Opinion

Gulzar Kayani & Aitzaz: Signs of Sickening Leadership
By Ahmed Quraishi
Islamabad, Pakistan

The recent statements of Aitzaz Ahsan and the retired lieutenant General Jamshed Gulzar Kayani take to new lows the standard of leadership in Pakistan. If it was in the gutter, now it touches the murky crust of the hardened mucus gathered at the lowest corner of the gutter floor. You have to excuse my choice of words. I am disgusted and I can’t hide it.
Mr. Ahsan is excused. He is a politician of the typical Pakistani style even if he tries to hide it in his interviews to the foreign media. But Lt. Gen. Kayani is a disappointment. An upright and a distinguished officer like him should have never stooped this low.
But I’ll come to Gen. Kayani in a minute. Let’s start with Mr. Ahsan.
I have no better word to describe his politics and that of his fellow politicized lawyers than the one used by the writer of a New York Times magazine story who interviewed Mr. Ahsan at length for the piece.
This is how Mr. James Traub started his June 1 article: “In April, on the highway outside the little Punjabi town of Renala Khurd, Aitzaz Ahsan was waylaid by a crowd of seemingly deranged lawyers.”
Thank you, Mr. Traub, who is definitely not on the payroll of President Musharraf and thus is neutral and objective in describing Mr. Ahsan and his buddies as deranged. This should tell you something about how ‘civilized’ this movement is if the first word that comes to the mind of a foreign correspondent watching the lawyers in action is ‘deranged.’
But this is the least of Mr. Ahsan’s troubles.
In the interview, Mr. Ahsan not only comes across as arrogant and full of hot air; he dares criticize both Asif Zardari and Benazir Bhutto and declares, in his infinite belated wisdom, that most of the corruption charges against the couple were correct.
Most Pakistanis already know this and don’t need Mr. Aitzaz Ahsan’s belated and self-serving confession to confirm it. So this is not a story. The real story is Mr. Ahsan’s cheap opportunism in trying to present himself to the Washington establishment – through the NYT magazine – as this great crusader for the rule of law in Pakistan who is about to change the destinies of: (1) Pakistan, (2) the broader Middle East, (3) South Asia and (4) the world. And I am not kidding. Mr. Ahsan says himself in the interview he is capable of this and more.
Here are some of the gems uttered by Mr. Ahsan:
- The author of the article, James Traub, writes: "I asked him (Mr Ahsan) how many of the allegations of corruption (against Zardari-Bhutto) he believed were justified. “Most of them," Mr. Ahsan said, after a moment's reflection. "The type of expenses that she had and he has are not from sources of income that can be lawfully explained and accounted for."
- James Traub said that Mr. Ahsan recognized that the PPP was itself a feudal and only marginally democratic body led by a figure accused of corruption and violence.
- Mr. Ahsan believed that in the aftermath of the Lahore incident, wherein he saved former federal minister Sher Afghan from the wrath of the people 'that he is more famous in the country than at any other time'. "And I have become much more famous."
- ‘Mr. Ahsan wasn't worried that a new round of protests … would divide the country.’
Mr. Ahsan’s outbursts against Zardari and his late wife show his hypocrisy and frustration. Even Mr. Traub, the story writer, was shocked at this and put it this way:
“Mr. Ahsan, who defended both Ms. Benazir Bhutto and Mr. Zardari in 14 cases, told Times that the charges of "corruption against both" and in Mr. Zardari's case also of "kidnapping, ransom and murder", were justified.”
Mr. Ahsan defended the couple in 14 cases of stolen wealth that belonged to the Pakistani people. He knew this and yet he told Pakistani courts that the money was not stolen and did belong to the couple, which means Mr. Ahsan lied to the courts and defended two thieves who had stolen from the people of Pakistan.
But now, when Mr. Zardari has virtually shown him the door, Mr. Ahsan suddenly discovers that the Zardari-Bhutto money was a stolen wealth. Mr. Zardari remains an honest person because he never denied how he became rich. But Mr. Ahsan is basically a typically dirty politician who used all his energies to whitewash Benazir Bhutto’s stolen money and never said a word but now wants to become a whistleblower because Mr. Zardari won’t treat him nicely.
If this is not hypocrisy and shamelessness, I don’t know what is. I personally laughed at everything Mr. Ahsan said in the interview, especially the part about how famous he has become inside and outside Pakistan. The only part that really saddened me is where he said he is not concerned that more lawyer protests would divide the country.
Amazing. A foreign correspondent knows and can tell that renewed protests will divide Pakistan. But Mr. Ahsan says he is not bothered. Divisions within Pakistan, where the economy is hurting, is not in Mr. Aitzaz Ahsan’s list of priorities.

