Khalifas from the hills

Feisal’s column

People who oppose the ongoing operation in Swat normally make two types of arguments.

The first argument is practical, that military force should only be utilised as a last resort and that this is not the time.

The second argument is philosophical. As one news anchor put it to me, how can we oppose the imposition of sharia law in Swat when Jinnah founded Pakistan in the name of Islam?

The essence of the first argument is that using the army to crush militants is the equivalent of using a sledgehammer to kill a fly. So while it may be effective, military action also comes with a massive cost. Innocent people get killed, families get displaced and entire towns get destroyed.

The answer to this argument is provided, however, by the military action itself. Operation Rah-e-Rast has been underway for almost four weeks. Sixty soldiers have died in the fighting while, according to ISPR, more than 1,100 militants have been killed. And yet, the operation is far from over. As I write these words, soldiers of the Pakistan Army are going door to door in Mingora, trying to blast out the militants who have been using 20,000 Swatis as human shields. And as for the financial cost, who knows?

The ongoing military operation is therefore self-evidently not excessive. Had that been the case, the operation would already have been over.

Opponents of military action can respond in one of three ways. The first is to argue that the army is incompetent. The second is to argue that the entire operation is a sham, the product of a giant conspiracy between Mossad, the CIA and RAW to break up the country and steal Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. And the third is to say that the army was sent in too soon.

I hold no brief for the Army and I know very little about its competence. But to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you fight with the army you have, not with the army you want. Since we have no other army, accusing the army of incompetence is neither here nor there. Logically, the only other alternative would have been to invite American forces over from Afghanistan to invade Swat for us. In the absence of any support for that option, we have no option but to stick with General Kayani and his men.

So far as the grand conspiracies are concerned, I have no doubt that the CIA, Mossad and RAW would all breathe easier at night if we did not have nuclear weapons. But the fact that they do not want us to have nuclear weapons does not mean that they want to break up Pakistan. An exploded Pakistan would be exponentially more problematic for the international community than Pakistan in its current state.

If anything, the heads of CIA, Mossad and RAW are all praying to their respective deities to keep Pakistan solvent and stable because that is the only way our weapons will stay in sane hands as opposed to being in the hands of those who think that a nuclear exchange is a good idea because all the Muslims who die in the resulting holocaust will go straight to Paradise.

The final contention is that we should have waited longer. My question is: why? Is it not serious enough when a group of armed men rejects our Constitution, attacks our army and kills our citizens? And if that is not the issue, what would extra time have bought us? If anything, extra time would have given greater opportunity to the militants to entrench their positions.

I come now to the question of morality: how do I justify making war on those who are supposedly seeking only to fulfil Pakistan’s destiny?

Simply put, Pakistan’s destiny was not — and is not — to serve as the handmaiden for morons. Mohammad Ali Jinnah was not just a lawyer but one of the finest lawyers produced in the entire history of British India. His vision for Pakistan was not one in which self-proclaimed khalifas descended from the hills to unilaterally impose a vision of Islam in which the worship of God was reduced to beards of stipulated lengths and blowing up women’s schools.

At the same time, I freely concede that it is the prerogative of a sovereign nation to decide how it wants to govern itself. And if the majority of the people in this country decide through some democratic process that they actually want to be governed by Sufi Muhammad and his ilk, so be it. But they have not done so. Instead, whenever they have been given the option, the people of this country have resoundingly rejected religious parties. Pakistanis have drafted three constitutions for themselves: not one of them has set up a theocratic state.

So, Mr Anchorman, here is my answer: these people deserve to have war waged on them because they reject our Constitution, because they reject the values which Pakistan was founded upon, and because they are trying to stuff a different legal system down the throats of unwilling citizens.

The Muck we are in….

by Khurshid Anwer

On the subject of Bhutto having made a study of world leaders,  I missed out Emperor Babar. Bhutto had learned from the Mughals that no ordinary mortal dare approach the monarch unannounced. Dr Mubashar Hasan writes that when he first went to meet the president and CMLA, the liveried person at the entrance asked him to wait while he was announced to the president. Mubashar however kept walking wondering whether his close comrade of a whole year’s struggle had already forgotten his name. When he reached Bhutto, the latter said, “aap ko intezar karna chaheay tha”.

No wonder people thus treated did not stay with him for long. Can any good have been expected from a megalomaniac who steam-rollered over all who stood in his way – political rivals, industrialists, factory owners, bankers, even his own comrades.

Pakistan is like a sewer which has been collecting muck from successive deluges – the Bhutto deluge, the two of Benazir and the one ongoing. Benazir embraced and carried forward all the muck left over by Bhutto, and Zardari is embracing and carrying forward all that of Bhutto and Benazir. Layer upon layer of muck. Unless the Bhutto and Benazir layers are not dredged out the sewer will remain a sewer, hence the continuing attack on those two.

The muck: The same squandering of national resources on the poor for immediate political gains. The same unproductive employment of Jialas in thousands upon thousands. The same indiscipline in industry, education and public sector. The same lack of development of industry or agriculture, the only thing developing is the PPP vote bank.

Let me end with Bhutto’s ‘Unkindest cut of all’. Some political analysts insist that all Pakistan’s problems stem from the population explosion – poverty, unemployment, lack of education, lack of housing, lack of power, lack of water, you name it and the cause is the same, even the increase in terrorism.

Ayub Khan had taken on the Mullahs, made salutary changes in  the Family Laws and installed Family Planning Clinics all over the country. A brake was being put upon the exploding population. Bhutto in his megalomaniac opposition to Ayub Khan and to gain the support of the orthodox elements in the society, did not spare even the family planning clinics which were all trashed and the staff scared into running away.

I myself witnessed this happening in Rawalpindi. Obviously having shut them down he was not going to reopen them during his seven years. Add to this 11 years of Zia’s rule who was a religious fundamentalist himself. Hence 18 years were lost before any government could take corrective measures.

It is also doubtful whether Benazir in her two years would have undone what her father had done. In these 20 years the population increased from 6.5 crore to over 11 crore, an increase of nearly 5 crore. By this time the Mullahs had made a come back making it difficult for any subsequent government to rectify the damage. The result is 17 crore people to feed today. Can any Bhutto aficionado defend this ‘Unkindest cut of all’ of his.