Pakistan: A Country that Lost Its Trigger-Point - I
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA
“A Believer in God is he who is not a danger to life, property of any other.” Bukhari/Tirmidhi
What probably can happen to a person or people when both become prisoners of circumstances? Uncertainty and lack of confidence is what will characterize them completely. They will be people robbed of their ability to plan, act or even feel that they are embroiled in a whirlpool of chaos, needing to come out of it urgently. Each movement and each step taken by them in this state of confusion and paralysis, would further drag them in the pit. “Technology is not going to save us. Our computers, our tools, our machines are not enough. We have to rely on our intuition, our true being,” said Joseph Campbell so wisely.
Was there a thing that could have been termed as favorable when Abraham Lincoln became the 16th President of the United States of America? He inherited a looming Civil War, which had become unavoidable; he had generals who were not ready to fight; he received threats of assassination on daily basis; he had a Cabinet that bickered constantly and was divided; he heard news of the loss of life and of the debacles of his forces in the battlefield; he had a good number of people who would not consider him worthy enough to be their President; he had opposition groups like Copperheads (snakes) who (like the political leadership in Pakistan) opposed the civil war and wanted peace with the Confederates.
On top of that President Lincoln inherited recession and general unrest. Any other man in his place would have withdrawn himself from the office. But he did not. In the first place he tried to win the Civil War by not fighting it (and got accused for delaying the fight and making it worse); in the second instance, once resolved he fought it, like no general would fight, and would not stop it until it was won most completely, because he believed, “A Civil War can never be brought to a close until the key is in our pocket.” Pakistan is confronted with a similar challenge, but where is Pakistan’s Abraham Lincoln? Each time a general failed, Abraham Lincoln replaced him instantly, and he did it about seven times, till he finally got the man who could win the war - General Ulysses Grant. Where is Pakistan’s Ulysses S. Grant?
Pakistan is currently passing through a similar psychological state of confusion and helplessness, buffeted constantly by acts of terrorism and sedition. Divided and confused, Pakistan stands alone. Glaring examples of success offered by such countries as Brazil, India, Vietnam, Bangladesh, or even Bhutan which is being cited as a place inhabited by the happiest people on earth; or Rwanda, which has lately become a favorite site for foreign investors, hardly offer any inspiration to the leadership in Pakistan. In all honesty it appears as if Pakistan’s leadership, military as well as civilian, and in particular, its politicians, have willingly chosen to provide a free hand to the militants and terrorists to behead the people, to blow them up, and to kill anyone, anywhere, or even hold the entire nation of 180 million as a hostage of fear. The question on every concerned Pakistani’s lips is, why so?
The general situation in Pakistan is that of “sick-hurry and divided aims”, to borrow Matthew Arnold’s phrase, the direction as well as discretion, both appear to have departed from the thought process. After having lost about 40,000 people in the war against terrorism, Pakistan is still not clear whether it is fighting an American war or a Pakistani war. And this confusion has been created deliberately because this is exactly what the terrorists had aimed to accomplish ideologically. Only a most confused, stupid and clueless leadership would let its 40,000 people die for nothing. Any nation would have torn such a military and civilian leadership into pieces for even saying so because the death of so many people did not take place in one battle or in one day - it happened in eleven years.
The fact of the matter is that the real war had never been fought. Pakistan appears to have become the loser on all fronts - international as well as domestic - in a war that it did not fight the way such wars are fought. If not from a civilian President, Abraham Lincoln, then from India in our neighborhood it can be learnt how the Sikh sedition in 1984 was quenched; or from Sri Lankans how they tamed the Tamils. The process of reconciliation never precedes before a total victory has been accomplished. America settled this matter of staying as united, as one country once and for all in 1865 after losing over 670,000 of its sons; India taught the Sikhs that they were good Indians so long as they lived as its loyal citizens.
General Robert Lee in the American Civil War was a military genius; he was a Southerner; a Virginian. He was offered the command of the US army by Lincoln, but his problem was that he preferred his ancestral State over the Union. He hated slavery like Lincoln did; he also loved the Union as Lincoln did; he also believed like Lincoln that the United States was a union, meant to live forever. But like the Baluchis of Pakistan, he put the State above the Nation and he termed his fight against the Union as “Revolution”, says Dale Carnegie. His father, the legendary Light Horse Harry, had helped the father of the United States of America, George Washington fight against the forces of King George. When Virginia State cast her vote with the states that had chosen to secede, Lee felt he had no choice but to calmly announce, “I cannot lead a hostile army against my relatives, my children and my home. I go to share the miseries of my people”. Once the fight started, Lincoln did not stop till there was total surrender, and an open acceptance of it.
What element of grace or dignity do these Taliban carry in them that they could have been tolerated so far. The Karachi problem is a law and order failure problem; the Baluchistan revolt is a provincial-autonomy issue; the Taliban and the militants issue is entirely a different one. They have committed an act of open sedition against Pakistan, and they have the express aim to take over the country with a view to imposing on people their own brand of ideology.
The irony of the matter is that while the military high-ups, the ruling party; the opposition leaders, (the exception being MQM, for obvious reasons), and the people in general, stand divided and confused because of the stakes they see in any action taken against the terrorists - (the military is concerned more about its image, notwithstanding its foremost duty to defend the country and protect the people; the politicians smell tangible political losses, or even a possible deferment of the elections), the militants and terrorists , on the contrary, stand singularly articulated and clear with regard to their stance and agenda. Only our religious and political leaders keep reading in the militants’ statements what the militants basically had never intended to mean.
For example, the militants say, “They would kill everyone and anyone who stands against the imposition of their version of Islam because they are fighting for Islam”, leaders of Pakistan, including the new establishment recruits, the PTI, instantly get busy in the task of softening such statements by contending that they do not mean what they say; they are just misguided people. Once America leaves, the “Natives” would return home in peace. They are just the victims of the American aggression. Even in the recent Malala tragedy, when the pumped in bullets were still lying lodged in the body of this innocent child, these leaders on TV, to the shame of all, were heard convincing the nation that the Swat Military Operation of 2009 was a failure; and the Malala incident was a tangible proof of it. “Confusion thy name is Pakistan”. Could there be people quoting incidents so out of context and so one-sidedly? Why do they refuse to see what Swat would have been without the 2009 military operation? (Continued next week)
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