Benjamin Disraeli, a British prime minister, would say there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. I share the same scepticism as regards the gory charts and figures depicting the horrible state of our economy and society, and more so in this country where statistics has been as much a con job as conducting a sham national or local election. But can we ignore or deny the statistics of the terrorist attacks, security lapses, governance failures, epidemic corruption, and virulent protests that define our collective life? What is surprising is that the powerful elites — the political, bureaucratic, military, business and propertied interests — continue to get away with all kinds of improprieties and misdemeanours, be it tax evasion, loan defaults, security failures, endemic corruption or the subversion of the constitution. And they do it adroitly by creating one or the other alibi, in addition to keeping this effete politico-legal environment perpetually alive. Thus, a ‘secret hand’ is blamed whenever a criminal security failure takes place requiring a thorough probe and punishment for the persons responsible. It is an alibi that is built on a well-publicised external threat eternally posed by our traditional enemies: India, Israel and the US. The façade is kept alive even when the culprits have been apprehended and found to be local or ‘insiders’. For example, the brazen attack on the Mehran Naval Base was immediately linked to the ‘secret hands’ by the interior minister, though now there are clear indications that the locals and ‘insiders’ are involved. Foreign elements were also accused for the attacks on the Manawan police training school and the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, but the later evidence clearly suggested otherwise. The ‘security risk’ is another alibi to deflect official responsibility. This badge has been attached even to those who struggled for democratic and human rights. Even elected prime ministers, such as Benazir Bhutto, were not spared. The real utility of this badge is to control the internal and foreign levers in the name of ‘clearance’ by the security and intelligence agencies. However, questions about the clearance of the ‘clearers’ have been conveniently ignored. For example, the explanation is still waited how nuclear proliferation was brazenly conducted allegedly by the ‘father’ of our bomb working with or under the nose of our security ‘clearing agents’. The ‘national interest’ is the most ubiquitous of all the rubrics used to justify unconstitutional and immoral acts. Under this tag, the country has been yoked with martial laws, international wars, global and regional alliances, and the lopsided economic and political agendas favouring particular individuals, classes and institutions. Yet, very few apologists of this ‘national interest’ theory have actually deciphered its contours on the touchstone of the facts, logic and law. Moreover, in civilised democratic states, matters of war and peace are left to parliament to decide, so that the people’s will as well as the watch over the government may be ensured through institutional mechanisms. On the contrary, thanks to this golden phrase, ‘national interest’, the people of Pakistan have never been even informed, let alone their mandate sought for the country joining a devastating war. Generals Ayub, Yahya, Zia and Musharraf never bothered to seek public approval before engaging the country in wars that would drastically affect the people’s lives only because they were a law unto themselves. Not surprisingly, the country has undergone many wars — 1965, 1971, 1979, 1984, 1999 and 2001 — but not a single inquiry has ever been instituted or published, let alone fixing the responsibility and punishing the culprits who caused failures and human and material losses. The Hamood-ur-Rehman Commission report was kept under wraps and the more recent Kargil misadventure was never probed. The reason: ‘national interest’. As a result, the powerful ‘culprits’ have always enjoyed absolute immunity from law. In addition to political alibis, the religion, Islam, has also been employed, on the one hand to define the objectives of the national security state, and on the other to convince the vast number of the poor, weaker and illiterate populace to ‘sacrifice’ their civil and political rights for the ‘sake of Islam’. Thus, Islam has been used for removing an elected government in 1977; suppressing the ‘western’ democratic ideals; denying the state’s multi-national and multi-cultural nature; and keeping the democratic discourse muddled with multi-sect religious rhetoric. However, the undue emphasis on the religious rather than the political discourse has harmed Pakistan’s social and federal textures. On the one hand, sectarianism and religious violence have emerged as the greatest menace; on the other hand, the increasing nationalist sentiments have found expression over and again in Balochistan and Sindh. Religion has also been used for more insidious purposes. Early on, the state was made to confront a powerful anti-Ahmedi agitation triggered on a highly emotive issue related to the finality of the Holy Prophet (PBUH). It catapulted the civil-military bureaucracy into power when the first martial law was declared in Lahore in 1953 to ‘quell’ the riots. The Islamist organisations that had opposed Jinnah’s supposedly liberal Pakistan, practically hijacked the then constitutional and political discourse. Later, General Ziaul Haq used religion for his regional and global agenda during the Afghan war. However, General Musharraf changed tack, though for the same purpose: strengthening the national security state of which he was the ‘chief executive’. He instead brought in a new alibi, ‘liberalism’, to entwine with a globalised and much more open world. Then he further honed this alibi by a catchy phrase, ‘enlightened moderation’ to sell his war on terror to the local and international moderate audience. Under his consumer- and US aid-driven economic ‘boom’, the legions of the landed, business, political and financial interests flourished. But the plight of the weaker and poorer sections only worsened, forcing many of them to join the jihadi leagues or the local feudal, tribal or criminal folds that plague the country’s rural and urban life. Appallingly, not to lag behind its military counterparts, the PPP leadership also came up with its one-size-fits-all alibi, ‘reconciliation’, which it is using as a fig leaf to induct all kinds of elements, including known turncoats, opportunists, criminals and corrupt politicians. Its actual utility consists in the government’s survival, of course, ‘in the national interest’. The cost of the prevalent inefficiencies, corruptions and security lapses is, however, borne by the hapless people. Yet the powerful elites continue to get away with their ever new alibis, unmindful of the statistics reflecting a moribund picture with 40 percent people being ‘very poor’, 50 percent illiterate, 25 percent unemployed, and the swathes of towns and cities caught in darkness and violence. The writer is a lawyer and academic. He can be reached at shahabusto@hotmail.com