mad as hell.

The army operation has caused the biggest migration since partition. While the rich got out well in time, poor people, growing more hungry, more frightened by the hour, were left behind and hardest hit. They did not have transport. The official evacuation plan, if any, was really based on people driving out in their own cars! The poor had no access to cars. As soon as the curfew was lifted, they tried to get out anyway they could. Lakhs of people, men, women and children, young and old, sick and infirm, streamed out of Swat and started the long march to Mardan.

From the earliest days of our country to the events of today, my real heroes have always been the men and women, young and old, mostly poor, who risked their lives, and sacrificed their lives to found this Republic. It seems that in every age of our history, the people always rose to meet the challenges and difficulties of their times. I am now speaking of those countless people in Mardan and Swabi who welcomed lakhs of displaced person with open arms and put them up in their humble abodes. Suddenly, as if by magic, they all belonged to one family, held together in the knowledge that each one were to give all that he had to give. No one gave the people the impulse to do what had to be done. They rose to the occasion spontaneously to face the challenge. It brought out the best in them. It was their finest hour.

The hurricane Katrina unmasked George W. Bush. The army action and the exodus it caused, has similarly unmasked Zardari. It illuminated a serious character flaw hidden from the public. In a president character is everything. He does not have to be brilliant. Truman was not brilliant and he helped save Western Europe from Stalin. He does not have to be clever. He can hire clever. But he cannot buy character. He cannot acquire decency. He cannot acquire empathy. A President must bring these qualities with him when he enters the Presidency.

Henry Adams once wrote that the essence of leadership in the Presidency is "a helm to grasp, a course to steer, a port to seek". President Zardari grasped the helm more then a year ago but the country still doesn't know whether he has an inner compass, or a course to steer or a port to seek. It is now abundantly clear that Zardari is not worthy of the trust placed in him by his people. He carries a serious baggage, dogged for years by charges of corruption until they were abruptly dropped under NRO. No democrat should come to power through such an array of backroom machinations, deals with Generals or Washington. No wonder, too many people reject his political legitimacy.

“Pakistan’s pants are on fire”, said Representative Gary Ackerman, democrat of New York. During the Vietnam War there was a phrase that came to symbolize the entire misbegotten adventure: “it became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it”. It was said at first with sincerity, then repeated with irony, and finally with despair. Sadly, a similar suicidal drama is being enacted in the beautiful valley of Swat on Zardari’s watch. It brings to mind Arnold Toynbee’s comment that a civilization doesn’t die from being invaded, but rather commits suicide.

Sometimes, once in a long while, you get a chance to serve your country. Few people had been offered the opportunity that lay open to Mr. Zardari. He blew it. His long absence from the country at a dangerous time in the history of Pakistan, his indiscretions abroad, his embarrassing press interviews, did more damage to the image of Pakistan than the much – maligned extremists could ever have done.

President Zardari has been weighed in the balance and found wanting. There is a fin–de–regime feel about Pakistan these days, and the miasma clings to Zardari. A year ago, he was anointed, literally behind the coffin of his wife, only to find the reins of power slipping from his grasp just as his moment in history arrived. His appeal to his countrymen for sacrifice to help the displaced persons reminds me of Lloyd George’s response to Chamberlain’s appeal for sacrifice when World War II broke out. “I say solemnly”, Lloyd George said, “that the Prime Minister should set an example of sacrifice, because there is nothing which can contribute more to victory than that he should sacrifice the seals of office”. A tearful Chamberlain resigned in national interest. His successor led the country to victory.

These are critical days in Pakistan. There is no steady hand on the tiller of Government. The survival of the country, its sovereignty, its stunted democracy, its hard-won independent judiciary, all are on the line. In these dangerous times, anything is possible. I shall not be surprised at any event that may happen. The country is gripped by fear and uncertainty. One doesn’t have to read the tea leaves for a glimpse of our future. The ship of state is decrepit and creaky. The sea is turbulent. The captain has a weak anchor and no compass. The crew is inexperienced. If the nation doesn’t wake up, we will all go down like the Titanic. History will remember both that Zardari failed to hear the warning bells and that politicians failed to ring them loudly enough.

La Patrie en Danger


Pakistan was born free, sovereign and independent. Today it is in chains, and in deep, deep trouble. Once we believed we were possessed of a unique destiny. Today our country is dysfunctional and sleepwalking toward disaster. It is, in the evocative French word, “Pourri” – rotten to the core.

It is not the country it was 10 years ago before General Musharraf struck and usurped political power. Back then, the country was in strong hands, settled, stable, democratic and free. Today, Pakistan is an American lackey, a “rentier state”, ill-led and ill-governed. A country full of promise has become the laughing stock of the world. Even the most incurable optimists, as some of us are, are deeply worried about the future of the country.

Toady the country is as near to anarchy as society can approach without dissolution. This is the time of La Grande Peur, (“the great fear”): foreign aggression, soaring prices, laws without force and magistrates without courts. Across the country, people inveigh against the senseless proxy war in FATA and PATA, the lack of accountability, the widespread corruption, the breakdown of law and order, and the all pervading sense of insecurity.

