By Saeed A. Malik
A few days back there was mayhem in Bahria Town Karachi. A mob was seen attacking and breaking every manner of structure. There was nothing too unusual about this, especially if it is taken into account that Bahria Town administration was sitting on the money of too many people, and had not delivered to them the goods this money was advanced for. Indeed, this was one of Malik Riaz’s SOPs which has gone a long way to make him one of the richest persons in Pakistan—a Robin Hood in reverse i.e taking from the poor to feed the rich and powerful.
But there was something odd about the vandalism enacted in Bahria Town that day. The mob seemed to lack the spontaneity and passion which accompanies a grieved and enraged citizenry. There was a suspicious discipline about this mob as if their targets had been pre-set, after attacking which they seemed to withdraw in a somewhat orderly fashion, got into their buses, and left.
Throughout this drama the police looked serenely on as if they had come to witness a show. And it is this which gave the game away i.e this was quite clearly a show sponsored by the Sindh Government, with a crowd rented and brought to the site from outside. And because Malik Riaz and Zardari are such good friends, it is obvious that without Zardari being the actual puppet master this game could not have been played the way it was.
One of two things could have motivated Zardari to put on this show of strength. Either Malik Riaz may have decided to treat Zardari like he does any other Pakistani, by fudging accounts; or perhaps, for some reason Zardari decided that it was time to play a trailer of the Sindh Card to get his tail free from under a boot which was making him decidedly uncomfortable. The latter of these is the greater probability because Malik Riaz is no fool whereas the State, having been ravaged with such untrammeled abandon over the years, is now too weak to stand up even to one of its petty goons, let alone by a gangster of Zardari’s standing.
I wonder if the minders of our National Security are even conscious of the implications of each new surrender of State authority. De facto, the biggest gangsters who brought Pakistan to its knees, have already been guaranteed full immunity for their crimes against their country. Sooner or later they are bound to unite on a common platform. They have always had a unity of sorts as far as pillage of the national treasury was concerned.
But now they will have the full backing of the U.S and the West as well. That was always going to be the case, but with Imran Khan having displayed the temerity of taking a stand on the sovereignty of Pakistan and making it clear that from now on Pakistan will stand by its own interest first, one should be able to see what lies on the road ahead.
To do this it may be instructive to look in the rear view mirror to see the debris which lies strewn on the road behind us. Among this debris lie the burnt bodies of Jamie Roldos of Equador and Omar Torrijos of Panama, and mangled ones of Saddam and of Gaddafi, to name just a few. One may be absolutely certain that it would now be the cherished aim of our adversaries that this heap of bodies be crowned by that of Imran Khan.
In the era of Pax Americana a leader who stands for the interest of his own people is considered to be a rogue leader, and if he cannot be got rid of, his country is labelled a rogue state on which war in any of its forms may justifiably be visited. Just take a look at Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and Syria! I wonder if the minders of our national security are conscious of what looms ahead for us.
Even if they are half as acutely aware of this as they should be, they must immediately veer away from their present direction of micro management of petty affairs, and of deal making etc and train all their mental energies and effort to combating the fifth column rising like an ogre in Pakistan, and threatening our destiny.
Why they did not begin with this from day one may never be known to us lesser mortals. But this is the subject that most agitates most minds today, and with the passage of time has brought down the credibility of the “establishment” to a degree that would have been unimagibable just a couple of years ago. No one can understand the policy under which people directly responsible for bankrupting the country have been granted virtual immunity from prosecution, and some of the most notorious among them have even been helped by them to flee the country.
And no one is in any doubt that it is the “establishment” which is behind this policy. The canard spun to malign Imran Khan in that it is his incompetence which has resulted in the routine cock-ups bedeviling Pakistan has not been able to stick. What is much more widely believed today is that it is the establishment in cahoots with the fifth column who are actively sabotaging Imran Khan’s total commitment to accountability.
And that in this arrangement venal considerations are not absent. A very accurate measure of the respect which the “establishment” therefore enjoys among a large generality of the citizens today lies in Hamid Mir’s telling recent tirade against them. And what matches the venom of this tirade is the supine “grace” with which the “establishment” has accepted it.
If the establishment wants to recover lost ground, and mark my words this can be done almost overnight, it needs to change the direction of its exertions and follow a one point agenda of helping the government to bring Pakistan’s arch criminals to the book, so that the rule of law can finally begin to be enforced in the land. If this cannot happen, nothing that is happening at present has any positive meaning or consequence.
Salvaging Pakistan and saving it is the crying need of the hour. And if letting a criminal like Nawaz Sharif flee the country is the establishment’s idea of service to the country, they have it coming to them. And this will not take more than about two years because by that time they too would have joined the ranks of us ordinary mortals.