JAMSHED GULZAR KAYANI

Now we come to Lt. Gen. Kayani, retired, who gave an interview to GEO’s Dr. Shahid Masood.
I agree with him on Gen. Musharraf’s initial response to the Americans after 9/11. Had President Musharraf told the Americans he will have to consult the Pakistani nation through a referendum (since the parliament was not there at the time), Washington would not have become a bully later, demanding more concessions.
But we don’t know how grave were the conversations that President Musharraf had with the Americans in the first hours after 9/11 that convinced him the situation was so grave for Pakistan – and the time so short to decide – that no course of action was more sensible than the one he took.
All of this is debatable and merits open discussion. And there was nothing wrong in Lt. Gen. Kayani doing this after retirement, when he is a free citizen.
But I wish he limited himself to this. Instead, knowing the volatile political situation in the country, he ventured to discuss highly controversial State and military matters, like the Kargil briefing to former premier Nawaz Sharif, and his own personal assessment of the Kargil war.
When Pakistan is in a desperate situation and needs to quickly move forward to deal with the real issues, Lt. Gen. Kayani comes up with the farce of a commission to probe the Kargil war and suggest that both President Musharraf and Mr. Sharif testify before it. What’s worse, he tries to use the authority of the military, which he does not own or have claim to, to give his political views an aura of credibility.
I am all for a commission. All civilized nations of the world do it. But I’ll accept a commission in Pakistan when Pakistan had become another Germany or China and Pakistanis had nothing better to do than to go back in history and dig up dirt that divides people more than unites them.
And I don’t believe in the weak argument that this will help democracy and the rule of law. It might in another time and place. But right now, this will only divide Pakistanis further and distract their attention from the games that the Americans and the Indians are playing around us.
Plus, we have more urgent issues to deal with than a commission to probe something that happened a decade ago.
Mr. Kayani could have given us his expert opinion on Kargil in a book, or in a focused television or newspaper interview about professional military matters. But he deliberately chose GEO Network’s show with Dr. Shahid Masood, which is a popular mudslinging platform – like all political talk sh0ws – preferred by senior politicians and those searching for immediate fame.
It is obvious the interview tickled Mr. Kayani’s vanity and it was really unfortunate to see the former officer sucking up to the host by repeatedly and slavishly calling him ‘Doctor Sahib’, which is a standard Pakistani suck-up term. Instead of showing his own importance as a former corps commander, Gen. Kayani looked small in front of Dr. Masood.
Is this what it has come to? Decorated officers from the military ready to talk about everything on camera so they could have their 15-minutes of fame?
I have no doubt about the professionalism of Lt. Gen. Kayani. And his patriotism, especially his assessment of the quality of the Pakistani soldiers compared to the Indian soldiers and how we had India by the jugular in Kargil, if only the war was better managed. But his statements on controversial State and military matters, made with an air of authority and finality that was not his right, were in poor taste.
Although I wouldn’t normally put the two together, but between Mr. Ahsan’s desperate statements and Gen. Kayani’s unnecessary ones, the crisis of leadership in Pakistan becomes clear.
We don’t have leaders anymore. We have men dying for their 15-minute of fame. And let the homeland go to the dogs. WWW.AHMEDQURAISHI.COM

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