Calling the Kettle Black!

“Legibility”, says James Scott Professor of Political Science at Yale University “is central to statecraft”. Scott asserts that rulers are not inherently destructive. It is only when their policies are modeled by personal interests and fail to align with that of the common man, does national destruction become a logical aftermath. Sessions, in and outside the parliament, during the last three and a half years have seen Asif Zardari, Nawaz Sharif and their heirs accusing Prime Minister Imran Khan of corruption, the dismal state of our economy, kowtowing to the US and abandoning the Kashmir Cause.

This is despite the fact that since the last many decades Pakistan was on a ventilator in terms of economy and isolated internationally. We were viewed as a terror sponsoring state. The opposition presents utopian facts and figures of those mismanaged days, bringing the Ghalib verse to mind: “qarz ki peetay thay mai lekin samajhte thay ki haan, rang laigee hamari faqa masti ek din”. What we are bearing today is the brunt of those faqa masti days.

Never before did governance, as does the abysmal state of Sindh and Karachi that is a testament to the 14-year PPP governing apathy, stand as thoroughly exposed as in the Zardari/ Sharif years. Those years saw corruption and cronyism become the baseline of political compromise among an otherwise bitterly divided political elite. The greatest sin, however, was that this contagion became so pervasive that it created complicity within the masses. Corruption and loss of values became our bane. We took to what other species do; morph and adapt to the surroundings for survival. This, undoubtedly, was the unkindest cut of all.

As for sovereignty, were we ever a sovereign state? Did our boundaries not merely mark the point where British bondage ended and that of the United States began? Did not General Musharraf respond to Washington’s demands saying thy wish is my command, a submission that saw 70,000 innocent Pakistanis perish; our sovereignty and economy in tatters? How can our would-be Mandelas’ forget the infamous NRO (National Reconciliation Ordinance), means to Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) assuming power, which criminally granted amnesty to politicians, bureaucrats and political militants accused of heinous crimes and corruption? Was the NRO not brokered by Mark Boucher and Mark Lyall Grant on behalf of Washington and London respectively; so much for our sovereignty?

How can we forget Memogate with Husain Haqqani beseeching Washington’s intervention and his (to date) activities? In a March 2017 Washington Post article Haqqani wrote that he had been “asked by the Obama administration to help station US Special Ops and intelligence personnel in Pakistan. I brought the request directly to Pakistan’s civilian leaders, who approved”. He goes on to write: “Among the security establishment’s charges was that I facilitated the presence of a large number of CIA operatives (in Pakistan), though I had acted under the authorization of Pakistan’s elected (read Zardari and party again) civilian leaders”. This is the sovereignty yearned by our custodians of democracy.

A deluge of spies and mercenaries along with JSOC / Black Ops soldiers and Blackwater agents in the thousands descended upon Pakistan. Our cities and towns became bastions of assassins, spooks and contractors; Raymond Davis was just one of them. Jeremy Scahill’s “Dirty Wars”, has six revealing chapters on a “sovereign” Pakistan. He writes that when Davis was apprehended, “his multiple mobile phones revealed calls to twenty-seven militants from Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and TTP”.

The (to date) unexplained fortune of Nawaz Sharif was countered by his haughty question, “agar mery asasay amdan say mutabqat nahi rakhtay to tumhe kya”; this was an indictment in itself. We saw Modi being feted as a personal guest at Jati Umrah along with dubious Mittal / Jindal meetings. As the criminal silence on Kulbhushan Jadhav’s terrorist activities prevailed, the Sharif’s Ramzan Sugar Mill was brimming with Indian technicians and engineers. They had non-police reporting all-Pakistan visas and were feted at the GOR Lahore.

Kashmir became a neglected cause in the Zardari / Nawaz years; the Fazlur Rahman led Kashmir Committee was just an indicator. So great was this Committee’s apathy that the late Syed Ali Shah Gillani, not prone to undue criticism or emotional outbursts, criticized the comatose Kashmir Committee and asked for the removal of Fazlur Rahman as its chairman. It was Asif Zardari who, in a 4 October 2008 interview with Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens, dubbed Kashmir’s freedom-fighters as “terrorists” and proclaimed in his infinite wisdom that “India has never been a threat to Pakistan”.

Those out of power and the many mafias and cartels along with vested interests within the PTI, are resisting what could be the enabling policies towards a viable Pakistan.

Both Zardari and Nawaz Sharif left no stone unturned to prove their “liberal” credentials viz a vis India and the USA; they still do. We all remember Zardari telling the Americans to carry on with drone strikes in Pakistan; criminal acts that would be condemned by his government just to appease the people. Nawaz Sharif went to the dangerous extent of wrongfully owning up to the Mumbai attacks by questioning “the policy to allow non-state actors to cross the border and kill people in Mumbai”. Playing into India’s hand, the insinuation had disastrous consequences. A case of the pot calling the kettle black, yet Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif blame Imran Khan for servitude and surely the accusers are honorable men!

Given the above, in Imran Khan, we have an individual whose uncompromising intent to steer Pakistan out of servitude is evident and absolutely clear. However, expecting him to do it alone is a fallacy. We, as a nation, shall have to let go of our lethal addiction that is the urge of quick fixes, as the accumulated deluge of decades cannot be wished away in the blink of an eye. Those out of power and the many mafias and cartels along with vested interests within PTI, are resisting what could be the enabling policies towards a viable Pakistan.

Social programmes in health, education/vocational training, housing and small loans for the needy, unprecedented remittances from overseas Pakistanis, record exports from a previously done and dusted textile sector, revival of the construction industry, admirable handling of the pandemic, documentation of economy and expanding our tax base are Imran Khan’s commendable achievements and a harbinger of better days. Excruciating as the present difficulties are, they herald the realization of a naya Pakistan.