Pakistan’s greatest enemy today is the enemy within. “Ameer,” Quaid-e-Azam told Raja Sahib of Mahmudabad in 1948, “You have no idea of the situation here. I am surrounded by traitors”. The situation we face today is much worse. Traitors and foreign agents have captured political power with foreign support. They are busy undermining our political and military institutions and constitute a serious threat to the independence and sovereignty of our country. A lesson to be drawn from the works of Gibbon is that Rome’s enemies lay not outside her borders but within her bosom, and they paved the way for the empire’s decline and fall – first to relentless barbarian invaders from the north, and then, a thousand years later, to the Turks. We must not let this fate befall our country. Look where Pakistan risks going, in contrast to where she was headed a decade ago. The Supreme Court defied, all our institutions trampled upon by a corrupt ruler, our international prestige debased and a bankrupt economy. Tragedy aplenty: no drinking water, no electricity, no gas, no jobs, no cash, rampant corruption, no hope and Zardari. And to cap it all, the Memogate scandal: a dark, sinister, high-level conspiracy directed at the armed forces, a dastardly, cowardly, despicable criminal conspiracy designed to emasculate and destroy the army as a fighting force, the only shield we have against foreign aggression and the only glue that is keeping the federation together. It was an unsuccessful attempt to undermine the army’s much cherished independence and make significant changes in its decision-making system. The plan was to sweep away the existing system of command and raft of unpalatable generals and merge political and military power. The affair began with an article published in the Financial Times on October 10, 2011, authored by Mansoor Ijaz, wherein it had been claimed that early on May 9, a week after US special forces stormed the hideout of Osama bin Laden and killed him, a senior Pakistani diplomat telephoned him with an urgent request that Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari needed to communicate a message to White House national security officials that would bypass Pakistan’s military and intelligence channel. After the publication of the said article, former ambassador Husain Haqqani and the presidency of Pakistan dismissed the author’s claim by lightly brushing it aside as mere fantasy. It is now abundantly clear that, if proved, the act in question of the individuals who initiated the said memorandum, the ones who rendered any help or assistance in the matter and those who blessed or approved it, renders them culpable for acts of high treason. I worry about one thing only: that light may not be shed in full and may not be shed immediately on this sordid affair. A judgement behind closed doors following a secret investigation would not put an end to anything. The apex court, which is now cognisant of the matter, must, therefore, identify the individuals responsible for, or involved in, initiating the process leading to the said memorandum, authoring the same, providing any assistance, whatsoever, in the process or approving the said act. Only then would this sad story really unfold. For people would have to speak up, since keeping silent would make them accomplices. What folly it is to think that anyone can prevent history from being written! Well, the history of this heinous crime shall be written, and not one person with any responsibility in it, irrespective of how high up, will go unpunished. I realise what storms it is going to stir up, but truth and justice are sovereign over all else, for they alone make a nation great. Political interests or special interests may blot them out momentarily but any nation that did not base its raison d’etre on truth and justice would today be a nation doomed. I am striving for the honour of the armed forces and the greatness of the nation and nothing else. If some corrupt people, who still hold sensitive positions of trust and responsibility, have to be brought to justice and given exemplary punishment to make Pakistan healthy again, why shield them? Why not make a horrible example of them? I realise that the interests involved are too great and the men who wish to stifle the truth and protect the guilty, are too powerful and, therefore, the truth may not be known for some time. But there is no doubt that sooner or later – perhaps sooner rather than later – every bit of it, without exception, will be divulged. It will be difficult. It will require a great deal of effort, but the truth will be revealed. And those who are combatting the truth will find, to their dismay, that as the poet Euripides said: “Quos vult perdere Jupiter” (Jupiter drives to madness those whose downfall he desires). President Nixon was not corrupt. Nobody questioned his integrity. Nobody said he had conspired with a foreign power to undermine national interests by secret or insidious means. Nixon was not charged with treason. But for his involvement in the cover-up of the Watergate scandal, he was forced to resign and hounded out of the Oval office. Twenty-five people were sent to prison because of the abuses of his administration, and many others faced indictments, including two attorney generals of the United States and several top officials of the White House. We in Pakistan will not be able to live with ourselves if the real culprit, the man whose duty, honour and raison d’etre it was to obey the law, serve the state and protect the Constitution, goes unpunished. After the fall of Nixon, David Gergen, a White House advisor to President Nixon, wrote, “the received wisdom is that Watergate teaches us two basic rules about politics. One, never elect a man of low character to high office. Two, if a president and his team do make an egregious mistake, a cover-up is always worse than the crime.” The story of Watergate should be required reading for every head of state and head of government in every country governed by law. Not in Pakistan. Here corrupt rulers get away with murder. They defy the Supreme Court, resist implementation of its orders, commit contempt of court with impunity, enter into criminal conspiracies with foreign powers and rule the country as if they have done nothing wrong. “Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord.” The crime against the state of Pakistan cries out to heaven for vengeance. It is but one example of the executive’s treachery and contempt for the Constitution, military institutions and the laws of this country. It is a challenge we must all accept. It is a challenge we have every intention of winning. We are in for a real battle. Today, it is a political and moral imperative for all patriotic Pakistanis to expose the traitors, unmask the conspirators, resist foreign intervention in our internal affairs, civil and military, and destroy the roots of evil that afflict Pakistan. The writer is a former federal secretary. Email: roedad@comsats. net.pk,www.roedadkhan.com
