Top brass to the rescue

THE generals must be with the Chief. That is what military discipline is all about. But the 101st Corps Commanders’ conference in Islamabad on Friday was something more than a routine meeting of the top brass, for the wording of the press release issued by the Inter-Services Public Relations seemed designed to convey a message to the opposition. More specifically, going by the press release, the corps commanders supported Gen Musharraf on a key issue — his dual role as president and army chief. Coming at a time when the opposition parties and sections of the legal community are challenging President Musharraf’s constitutional validity as head of state, especially targeting his uniform, the ISPR press release speaks of the corps commanders’ commitment to the “security of their country under the leadership and guidance of the president and the COAS”. According to the ISPR, the generals also resolved “to ensure that the nation continues on the path of socio-economic development and carries on its mission to rid society of the scourge of extremism”. This implies clear support for President Musharraf’s political plans.

A further reference to the current political turmoil came when the conference took “serious note of the malicious campaign against institutions of the state launched by vested interests…” This is a repetition of what President Musharraf has said a number of times, especially after the seminar at the Supreme Court auditorium. No wonder, the president “appreciated” the brother generals’ support to him and pledged that nobody would be allowed to “bring instability” to the country. Nothing brings instability to a country more than the absence of democracy. Stability without democracy is a sham, as shown by examples in Pakistan’s own chequered history. Ayub Khan’s rule (1958-1969) gave a stability that turned out to be superficial. In 1968, disturbances that rocked both East and West Pakistan led to Ayub’s ouster in March 1969, army chief Gen Yahya took over, the constitution was abrogated and East Pakistan broke away in less than three years. The same phenomenon was witnessed when Gen Ziaul Haq was killed in an air crash in 1988. The ‘system’ he had designed failed because it had no popular backing, and as irony would have it, the arbitrary changes he had made in the 1973 Constitution, including the introduction of the infamous Article 58-2b, were done away with by his protégé, Nawaz Sharif. It was then left to President Musharraf to reintroduce those expedient provisions in the Constitution, including the controversial Article that gives him the right to dismiss an elected prime minister and dissolve the National Assembly.

There is every possibility that President Musharraf may survive the present turmoil, but that will hardly give stability to the country. Only free and fair elections held periodically with an even playing field for all can provide real stability to the nation. If President Musharraf and the generals are keen to give stability to Pakistan, they should ensure the next general election is free and fair, instead of what the nation suspects it will be — a ‘fixed’ parliamentary election after the existing assemblies elect Gen Musharraf as president for a second term. This is a recipe not for stability but for continued instability. It is a matter of opinion whether the publicity given to the corps commanders’ political support to the president is a sign of Gen Musharraf’s strength or weakness.

Progress on IPI pipeline

ALL the signs are that the IPI gas pipeline deal will be wrapped up soon to the satisfaction of all three stakeholders. Two major stumbling blocks — tariff and the gas-sharing formula — have already been overcome, and it is hoped that the final June 30 meeting in Islamabad will succeed in settling other outstanding issues. According to a senior Iranian energy official, a list of 16 contentious points has now been whittled down to “just four or five items” that still await resolution. He did not elaborate on the issues that are yet to be negotiated, but it is known that Pakistan and India have previously not seen eye to eye on the transit fee that New Delhi must pay Islamabad. Still, smooth progress from here on could mean that the first phase of the $7.4 billion, 2,600-kilometre project could be operational as early as 2010-11. It goes without saying that the IPI pipeline is of critical importance to both Pakistan and India, and also marks a major step forward in the international arena for economically isolated Iran. Pakistan is already reeling under an energy crisis that is threatening to strangle productivity, while India cannot sustain its remarkable economic growth of recent years without securing access to new and reliable sources of power.

True to form, the US continues to play the spoiler. It has made its displeasure over the IPI pipeline known to both Islamabad and New Delhi, and will be more than willing to reward any party that backs out of the project. For instance, India’s support for the September 2005 IAEA resolution against Iran temporarily soured the IPI project but played a part in securing New Delhi its nuclear power deal with Washington six months later. Now, with the March 2006 nuclear accord showing signs of unravelling, there is a danger that the IPI project could be used as a bargaining chip. This must not be allowed to happen for the pipeline offers an ideal opportunity to bolster regional economic ties in a unipolar world. The US has shown itself to be a fickle ally and no country in South Asia can be guaranteed its unqualified support.

