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In Pakistan, certain absurdities are casually treated as being products of clever political pragmatism. Nothing’s shocking anymore. As civilians and security personnel build taller and taller walls around their schools, mosques, shrines, markets and offices, a hapless polity and its leadership have no clue how to stop the monsters we call suicide bombers.
Yet, in the animated electronic media of Pakistan, it is not these mad men with bombs around their waists and visions of paradise in their heads that dominate the discourse on the country’s war against Islamists. No, sir, what gets discussed and decried more in this respect are the American drone attacks in the country’s tribal, militant-infested north-western areas. Statistics do not matter. For example, a whooping 34,017 people have died in terrorist attacks since 2004 in Pakistan, whereas 1,968 have been killed by the drones more than half of them militants!
Nevertheless, this hasn’t stopped the media and the politicians to sound louder in their condemnation of drone attacks, but strike utterly ambiguous postures about terror attacks. The groaning in this case became so loud at one point that an alternative narrative finally came screaming out from the other side. Amidst all the decrying, some senior journalists and political analysts turned leftwards and became the articulate vassals of this alternative narrative.
They suggest that it is most probably the Pakistani intelligence agencies who want their various alleged recruits in the media to begin a concerted campaign against the Americans using the drone attack issue as a confrontational plank. Not so absurd a theory, really. CIA accuses the ISI of being selective in targeting the Islamists, killing some but at the same time protecting others.
The drones issue becomes a way for the media and opposition parties to whip up anti-American sentiment in the public only for the agencies to tell their aggravated counterparts in the CIA that America had better listen to the ISI’s concerns otherwise the public would eat them up. Yes, Pakistani intelligence agencies have had a history of propping up whole political parties and politicians and a number of media people to bid for them in a civilian set-up.
But the scenario has become rather bizarre. As the rampaging media’s credibility is increasingly coming under scrutiny, it seems those who want to keep this cyclic game against the Americans going, have begun to prop up certain politicians too. Again, nothing new. But what is new is the fact that it is parties and politicians with a history of being propped up by the agencies in the past who have decided to raise alarm.
About two months ago, leader of the opposition, Chaudhry Nisar, thumped his desk at the National Assembly for three consecutive days, accusing the ISI of funding cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan. Though there is every likelihood that Nisar is right, it is ironic that he belongs to a party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), which, in the 1990s, was the most gracious recipient of agency tinkering and maneouvers.
But why is PML-N making the most hue and cry about Imran’s new-found status? After all it shares Imran’s largely right-wing views and concerns about drone attacks, and has sounded equally apologetic about the Taliban as has Imran? Well, Imran’s almost non-existent party is now said to be all set to suddenly emerge into an organised unit. But his enigmatic backers also know, that no matter how much shine they give his party, his vote-bank will remain rooted in central Punjab.
Central Punjab is also the PML-N’s traditional constituency. But since the PML-N has washed its hands of whatever history it has had as being an establishment-backed party, the establishment has gone looking for those who not only have similar right-wing views, but can easily be maneuovered. Thus, Imran becomes an attractive choice. Though still a minnow, some of his backers see a lot of promise in him. They feel he can be molded into the next big right-wing thing in the populous Punjab, and someone whose rampant quasi-reactionary views can be an asset to help the military-establishment continue to play footsie with the Americans.
In another bizarre twist, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani has dismissed Nisar’s anti-ISI tirades. This is bizarre because unlike the PML-N, Gilani belongs to a party (PPP) that is perhaps the only mainstream party that had no links whatsoever with the agencies. In fact, it had been the target of the establishment for over 30 years.
But look at it this way. The PPP is in the government. It is barely surviving, but has done well to stay put. Come next election it is bound to lose a lot of votes, especially in Punjab. But if Imran is able to make a dramatic impact in Punjab, he will be cannibalising the PML-N vote, not the PPP’s. Why should then the PPP be worried about what ISI is supposedly up to with Imran? In fact, Gilani, a southern Punjabi/Seraiki, seems to be saying, ‘ISI’s propping up a new alliance in Punjab? Sou bismillah! (by the grace of God, do it a hundred times).
