1.
Ashraf Jehangir QaziTuesday, April 22, 2014
From Print Editionof THE NEWS
The outrageous attempt to murder Hamid Mir, arguably Pakistan’s most prominent TV anchor today, is just one more exposure of the utter breakdown of governance throughout Pakistan which, not to put too fine a point on it, is tantamount to the ultimate disaster of state failure. This is not because of this one outrage alone. Nor is it because of thousands of others like it, and much worse. It is because such impunity has become the deadly norm.
Similarly, the government’s standard mantra expressing indignation and ‘zero-tolerance’ cloaks a callous indifference motivated by raw fear and guilt. This malady informs almost its every activity and, for that matter, that of the ruling classes and political society.
Thank God, Hamid Mir has survived and, Insha’Allah, will soon resume his heroic mission to reveal the corruption, double-talk and violence that passes for governance in Pakistan. Thank God, there are others like him, including many dedicated and fearless ladies, who have the heart to speak truth to the ugly faces of arbitrary, evil and monstrous power despite the most vicious threats of assault, defamation, persecution, torture and death.
Our hope as a nation lies in the continued exposure of those in our power and political structures whose whole history has been dominated by a litany of intentional and unintentional harm done to the country. They did absolutely nothing for the Pakistan Movement. They played a key role in bringing about the disgrace, defeat and demise of Quaid-e-Azam’s Pakistan. They did everything to ensure that no lessons would ever be learned and put into practice to prevent the repetition of this crime against the nation. They buried enquiry commission reports. And today, when the country stands on the brink of disaster, they allow no fundamental and comprehensive reform to avert final failure of the State of Pakistan.
The great English romantic poet Byron wrote “fanatics have their dreams wherewith they weave a paradise for a sect.” For our exploiters, who are a sect unto themselves, paradise means wielding arbitrary and irresponsible power and influence as well as stealing the bread, dreams and life-blood of the downtrodden, honest and hardworking poor and, of course, immunity from any earthly accountability.
The fact that an Islamic and patriotic cloak is used to cover an implacable determination to continue with business as usual indicates a hypocritical mindset which flies in the face of an elementary understanding of the basic tenets of Islam which is, above all, a religion of humanity. Such an attitude that involves an attempt to interpret and use the teachings of the Holy Quran against the meaning and purpose of its message has been condemned in the Holy Quran itself.
Crimes committed in the name of religion have been lamented throughout history. This truth, along with James Boswell’s insight that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, as well as Lord Acton’s wise observation that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, is conveyed in the language of intimidation and death in today’s Pakistan.
Those who, through acts of commission and omission, continue to uphold this state of affairs cannot be called Pakistanis in any meaningful sense. Pakistan was meant to mean freedom and dignity. Those responsible for the state of affairs in Pakistan today can have no concept of the culture and meaning of freedom and dignity. Their history is their DNA. Their actions demonstrate this every single day and the daily news headlines are more eloquent on the subject than any doctoral dissertation can hope to be.
From today, every single person pretending to political leadership and national responsibility, and every single institution that claims a share in the exercise of power and policy stands accused of being responsible to one degree or another for the present state of affairs in Pakistan. They are guilty as accused unless their actions exonerate them. The blood of the people of Pakistan will be on their hands unless it is washed away by selfless and self-sacrificing service, a prospect that appears infinitely remote at this moment.
I have seen the reactions of a number of persons belonging to the so-called comfortable classes to the latest outrage. They were empty. Their responses were essentially those of a politically deadened people who were otherwise perfectly alive and decent human beings.
Accordingly, should the people await miracles? In fact, they have no option but to agitate, organise, struggle, educate and make progress, imbued with the strength of hope and conviction, for as long as it takes for miracles to become commonplace. If not, they will be largely condemned to die useless deaths after having lived abbreviated and wasted lives. However common, this is a tragedy beyond any description. Other peoples have taken huge strides towards overcoming the impediments, obstacles, terrors and humiliations our people face every day. So must we.
Placed below are a few lines the first four of which were written immediately after the judicial murder of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto; the last four today:
What is it that ails my country?/What is it that I may do?
Why is it I fear an answer/That all I fear may be true?
It is you who ail your country./There is nothing you can’t do.
Yet you fear your every answer/For your questions are not true.
The writer is a former envoy to the US and India. Email:
ashrafjqazi@yahoo.com
2.Ayaz AmirTuesday, April 22, 2014
From Print Editionof THE NEWS
Islamabad diary
A gun attack on a prominent journalist in the country’s largest city, on the road from the airport, would be enough bad news and to spare anywhere else. And everyone would be examining the cult of violence, and the stealth accompanying it, which has this nation in its grip. But such is the excitability, the nervous state of Pakistani democracy, that here it must be turned into another melodramatic episode in the never-ending saga called civil-military relations.
Hardly was the poor guy in hospital and before the doctors had even a chance to extract the several bullets in his body the cry went up that it was the mother of all evils, the ISI, which had done it…without a shred of evidence of course to back up the cry. But since when did such niceties stop the drums of wild accusation from being beaten?
