General Raheel's Remarks
By Col. Riaz Jafri (Retd)
Westridge, Rawalpindi
“Army respects all other institutions of the state and expects them to respect it also”, was a simple and straight forward remark made by the COAS General Raheel Sharif while visiting a Pak army commando unit near Terbela. Somehow the remark has created a furor totally unwarranted in certain quarters, especially the electronic media. which is blowing it hot and cold and quite out of proportion projecting it as nothing short of an ultimatum by the General to the government. All sorts of TV talk shows are being held where anchors are openly trying to create a hype. At times they pose silly questions to the panelists, such as, “Would you call it the first warning or the last warning by the General to the government?”. The absurdity of the question is self-evident!
Some others in their sublime (read ridiculous) wisdom attribute the remark to be a veiled threat to the govt. not to proceed against Musharraf – not realizing that now that he has been indicted by a court legal proceedings have to be resorted to till they come to a logical end.
To me the whole matter is very simple and clear. Some of the politicians, for reasons best known to them, cannot hide their obvious hate and contempt for Musharraf. But in doing so they instead of condemning him as an individual - Pervez Musharraf or ex President Pervez Musharraf or even ex General Pervez Musharraf - somehow focus, directly or obliquely, more upon his association with the army than anything else and fling vitriolic and contemptuous remarks upon him such as a “buzdil commando”, “a darpok jarnail”, “ the ghaddar jarnail,” etc. etc. The army most certainly doesn’t like to be associated with or told to have been commanded by a buzdil, darpoke or ghaddar chief and ridiculed in default by such ostensibly veiled but quite obvious references to it by anyone. Hence, an honest and sincere riposte from the General for the concerned to refrain from deepening the chasm between the civil and the military which could be extremely harmful for the nation.
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