Daily Times

The May 13 joint resolution by parliament and the joint communiqué issued after Senator John Kerry’s May 15/16 visit underlines the distortions in Pakistan’s misjudgement of its weight. The May 13 resolution partly conceded failure but remained, for a significant part, bluster; May 16 was realpolitik hitting home in full force reminding us all of the limitations that attend international dependencies in an overtly globalised and interwoven world.

We the people spoke through our parliament, as it goes, and after a 10-hour inquest decided the fate of this nation at the most crucial point of our history through three pearls of unmatchable wisdom: the drones must stop attacking or else…(hot air and Punjabi invectives, alone); the need for a Commission to investigate how the military has come to dominate everything in Pakistan (passable — what else may one expect though than the inevitable when what started as a crucial 442-member session in Pakistan’s parliamentary history ended up frittered to less than 90 members at the end of 10 hours); and, of course the bit about revisiting the relationship with the US. Ten hours of bluster and bile that went on behind closed doors, leaked nevertheless through squeaky stomachs to an awaiting media circus in an effort to seek a higher populist pedestal through a placated media, ridiculing and reviling the military of their country and rejoicing in its plight. In a private chat, one MNA called it “our sweet revenge”.

Did the prime minister go out to France on purpose, leaving the Abbottabad conundrum unresolved from a political perspective, letting the military broil in its own stew? Did the president choose to keep quiet in the post-Abbottabad days for the same reason, letting imaginations and manipulations go wild in demonising the intelligence and the military establishment? The prime minister spoke only on May 9 after returning from his French sojourn, and got down to real business on May 12 with a DCC meeting and then parliament’s joint session. Enough time to belittle and grind into the ground an already embarrassed military?

Post-1971, as long as the 90,000 prisoners of war remained in Indian custody, every moment was a moment in shame for the hitherto redoubtable Pakistani military. Mr Bhutto claimed it his achievement in getting the military their prisoners back; that it took two-and-a-half years for the feat to materialise was the benefit that both India and Mr Bhutto sought for exactly the same reasons — belittling and humiliating the military into submission. Never mind the scars of shame that the nation as a whole bore as long as the military could be kept in its place vis-à-vis the civilian political leadership. That sentiment has resurfaced with a vengeance in the aftermath of the Abbottabad incident. The Pakistani military is in a corner, guilty of dereliction on some important counts, exhibiting a rare chink in its armour that their political and civilian brethren are clamouring to exploit. Reasonable commentators have lost their balance in smelling blood. The language is vile. Mr Bhutto failed. We should not be bringing the military down to where we would love to see it belong — in the dumps — and then rule over it as the ultimate picking of this great democratic journey.

Back to the 1970s. What happened in the long run? Yes, Gul Hasan and Rahim Khan were both sacked in democratic fervour, forgetting quite conveniently that the two were most instrumental in getting Mr Bhutto back in the leadership position and in helping restore democracy, but who has ever remembered a favour? A political high in this country unleashes its own juices through the democratic loins and envelops the mighty with an omnipotence that in the end devours the bearer. There is no sense of balance, nor are we used to one. It is as if there is no tomorrow and all scores must be settled overnight. Our national psyche is exaggeratedly distorted in its manifest extremes, never finding the middle ground where it just might survive a bit longer to seek a stable disposition. Mr Bhutto lost both his government and his life to an ever-suspicious military smarting from serious efforts to draw down its place; the military mind senses it as belittling its pride — the prime driver of its self-respect. The PNA was born and the country was shoved into the political right’s stranglehold, the consequences of which we keep harvesting every single day, even in the Abbottabad incident. There may have been small tactical victories in this civil-military tussle, but it ultimately has been a huge strategic political loss to the country’s direction. Are we witnessing a re-enactment? Do we want one, sensitive as we are to the political flavour that this nation must wear? Will there be another PNA? Will there be a counter-effort by the military to stop its slide based on political and liberal-intellectual criticism, very appropriately aided by the American and Indian constituencies of the same bent?

Abbottabad was bad, no doubt about it. But we failed on the intelligence count, not on the military count! Osama, ostensibly, was not detected and to get to the bottom of this omission or commission, we must investigate in every possible manner. But if there is a defence that the intelligence might have, let’s listen to that too. That the Americans sought to do it alone is not a Pakistani failure; it is typical American diabolic. They too have had a compulsion to do it alone: political benefits. They will henceforth join Pakistan again in a combined effort to pin the remaining, the chief trophy already well preserved with them. We will now only play for some brownie points and bettering our standing on the League table.

The Pakistani military is neither equipped to take on the American military might nor must it to save Pakistan from further chaos and slide. We should preserve both Pakistan and its military from such a pre-determined consequence. The Indian military is not the American and any comparison is entirely misplaced. The radars functioned as they were intended to in peacetime deployment and no amount of technology or their origin had any hand in the absence of detection of the American raid. It was simply a case of staying outside the radar cover. To alleviate doubts, revisit the 1984-89 period of Soviet air action in Afghanistan and in Pakistan’s border areas. An air defence that was geared for war against a declared and manifest threat gave the Pakistani Air Force (PAF) seven kills against nil loss, a fact that American manufacturers of the F-16 propagate as a popular sales pitch. The Soviet Union was a real-time superpower. Want the same response from the air force? Declare the US an enemy aggressor and detail the mission to the PAF to defend against an incursion at all cost. That is a political determination. Did that come out as clearly in the joint resolution? I doubt very much.

In the Soviet case we had at our back the US, the competing and ultimately the lone superpower; today if we choose that route we will have to do it alone. John Kerry’s visit proved it beyond doubt that international relationships are bound in realpolitik rather than emotive bluster.

The writer is a political and defence analyst