Daily Times

“I am receiving very depressing reports of economic distress and maladministration through political interference, frustration and complete lack of faith by the people in political leaders. The general belief is that none of these men have the honesty of purpose, integrity and patriotism to root out the evils of the country, which will require drastic action,” thus wrote Field Marshal Ayub Khan in his diary in August 1958. He proclaimed martial law within three months of this notation and disparaged politicians to the fullest in his first speech and there on out. He did not even spare the venerable Ms Fatima Jinnah and targeted her in vicious personal attacks when she decided to contest elections against him in 1964. Ironically, the field marshal — his disdain for politicians and politics notwithstanding — formed a king’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League (PML), aka the Convention League, within four years of proclaiming martial law and relied on assorted politicians to sustain and then prolong his reign. One of the first things that Ayub Khan did was take over Progressive Papers Limited (PPL) and its publications The Pakistan Times, the Urdu daily Imroze and the weekly Lail-o-Nahar in April 1959. Muzzling the free press while controlling the state media (initially radio and later on television too) gave the Ayub regime an edge in narrative control that could not be blunted till the end of his rule.
Fast-forward 58 years and the media is churning out material identical to those lines from Ayub Khan’s diary. The prime target is the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) but politicians in general are at the receiving end again. No overt takeover of a media house has, however, taken place this time around. With the booming conventional electronic media and various social media avenues, blatant takeovers are out but not-so-subtle makeovers are in. While coercion is not totally out of fashion yet, rather than flagrant stifling, the media is being inundated with pliant opinions. Instead of outright censorship, critical voices are carefully weeded out and, in almost every talk show, a political Tweedledum is seen debating a Tweedledee. The peg invariably deployed is the purported success of the Zarb-e-Azb military operation in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the Rangers’ operation in Karachi. A case is then built for either overt military intervention or a much larger tutelary role than it is already playing. Of course, when all else fails, there are mysterious petitioners who move the courts, which seem only too eager to issue gag orders like the one barring the media from carrying the MQM leader Altaf Hussain’s speeches. It is surreal how the exact same media, which went blue in the face condemning the US drone strikes against terrorists for causing alleged civilian casualties, does not question the accuracy of the payload delivered by the air force jets over FATA. The indigenous drone (developed with assistance from China, according to the Financial Times) strike that killed three supposed militants obviously remains above reproach.
The only question the mainstream media seems to ask when told to jump is how high. The military has claimed to have killed over 3,500 terrorists in the Zarb-e-Azb operation since June 2014 but no one — not even the journalists taken on escorted tours of the combat zone — knows who those individuals were. If a terrorist kingpin has been killed or arrested in this operation, one has not heard that name. On the other hand, according to media reports, the Afghan Taliban appointed their new emir (leader) inside Pakistan while the Haqqani network men attended the botched Murree peace talks. Indeed, according to the Wall Street Journal, the US national security advisor, Susan Rice, recently “told top civilian and military leaders in Islamabad that attacks in neighbouring Afghanistan by Pakistan-based militants were absolutely unacceptable”. And, of course, India-oriented jihadists continue to cry hoarse from central Punjab. So, if the Afghan Taliban, their allied Haqqani network and anti-India jihadists have gone scot-free, what exactly has Zarb-e-Azb achieved? The short answer to that is that Operation Zarb-e-Azb has achieved exactly what it had set out to do: neutralise the jihadists who attack inside Pakistan, i.e. the ‘bad Taliban’.
The ‘good’ Taliban, who pose an imminent threat to its immediate neighbors but not to Pakistan itself remain unscathed, at least for now. And they might not get the boot anytime soon. Aside from any capacity issues to go after these transnational jihadists, there seems to be no domestic pressure and, therefore, the need to smoke them out. Operation Zarb-e-Azb seems to have decisively neutralised the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s (TTP’s) capacity to hit at will inside Pakistan. With the heartland relatively secure, even the otherwise liberal opinion makers seem to care less about what goes on in Kabul or Kashmir. In fact, some sections of the intelligentsia have bought the ‘change of heart, change of tack’ theme hook, line and sinker. They are as ecstatic about the new management as they were about General Pervez Musharraf, and thus unwilling to question its Punjab-centric agenda. And therein lies the rub. The ostensible economic success under Ayub Khan created a halo effect under which he consolidated the top-heavy, Punjab-heavy civil and military establishment’s agenda, including perpetuation of the infamous One Unit. As the then commander-in-chief, Ayub Khan helped sire the One Unit in 1955, marking the first open military foray into Pakistani politics. Something similar seems afoot. No overt military intervention is imminent because none is needed when one is getting one’s way without any hiccups. Every other official picture coming out of Islamabad would have one believe that the federation comprises of only two men. And no marks for guessing which one wields the power.
Parliament has been reduced to virtually a nonentity after having shot itself in the foot with the 21st Constitutional Amendment setting up the military courts. In Sindh province, the PPP and MQM are on the ropes while the Centre calls the shots in Karachi. The government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is run from an Islamabad suburb while the fate of Balochistan’s resources — and its government — is already being decided in Punjab courtesy the faux nationalist dispensation in that province. The critical question remains whether the Punjab-dominant Centre is out to reverse some of the gains that the provinces made under the 18th Amendment and the National Finance Commission (NFC) Award. For all intents and purposes, the One Unit redux is underway merely by another name.

The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com and he tweets @mazdaki