“Quis custodiet ipsos Custodies?” is a Latin phrase from the Roman poet Juvenal which translates as ‘who will guard the guards’. This single phrase can be applied and understood in different contexts. However, I am going to particularly focus on a certain theme; one of the many sacred cows of our beloved homeland i.e. actions and decisions taken by top tier of the Pakistan Military. I am a student of politics, strategic studies and international relations. Where the politics made me question the role of military in politics, the strategic studies made me understand the motive behind that and international relations taught me that it happens across the world and is a well practice norm even in the most developed of the countries. I studied all these three interrelated yet in some ways distinct subjects in an aforementioned order and that’s why it took me some time to understand why military does what it has been doing in the past and how the actions of different military administrators can be interpreted in the name of country’s survival and security.
It took me some time to understand why AQ Khan was used as a scapegoat; I understood why military had to keep the nuclear system under their control; I somewhat understand why the political system of Pakistan has always stayed unreliable and week in comparison to the very well organized institution of military. I understood the electoral system of Pakistan and the inherent flaws in it and then got to the conclusion why even the most rebellious of politicians will not dare change the system as it only favors a particular class. It also took some time to realize that I do not belong to that particular class. I now know that I belong to a class that no one cares about and I can somehow live with it.
However, this is not about what I learned contrary to what I believed in. I can criticize the politicians for being incompetent and insincere; I can blame the military for the coup d’etats; I can question the logic of judicial actions based on the law of necessity; I can debate over the influence of right wing and religious actors over everything in the country. Nevertheless, these things will not make me part of the ‘category of people’ who mater for any of these actors mentioned above. That is perfectly clear to me now. What I could not understand is that who will guard the guards? Being a researcher, I was taught to question everything and then find different versions of the reality as we were repeatedly told that no truth is ever absolute.
Recently, when Major Ishaq embraced martyrdom in DI Khan it somehow made something stir in me. A picture of him with his young kid His picture and the pictures of his wife with the coffin were all over the place. Habitually, I had to question the whole reality revolving around the whole issue of military on front with the extremist elements. The category (civil and non civil) of people who once harbored the Taliban and the extremists in name of national security are now sacrificing the new generation. The people who do not matter, the likes of me, had no role in it; not then not now. A few days later, the high official of military giving out aid to people who were a part of a sit in; it made me question the intents of a very prestigious institution of Pakistan; why would you do that? Which version of the reality am I missing on? Why would you do that openly? How would you defend this act to the kid of Major Ishaq and his likes? Who is going to safeguard their rights and see to if that their martyrdom is not going in vain? Who will guard the guards? Leave us, the ordinary bloody civilians aside; what about your own? Who will think about the people who are fighting the extremists who claim to be the Muslims and consider themselves the torchbearers of Islam? Those who are paying the price for the actions and decision of the earlier generations. How would you justify this act if another Major Ishaq dies in line of duty from 40 years now at the hands of very people that you are harboring today? What was it that made you get involved and why did this not remind you of the lessons from the 1970s, 1980s, and the recent massacres at the hands of those who were sheltered earlier in name of national security? Have you not sacrificed enough of your men in Khaki? Have you not felt the burden of the little coffins of APS Peshawar from December 2015?
None of my disciplines and books and lectures are making any sense now; there is nothing that could make me understand that ‘who will guard the guards’ if not you?!
The writer is the author of Baluchistan Conundrum — The Real Perspective. She is a PhD scholar at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, and is a visiting PhD scholar at Durham University, UK
Published in Daily Times, December 9th 2017.