Posted on 05/18/2002 4:28:33 PM PDT by AM2000
I was a kid at the time of Ayub Khan's martial law and when we asked our dreaded and legendary headmistress, Ms Glegg, what martial law meant, she said that if we did not take our lessons seriously, soldiers would come and take us far away. For weeks after that revelation I worked very hard at my exercise books.
I was a cadet in the Pakistan Military Academy at the time of Yahya Khan's martial law and well remember that when he once came visiting and had dinner with us in the great dining hall above the parade ground - his face ablaze with what I can only imagine to be premium whisky (Lucky Dog) - and a cadet complained that our physical training was too tough, the Generalissimo shot back that at our age we should have PT morning, afternoon and night.
In Zia-ul-Haq's martial law, I tried making a new start as a journalist but for want of openings or opportunity, I stayed for the most part on the outer tracks of the profession, out of work or writing for obscure journals with little circulation. In that small city with grandiose pretensions which is Islamabad, occasionally I come across remnants from the ruling class of that period, always driven to wonder as I look at their shrivelled figures what inscrutable power placed the country's destiny in such hands. In the days of their glory, however, I saw these magnificoes only from a distance.
But the present military dispensation is of my generation, with some of its leading pillars my contemporaries either at school or in the Academy. Lt Gen Mahmood, now mulling over the turn of the wheel in ill-deserved retirement but who on the Night of the Long Knives - Oct 12, 1999 - foiled Nawaz Sharif's plans and kept Islamabad warm for his chief, Pervez Musharraf, was a year senior to me at Lawrence College. As was the first Chief of the NAB, Lt Gen Amjad, now commanding 1 Corps in Multan.
To drop a few more names, but for a purpose I'll come to soon enough, Ehsan who heads ISI and who on the Long Night was head of Military Intelligence, was my course mate in the Academy. Maj Gen Talat Munir who heads the Intelligence Bureau was also from the same course (41st). One of my course mates was until recently commanding the Mangla corps. His replacement, Lt Gen Javed Alam, is from Lawrence College. The present Corps Commanders Rawalpindi and Lahore were two or three courses junior to me in PMA. Several other lieutenant generals - Imtiaz Shaheen, Waseem Ghazi and so on - were two or three courses ahead of me.
All the officers I have named are outstanding professionals who in any army of the world would make Grade 1 officers. Of their military expertise or competence there should not be the slightest doubt. But about their capacity for politics or the higher administration of the country doubts are bound to arise simply because nothing in their training or scholastic background equips them for this role. I say this not with a sense of glee but a great deal of sadness because these contemporaries, while men of great ability in their own field, are scampering about on the wrong deck trying to perform duties they are ill-equipped to discharge.
Can any of them or indeed anyone else from the long list of my military colleagues say with any honesty that the country today is in good shape or that it is marching to a brave new future? Let us have a proper measure of time. Two or three years in the life of any country - whether here, Nazi Germany or FDR's America - is pretty long, certainly long enough to mark the difference between success and failure.
In two years Roosevelt had established the outlines of his New Deal and turned America's back on the Great Depression. In two years Hitler (a politically incorrect example but relevant nonetheless) had turned Germany around, reviving its economy, repudiating the Treaty of Versailles and restoring Germany's prestige as a great power (that he took a wrong turning thereafter is a different story). Britain stood alone after the fall of France in 1940 but in that dark hour Churchill lifted his countrymen's spirits when he became prime minister. This is what leadership is about: making a difference when it matters. Rhetoric aside, what has military leadership achieved since the Night of the Long Knives? As a country we are as much at sea now as we were then, the roll-call of failure and of opportunities wasted being dismal and long.
The army command has too much on its plate. The intelligence agencies are distracted between the competing pulls of gathering intelligence and carrying out political intrigue. The state of law and order, the first priority of an authoritarian government, is abysmal, the agencies of the state helpless before the rising tide of lawlessness and terror. NADRA, a military white elephant, can neither issue identity cards nor make a population or voting list which is error-free. WAPDA is in the red. So is the national carrier, PIA, and Pakistan Steel.
In a dictatorship the trains are supposed to run on time, trains in this case being a metaphor for good order and discipline. But if anything, life has become more chaotic in these two and a half years. Which is not to say Nawaz Sharif or Benazir were the heralds of a Golden Age. But then the Night of the Long Knives was supposed to make a difference. Indeed, the promise of making a difference was its sole justification. The chattering classes, duped as so often before, flocked to the military's standard fully convinced that the age of miracles was finally at hand.
Long after the gathering evidence pointed to a different conclusion - to ineptitude and clumsiness in handling even ordinary matters - the chattering classes clung to their belief, hailing Musharraf as messiah, redeemer and Ataturk rolled into one. It had to take the referendum to strip the scales from their eyes and make even the general's most ardent admirers sit up and take notice of the things happening around them.
Full-fledged banana status is about the only thing we have convincingly achieved. But again we miscalculated. By signing up for loyal service in Afghanistan we thought we were beating India to the draw and leaving it behind in the calculus of American favour. But far from America putting any pressure on India to lay off and withdraw its troops from our border, it is Pakistan which is read lectures on restraint and responsible behaviour. Indeed, it almost seems as if heightened tension with India - short of an actual flare-up - is a pistol pointed at Pakistan's head to keep it in line and ensure that its anti-Al Qaeda fervour does not flag.
The IRA in Britain, Basque separatists in Spain: other countries have faced far more sustained campaigns of terrorism than Pakistan. But even when very serious incidents have taken place in those countries, no one has accused them of being unsafe for travel or investment. Two or three terrorist incidents in Pakistan and it appears as if everything is about to cave in or fall apart. Why? Because with our banana politics and the absence of institutional rule our country looks fragile and vulnerable. Nothing sticks out more like a sore thumb in this day and age than a government dressed in military uniform.
This, baldly stated, is the problem facing my generation: how to come round to the realisation that even with the best intentions in the world the Pakistan army is simply not equipped to play a political role or give the country a political lead. Do we want a future brighter than Burma's or Indonesia's? If we do, we have to do some urgent rethinking because, taking heed from the lessons of the past, the course we are embarked on is another prescription for disaster.
Ayaz Amir is a leading Pakistani columnist and political commentator
(Courtesy: Dawn)
Someone needs to tell him its not the politics that are ruining his country, it's the religion.
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