Under siege

“They wanted spring, of course they wanted it, more than anything. They longed for sun with every pore of their skin. But, spring hurts. If spring can come, if things can be different, how can you bear when your existence has been?” H elen Dunmore, ‘The Siege’ Today is day 8 of the siege of Islamabad. For all these days since it started, there have not been more than five-hundred people at the sit-in blocking one of the main arteries for travellers going to Islamabad. Consequently, one has to virtually labour it out for hours to get to where one may be headed to, within Islamabad, into Islamabad and out of Islamabad. But the government is unmoved. Why? Does it lack the police and rangers power who are to be entrusted to put an end to this drama, orchestrated by a motley crowd not exceeding five-hundred? Does it not have the wherewithal or the strategy to handle this crisis? Or, does it not have the will to do so? Or, does it not want to do so, the last being the most appropriate conclusion that one is inclined to draw seeing the way the government has looked the other way through all these days that members of the militant outfit have turned Faizabad crossing into their living quarters. But, why is it that the government may not want to do something which falls within the domain of its basic responsibility towards the people of the city, particularly when it has started getting the flak from all sides? One guess would be that, according to the government’s appraisal, the elections could be around the corner. Thus, having nurtured and benefitted from close relations with the terror outfits through years, the ruling party may be looking at the prospect of cashing in on the new-found electoral popularity of Labaik Ya Rasool Allah which is staging the protest, as evidenced in some recent by-elections. This impression gets further accentuated by the perception that action against one such militant outfit may be construed as action against the entire repertoire of such organisations. So, the government may feel that it stands to lose political mileage by initiating an operation of this kind. What does this reflect and where does that take us? When a sitting government is so palpably unable, or unwilling, to free the capital of this prolonged siege at the hands of a militant organisation which has been commissioned to celebrate the murder of the former governor of Punjab, and whose proponents have constructed a monstrous mausoleum in memory of Qadri, the murderer – doesn’t this automatically nullify its writ and its right to continue ruling the country, this being in addition to so many other reasons driving one to the same conclusion? But there is yet another aspect to the gruesome drama. There is a discreet propaganda being orchestrated that, in actual effect, it is the military which is responsible for the congregation, and that the government is helpless in moving against the protestors. Many people whom I have met, and who have some or the other link with one or the other echelon of the government, concede that a nefarious attempt is ongoing to spread such-like impression which is being manipulated from the highest in the government ranks – particularly the ones who are not seen as managing the country these days. Pakistan is just beginning to come out of a huge crisis – a crisis partly of its own making and partly manufactured by the countries it has not been able to manage its relations with. I have written on the subject in this paper on November 14 under the title “Travelling Far, Dreaming Beyond”. It is by now an acknowledged fact that Pakistan military has done more in combating and eliminating a variety of terror networks than any other military in the world, as was demonstrated to us during a trip that we undertook to North Waziristan. We saw a virtual transformation that is taking place in that region undertaken and overseen by the military. The political arm of the state is nowhere to be seen – not because the military does not want it to take over, but because – and in spite of the military’s urgings – it does not want to. There, too, the lingering impression that is being assiduously created is that it is not being given the space that belongs to it. Or, in other words, the military has usurped this space. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The military has repeatedly insisted on a political role for sustaining the successes that it has commandeered. There is no other option, there cannot be. The military cannot stay in the cleared areas to perpetuity. The areas have to be brought back to normalcy like other parts of the country so that the displaced people could return to their homes and begin to live a normal life. The government’s resistance to bringing normalcy to the country is reflected in yet another domain of governance. The FATA reforms committee submitted its report more than a year ago recommending that the area should be mainstreamed with the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. The proposal was approved by the cabinet. Virtually all political parties, with any standing in the province, and from all sides of the divide, have supported the recommendation. They have been calling upon the government to implement the proposal without any delay. But, the government has been stalling it for over one year now. This is so because one of its allied parties in the government – Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (F) – is opposed to it. This party has no representation in FATA, but wants to make use of this opportunity to create a level of support. The government refusing to mainstream FATA is the worst that it can do in terms of preferring political expediency over national interest. Now compare this to the interior minister’s fuming and frothing on the occasion of the Rangers guarding the accountability court during a hearing of the former ruling family. One thought that he may have to be carried to the hospital – such was the level of his anger and venom. He claimed that this was a direct challenge to his authority as also the writ of the elected government. Now, where has the writ of the government been hiding over the last eight days? And when is he getting into the act of having these five-hundred odd people cleared from the main artery connecting Rawalpindi with the capital city? It may not happen over the next few days, even a few weeks, not because the government can’t do so, but because it does not want to do so. It wants to manipulate the occasion to cast aspersions on the role of the military which it considers is behind the current sufferings of the Sharif family. That is not selling. But, in the process, it is the government that, in addition to being the most corrupt dispensation in the history of the country, is also earning the scorn and ridicule of the people who continue to suffer enormously on a daily basis. And Islamabad remains under siege! Published in Daily Times, November 15th 2017.