The war games going on in that white elephant called the National Defence College - one look at the building will confirm this view - are the second to be conducted this summer. These games are an in-house exercise where imposing generals display their higher military skills to each other. The first games were conducted against that large population of lambs otherwise known as the people of Pakistan.
Whatever the outcome of the present war games, the first were a resounding success from the government's point of view. The lambs knocked out in the first round and now lying helpless and exhausted before the constitutional machinations of that strange body called the National Reconstruction Bureau.
Even the bleating of the lambs, earlier a loud chorus, has subsided in the face of the realization that there is no point in struggling against the inevitable. What's that forest of hoofs in the far distance? The lambs raising their front legs in abject surrender. This is the most complete military victory any senior general now serving will ever have won.
As always in the business of compromise and capitulation, Punjabi mutton has distinguished itself above all other varieties. Most of the quislings roped in for the military's higher purposes are from this proud province - the Q League headed by Mian Azhar and my friend Chaudry Shujaat Hussain packed with serious-looking Punjabis. Used and abused these past two and a half years, their enthusiasm has still not flagged: even as chopped and barbecued mutton they are hoping to ride to the military's high table.
The patience of the Q League is all the more remarkable given the wholesale slaughter of so many of its stalwarts at the hands of the graduation clause. Less steadfast loyalists would have hurled the charge of betrayal at their military patrons. But not the flag-bearers of the Q Leaguers who are guided by a sturdier philosophy: those who slip in the race and are trampled underfoot deserve to be left to their own devices even as the rest of the mounted cavalry gallops on. In a ruthless race such as this woe betide the slipshod rider.
My heart goes to my Chakwal colleague, Lt Gen Majeed Malik, MNA since 1985, who for all the alacrity he showed in defecting to the Q League has also been hit hard on the head by the graduation clause. To my dismay, however, I find that my feelings of remorse are not shared by most Chakwalis. The last I heard of it some of them were thinking of sending a prayer of thanks to Gen Musharraf that even if he has done nothing else, he has at least rid them of Gen Majeed Malik.
Strange are the ways of fate. Who would have thought there might be some good in Gen Naqvi's constitutional schema after all? (If the reader is confused with the names of so many generals I can sympathize with him. But it is not my fault if we are such a martial race.)
Rana Shaukat Mehmood, formerly a PPP luminary and now lost somewhere in the political wilds, once told me that prior to the Shimla Conference of 1972, Mr Bhutto called a meeting of the PPP's MNAs and MPAs from Punjab. He wanted to know their opinion about the forthcoming talks with Mrs Indira Gandhi. Rana Shaukat tells me that my father, then an MNA, got up to say that the faces before him would bow and scrape before Mrs Gandhi should she enter Lahore on a tank. So he need not bother with their opinions and should do what he thought best. And whatever he did, these people would applaud him.
As a Punjabi myself I have no qualms in saying that Punjab again is living up to its traditions. Its political elite has never failed a military strongman before. In the shape of the desperadoes assembled in the Q League it is trying not to fail Gen Musharraf.
The problem, however, is not with the elite. It is with the sheep who constitute the rest of the people. Resigned to slaughter they may be but they are still in no mood to dance to the piper's tunes being played to them. This is the central problem facing the military government: how to inject some enthusiasm into the charade being planned in the name of the October elections.
Should all hope then be lost? Is there nothing to be done? Hope resides in the very nature of a general election: the number of sheep is too large for easy manipulation. This precisely is what is disturbing the nightly rest of the military's war-gamers. Handing down dictation to the patriots of the Q League is one thing, expecting the voters to follow suit quite another. And however much you queer the pitch, the outcome still remains uncertain. This is one reason why the military mind does not take readily to the political field. The certainties of the parade ground are so much more soothing.
Potential for hope also exists in the role of the two major parties: the PPP and the Nawaz League. Provided they get their act together and can show the statesmanship they never did when in power, they could still throw a spanner into the best-laid military plans.
The requirement is simple: a formula for seat adjustments on the pattern of that already initiated in the Frontier. Where the PPP is strong the Nawaz League should support it, where a candidate of the Nawaz League looks the likelier winner the PPP should withdraw and offer support. In this formula and in this alone lies the survival and continued relevance of both the parties. Otherwise the military steamroller, with Punjab's famous loyalists riding the baggage train, will flatten everything.
At stake, however, is not just the survival of the two larger parties but the very direction of the Pakistani state. With a wink and a nod from the United States, what Pakistan is heading for is a Hosni Mubarak-style or Suharto type of military-cum-civilian dispensation. The US likes pliant regimes and the one now holding the Pakistani flag has been more pliant than most.
The US thus has a vested interest in the stability of this regime, a purpose it hopes can be achieved when this regime adopts a democratic veneer and facade. This is the purpose of the October elections. Central to the political war games being played with the nation is the emergence of a dummy parliament. There should be no doubts on this score.
All the more reason then to be up and about. The October elections will be a seminal affair and will decide whether the people of Pakistan are content to stay as lambs or they can take their future into their own hands. Can the two parties rise to the occasion? Can they forge a larger alliance which could even include the Beards of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal? Not an impossible task provided Bhutto and Sharif downplay personal ambition and focus on the larger horizon, something that until now has proved singularly beyond their grasp.
Two days ago in Islamabad the newly-arrived head of USAID was saying that in future his agency, apart from other things, would help in imparting training to office-bearers of political parties. "Our mission," he said, " is helping political parties to develop capacity and to train new legislatures to do a better job." The cheek of this statement is mind-boggling but then when you give someone a free hand to meddle in your affairs this is what you get.
I am also happy to report that last week GOC 6 Armour Division, Maj Gen Hamid Ali, was in Chakwal interviewing a clutch of political hopefuls. Under the Musharraf order Chakwal's fate seems closely entwined with that of this crack formation. Last year the then GOC Israr Ghumman took a keen interest in the Nazim elections.
After completing his inquiries and interviews he announced who the government-backed candidate would be. Now his successor seems to have his eyes all set on the parliamentary elections. It is reassuring to know that apart from their professional duties, our guardians are also taking their civic responsibilities seriously.