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IF it is the ineptitude of the media managers, it is bad enough. But if the optics reflect the substance of the post-Peshawar Pakistan then it is an outright disaster for the civilian politicians.
In the week, the 21st Amendment to the Constitution (as well as the changes in the Army Act) was approved by parliament without as much as a whisper by the parliamentarians and a mere whimper by my old friend Raza Rabbani, what were the key civilian politicians and the military leader up to?
The prime minister, who somehow believes that the route to the country’s salvation lies through the Gulf, and ironically not necessarily because that’s where the toxic ideology that ails our society today keeps receiving substantial shots in the arm, is seen talking about terrorism-plagued Pakistan in Bahrain. Yes, in Bahrain.
The military leadership seems to be ahead of anyone else in the game.
While everyone, politicians included, is entitled to personal space and time, the main opposition leader, and by his own reckoning the winner of the last election and hence the country’s leader, at a time of grave national crises is tying the knot. Indeed, with great simplicity, possibly austerity, and with only a handful of people very close to the couple present, but the splendour of his brocade sherwani was a sight to behold nonetheless.
Where in the wake of the Peshawar attack, the leader of the once vibrant and now moribund PPP headed to London to wish his reportedly estranged son and the party’s ‘co-leader’ a Merry Christmas, in the post-21st Amendment period he has been mostly missing apart from the saving grace of having inaugurated a ‘reverse osmosis’ desalination plant to provide some water to a parched Thar.
Of course, the leaders of the country’s politico-religious parties, having been mollycoddled by the military and its agencies for decades, are finally realising that they might, just might, have to fend for themselves. So, we’re hearing them protest against the anti-terror legislation far louder than their eternally conditional and qualified condemnation of terrorism, of the purveyors of hate and perpetrators of mass murder.
Against this backdrop, look at what the military leadership is doing. It seems of the entire lot of our top-tier leaders, the khaki ones are the only ones aware of the need to have a communication strategy, of optics. So, the army chief visits his troops every day to reinforce the impression he is leading from the front.
On Thursday, when most of the electronic and social media seemed obsessed with a ‘quiet’ wedding in the Islamabad suburb of Bani Gala, the COAS was visiting the Army Public School in Peshawar, praying for the fallen students and their teachers and mingling with their families, sitting on the floor in camouflage battle fatigues.
After years of disastrous policies by the military which have been the most significant contributor to the morass Pakistan finds itself in today, the jury’s out on whether the new leadership is actually committed to a meaningful and substantial course change.
But if the perception in the immediate term is any indicator, the military leadership seems to be ahead of anyone else in the game. My reservations and those of some like-minded friends on the issue of military courts notwithstanding, no matter who you talk to, there is this belief that the government would have sat idly and done nothing to fight terrorism had the army chief not taken the initiative.
Reasons abound. The worst detractors would point to the governing party’s cosy arrangements with Punjab-based militant groups, including sectarian parties, while other critics would merely say the rulers lacked the guts, the spine to take on the terrorists.
In equal measure, the judicial system is blamed which, many believe, simply does not have what it takes to dispense justice to the common man, let alone to convict militants responsible for mass murder and mayhem in the country. Hence, the visible support for the military courts, with very little concern about the fate of due process.
Then, of course, there are those in the media who selectively target the civilian politicians for their abysmal record but say nothing of the role of the khakis played in the mess and the spiralling existential threat facing the country as we speak.
But all isn’t lost. It is up to the civilian leaders now to rise to the occasion. If the prime minister and the chief justice, a man respected uniformly for his integrity and adherence to the supremacy of law, can work towards a judicial reform package and roll it out who knows if the need for military courts goes away earlier than their mandated two years.
Side by side, the government needs to depoliticise and better resource the police force. Any long-term fight against crime, terrorism included, has to be the police’s primary responsibility. Police reforms should not be led by the prime minister’s favourite ‘DMG’ officers. There are plenty of serving and retired police officers of vision and integrity and the government knows well who and where they are.
Last but not least, we can cry ourselves hoarse for madressah reform but no meaningful change will happen unless the state provision of school education improves and free school meals are added on as an extra. Regardless of what madressahs produce, poverty, not ideology, drives their enrolment.
In the short, medium and long term, the political leadership has to focus on these factors which together would fall under the category of good governance or in this battle against terrorism they shall have conceded so much to the khakis that civilian supremacy will be no more than a pipe dream.
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
Published in Dawn, January 10th, 2015
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