A UNIVERSALLY accepted truth is that the government we have is powerless, that the state is non-functional, and that law and order has fled (if it ever has been with us during the past four decades).
Thanks to the last of the military dictators and the myriad private television channels he gave us that bring the nation news from wherever, we are made aware of the above fact on a daily basis.
For instance, we have seen on our screens the beating up of errant citizens by a police force that seems capable solely of wielding a danda, the beating up, blackening of faces and the stringing up on poles of thieves in Lyallpur (Faisalabad) by irate citizens. We have read of the student in Peshawar who was killed by his fellow students for playing his radio at night, and in Karachi we have read of citizens catching and killing criminals, even burning them alive.
Meanwhile, our nervy president and his band of sycophantic advisors and ministers (many of whom should rightly be behind a set of bars) continue on their merry way, clueless and “eyeless in Gaza”, with a prime minister frozen into compliance with his party co-chairman’s equally nervy desires, who manages to remain expressionless and presides over a grossly oversized cabinet the members of which he is hard-pressed to recognise.
In the news this past 10 days have been the meetings held in Washington between a supplicant Pakistan and the USA. According to a Washington Post editorial of March 23, “… when asked what it seeks in a strategic relationship, the government of Asif Ali Zardari proposed a lengthy laundry list that mixed worthy proposals, like more access to western markets, with requests for advanced military hardware and other favours that reflect its continuing, unhealthy preoccupation with India. For example, it wants a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States similar to that struck with New Delhi. That should be a non-starter for a host of reasons, including Pakistan’s failure to come clean about its involvement in the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology to Iran, Iraq and North Korea”.
A news item in the same publication on the same day headlined ‘Army dominates Pakistan agenda for US talks’ told us that “analysts say it is the head of Pakistan’s army General Ashfaq Kayani, also attending the talks, who has set the agenda for Pakistan on security-related matters….”
On March 21, a New York Times headline read ‘Army chief driving Pakistan’s agenda for talks’, over the news, “In a sign of the mounting power of the army over the civilian government, the head of the military, General Ashfaq Kayani, will be the dominant Pakistani participant in important meetings in Washington this week”. And headlines over a Reuter’s report the same day, ‘General Kayani in Washington: Pakistan’s most powerful man’. The opening sentence: “So much for democracy.” Then, “Inside Pakistan itself, the political parties have been at loggerheads, leaving Kayani looking like the only national figure who remained above the fray”.
Enough said. Since the advent of this democratic government, the world has been at a loss to know who to talk to in Pakistan — a great stumbling block, and it is only the US and to a certain extent the UK who have sorted themselves out and decided that the chief of army staff is the man. Last month in India, when US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said he was visiting Pakistan the next day, he was asked who he was going to talk to. A number of people, he said, but most importantly with General Kayani. Why, came the query, why not the president? “Because Kayani is the most important man out there.”
Kayani started out as an apolitical army chief, intent upon putting back the army in the place it is intended to occupy in the constitutional frame of the state. Through no fault of his but purely due to the incompetence and intransigent attitude of the politicos, he was soon dragged into the culmination of the lawyers’ movement and the judicial crisis which he neatly sorted out with a wave of his stick.
At the US’s urging and behest, which cannot be ignored in any way being as we are what we are, he moved against the advancing Taliban of the Swat valley and its environs. Having sorted that problem out, he moved his army into South Waziristan for a further sorting out of the militant threat. There was never any doubt that he was the man who called all the shots when it came to military involvement.
Then slowly but surely, as the government dithered and flailed away helplessly, he began to gather up the reins and became the man regarded by many inside and outside the country as the de facto ruler of Pakistan. He not only masterminded the latest parleys in Washington but he was the quiet mastermind behind the Pakistan-India foreign secretary level talks and it was not until he gave the nod that they proceeded. It is also known that he is also fully aware of the water issue between the two countries and has uttered on that matter.
At home and abroad there has been much recent speculation as regards Kayani’s future because as per army rules he is due to retire in November this year. Since he has granted extensions to a number of his lieutenant-generals, for reasons best known to him, there is a strong feeling that his term in service will also be extended — in the national interest, of course.
The week ends, we remaining assured that a strong silent stoic hand holds the helm.
Mohammed Abbasi 