| Daily Times - Site Edition | Friday, October 08, 2004 |
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SECOND OPINION: The kind of generals we love —Khaled Ahmed’s Urdu Press Review
Gemal Nasser was defeated but millions came to his funeral in Cairo because he had defied the world. It did not matter that he had divided the Islamic world (Beg versus Gul!) and damaged the interest of the Egyptian state, which simply boosted Israel at the cost of the Arabs
There is something wrong in the way we educate ourselves about our state. This indoctrination stands in the way of the interest of the state, which is never actually linked to our nationalism but to the pragmatic needs of the state. We love the generals who want to fight the superior enemy for honour but we hate the generals who guard the interest of the state. It is called lait gayay (prostration) in today’s parlance.
Writing in Nawa-e-Waqt (July 25, 2004) magazine, Major (Retd) Amir Afzal stated that he had written one book on the traitors of Tashkent and the other on the traitors who betrayed East Pakistan, the last one for the GHQ. The GHQ was not publishing it. He wanted to meet army chief Asif Nawaz but he avoided him and instead toured Bangladesh. Asif Nawaz’s uncle Col Sultan Ali Shah had admitted in his book that he had obeyed the British and benefited the Hindus but not done much for Muslims in 1947. Asif Nawaz, too, was obeying the Americans and not taking advantage of the wisdom (tadabbur) of Hameed Gul whom he had in fact dubbed an enemy.
Asif Nawaz was a realist and therefore more interested in safeguarding the interest of the state. Aslam Beg was sold on nationalist rhetoric and fashioned his worldview on falsehoods that can only be acceptable in an environment charged with nationalist emotion. It doesn’t matter if he is proved wrong again and again. He touches a chord in us. There are two ways you can do that. Do it in a secular way and you have most of the liberals with you. Do it with religion and you have the masses with you. Beg is a secular big mouth; Hameed Gul is a jihadi big mouth. Not even defeat will discredit them. Gemal Nasser was defeated in war but millions came to his funeral in Cairo because he had defied the world. It did not matter that he had divided the Islamic world (Beg versus Gul!) and damaged the interest of the Egyptian state, which simply boosted Israel at the cost of the Arabs.
Writing in daily Pakistan magazine (July 25, 2004) Lt-Col (Retd) Ghulam Jilani Khan stated that English was a great obstacle in the career of bright officers in Pakistan Army who came mostly from the middle class and Urdu-medium schools. They did not know English while, in the army, promotion depended a lot on knowledge of English. The truth was that modern military strategy simply could not be expressed in Urdu. But in ancient times military leaders like Chingiz Khan and Hulegu Khan formed their strategies in their own language.
The message is frightening. Our generals are subliminally required to be like the two barbarians and their barbarism is linked to their being unilingual. Urdu is the language of our nationalism and it saves us from being exposed to too much knowledge. If you have knowledge you will not go to war. Some army personnel lent a hand to Amjad Farooqi in his attempt to kill President Musharraf because the army has a problem with English. The clerics are rampant because they are illiterate in English. To save Pakistan, the army must be better grounded in the English language. Pakistan needs to be pragmatic and use great subterfuge in warding off the edicts of nationalism in order to survive.
Quoted in Jang (July 30, 2004) Supreme Court Bar Association president Tariq Mehmood said that President Musharraf had acted in violation of the Judges Case verdict (1997) in promoting non-deserving judges to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice of the Peshawar High Court Justice Shakirullah Jan, Lahore High Court’s Justice Tasadduq Hussain Jilani and Justice M Javed Buttar were elevated but the senior-most judge, the chief justice of the Lahore High Court, was allowed to remain in place. Mr Tariq Mehmood said that Lahore High Court chief justice was retained there because the Chaudhry Brothers wanted him there.
The Judges’ Case verdict was flouted first by Nawaz Sharif, then by the present government. Was the verdict defective? Justice (Retd) Ajmal Mian who was chief justice of Pakistan when the verdict began to be flouted thinks in his book A Judge Speaks Out that there were two versions of the Judges’ Case verdicts, his, which was written on time, and that of chief justice Sajjad Ali Shah, which was written later. The latter sent his judgment for signing to the bench, so late that one judge out of it had already retired, thus requiring a retrial. Justice Manzoor Hussain Sial, who had retired on March 24, 1996, signed the judgment on April 3, 1996, two weeks after retirement! In short, it was a mistrial.
Writing in Jang (July 31, 2004) Irshad Haqqani asked why was the government not declaring that it would not send troops to Iraq. It had done the right thing by going along with the American policy on Afghanistan because the Taliban were not willing to listen to it. In any case if Pakistan had supported the Taliban against the US it would have suffered together with Afghanistan. That decision was right but why should Pakistan go along with the US on Iraq after abstaining from the vote at the UN Security Council? It should declare now that it was not going to send troops to Iraq.
Should Pakistan retain the option of sending out troops and decide when the time comes? Diplomacy suggests that Pakistan should retain the option. It has said no to sending out troops but retains the option. The terrorists belong to no convention. They have total flexibility of tactic. Why should Pakistan line up with someone it doesn’t even know? What if Zerqavi accepts but Muqtada al Sadr doesn’t? At present Pakistan rejects the request of America and that should satisfy whoever it is that is killing Pakistanis in Iraq. Somewhere down the line it might start mattering to the terrorists that Pakistan retains the option of sending troops. *