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July 7, 2002
REVIEW: Not a ringside view
Murtaza Malik is an old campaigner and has been in the world’s second oldest profession for many years. In Peshawar, where he has always lived, he was the eyes and ears of The Pakistan Times during its good days. Quite deservedly, he enjoyed the reputation of being one of the most resourceful reporters in the region with all its Byzantine intrigue, vendettas, murder, mayhem and hospitality.
The nine chapters that make up this work are more in the nature of individual episodes than a sustained narrative. What emerges is not a pretty picture.
A good deal of what Malik writes is drawn from his own experience, but from someone who has been around for as long as he has, one expected more of a “ringside view” than one gets. Malik is not shy of passing judgment which can be harsh or generous, depending on who he is writing about. If it is the man he obviously hero worships, the wily Frontier politician, Aslam Khattak, then no praise is too great. If it is Maulana Kausar Niazi, whom Malik obviously detests, then there is nothing good the Maulana could have done.
Malik makes some startling claims. For instance, he says that had Aslam Khattak had his way, Pakistan and Afghanistan would have formed a confederation. Aslam Khattak is also given the credit for having saved Ayub Khan from being sacked as army chief by Iskander Mirza. Ayub, Khattak complains, got rid of his “benefactor” at the first opportunity. Smart man.
According to Malik, Bhutto also rejected the idea of a Pak-Afghan confederation, saying, “Why confederate with a backward country like Afghanistan? Why not confederate with India?’ Where or to whom Bhutto said this, the author does not state. He also claims that Bhutto was in favour of an Iran-Pakistan confederation but was “frightened” into not pursuing it by a “mullah” in his cabinet.
Since the only “mullah” in his cabinet was Niazi (who was far more anti-Mullah than Bhutto turned out to be), this can only be called another unsubstantiated charge against a man who cannot defend himself. Malik also suggests that it was Bhutto who had Hayat Muhammad Khan Sherpao killed. This is yet another unsubstantiated charge.
Malik’s book contains three valuable documents: Yahya’s deposition before the Hamoodur Rehman Commission, the statement by Capt Saeed Akhtar Malik, son of Gen. Akhtar Malik, to the special tribunal constituted by Bhutto to hear the Attock conspiracy case, and the letter written to service chiefs by Air Marshal Asghar Khan in 1977 asking them to disobey Bhutto’s “illegal” orders and not put down the PNA-led agitation.
The three texts do not appear as appendices but, most annoyingly, as part of the narrative. Anyone who has not read Yahya’s or Saeed Akhtar Malik’s depositions, needs to do so. Yahya claims in his defence that his orders to attack India were disregarded. Had they been carried out, Pakistan would have made large territorial gains and thus been in a strong bargaining position with India. Although it is the norm now to blacken Yahya Khan’s name, it is a fact that what he said was correct.
Saeed Akhtar Malik’s stirring words to the court, headed by Gen Zia-ul-Haq, the man who, ironically, was to overthrow Zulfikar Ali Bhutto four years later, deserve to be quoted. “Morally a bankrupt army, ill-trained and ill-led, we in uniform are the men responsible for one of the biggest betrayals in history . We have promptly blamed all and sundry for this farce which we call ‘war’, and have regained our composure with remarkable resilience. Such somersaults of equanimity can only be performed by evil, depraved, snivelling little men.”
A few lines from Asghar Khan’s letter should remind those who have forgotten that he was not uninvolved in the conspiracy that gave us eleven years of martial law. Writes the Air Marshal, “As men of honour, it is your duty and the call of duty in these trying circumstances is not the blind obedience of unlawful commands. There comes a time in the lives of nations when each man has to ask himself whether he is doing the right thing. For you that time has come. Answer this call honestly and save Pakistan. God be with you.” Whether God was with Zia-ul-Haq or not, a cabal of Generals certainly was.
Malik writes that “it was the American scheme to get rid of Bhutto to meet the demands of the ensuing changes in the region”. What those changes were, he does not say. According to him, Bhutto fell because he refused to heed Kissinger’s warning on Pakistan’s nuclear programme. Bhutto, he writes, “could never imagine perhaps that Zia had been chosen to play the role of Brutus and carry out the American scheme using the PNA as the cat’s paw”. Assuming that Malik is right, then it is logical that the American “nominee” Gen Zia would have scrapped or at least halted the nuclear programme. How will the author explain that it was under Zia that the bomb came to be made.
Writer’s email: khasan2@cox.net
The curtain rises: uncovered conspiracies in Pakistan, Afghanistan
By Murtaza Malik
Royal Book Company, BG-5, Rex Centre Basement, Zaibunnisa Street, Karachi-74400
Tel: 021-568 4244
Email:
royalbook@hotmail.com
185pp. Rs595
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