COAS’s REMOVAL–THE SOCIAL MEDIA NEWS.
The following email on the possible removal of Gen Raheel has been on the email circuit.Thrice earlier it has crossed my desk, and I have deleted it. But it is difficult to ignore it yet again. I was under the impression that it was the people of Pakistan, who were begging the Army Chief to save this country from the vultures. From there, now to make an about turn and hope the people of Pakistan must stand up to save their Army Chief is a breathtaking change in the location of the qibla. To even be able to imagine such a change in positions is to first concede that ours has been a case of collective barking up the wrong tree.
And yet recklessness is always a possibility, and becomes more of a probability when Nawaz Sharif’s past record is kept in view. He has an unblemished record of making a grab for total power each time he has had the opportunity to do so. He was absolutely committed to having himself declared Ameer ul Momineen not too far back. And he did not have any qualms to plan and execute a physical assault on the Supreme Court of Pakistan to hold on to power. His zest for total power is not debatable. Having successfully subverted the police, the bureaucracy, and the judiciary towards his own ends, he has tried unsuccessfully to do the same to the army at least three times in the past. Pure chance has so far stood in his way. But “chance” may give way on his next attempt.
Yet now that the army has, however reluctantly, come to the rescue of the country it is honour bound to defend, one hopes that it has first made clear to itself that its own security lies in very clear resolve on two issues:
a. That it will not allow a coup against itself.
b. And that it will go to the logical conclusion of the operation that it is now conducting, and will go to the ultimate extent to see this operation successfully completed, and will resort to any and all measures within its capability to achieve this goal.
However, this resolve has practical value only if first this has been debated within the army and a formal decision on this score is taken, and secondly, all those who can be identified as having a vested interest in upsetting this apple cart, have been duly warned. This formal communication of intent is important because fools can all too often rush in where angels fear to tread, and PML-N is entirely capable of trusting stupidity for counsel. They have done this in the past, and will do so again.There was a rumour doing the rounds a couple of months back that one Corps Commander was approached by PML-N to examine the possibility of coup against Gen Raheel, but that the officer so approached spilled the beans. Because of Nawaz Sharif’s previous track record this received some traction. After this failure, it was rumoured that the soft approach was adopted and some very expensive shawls were sent to Gen Raheel’s house, only to be returned from the gate.
The new rumour that another coup is being planned finds currency because of the following:
a. that unheard of sums of money are leaving Pakistan without impediment, and what is more, any number of crooks responsible for farming these funds have also been allowed to leave the country. The belief is that this could only have been possible if the army’s wings have been clipped. And if this could happen, the next logical step would be to chop off the head of the Army Chief and regain total control.
b. the allegations made by no one other than the Defense Minister that General Zaheer, the last D.G ISI was behind an attempt to oust the government, something that would only have been done behind closed doors in any other country, is being seen as an indication of a push back against the army. And the conclusion is that if the army is willing to be pushed back, there must be a chink in its armour. So the next logical step has to be to exploit this chink and remove the Army Chief.
The Army’s previous forays in the political realm have been both selfish and dishonourable. Each intervention though, was accompanied by huge public applause. This was due directly to the mess made by the politicians, and the hope that the army would clean the mess up. But the army stayed to dinner each time and refused to leave. A measure which was supposed to be a temporary response to an emergency situation became a permanent solution. The army started to rule, per force using the same tools to do so which the ousted politicians were using. And it got the same results, was tainted in the same way, and garnered the same unpopularity.
But never in the past has the demand for the army to intervene been so loud and so widespread as it is today because never before has the mess created by the politicians been so egregious [ with no dearth of help from Musharraf’s NRO ] so as to have become an existential threat to the country. This time it was a collective decision by all the political parties to move in concert and to first immunize themselves against unobstructed plunder of national resources through judicial decisions and the 18nth Amendment to the Constitution. This Amendment also guaranteed the parties in power a monopoly over rigging of elections to retain their power. Thus empowered they moved in for the kill. Entirely fortuitously an obstruction materialized in the path of a smooth extinction of Pakistan in the unlikely shape of the Pakistan Army, which was thought to have been abundantly shackled by the 18nth Amendment and rulings of the Supreme Court on the law of necessity.
A huge majority of the people of Pakistan want to see their country saved instead of standing with a Constitution which, as it now stands, was designed specifically to immunize the two largest political parties of the country against any possibility of accountability for their crimes. With the courts, police, and the bureaucracy having been made totally subservient to their purposes, they thus also gave themselves legal cover to keep at bay the army, which was the only institution which had the power to stop them.
The Army has so far achieved the following:
a. Severely mauled the infrastructure of militant terrorists holding the country hostage. It must be emphasized that this is an achievement which belongs solely to the armed forces of Pakistan, particularly of the Army. The government has merely been reluctantly dragged into this operation. Had it been for the government, we would still have been negotiating with the terrorists.
b.It has also made Karachi substantially safer and also undermined Altaf Hussain’s ability to hold the city hostage by undermining his command and control infrastructure. This is why in his helplessness Alfaf is so frequently foaming at the mouth.
c.Though tons of money has been successfully evacuated, sufficient fright has been put into the evil menace of Zardari so as to make him flee the country.
d. The combined effect of all of the above has been to restore the credibility of at least one institution of the country i.e the Army, and thus the restoration of some hope to the people of Pakistan.
What the army has to decide now is whether this hope which it has ignited, was justified, or is this hope to be a mere whistling in the dark for the people of Pakistan. And if it is to be merely the latter, the question which then naturally arises is, what was the Army’s compulsion to initiate a half measure? It should have no doubt whatever that a good part of the huge amount of money taken out of Pakistan will now come back and fund terrorism and crime in Pakistan. Terrorism and massive crime leading to create instability in Pakistan will have many foreign sponsors who cannot abide a stable pro-China Pakistan whose territory will partially allow China to circumvent its containment by Western powers. This will be the single most powerful dynamic which will decide Pakistan’s relationship with the West. Towards this end we already see a coalition of MQM and PPP. And Hussain Haqqani is well placed to coordinate their overall effort. And no one should have any doubt where Haqqani is coming from. The writing should thus be on the wall, but the question is whether the Army is seeing it? And if it is seeing it, is it reaching the conclusions it must?
No, once again Martial Law is not the answer, but intervention is unavoidable. For a period of time rule by a National Government with total support by the Army with an emergency imposed, and military courts functioning and trying people for mega corruption,will have to be resorted to. There is no other way of moving forward. For once the Army should break with tradition, eschew the urge to rule, empower the best in the country, and give them total support. And along the way as it will have to step on many toes and will need legal cover for this, it will be able to get such cover ex post facto by ordinance, later ratified in the assembly after elections are held. And this any assembly will be happy to do if for naught else, then because of the realization that the army still retains the option of imposing Martial Law.
But China will have to be central to any such plan. Inevitably any course correction by Pakistan which stabilizes it and is therefore to be of benefit to China, will meet great resistance from the West. It is the financial and economic segments of such resistance which Pakistan will not be able to bear. Will China be willing to pick up this slack? This would need to be cleared with them. And if they refuse, then as the old nursery rhyme says, ” we all fall down.
