The Puzzling Fazal Factor
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
Did anyone seriously thought the dharna (sit-in) by ‘Maulana’ Fazal ur Rehman, popularly known to most Pakistanis as Mullah Diesel, would last as long as it already has?
It’s in its 12th day, already, and shows no sign of going away, or withering on the vine so to speak, any time soon. To any thoughtful observer of Pakistan’s meandering course of history, the spectacle is becoming puzzling and perplexing by the day.
Of course, dharna is not a new or novel phenomenon to Pakistan’s political culture. Ironically, it was brought into popular discourse and fashion by the very political party—the incumbent ruling elite of PTI (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf)—which the dharna is focused against. Imran Khan’s famous dharna, five years ago, to date, went on for more than two months and was cut short only by the horrible massacre of innocent children at Peshawar’s Army School.
Fazal, or Fazloo in popular parlance, is a rabble-rouser, in addition to being Pakistan’s most enduring and persistent politician. His title of Maulana is a grotesque insult and affront to the meaning of the term. He isn’t a scholar of Islam by any stretch of imagination, or sycophancy so endemic to Pakistani political culture of spoils. Fazal’s title of a pseudo religious scholar is an inheritance from his father, Maulana Mufti Mehmood, who did attend the famous Indian seminary of Deoband and was a down-to-earth man, much against the flamboyant and pompous Fazal.
However, in a befitting reminder to all pundits of the Pakistani scene, Fazal is an epitome of Machiavelli’s notorious prince surviving by his wits and fox-like cunning.
Fazal’s reputation, for years since he inherited the mantle of leadership of the right-wing JUI (Jamiat-ul-Ulemae Islam), the Pakistani face of India’s ever-enduring Jamiat-ul-Ulemae Hind (JUH) which opposed the Pakistan ideology and movement, tooth-and-nail, is of a rank opportunist. He has had no compunction in sharing power with both PML-N and Zardari’s PPP. In the process, he enriched himself enormously amassing fortunes that few could ever associate with a so-called religious leader.
Fazal’s bluff was, eventually, called by Imran Khan, who not only kept him at arm’s length but took away from his usurping reach all those perks and privileges previous regimes in Islamabad had bestowed on him as the ransom money for his nuisance value. The man on the Pakistani street is privy to Fazal’s rancor against Imran for having kicked him out of bungalow no. 22 in Islamabad’s exclusive Ministers’ Enclave.
Fazal’s exit from Islamabad’s up-street and famous address came on top of an earlier humiliation at the 2018 polls. He was soundly beaten by PTI unknowns—fledgling acolytes of Imran—in both the NA constituencies that he contested. It should have been a wake-up call to a politician who took his ‘popularity’ and approbation with the people in his home territory for granted.
In any civilized democracy, a man so soundly beaten, humiliated and cut to size, would’ve become history for good. But not in Pakistan, where politicos have habitually thrived on the short memory span of the people. Fazal is a perfect example of it.
Those with a hindsight on Pakistan’s macabre game of thrones aren’t surprised but any novice would be out of his wits to see a man so thoroughly discredited and rejected by the people is back on the country’s political center-stage with a vengeance.
This could only happen in Pakistan that a spent bullet can rally tens of thousands and bring them to the outskirts of the country’s seat of power and challenge Imran Khan with such elan and confidence. The rabble-rousing mullah is not only proving his staying power with his Azadi March but still presiding over a crowd of his purblind followers right within hailing distance of PM’s Office. He may still be some distance from Islamabad’s Red Zone but his hectoring can still be heard, loud and clear, by those saddled with the question of how to tackle the tacky rabble-rouser.
What’s puzzling, if not annoying, to pundits, including this scribe, is who’s behind the fire-belching mullah?
Fazal may have access to tens of thousands of students enrolled in hundreds of madressas run through the length and breadth of Pakistan by his religio-political outfit, JUI. That’s an asset to fall back upon in a situation like this. Seminaries in Pakistan have a history of using their pupils with abandon as cannon-fodder for the extension of their political agendas. Students, mostly from poor families are like hostages in the hands of their faculty and those, like Fazal, calling the shots entirely for personal gains.
But is street-power enough to challenge an elected government and hunker down with a set of outrageous demands on the door-step of the capital city?
What’s even more perplexing is that Fazal’s not-so-well nuanced tirades against Imran Khan—with whom he has an axe to grind because IK was astute enough to call a spade a spade—have implied insults also against Pakistan’s military establishment. And it isn’t insulting innuendoes only; weaved into them are also threats delivered with panache.
Which prompts the question where is his backing and support coming from?
Of course, the mullah has a history of consorting with the establishment going back to decades. The late Maulana Kausar Niazi in his book Aur Line Kat Gai, has an interesting episode to narrate from that tense stand-off between his boss, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and his political rivals and challengers in the PNA movement of mid-1977 against ZAB. Kausar Niazi was ZAB’s Information Minister and had gone to a meeting with Maulana Mufti Mehmood, Fazal’s father, then leading the PNA squad.
Niazi narrates that in the middle of his meeting with Mufti Mehmood, a young man not known to him entered the room and seeing him Mufti Sahib stopped talking, and resumed the dialogue only when the youngster went out of the room. A few minutes later the young man came back and the Mufti fell silent, once again. After the young man had vacated the room Niazi asked Mehmood why wouldn’t he continue their conversation in the presence of the youngster. It was then that Mufti Mehmood revealed the identity of his son and added that he was a tout of the army and even reported his father for money!
This episode from a most authentic source sheds light on the character of Fazal. What’s the moral worth of a man who would literally sell his father for a few bolts of silver?
But, then, it adds weight to the question why he should now be training his guns on the people who have nurtured and pampered him?
Equally relevant and important is the question why the establishment tolerating his tirades? Or is it that they are only giving him a long rope so he may, eventually, hang himself.
While the jury is out, for the moment, on these questions, what’s crystal clear is that the choice of this sensitive period by the rabble-rousing mullah to mount his challenge to the government of IK fully and unmistakably exposes his anti-Pakistan and anti-Kashmiri agenda. This man, ironically, held the office of Chairman of Parliament’s Kashmir Committee for twenty years and did precious little to promote the cause of the Kashmiris groaning under the yoke of brutal Indian occupation of the Valley.
But, of course, he has sprung to his feet with the going in beleaguered Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) getting tough for a revanchist Narendra Modi. What Fazal has done is a yeoman’s service to Modi, far exceeding in impact the verbal support extended by JUH to his abrogation of IOK’s Special Status and unstinted suppression of its people.
The rabble-rousing Fazal’s self-serving dharna has taken the focus of the people of Pakistan off the suffering of their brethren in IOK. Kashmir has been turned into an open-air jail, or concentration camp in the real sense of the term. But that doesn’t bother Fazal. His concern is with turning the screws on IK and stir up his hostage rabble to mutiny.
The bottom-line question is how long will be the rope for him and where will those charged with the burden of keeping Pakistan safe, secure and orderly, draw the line underneath the pesky mullah? Few would be the pundits ready to hazard a guess. I wouldn’t. - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com
(The writer is a former ambassador and a career diplomat)
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