By Brig® Mehboob Qadir
Email:clay.potter@hotmail.com
(Part 1)
Loch Ness is a lake in Scotland where in 1933 a dinosaur was reportedly sighted and widely publicized. Dinosaurs belonged to a family of mammoth animals of the Jurassic age which romped over land, swam in the seas millions of years ago consuming huge amounts of food, devouring each other,perishing and destroying.Elephants, alligators and whales can be considered their poorer and far smaller successors. The one reportedly seen in the Scotland’s lake came to be called as the Loch Ness Monster. Scottish monster was mythical but Loch Ness Pakistan’s monsters mainly sighted after 1970 are real, present and sighted daily.Strangely most of the sightings were done by the army and unlike the Loch Ness Monster our sightings were not misidentification of some inanimate objects but were real who eventually devoured their own benefactors.By no means the count is comprehensive but an attempt to identify and focus on the main ones.
Lets recount who discovered whom? FM Ayub Khan discovered ZA Bhutto,General Zia ul Haq discovered Nawaz Sharif,General Bajwa Shehbaz Sharif and the trophy goes to General Asim for not only discovering a shoal of triple sea serpents ; Zardari, Shehbaz Sharif and Maryam Nawaz but also feeding,protecting and projecting them.This is a role reversal from seeking indemnity as before to patronizing as proteges, and may be considered as a new normal for the foreseeable future.Experience shows that except dynastic kingdoms such arrangements do not normally last long in structured democracies. We have late President Musharraf’s ouster from presidency as an objective lesson.
Now then all this has not been incidental or freaks but part of a considered game plan.Despite our well known solemn declarations of firm faith in civilian supremacy GHQ disliked to be fully subservient to ill clad,native accented and poorly shaped elected politicians.So it contrived to alienate and eject political leaders of substance like Hussain Shaheed Suharwardi, Shaikh Mujeeb, Wali Khan and GM Syed after Qaid e Azam, Liaquat Ali Khan and Maulvi Tameezud Din were gone.Most of them were towering leaders during Pakistan Movement.Simultaneously it kept positioning itself as a guarantor and finally the source of state power albeit for the pliant politicians.The price in professionalism, discipline and credibility of its word and action which the army paid for this fancywork of the few has been horrendous.That we will discuss subsequently.
An inconvenient pebble in the shoe remained to be dealt with in this hunky dory arrangement.It was the loud mouthed maulanas of different descriptions who wanted their share of the pie by raising the bogey of an archaic Islamic state in the country as against an inclusive, egalitarian and democratic set up.They were able to scuttle our first draft constitution prepared by late Liaquat Ali Khan,such was their nuisance value.Political mullah was an irritant in the emerging scheme of power so ways were devised to keep him on the side of the power wielders of the day and they are there eversince.This arrangement turned out to be happily workable and a troika of military, politicians and bureaucracy with mullah as junior partner came into being at the pain and cost of a progressive, democratic Pakistan and its people.
When all seems to have been done and dusted then why this rigmarole of every time creating a civilian rule façade?Possible reasons could be many. Basically the country came into being by the force of a popular democratic movement where people of Pakistan made great contributions and also suffered immensely.The armed forces had no role in the creation of Pakistan.Therefore there has always existed a resilient street resistance to the dictatorial govenance.Global political sentiment had decisively moved away from dynastic, autocratic or military rule in the countries of the world.Finally every military take over led to an economic and political mess more or less towards its end. Therefore perforce ramshackle elections and a lame duck democracy.That means a full scale transfer of power never took place nor was intended or allowed if attempted .Those politicians who were intrepid enough to stretch their wings paid dearly with long jail terms, persecution and even with life.
Since military had no historic or constitutional locus standi to intervene in the country’s political dispensation, the military Voltaires and Bismarcks searched for a sure hatchet to wield and brilliantly dug out not one but four.They discovered national security and patriotism as incontrovertible tools of intervention and have monopolized both.1948 Kashmir liberation war was a godsend to pick up as issue mainly to overcome the yawning deficiency of inability to participate in the struggle for the creation of Pakistan.It was stitched with the national security and monopolized this too.Finally ‘ideological frontiers’ aka Ideology of Pakistan too was added to the backpack.As we can see all the four were honed into sharp and potent weapons of intervention and eventually have become the GHQ defined fundamentals for state policy formulation including foreign policy. Perceived deviations from anyone of these have seen civilian governments being pressurized and unceremoniously packed off whether directly or through a contrived constitutional or judicial manoeuvre.
You may have noticed that this game of thrones was invariably played above the clouds to the sad exclusion of the people that were to be ruled.This had regrettable consequences leading to the degeneration of governance and more for the people themselves who were gradually reduced to a mass of disconnected, vulnerable and demoralized men and women busy in the base struggles to survive, snatch and reproduce regardless of moral, legal and ethical considerations in most cases.That is why our intellectual landscape is so barren;just one Nobel laureate and hardly any scientific inventions to show.It should be considered a miracle of sorts that our infertile society was still able to produce writers, artists, painters, architects, economists and nuclear scientists of repute in a choking atmosphere of moral and cerebral suffocation.
