House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul delivers his remarks
Congressional Hearing on Pakistan: Ides of March?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
In Western folklore and history, the Ides of March has a highly negative and tragic connotation. That’s what conventional wisdom dispenses.
It started with Julius Caesar, in 44 BC when he was brutally murdered by his colleagues in the Roman Senate, in the middle of March.
In the 20 th century, US imperialist power invaded Vietnam, in the middle of March 1965. They were forced out of that adventure in blood and mayhem, ten years later. But in the process of a decade-long spree of bloodletting, millions of Vietnamese and their Cambodian neighbors had died.
At the dawn of the 21 st century, another US aggressive thrust was launched against Iraq, on March 19, 2003.
In the Pakistani context, March has a mixed bag of fortune and misfortune in the country’s history.
What’s known, to all and sundry, the Pakistan Resolution was passed in the city of Lahore, in 1940, on March 23. Sixteen years later, the first Constitution of Pakistan was finally adopted and promulgated on the same date, which, from there on, became the Pakistan Democratic Day.
However, Pakistan’s hard-won democracy had a short life. It was snuffed out, two and a half years later, on October 7, 1958, when the 1 st of four Martial Laws was imposed by military adventurer and soldier of fortune, General Ayub Khan, and his co-conspirator, President Iskandar Mirza. It was understandable that, thenceforth, the Day of Democracy was robbed of its democratic spirit as well as title and rebranded—under military diktat—as Pakistan Day.
Ayub’s Faustian bargain led to the tragedy of East Pakistan. The military action against the most popular political party of then Pakistan—Sheikh Mujib’s Awami League—was launched, on March 25, 1971, by Ayub’s megalomaniac successor, General Yahya. It spawned the truncation of pristine Pakistan and the birth of Bangladesh, in December of that same year.
But on that same date, March 25, 21 years later—in 1992—glory came to Pakistan in the guise of the Cricket World Cup, won on the hallowed ground of Melbourne, Australia, under the inspiring leadership of Imran Khan.
Imran Khan (IK) took on the colors of a political leader, four years later when he launched his own political party, by the name of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf or PTI.
As IK had won the hearts of his adoring fans on the playing ground of cricket, so did he become an icon for millions of Pakistanis, particularly those from the enlightened middle class which, before IK burst on the scene and painted the firmament with his own colors, had abhorred the idea of active participation in the politics of their country.
Another segment of Pakistanis inspired by IK’s maverick style of politicking was the Pakistani youth which had previously shunned politics as a game of rogues and scoundrels. IK gave them a new vision and a new perspective on politics. Responding to his call, the youth took to him like moths to a flame.
But the Pakistani Bonapartes—who have lorded over Pakistan for well over seven decades as self-appointed guardians of its political fortunes—tried to be as clever-by-half with him as they had been with Shaikh Mujib of Awami League, back in 1971.
General Ayub had assaulted the ramparts of democracy, in 1958 and sowed the seeds of Pakistan’s dismemberment.
General Qamar Bajwa—in the mold of Ayub and all other successor Bonapartes—conspired to derail IK’s popularly-elected government, just as Yahya had mischievously tried to pull the rug from under the feet of Sheikh Mujib.
But while Yahya had vainly attempted to upend Mujib’s popular appeal to his people with the help of his military cohorts, Bajwa got help overseas.
Washington and Bajwa—on whom IK had bestowed a favor, which he was later to regret, by giving the ungrateful soldier an extension in his tenure—came on board the bandwagon against IK. Some of Pakistan’s traditional political leaders, who resented IK’s popularity as an icon of democracy, became willing cohorts in the plans to topple IK from his pedestal of power; others were goaded and blackmailed by Bonapartes and their henchmen to fall in line behind the conspirators. The juggernaut to dethrone IK was in place by March 2022.
