Pakistan: Now or Never
By Mohammad A Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA
“Even Israfil’s trumpet cannot bring back to life those whose bodies, when they lived, had no soul.”
- Allama Iqbal
It is a matter of routine with the army that once a person paces for more than three times in front of any of its sensitive installations or the residence of a high-ranking official, the alarm bell begins to ring, and the person in question allegedly becomes an automatic suspect, unless proven otherwise. Osama bin Laden had been at the top of the “Most Wanted Persons’ List” of the world for over ten years. And he had been living in close proximity to Pakistan’s most prestigious officers’ training Academy for the last five years. No alarm bells did ever ring. How interesting!
Osama’s ideology itself had earned him enough notoriety to debar him from being a bed-fellow anywhere, not even in a country of his own birth, except in Pakistan and Afghanistan where some, however, discovered some new streaks of “saintliness” in him. What attracted them more, his ‘piety’, or his ‘money’, is anybody’s guess.
That this man would be found living comfortably in a mansion with his three wives and about 15 children in the garrison town of Abbottabad, just about 750 meters away from the country’s top military academy, an institution from which both, General Kiyani, the former ISI head and the current C-in-C, and Lt. General Pasha, the incumbent ISI chief, had graduated, is not a matter of surprise; it is a matter of utter shame and shock. No wonder, the former Afghan Intelligence head, Mr. Umrao Saleh, is now heard singing in a loud and clear voice, telling the world and Pakistan, “I told you about his presence four years ago… I was snubbed by President Pervez Musharraf in the presence of President Karzai in words, ‘I am not a banana republic President, sitting here to learn the art of intelligence from a Panj-Sheri…”
Lies, arrogance, double-dealings, vanity, self-conceitedness, and above all, a total lack of sincerity even in matters that directly relate to the national interests is what now characterizes Pakistan’s past and present leadership.
Dozens of legitimate questions about the presence of this man, first in Pakistan, and then in that most sensitive and least expected location have cropped up, warranting an honest and true answer. Pakistan never lost its total credibility and prestige in the amount as it has now. According to Ayesha Siddiqa, an analyst, “In the days to come, the death of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad at the hands of the US military is likely to raise more questions about Pakistan’s intention in fighting terrorism than as a major achievement of Pakistan-US relations in the war on terror”.
Already the spin on the main issue relating to the above cited basic question has begun. “The pro-Jihadi, pro-GHQ media”, have already begun playing the game of how to deflect the attention of the people of Pakistan from the main issue, which being, “ Why Osama was found living in Pakistan when all along Pakistan had been in a denial mode?”, to such issues as the sovereignty of the country; the legality of the American action; the American designs in the region; the American initiative to first test the waters by taking the risk of direct action in Pakistan, and then clearing the way for India and Israel to go after its nuclear assets; and a usual American political move to resuscitate the sinking popularity of the President prior to the 2012 elections, or an American face-saving strategy before its next year withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan etc. The list goes on.
The docile and bland statement of the Foreign Office is already reflective of the fear it anticipates of “repercussion from supporters of al-Queda and militant Jihadis within the country” as says Ayesha Siddiqa. Pakistan played too long a game of indecisiveness in the war against terrorism. No more now. Pakistan has no option now but to declare in absolutely and clear terms a total war against terrorism, and that means “Pakistan’s war against its own ill-willed Pakistanis”. It is now or never.
In Multan, the PM’s home town, processions of protest against the killing of Osama bin Laden have already been taken out. Saleem Safi an anchor of GEO, dressed in a suit and tie with a shirt showing his golden cuff-links, and a golden ring, openly addresses Mullah Omar in his “Jirga” drama as “Amir ul Momineen”; nor is Hamid Mir found lagging behind in picking up the issue of “American aggressiveness and of the loss of Pakistan’s sovereignty”, as if there was left any. In the words of Ayesha Siddiqa, “Harkatul Jihadul Islami, Jaishe Muhammad, Sipahe Sahaba, Lashkar-e-Jhangavi and Lashkar-e-Taiba are some of the many organizations that were allowed to spread their network and physical infrastructure into the ’settled’ areas of Pakistan such as Punjab and Sindh”, or to send them into Afghanistan, a fact confirmed by a 15-year suicidal attacker, Umer, known as Fidai, captured alive in a suicide attack he made at Sakhi Sarwar Darbar, and making an open confession, “We were being prepared for Jihad in Afghanistan. If you kill those who beg from the dead, you will earn your place in Jannah”.
The unfortunate part is that “most of the militant outfits now have developed influential ties within the mainstream political parties as well” as was witnessed recently in Punjab… “What is most certain is that the right-wing media (which is actually the bulk of mainstream media) will begin turning the event around on its head to classify this as some sort of super conspiracy against Pakistan,” opines Ayesha. Private militia can never be a ‘strategic asset’. A total, relentless and rather ruthless war against all such militia or individuals who perpetrate or incite violence and who propagate the policy of intolerance in the country must begin now or it would be too late.
What happened to the Quaid’s Pakistan? A country born “at midnight as a sovereign, independent, democratic country, today it is just a ‘rentier state’, or a client state, a slave state, ill-led, ill-governed by a corrupt, power-hungry junta imposed by Washington…today Pakistan is in total disarray. It looks frozen, with apathy below and paralysis above. Weighed down by abject poverty, income inequality, social injustice, crooked politicians, a carousal of corruption scandals involving the elite, and both the president and the prime minister corrupt to the core, Pakistan has nothing to smile about”, this is how a former Federal Secretary, Mr. Roedad Khan defines it now. And it is not untrue.
The president that night was busy in hugging the newly inducted Q league turncoats who had condescended to join the cabinet “in the larger interest of the country”; and the prime minister with a retinue of fifty free-lancers was having a good time in the five-star Intercontinental Hotel in Paris. The rent of one room of that hotel is 500 Euros per day (50 thousand rupees).
Kamran Khan on May 5, 2011 presented a good, and heart-wrenching program on TV in which he shared some well-researched facts and figures with relation to the suicidal attacks made by the Jihadis and terrorists on the Pakistani people and on the Pakistani soil. He is right when he concludes that Pakistan will have to declare a war on Pakistanis and it should happen now or never. These butchers are the persons who have not spared any institution, or any person or any place in Pakistan, namely the GHQ, the ISI headquarters; the masjids, imambaras, market places, political, religious or funeral processions; or even the saint- mausoleums, and the people in prayers in the masjids, to name only a few. It has to be an all-out war.
The killers were not aliens or robots. They are Pakistanis killing Pakistanis. The stupid logic advanced by the media and maulanas invariably has been: “There is a foreign hand involved in these killings. No Muslim can think of killing. It is India that is sponsoring them, etc”. For God sake, try to hold the bull by its horns and not by its tail.
It is only the Pakistani people who will have to fight this war and fight it ruthlessly and relentlessly, sparing not even their kith or kin, even when it means their own father, brother or sister. These butchers killed innocent people and endangered the very existence of the country they inhabit. They brought a bad name to the religion they claim to follow, and had been responsible for the desecration of the holy name of the Prophet, and the Holy Book revealed on him. They are directly responsible for turning Pakistan into the country it is now. It is a war they will have to fight like the way America fought it, or India did in 1984.
Did any one ever resign in Pakistan? Some people in the army as well as in the civil government must be shown the door now.