Outwardly, Islamabad is still as the surface of the pond. An illusionary calm seems to have settled over Pakistan. The reality is that Pakistan is anything but calm. It has not become just dangerous but shrill; an embattled President, is now regular sport for the people, heckled and mocked not behind his back – but heresy of heresies, in the open. Today he is like a “captain in the cabin” dozing while the country was being driven into an “enemy’s port”. It is Zardari’s most beleaguered hour. Rarely has one man’s misrule so horribly endangered the security of the country. Instead of governing, Zardari is lurching from disaster to disaster. Is it any wonder that the situation in Pakistan is so dire? How much more dire it must get before the people do something about it.

Today Pakistan is rudderless and sliding into darkness. It is like a nightmare in which you foresee all the horrible things which are going to happen and can't stretch out your hand to prevent them. Such is the feeling conjured up by inept rulers of Pakistan as it enters a period of great uncertainty and sinks deeper and deeper into the quagmire.

A pall has descended on the nation and we are fast approaching Arthur Koestlers’ Darkness at Noon. The tragedy is that each man feels what is wrong, and knows what is required to be done, but none has the will or the courage or the energy needed to speak up and say Enough is Enough. No more drone attacks. No more American interference in our internal affairs. All have lofty ideals, hopes, aspirations, desires, which produce no visible or durable results, like old men’s passions ending in impotence.

In these harsh and dangerous political times, the question of leadership is at the center of our national concerns. The times cry out for leadership. At the heart of leadership is the leader’s character. Pakistan is a nation of teahouse politicians, midgets with no commitment to principles and no values; nothing to die for and nothing to live for. Here we have pocketbook liberals, pseudo democrats and orthodox religious leaders concerned only with short – term profits and only too eager to do business with the Americans. A chasm separates them from the people who see them as a predatory group, self-enriching and engaged in perpetual intrigue while the country collapses.

Today Pakistan is ruled by a President who lacks credibility and predictability and seems oblivious to the realities of his awesome responsibilities and is interested only in perpetuating himself. The country is breaking down. It has become ungovernable and would remain so as long as present leadership remains in power. Unless we get the right kind of leadership, centrifugal forces, which are fast becoming stronger, would destroy this country.

In the backdrop of this grim picture, under American pressure, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani, blissfully ignorant of the storm raging outside, suddenly broke off talks, declared war on the militants in Swat and vowed to crush them. His speech has a ring of de javu about it, reminiscent of President Yahya Khan’s speech after launching military action in East Pakistan. It is very easy to start a war, difficult to end it. Once war is unleashed, it becomes unpredictable, uncontrollable and produces unintended results.

I was in Dhaka on March 25, 1971 when army operation was launched. I saw long lines of our own people – men, women and children, with their pitiful belongings on their heads, heading for the Indian border. We lost East Pakistan on that day. It is idle to speculate, with the benefit of hindsight, but the war with India, the defeat of the Pakistan army, the humiliating spectacle of its surrender in Dhaka, the loss of half the country, the long incarceration of our soldiers in Indian captivity, the untold human misery, might have been avoided, if we had eschewed military option altogether and kept the talks going in search of a political solution. The politicians, left to themselves, would have muddled through the crisis and struck a political bargain. The history of Pakistan might have been different.

The lesson of the ill-fated army action in East Pakistan is: never, never, use your army against your own people. It leads to civil war, foreign intervention and the breakup of the country. Military operation did not succeed in Balochistan either in 1977 and had to be called off by General Zia ul Haq. How can it succeed in Swat, Buner or Dir?

The tragedy of Pakistan is that our rulers, like the Bourbons of France, don't learn from history and are doomed to repeat the same mistakes. Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again in the expectation that it would produce a different result. We have gone through the valley of the shadows before. Do we have to go through it again?

Why kill your own people just to please the Americans? Why uproot lakhs and lakhs of your own people and turn them into refugees in their own country? Stop this absurd fighting, resume talks and you will see at once a new blossoming of hope all over the country.

The Pakistan army is a people’s army, in the sense that it belongs to the people of Pakistan. It is the only shield we have against foreign aggression. In the absence of strong political institutions, it is the only glue that is keeping our fragile federation together. Why use it against your own people? Why use force to resolve what is essentially a political problem?

Today all the symptoms which one had ever met within history previous to great changes and revolutions exist in Pakistan. Our army is at war with its own people. With the tacit consent of our rulers, American drones violate our airspace, bomb our villages in the tribal areas, and kill innocent men, women and children. Not a dog barks in protest. The country appears to be adrift. Nobody knows where it was headed without popular leadership to guide or direct it. The social contract between the rulers and the ruled has collapsed. Fundamental issues of far - reaching significance are churning beneath the placid surface of life. I know that at the present moment an unusual agitation is pervading the people, but what it will exactly result in, I am unable to say. “I can detect the near approach of the storm. I can hear the moaning of the hurricane, but I can’t say when or where it will break forth”.

In a democracy, political change is linked to a change of rulers, which occurs regularly and at minimal social cost. The absence of authentic democracy, however, does not prevent a change of rulers. It happens anyway. It takes the form of revolution. Some are “soft” like the velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1989 or the “orange” revolution in Ukraine in 2004. Some are bloody like the October revolution in Russia or the Iranian revolution. Nobody denies the inevitability of change in Pakistan. It will happen sooner or later, perhaps sooner than later. But when it does happen, it may not be “velvet”.