Destruction of Rais Mureed forest

THE claims and slogans of officialdom are completely divorced from reality. The government is promoting 2007 as ‘Green Pakistan Year’ even as trees continue to be slaughtered across the country in the name of development. The timber mafia is denuding the country’s woodlands and mangrove forests are making way for marinas and luxury resorts. Yet, the environment ministry is confident that Pakistan can meet the millennium development goal of increasing its forest cover to six per cent of the total land area by 2015. Official estimates put the existing forest cover at 4.8 per cent, while the United Nations Environment Programme believes it to be under three per cent. In either case, one thing is clear: the situation today is desperate and is deteriorating by the day.

In a shocking development, it has come to light that some 80 million trees have been chopped down over the last three years in the Rais Mureed Belo (forest) in district Matiari, Sindh. According to the Belo Bachayo Committee, the forest has shrunk from 12,000 acres to a mere 2,000 acres in 36 months, causing serious damage to the environment and hurting the livelihoods of local herders who have been grazing their livestock in these woodlands for generations without harming the ecosystem. The committee, formed by local cattle herders in collaboration with the Indus Development Organisation and UNDP, is now trying to save what remains of the forest from local influentials who are clearing the land in order to occupy it. The land-grabbers are, of course, also profiting from timber sales, allegedly in collusion with the forest department. So far, the committee’s pleas have fallen on deaf ears at both the district and provincial levels. It is time for the environment ministry and the Sindh EPA to step in and halt this massacre.

Ayub’s diaries in perspective

DISCERNING observers have been deeply perturbed by the expletives used in the ‘Diaries of Field Marshal Muhammad Ayub Khan: 1966-1972’ against the late military ruler’s opponents and dissenters. Ayub Khan was far ahead of all other dictators and usurpers when it came to obfuscating the truth and portraying himself as a national hero.

This was made possible because the plunderers and blunderers of this beleaguered nation have always left behind a powerful network of scions and beneficiaries who either kept their sins hidden away from the reach of students of history or projected themselves through propaganda sustained by the power of embezzled and stolen wealth.

What stands out in some excerpts that I read of the diaries is Ayub Khan’s contempt for and denigration of every single one of his former colleagues who turned hostile to his despotic and dishonest policies and rebelled after perceptive deliberation. He has used belittling adjectives and indulged in fictitious conjectures about highly successful professionals such as Asghar Khan, a man of sterling character.

Other targets include General Azam Khan, the most successful governor of former East Pakistan. He was sacked because his popularity with the Bengalis for securing their rights was construed as a threat to Ayub’s power. About Akbar Bugti, he wrote , “Fancy Bugti becoming a governor. No bigger scoundrel could be found anywhere.” I am a witness to the fact that Bugti as governor of Balochistan was financially clean and rabidly strict about the misuse of government resources, an attribute Ayub Khan could never qualify for.

The list is too long for this article but it is enough to say that none of Ayub Khan’s detractors have been spared. The real surprise, however, was his view of Air Marshal Nur Khan, one of Ayub Khan’s few respected admirers and a hugely successful commander and leader. Ayub Khan refers to him as ambitious and responsible for the destruction of Pakistan, when he himself was a victim of his professional inferiority and his damning failure in perpetrating a senseless war in1965, for which he neither had a plan nor the courage to carry through. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto has been the prime target in the diaries simply because of his success as a populist leader.

With regard to Air Marshal Asghar Khan, this is what is written in the diaries:

“Asghar Khan, former commander-in-chief of the Pakistan Air Force…today held a press conference in Lahore and launched a scathing attack on the government…Asghar Khan has seen fit to make a vile attack on the government and its policies based on half-truths and downright falsehoods. This neurotic and unreasoned person may surprise strangers but those who know him well are well aware that it is nothing but fulminations of a shallow, frustrated…introvert…not above cunning and deceit…Even in service he used to keep odd company and his associates have been working on him since his retirement to come out with such a statement. In doing so he has disgraced his uniform apart from setting a poor example for his service. Be that as it may be, he has to be countered and met…Chances are that people will soon find out that he is tongue-tied, superficial and lacks charisma.”

His son, renowned for filching successful businesses and touring about on a jeep mounted with automatic weapons to terrorise the voters of Fatima Jinnah, had this comment to make about the redoubtable Asghar Khan: “They (the Pakistanis) soon realised that he was limited and shallow.” Talk of being shallow!

The diatribe has little veracity and reads like the requiem of a tortured soul who knew that he had violated and rubbished the constitution, usurped power illegally and had it legitimised by the then most disrespected Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Muhammad Munir. He scorned the indomitable courage of intrepid and successful commanders-in-chief.

Asghar Khan prepared the Pakistan Air Force as a formidable fighting machine and took PIA to new heights. He himself has remained a symbol of dignity and honesty.