The cry echoed across the land and across the global airwaves. The shooting itself took a back seat as the ISI debate raged on, the battle lines drawn, on one side the knives drawn for the ISI, on the other self-appointed defenders of the ISI, the usual suspects including the one made famous by his trademark red cap, going on about dark conspiracies against the fatherland, etc.
Time was when the clock of democracy stood still in this country. Time now is when there seems to be a veritable excess of democracy – not for the masses, blast them, but for the chattering classes and for the genie that goes by the name of 24-hour television, the genie freed from its confines and let loose amongst the Pakistani populace by one Gen Pervez Musharraf. When the final reckoning comes, of all his sins this may well be considered the gravest of all. Not that journos will remember this with any remote sense of gratitude – biting the hand that feeds them one of the more endearing characteristics of our trade.
The triumph of democracy is witnessed in such glories as front page news stories that many would hesitate to carry, editorials masquerading as news stories, news stories doing service for outrageous opinion pieces…all in the name of the sacred rights of freedom of expression, freedom that in its more florid expressions comes across as the freedom of the chimpanzee, or that of the monkey with a freshly sharpened razor blade in his hand. And things are said on the TV screen that makes Fox News look like a family channel.
The ISI theme makes for entertaining copy, for it confirms our worst suspicions that the agency is peopled, and led, by some of the choicest idiots on the planet who chose an auspicious day for settling scores or teaching a lesson to a journalist they did not like – when the prime minister, with the brass in tow, was reviewing an honour guard in PMA Kakul, and going out of his way to say nice things about the army chief, Gen Raheel Sharif, in an obvious bid to soothe ruffled military feathers. The very day, moreover, when Musharraf was flying from Islamabad to Karachi and TV screens were full of the elaborate security put in place for him.
In other words, just when tensions between the Sharif government and the army were coming down, the ISI chose that very moment to lay an ambush for a journalist whose prominence in the media field would guarantee the maximum coverage, automatically ensure that the finger of suspicion was pointed at the ISI – Hamid Mir reportedly having said that if anything happened to him the ISI would be responsible – blacken the army’s name, and wreck any chances of a real cooling down between the PM and General Headquarters.
And the ISI was so good at what it did that this dreaded agency, the stuff of legend, victor of Afghanistan and Kashmir, bungled its job and failed to get its man. Hamid’s near and dear ones have every right to blame whomsoever they want, this the unchallenged right of the hurt or the aggrieved…subject of course to subsequent investigation and the law of evidence. But the drum-beaters almost made it sound as if the attack on Hamid was a pretext to score other points, politics supplanting grief and outrage given pointed meaning.
What are we all trying to do? And what games are we all playing? To be sure, the ISI is not an outfit of the Salvation Army. Which intelligence agency is? In the army’s history many deeds are enshrined that do not redound to its credit. Much is there that should not have been there. Indeed, there is much in the nation’s past, and much in its thinking, that has led to consequences we would have been better off without.
But in the midst of hand-wringing and chest-beating we should also consider that in the shape of our Taliban wars our past has caught up with us. The dragon’s teeth scattered then, by none more assiduously than a misguided army, have come to haunt us now. And for the soul of the country, its future, we are battling and the only army we have, whether we like it or not, is this army.
Yes, cobwebs of the past still cling to the rafters. There is much old thinking that needs to be exorcised. One would suppose that this would be amongst the first tasks of the political leadership, leading the army, giving it a sense of direction, educating the nation about the dangers ahead. What we are seeing instead is a failure of leadership, the government far from being able to give a lead to the army getting into unnecessary scraps with it. Nawaz Sharif rode into his third incarnation as prime minister with the promise of stability. He is managing to deliver anything but that.
All of this comes on top of a divided nation, split down the middle in its thinking, the Hamid Mir affair, with all its pain and tragedy, mirroring this division and playing up the nation’s confusion. The government looks clueless, the army peeved, the ISI hurt. Enjoying this spectacle almost with glee are the Taliban, their spokesman, Shahidullah Shahid, coming up with these priceless words: “The attack on Hamid Mir, orchestrated by ISI proved that the spy agency had no respect for the civil and private institutions in the country…The real power brokers in Pakistan were the army and ISI and they eliminated everyone who raised voice against their excesses.” The Taliban upholding decency and rule of law…try beating this.
And what is the government caught up in? On its mind are such brilliant ideas as fast track trains to picturesque Murree and distant Muzaffarabad. You must have seen the ads. Look at them again and wonder. Ye gods, great as our sins may be, what have we done to deserve this? And such thinking at the highest echelons is all we have. Qadam barhao Nawaz Sharif, hum tumhare saath hain.
And the media which should be helping clarify matters is not just adding to the confusion but revelling in it…as can be graphically seen in the reaction to Hamid’s shooting. The triumph of democracy or the triumph of mediocrity? Take your pick. When the Titanic was sinking at least the band was playing and there was plenty of booze to go around. Consider our plight: the only band playing is the screeching of the media. As for the rites of civilisation, the less said the better.
Email:
winlust@yahoo.com
