Dunya News
Another Operation
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
Named Azm-e-Istehkam (‘Resolve of Stability’) a new security operation promises to combat the spike in acts of terrorism in the northern province of Khyber Pakhtoon Khwa or KPK, focally witnessed in the weeks and months since the current puppet regime, led by a hand-picked factotum Shehbaz Sharif was installed, in the post-February general elections. The people of Pakistan were brazenly cheated out of the mandate they had given to the incarcerated Imran Khan (IK) and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI.
Ironically, the Establishment used the same Shehbaz Sharif to act as their spokesman and break the news to the nation that a ‘limited’ military operation, under the above-named slogan, will be conducted in KPK to weed out militants and terrorists of TTP (Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan ) who are said to operate from their sanctuaries and hide-outs in the neighboring Afghanistan.
The security operation’s main theatre will be Swat where an act of fanatical barbarity, in the name of religion, ostensibly acted as the catalyst to spawn this latest offensive of the top brass against their own people.
In the city of Madyan, in Swat, a tourist—a man hailing from Sialkot, in Punjab—was killed because he had been accused, allegedly, of insulting the Holy Qur’an. He was not only brutally killed in mob frenzy but his dead body was dragged through the town streets and, then, set on fire.
It isn’t unusual in the Pakistani context for people having been brutally tortured and bestially murdered because of their alleged crime of insulting the Holy Prophet of Islam (PBUH) and/or allegedly desecrating the Holy Qur’an.
No evidence, forensic or otherwise, is needed to inflame mob frenzy in the name of violating the sanctity of Islam. In the years since an amendment in law relating to sacrilege was inserted, in the early 1980s, there have been hundreds of documented incidents of the nature witnessed in Swat.
Incidentally, it was in the reign of General Ziaul Haq, known for his passion, if not fanaticism, for religion that this law was spawned. In the four decades of its ongoing currency, it has been abused by a largely illiterate social milieu, corrupted by its feudal moorings, to settle personal vendettas.
What’s still more ironic is the fact that it was the same Swat where a similar anti-terrorist operation—especially targeting the fanatical followers of TTP—was carried out, a decade or so ago, when Nawaz Sharif was in his third stint as PM, and General Raheel Sharif was the military chiefof Pakistan.
That so-called anti-militancy campaign too had a catchy slogan: Zarb-e-Ghazb (‘Strike to sow the fear of God’) and, as usual for our top brass who think they can always take the people of Pakistan for a sentimental ride, it was hailed as a major success when it was over after several months. It was claimed that Swat had been cleansed of militants’ presence and everything there was said to be hunky-dory.
Why is it that Swat is once again in the focus and limelight, for dubious reasons, no doubt?
The real reason is that KPK, led by PTI of IK, isn’t prepared to sign on the agenda compiled by the overly ambitious top brass. They were, not too long ago, given a taste of the people’s power in the Pakistani-administered Jammu and Kashmir. The paramilitary troops and Rangers had to beat a retreat from there when the people of AJK refused to tolerate their high-handedness.
The national annual budget, presented by the puppet government has been rejected by the people of Pakistan already groaning under the burden of spiraling cost of living. The new load of taxes—the main feature of the budget— leaves no doubt that it may well be the last straw to break the already-bent back of the people of Pakistan. But in the lexicon of power, the only remedy recommended is to divert the people’s attention from the issue that may be troubling them.
Topping the list of the people’s grievances is the crushing burden of the economy which has sapped their energy and shows no promise of going away, any time soon. On the contrary, the budget unveiled by the puppeteers of Shehbaz and Company shows no flicker of light to a people huddled in a very dark tunnel.
Appended to the mountain of economic misery and woes is the people of Pakistan’s sense of deprivation of their stake in the political administration of their country. The wound inflicted on their body politic, last February 8 when they were brazenly cheated out of the mandate they had so loudly and vociferously given to IK and his PTI, is still raw.
What IK has done is beyond the limited imagination of the top brass keeping him incarcerated, on one flimsy excuse or another. He has made the people of Pakistan conscious of the fact that they have been fooled and led up the garden path in the name of security. The establishment naively forgets the universally acclaimed maxim: ‘You may fool some people all the time; fool all the people some of the time but you can’t fool all the people, all the time.’
Political stability—and in tandem with it, economic salvation—doesn’t come from slogans or operations. You can’t pull the wool over the wide-open eyes of a people conscious of the stakes snatched away from them.
True friends that the Chinese are to Pakistan, they served a reminder of the primordial need for political stability—a sine qua non for economic turnaround and prosperity—by the leader of the Chinese delegation to the meeting, in Islamabad, of the China-Pakistan Consultative Committee, only a day before the latest operation was presented to the people of Pakistan. The meeting was in the context of CPEC—China-Pakistan Economic Cooperation. The Chinese, for obvious reasons, are unhappy with the sluggish pace of our input into that ambitious program that could give a huge boost to Pakistan, in real economic and social terms.
The much-needed political stability in Pakistan would come, not by flimsy Machiavellian undertakings to deviate the people’s focus from what hurts them. It will come only by letting the people of Pakistan be led, not by puppets at the end of strings, but by a genuine leader, like IK.
The sooner this reality dawns the better.
K_K_ghori@hotmail.com
(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)