In choosing to enter politics, did Asghar Khan commit a crime? Was politics only for Ayub and his family fiefdom? Who gave his sons and friends the nation’s silver such as Ghandhara Motors and Sherazad Hotel, and business contracts to generals he considered a threat? Did Asghar Khan not have the right to raise his voice against tyranny, graft, nepotism and the alienation of East Pakistanis through contempt and conduct of pompous bureaucrats like Aziz Ahmed?

What about the strategic and tactical blunders and lack of courage in the 1965 war where elite commandos were put in the mouth of hell in the disgracefully botched Operation Gibraltar? What about trembling when the Indians attacked West Pakistan, and stopping a winning general, Akhtar Malik, from taking Akhnoor which would have decided the Kashmir imbroglio? What about stopping Chinese premier Zhou Enlai from sending Mig fighters by air to Sargodha on Sept 7 and 8, asking him instead to crate and send them by ships so as not to provoke the Indians and Americans?

When the war started, Ayub Khan was already imploring for a ceasefire as stated by Zhou Enlai, after the PAF and a handful of soldiers had wrought havoc on the enemy ranks on the ground and in the air and as the precious blood of our fighter pilots and soldiers was flowing at Halwara, Wagah, Chawinda and Kasur. What was Asghar Khan’s crime other than to tell the masses the incontrovertible truth?

For some inexplicable reason, Ayub Khan has been beamed up from his final resting place and transported into the present to issue expletives against his detractors and those who stood up to him on the strength of their own integrity, professional excellence and financial honesty. No one can cast aspersions on the achievements and integrity of an icon like Asghar Khan, least of all Ayub Khan.

There is no evidence in history of Ayub Khan’s bravery or professional integrity. In the words of General Sher Ali, “Ayub’s knowledge of strategy was limited to barrack and battalion” and he was removed by General Reese in the Burma campaign of 1945 for declining the command of an operational regiment in front of the officer corps.

Today, I am embarrassed by the men in charge of our destiny. We have been rendered servile and meek hostages to maulvis because no one had the courage to raise their voices when Liaquat Ali Khan demolished the Quaid’s vision of Pakistan’s future with one stroke of his pen with the Objectives Resolution. That was the first nail in the coffin of a progressive, egalitarian Pakistani society. That is when the mullah raised his head and never looked back.

By March 1953, the Jamaat-i-Islami, the cursed Ahrar and other extremist organisations had resorted to killing and plunder in Karachi and later in Lahore against the Qadiani dispensation. Meanwhile, the foxy Punjab Chief Minister Mumtaz Daultana supported the Ahrars and their ilk by rescinding orders to ban inciting jalsas and fiery speeches by feuding parties supported by the extremists, especially the Ahrars.

A nudge from the army led by Ayub Khan with Defence Secretary Iskandar Mirza appointed as the government’s point man in Lahore set the stage for the doom of democracy, religious tolerance, accountability of any kind of anyone, and proved an opportune rehearsal for the army’s role in civil administration. Ayub Khan waited in the shadows with a script that read ‘how to exploit the demon of civil unrest to usurp power through martial law’.

How ironical that the situation more than five decades ago has been reignited in the horrible carnage in Karachi.

Today, in Islamabad, the Lal Masjid renegades are part of a replay. The carnage in Karachi in 1953 spread to Lahore but with a different hue; it was turned into anti-middle class rioting and murder. On March 4, 1953, the extremists had set up an alternative government in a mosque and a police officer who had gone to placate the supporters of the Jamaat-i-Islami and the Ahrar was murdered in cold blood. (Does this not sound jarringly familiar to the law-abiding residents of Aabpara and E-7?)

On March 6 martial law was declared which suited Ayub Khan, Iskandar Mirza and above all the rogue Governor-General Ghulam Mohammad. It signified the beginning of the end of the Quaid’s democratic and non-racist Pakistan that was meant to be free from sectarian tensions. In the successive years, the demon of martial law with all its devastating jargons such as the decade of reforms, green revolution and Zia’s hypocritical Sharia descended on the nation.

I will ask readers to judge which man conducted himself with dignity, courage and resolve against successive martial laws and was financially honest and censured nepotism: Asghar Khan or Ayub Khan?

Let us learn from our past mistakes if we want to survive with some dignity. For this we need to demonstrate the courage to disentangle our national, institutional (especially pertaining to the defence forces) and individual errors and falsehoods, and desist from falsifying and glorifying our failures. Let us stand up and be counted. The leaders of the past colluded with the plunderers to consolidate themselves. Let us rise and take account of all those who have filched even a rupee from the share of the poor and the wretched.

The writer is a retired commodore of the PAF.