Excelling in
the Bizarre
By Dr Shireen M. Mazari
Only in Pakistan can
we witness the ultimate in bizarre scenarios. There
we have members of civil society fighting alongside
lawyers and media persons to struggle for the restoration
of the Constitution, the independence of the judiciary
and basic rights of citizens. We have seen the police
spare no violence or abuse in countering these protests
and throwing the protestors into thanas and jails.
With college and university students also undergoing
a political reawakening, civil society is becoming
ever more confident in its sense of relevancy just
when the political elites seem to be losing all
relevance with their particularistic divides --
and their presence is felt more by their absence!
As the terrorists in the tribal belt and Swat seemingly
continue to make tactical gains, the mainstream
civil society seems to have moved center stage as
targets of the law enforcers.
In all this, no one can take the theatre of the
absurd away from the law enforcers whose brutality
reached new heights of the bizarre when schoolchildren,
who undertook a peaceful civil protest against the
emergency-martial law, were beaten up and arrested
by the Islamabad police. What an education in politics
for the future generations of the country! Is this
how we will teach them respect for the law enforcers?
The irony is that the children agreed to break up
their protest on the request of the police who then
chose to attack them as they were winding up.
However, the law enforcers are not alone in conducting
theatres of the absurd, though theirs is certainly
the most violent and brutal. We have our very own
BB, the darling of the West, conducting her own
Kabuki theatre -- with its stylized and exaggerated
techniques. Watching her drama on the day she was
put under house arrest in Islamabad (some say she
requested the same!) it was clear that she had brought
a new glamour to the notion of 'noora kushti'. This
was supported by the fact that her speech outside
her house was relayed by all the official media
channels so that no one would miss it in these days
of the credible electronic media blackout. This
drama was followed by her uninterrupted visits to
the journalists' protest and a visit to the house
of Chief Justice Chaudhry. As for her access to
the Senate for her meeting with diplomats, no matter
what the PPP explanation is put forward, it had
official sanction.
Certainly BB is reaching new heights of the bizarre
in her Kabuki drama with the government. The result
is that while her Party's leadership has also by
and large been spared -- Aitzaz being incarcerated
in his capacity as the leader of the lawyers movement
rather than a worker of the PPP -- with the poor
workers and ordinary supporters of BB being targeted
by the state. What a different scenario from the
one being faced by other political leaders!
Friend Shafqat Mahmood has stated that if BB's long
march is prevented, it will restore her credibility
that she has now moved beyond her deal with the
government; but I feel that that will simply be
a continuation of the BB Kabuki theatre. The real
proof will come when the NRO is withdrawn by the
government and corruption cases are left to their
judicial fate.
While we are seeing various levels of the bizarre
being enacted in Pakistan, a very serious source
of threat to the nation is the increasingly questionable
role of the US. The British have sought to resort
to an unbecoming imperial tone -- given the tiny
British Isles along with the Malians, are all that
remain of British Imperial might – but they
really do not count in terms of power pressure on
their own. But the US now directly threatens the
security of Pakistan by declaring its intent, through
a news story in The Washington Post, to "seize"
our nuclear assets if they fall into the "wrong
hands". Given that US nukes presently are in
the trigger happy and dangerous hands of the born-again
Christian fundamentalists that are the neo cons
and their leader Bush; and given that Israel's unknown
nuclear arsenal is in the hands of a brutal and
violent extreme right regime; and given how the
Hindu fundamentalists of the BJP had control of
the Indian nuclear arsenal; how can the US have
the gall to refer to Pakistan's nuclear arsenal
going into "wrong hands". But as some
of us have been saying for some time now, the US
will always target our strategic assets one way
or another because we are a Muslim state.
Meanwhile, the US has dropped all pretence of staying
out of our internal affairs. The US consul-general
in Lahore is now openly informing all the misguided
social elite, who still insist on interacting with
him that the Supreme Court had to be dealt with
because it was giving some "wrong decisions".
Has there ever been a more blatant intervention
in our domestic affairs? Now why was he given permission
to see Asma Jahangir when many Pakistanis are being
denied the same? We have also had the US ambassador
visit the Election Commission although can one imagine
a Pakistani ambassador to the US publicly querying
the role of George Bush in the 2000 US elections!
Perhaps the most bizarre happenings relate to the
US desire to cobble a Musharraf-BB partnership without
awaiting the results that a fair and free election
will throw up. Under these circumstances it is not
surprising to assume that what the US is actually
seeking is not so much totally fair and free elections
-- after all the trauma of the Hamas victory is
still there -- as some sort of a national government
headed by BB! Is that why it has said little about
the forced stay of Nawaz Sharif in Saudi Arabia?
Finally, an almost comic scenario is developing
as formation of interim governments becomes imminent.
We have retired bureaucrats, civil and military,
who all seem to undergo a democratic and nationalist
rebirth after retirement and hold TV audiences hostage
to their raging. There now seems to be an old folks
club of caretaker candidates who descend on the
capital whenever a caretaker or interim regime is
in the offing. Why oh why do we always look to recycling
old souls?
With all these shenanigans, it is not surprising
to find Pakistan at the receiving end of ridicule
and threats from the foreign media and governments
respectively. While in the case of other countries,
out of favor leaders tend to be targeted in their
own capacities -- take the case of the US (official
and media) targeting of Venezuela's Chavez or even
Iran's Ahmedinejad -- in the case of Pakistan it
is the country as a whole that is the target, especially
by the US and its allies. So while leaders come
and go, the image of the nation suffers long term.
Something that is extremely bothersome is why our
elites are ever ready, for their own interests,
to paint dire consequences of "après
moi le deluge"? In other words, if the status
quo dissipates, the country will fall apart.
Nothing could be further from the truth. We Pakistanis
have tremendous resilience as a nation, and our
survival is not dependent on any one individual
alone. After all not all of us have villas in Dubai
or apartments and chateaus in Europe to run to so
we must stay and fight for this beautiful nation.
We must look to strengthen our institutions and
systems, not individuals. As for those waiting for
the imminent demise of nuclear Pakistan, they will
have to wait an eternity.
(The writer is director general of the Institute
of Strategic Studies, Islamabad. Courtesy The News)
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