It was in the context of Donald Lu’s role in the macabre plot to topple IK from power that the first-ever Congressional Hearing on Pakistan was conducted – by the House Foreign Relations’ sub-committee on Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia—on March 20, in the timeframe associated, in Western almanac, with Ides of March.
The Congressional hearing was a feather in the cap of the enlightened Pakistani diaspora in the US. Its members have worked tirelessly and energetically, in concert, to invoke interest in what has been going on in Pakistan over the past two years, under those whose policies and actions are at variance with the popular will of the people of Pakistan.
The Pakistani diaspora honed its skills of lobbying, and it was a fitting reward of their concerted efforts that American lawmakers decided to summon the principal character in the sordid drama of interference in the domestic and political affairs of Pakistan.
As expected, Donald Lu denied any conspiracy hatched by the US to topple IK from power. This, understandably, didn’t sit well with those of the Pakistanis and Americans, too, who packed the hall of the hearing. Loud and vociferous shouts of Lu being a ‘liar’ resonated in the hallowed precincts of the committee hearing hall.
But of greater interest to those Pakistanis concerned with the fate of democracy in their country were the candid remarks and observations of some enlightened members of the committee, in the context of the military’s interference in the democratic process.
The wholesale bungling in the election results of the February 8 general elections in Pakistan came under minute scrutiny from members of the committee.
Congressman Pfluger asked Donald Lu, pointedly, how he would interpret the February 8 elections. He asked Lu, “Can you call the elections 2024 of Pakistan free and fair by any means?”
Lu replied: “We never used this term of free and fair for the Pakistan elections.”
Congressman Brad Sherman was brutally frank in his summation of the way election results were manipulated by the Pakistani Establishment. Said he, “There have been flaws in all previous elections. But the flaws in the 2024 elections were the greatest.”
Sherman won the hearts of the Pakistanis—present at the hearing and those not there—when he sounded skeptical of the fairness of Pakistan’s tainted judiciary. He asked that the American ambassador in Islamabad be asked to visit IK, in his jail cell, to ensure that there isn’t a threat to the Pakistani icon’s life.
Congressman Greg Casar quizzed Lu on how the US administration intends to deal with the government thrust on the people of Pakistan, against their will, by Bonapartes lording over them. He cited the example of how the US had treated the regime in Venezuela as a pariah.
Casar’s jibe was a slap on the cheek of the administration, whose spokesman had congratulated the puppet government spawned by the Bonapartes’ engineering. It was also meant to serve as a warning to the Pakistani Establishment that its bluff had been called by US lawmakers.
The history-making hearing in the US Congress on Pakistan may not be consequential in steering the US policy of Pakistan from its traditional and well-trodden path of overt reliance on faithful lackeys and minions in the security establishment of Pakistan. But alarm bells must start ringing in the corridors of khaki power in Pakistan if the Bonapartes hogging power there are awake. The American administration may be hopelessly mired in the bog of its infatuation with hired guns in Pakistan, but Congress is moving on another trajectory that may not be too kind to Pakistani Bonapartes’ aspirations to keep the Pakistanis forever slaves to their whims and fancies.
The Pakistani Bonapartes—too conceited and self-engrossed Narcissistic as they may be—would be doing themselves a favor by appreciating the nuances of this Congressional hearing. Their masters may no longer be content with keeping all their eggs in the khakis’ basket. The Khaki power’s days of thrusting their own genius over the collective wisdom of 240 million Pakistanis may be numbered, sooner than later. That’s what conventional wisdom says.
A litmus test of this Congressional hearing may be in the offing soon. It would be a matter of interest to the Pakistani diaspora in North America if the American ambassador in Islamabad follows through on Congressman Brad Sherman’s directive to visit IK in his jail cell.
It would be a test of nerves—among the generals and their civilian puppets—if the American ambassador does seek their concurrence to allow him to pay a visit to IK.
Will the Bonapartes and their political henchmen and minions have the nerve, and the gall, to say no to the vice-regal envoy of their masters? - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com
(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)