(Part2)
A major upshot of this political carpentry has been the devastation of decision making process at the national level.Over the years a flurry of ill-considered decisions were taken which cost the nation materially, politically and morally very dearly.Starting from Indus Basin Water Treaty to the ill fought Indo Pak wars, participation in the US wars in Afghanistan and helping emergence of Taliban including OBL’s last hideout in the country, overdependence on the escalating nuclear arsenal which is not a war fighting weapon,ill-fated denouncement of President Putin’s military response against Ukraine’s flagrant proxy war and in that undermining own prime minister locally and before the US,poor focus on the CPEC’s economic and strategic benefits thereby pushing disillusioned China to nearly relocate its effort via Afghanistan and Iran,- destruction of productive economy into loan based economy and creating opportunities for skimming off kickbacks, regrettable vulgarization of Rangers, Frontier Corps(FC) and razor sharp Frontier Constabulary into a mirror image of our notorious Punjab Police.A decade or two ago this troika expanded into a five fold partnership adding media Czars and mullahs as equal partners.The latest to join this trade union of plunder is our higher judiciary ably ushered in by ex CJ Qazi Faiz Issa. Last but not the least the brazen fudging of results of February 24 general elections to foist a coterie of defeated power seekers,talented kinsmen and fan-tailers into power setting up a toxic cascade of political instability in the country.The list is long and painfully can go on and on for pages.
As may be seen the scarlet thread of this profitable brickwork is to always partner with meek political leadership to extract indemnity for past excesses and obtain future concessions mainly in budget allocations, force expansions, lucrative in service and post-retirement placements and favorable business ventures.Latest was DHA Islamabad which comprises 10,000 kanals of prime land and formation of a supra cabinet like SIFC which redirects already limited resources to where directed, millions of acres of farmland whose proposed six new irrigation canals has whipped up a controversy which may overtake the one which Kalabagh Dam proposal did many decades ago.
There seems no end to this economic black hole sucking in national resources albeit under ever lengthening shadows of military corporate sharking and rising popular disenchantment with the expanding overreach. Apparently at the cost of national defense as the persistent sentiment goes.Most recent has been the infamous international mineral resources investment conference held under the auspices of SIFC as a cover to acquire sole or monopoly rights over the country’s lucrative strategic minerals this time through legislation.Except KP remaining provinces including GB and AJK have meekly submitted. However KP shows strange reactions whose govt has tabled a copious bill in the provincial assembly but also plays to the gallery showing resentment over the proposed federal takeover. Then there is the ever expanding Fauji Foundation business empire which probably is the largest in the country.What started off with Pakistan Defence Ministry’s share of the funds granted by the British Indian Government has expanded into multi-billion rupee businesses conglomerate.
Earnings from Fauji Foundation businesses and other sources of income generation in various garrison towns run into billions which are reportedly not fully visible on AG/FBR radar.In a conservative estimate income from Army run/owned projects in Lahore including the Fortress Stadium alone is possibly rupees 20 billion or thereabouts in a year.It is believed that one of the reasons Imran Khan fell from favor before the VoNC was that he was becoming too nosy about the Army’s cache of income and its disposal.
It is not purely for altruistic reasons that DHA’s keep coming up in almost every garrison town.This is basically monetizing Army’s hard earned credibility in years of the yore, making mountains of money in the process.Come to think of it,we have made tons of money from businesses and real estate,added enormous value to our properties but lost our professional prestige in the pursuit. Not a very good bargain really but then it is a matter of perceptions and the prism one is looking at.Imagine a retired major general, so well provided for by the army and extended all the privileges and respect in service, becomes a property dealer among the riff raffs of the real estate trade.There are desirable financial returns but the self respect.What happens when his ex flag staff house Adm JCO(Subedar) walks in to tell him that the plot he sold to his son was a scam?
Lets face it.Serious aspersions continue to be cast on our ever expanding businesses , acquisition of land for mass agriculture and development of DHAs and involvement of serving officers in their management.There is a full scale outfit in GHQ for central supervision of DHAs and Askari housings.Yet another has been put together for the agricultural lands management and logically next on the anvil will be for handling mines and minerals affairs.Each of these is a full time work and outside the military’s compass eating into our primary task.Our day is not that of 48 hours.It can be seen with sufficient clarity that our venerable military instrument has morphed into a vast, multifaceted business corporate giant akin to an octopus like mechanism which has powerful tentacles embedded into the country’s economy, agriculture, state power and now strategic minerals.Our sister Services PAF and PN seem to have taken quite a few leaves from our hand book of business and are well on their own way too.