One headline in an English newspaper on Saturday said: “Pak army needs time for introspection: US”. It relates to a statement by Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. He told a Pentagon press conference on Thursday that the Osama bin Laden raid had caused much consternation among the Pakistani leadership and they must be given time to work through it.
Surely, the Abbottabad operation had raised questions that need to be patiently explored by our military and civilian leadership. And it might take some time. But what have we been doing all these years when we have continued to suffer terrible disasters and setbacks? Haven’t we had enough time to work through our crises and set our directions right?
A few things were fairly obvious at the very outset. For instance, we dutifully keep harping on the pronouncements of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, including his address on August 11, 1947. There should have been little doubt about our national priorities, such as law and order and social justice. Yes, we became obsessive about the kind of security that is identified with the military. That it finally led us to the ignominy of December 16, 1972, is something we were not able to work through in more than 38 years.
Besides, we don’t just have to work through the US incursion into Pakistan’s territory without any interception or the shocking revelation that Osama was living in a conspicuous site in a garrison town. If we choose to begin with May of this year, there was also the attack, this time by possibly home-grown militants, on the Mehran base in Karachi. Then, we were shaken by the brutal torture and murder of investigative reporter Saleem Shahzad in circumstances that have raised some very disturbing thoughts.
June has not been any less merciful. The painful memory of how an unarmed man was hunted and killed like an animal in a public place in Karachi by a group of Rangers is bound to linger in our troubled minds for a long time. This incident alone could serve to show what we have made of Pakistan. Yet, it happened soon after the Kharotabad killings in the wilderness that Balochistan has become. Who is working through this evidence that we, so proud of our nuclear capability, are still partly living in medieval times?
Incidentally, the killing in Karachi and the outrage in Kharotabad could have gone down as feats of daring by our paramilitary forces in the annals of official press releases. After all, you do need to resort to violence in dealing with an armed robber or dangerous foreign militants. In the case of the Karachi killing, an FIR had already been registered and information relayed to the media that an armed criminal had died in a police encounter. As an aside, do consider the credibility of clarifications that the army authorities have issued about suspected ISI involvement in Saleem Shahzad’s murder.
Now that a very graphic, visual account is available of the Kharotabad and Karachi killings, the impression being given is that particular individuals themselves should be held accountable for their extra-judicial conduct. It took suo moto action on the part of the chief justice of the Supreme Court to force the ouster – in fact, a transfer – of the heads of the Sindh Rangers and the police. Otherwise, our leaders who wield authority have no inkling of what professional integrity or moral responsibility is all about.
It was also in June (and we still have more than 10 days left in this month) that a jirga of a village in Haripur district ordered that a 50-year-old woman be stripped and paraded through the streets. Her crime was that her son was found guilty (by the same jirga) of raping the wife of an influential person of the village. So, all those campaigns and the brave struggle of Mukhtaran Mai have not made much impact? What is the drift when it comes to social change? This instance of how justice is dispensed in our tribal and feudal environment is also something we should be working through.
I need to desist from citing more illustrations of how our society has effectively been derailed. I am ignoring another round of target killings in Karachi and the murders that have taken place in Balochistan. An Olympian boxer was gunned down in Quetta on Thursday. I have had a cursory look at what has happened since May 2 this year. But the year itself began ominously as Salmaan Taseer was assassinated by his own guard on the fourth day of 2011 – a crime that may also serve as a parable for our times.
Coming back to the beginning of this piece, what kind of introspection is the Pakistan army capable of? Does it have the necessary intellectual and moral resources to be able to do that? For that matter, the civilian leadership seems even less equipped to indulge in any meaningful contemplation of the deepening crisis of Pakistan.
I am reminded of an expression – “the dark night of the soul” – that is used to describe a phase in a person’s spiritual life marked by a sense of loneliness and desolation. I see this as an appropriate metaphor for the present state of Pakistan. Our society confronts a breakdown, emotionally and spiritually. The most tragic aspect of our many and manifold disasters is that our collective religiosity, so brazenly flouted, has led us to this state of moral and spiritual destitution. The more we invoke religion, the more we tend to be irreligious in terms of our character and integrity.
We live in a society in which honest and upright individuals, those who have the courage of their convictions, are totally marginalised. Our system is infected with corruption, lawlessness and deceit. So, in the same way that we are now realising the imperative of looking at the role that the military has played, do we not need to question the validity of investing religion in our polity? What is this Islamic Republic in the context of its somewhat pagan reality?
In a spiritual sense, then, we need a new awakening. We need to change and to become, to begin with, more civilised. The very ability of Pakistan’s statecraft to function properly is in doubt. Just consider how our leadership is avoiding any meaningful communication with the people in a situation in which they need emergency relief, emotional support and reassurance. Most significantly, the people need to believe in the survival of their country.
In an account of his own emotional breakdown, F Scott Fitzgerald said: “In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning”. We, in Pakistan, seem to have been trapped in that ungodly hour – debacle after debacle.
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