In the end, there is always the army.
And so it starts all over again. The civilians oust the army, step into government, start bickering amongst themselves, peddle personal and political agendas above national ones, earn the wrath of the people, lose credibility and control, thereby forcing the people to clamour for the army yet again. The wheel of (mis)fortune keeps spinning and spinning and spinning.
Not convinced? One look at Karachi and all doubts will dissipate. The metropolis is being wilfully murdered — person by person — while the three political stakeholders lock horns over turf issues. It is absolutely mindboggling that a thousand murders later, the government is nowhere near either stopping the bloody mayhem, or netting the marauders. It is almost as if the murderers are mocking the state, daring them to come and get them if they can. Each gunny-bagged body is a bloody reminder that killers rule the streets of Karachi, by day and by night.
There can be only two reasons for this mayhem: either the political parties are completely helpless in halting the wanton bloodshed, or they are complicit. Neither elicits much comfort. The inane statements from party bosses add insult to this grievous injury. Both these reasons point to the same conclusion: restoring order and sanity to Karachi will require an outside intervention.
Enter the army — again. Our favourite bugbear has suddenly become the flavour of the month. Till only a few years ago, the army was the cause of all our troubles, domestic and foreign. Less than four years since the last elections, the army appears to have dusted off its uniform and is back on horseback, ready to gallop into the killing fields of Karachi to save the day again for the shell-shocked nation. With the Sindh political stakeholders having burnt the last shred of their political capital, the weary nation is forced to resort to the last resort.
Here’s the thing, though. If the army has to clean up Karachi, it will need to use a sledgehammer. For this sledgehammer to find the right targets, the army will have to cut through the political mess littered across the Karachi landscape. This it will only be able to do if it has the powers to knock heads and haul up the bigwigs regardless of their clout. This will make a lot of people uncomfortable, especially those who have gotten used to riding roughshod over everything on the basis of their ‘mandate’.This mandate has so far legitimised all sorts of skulduggery, but it should not, cannot, and must not be allowed to gloss over the massacre of people in Karachi. Democratic legitimacy only extends so far, before it begins to wear thin. In Karachi, it is on its last gasps. If there is an alternative to the army in Karachi now, it is very well disguised.
One just has to look at the happenings on Monday to realise that the MQM, PPP and ANP are now totally incapable of controlling the Karachi carnage. By saying in the Sindh cabinet meeting that the government will finally crackdown on the killers, the prime minister has yet again proved that he is neither from Mars nor from Venus. And clearly he makes no earthly sense either. In the same meeting held to mull over the collapsed law and order situation in the city, Dr Zulfiqar Mirza gave a verbal lashing to Rehman Malik. So the answer to homicide is fratricide. Need one say more?
If this then is not the last hurrah for the political setup in Karachi, it is surely the beginning of the end. That faint noise you hear in the background may be the sound of the galloping hooves of the oncoming horsemen.
Who benefits if the army comes in? Let’s start with the people of Karachi. Right now the top priority for every living soul is the end to wanton killing. People need the comforting feeling that they have a state to protect them. Pakistanis may not like the army to rule them (and they have strong reasons to feel this way), but they like getting killed even less. Some may even go as far as to say that a government that cannot protect the lives of its citizens has no democratic right to rule.
Some political parties may also like the army to come in. The MQM and the ANP have both said so publicly. They have their own reasons, based on their own political calculations, to make this demand. If nothing else, their invitation — or at least quiet acquiescence — to army control of Karachi will ease the passage from the current dispensation to the new one. Other political actors — a la the PML-N, PTI, JI, well, they have been making the right kind of noises regarding the army in Karachi. Expect no long marches or dharnas (sit-ins), thank you very much.
That leaves the PPP. In the end, it may have no choice, except to put up a brave face and let the eloquent information minister spin out a justification. The Supreme Court has already admitted a petition calling for army control in Karachi. The judges may pull a judgement out of their judicial hat to provide a legal cover for the move. The path will then be paved for Caesar to cross the Rubicon.
Is there an alternative to this developing narrative? Well, the PPP, MQM, ANP could all join hands, arrest all target killers, deweaponise their own militias, renounce turf wars, restore complete order in the city and declare zero tolerance towards all types of alternatives.
Yeah, right.
The writer hosts a primetime show on ARY News. He can be reached at [email protected]