Daily Times

Despite the desirable progress of the North Waziristan operation, our national leadership seems to be walking at a distance from the troops. Unlike the Swat operation of 2009, the information ministry is nowhere to be seen. It is the Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) that is doing all the media briefings. Not only that, the responsibility to provide logistic support to a million IDPs from the battle zone has also been laid at the army’s door. The impression doing the rounds is that the government did not have its heart fully in the ongoing operation but got drawn in willy-nilly. This listless manner is not how states fight their existential battles. North Waziristan is the pivot around which Pakistan’s future will be contested and decided. The region’s stability and integrity also hinge upon the same pivot. We must realise that we have a great responsibility in this regard not only to our own people but also to the region and the world at large.

At the same time, the political temperature in the country has been rising unabated, no less stoked by the ruling party’s band of intemperate spokesmen, both official and not so unofficial. Despite clear indications they have not been able to fully grasp the real significance of Imran Khan’s and Tahirul Qadri’s game plans except panic driven responses and a startled scramble to pad up defences, that is not what it should have been. Instead of putting out small fires here and there, a grand strategy to tackle the twin blaze should have been devised. Their strange inclination to postpone needed response to the last moment leaves them with elapsed opportunities and evokes half-baked reactions. While Imran Khan was rallying his forces and Qadri was rattling his distant sabre, no effort was made to mount a political riposte. As a result, some of the response has been quite graceless.

It was rather hilarious to pitch poor Naseebo Lal’s stage show against the PTI’s Faisalabad rally and wanton to teach a lesson to Tahirul Qadri’s supporters, hiding behind the untenable excuse to remove road blocks before their headquarters. It ended up in the Faisalabad leadership making monkeys of themselves and the Model Town gamble being a terrible fiasco, which has needlessly aroused a huge nest of very well organised wasps. From then on, the administration’s responses have continued to look muddled and chaotic. Take, for example, the knee jerk decision to divert Qadri’s flight to Lahore and then conceding to all his preconditions, including taking ‘hostage’ the governor of Punjab — so embarrassing. More instructive has been the apparent poverty of ideas and a corresponding disregard for the possible consequences of their actions. The attempt to play the plight of North Waziristan’s internally displaced persons (IDPs) against Khan’s Bahawalpur rally was in bad taste.

Their latest manoeuvre has the potential to be the most dangerous so far. This time the state has decided to pitch a historic national event (Independence Day, August 14) to counter the PTI’s protest march on Islamabad that day, not realising that the two are completely different things and the gimmick might not work as planned. The devil of this move is in its detail. Although not really expected from the otherwise economical official intellect, it has all the Machiavellian contours. The ruling party seems to be contriving to deploy the Pakistan army, foreign diplomats, civilian invitees and the ulema (clergy) as a shield against the PTI’s rally that day.

The whole thing could unfold in many different ways but some could be really awful. It is understood that the PTI workers and leadership have become more bellicose, ready to explode into violence if provoked. To be sure, the planned celebration is not likely to create a dilemma for the determined PTI but, instead, might incite a stronger reaction and diplomats and invitees ought to use discretion in view of imminent confrontation. Therefore, a clash between the PTI and PML-N supporters is likely to occur. Police intervention could further aggravate the situation; bloodshed and deaths will result. Seeing the crowd get out of hand, if the army has to intervene, it might do so, albeit differently. More likely it could bundle off the bumbling leadership back to their peacock pens and then persuade the crowd to disperse peacefully. The Pakistan army, as a principle, is averse to ambers of internal unrest falling on its heels when it is engaged in mortal combat in FATA. What might follow is all too familiar but nascent democracy would be the first and major casualty. A vigorous round of prosecutions could be a possibility with little space for plea bargains, pardons or friendly foreign intervention. Yet, if the administration insists on their deficient plan, the country might unravel as a result.

It will be a mistake to dismiss protesters as a few thousand too little to make a difference. No one could predict that a street vendor in Tunis could set the Arab Spring in motion. See the colossal upheaval it has caused. Basically, it is the ideology and not the numbers that really matter. The PTI and PAT workers have to be viewed as a different breed. They are neither soaked sectarian zombies nor blind and bound followers of the ANP, PML-N, etc. They are generally literate, motivated and reasoning urbanites. Urbanites are the ones who will decide the future political framework of the country. Pakistan’s future governments will be formed and deformed by urban centres of population and not rural herds. Sixteen of these agile men and women have been killed in Model Town and the effect is already ballooning. PAT’s offensive is impending and if our trigger-happy police falter again, it will snowball horribly. They have quite disdainfully rejected the Punjab government’s offer of considerable compensation for the dead and wounded. For the first time one has heard the dreadful demand to seek out children of the leadership instead, kill and pay double the compensation. The rhetoric of the demand apart, the very notion should jerk society out of its slumber, as this can kick off a savage but unstoppable cycle of revenge killings.

If the administration is not determined to walk their talk, they better put off this so-called August 14 celebration in the national interest and tackle the PTI politically. There is still time and a lot can be done if the dysfunctional election commission is revamped completely, the judiciary cleansed of tainted judges, perpetrators of the Model Town carnage brought to book and, finally, election results of controversial constituencies opened to scrutiny. Meanwhile, one can expect the GHQ to be working on various contingencies arising out of the government’s latest move. Top of the options list might emerge a polite expression of inability to attend the audacious celebration as that will stain the institution’s neutrality irreparably, under whose impact the country might shatter.

(Concluded)

The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan army and can be reached at clay.potter@hotmail.com