Kamran Shafi

The writer is a retired army officer and a freelance columnist

kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk

General Musharraf has given a ringing call to the law-enforcing agencies (did I say "law-enforcing"? Makes you want to laugh, eh, for these "agencies" do everything but enforce the law) to ensure that no one is allowed to violate the "writ of the government", at what is known in our country as "a high level meeting". Why we apply high sounding epithets to meetings of our officials I just don't know. I mean if the President is meeting with his Interior Minister, the Governors of the Provinces, and his cabinet, the meeting has to be high level, what? I mean if President Bush meets with his Homeland Security Council - an upshot of the New York Madness and which is gradually making life more difficult for everyone in this country, not only those who look Asian, but 'white' Americans too - it is jolly well a "high level" meeting. The US President's spokes-people don't go about briefing the media as to the meeting's importance (and height).

Right then, the following were the rather many instances in the past week in which the State of Pakistan, indeed it's military government failed to apply it's writ. Our guests, Afghan refugees, damaged 128 kilometres of the Quetta-Chaman railway line, and destroyed Kuchlak Railway Station, thus not only abusing our hospitality but spitting in our faces too. Protesting on behalf of their friends, the Taliban, the Kohistanis blocked the Karakorum Highway - these are the same badmashes who invaded a Gilgit village and killed hundreds of people including women and children, and set fire to their homes and cattle towards the end of the monstrous Zia's period of the "Islamisation of Pakistan" - for days on end, and made the government come to their "shoora" whatever that is, on it's knees to "negotiate" the re-opening of that most vital road. Fifteen Pakistani Christians, women and little children among them, were murdered in cold blood as they worshipped in their church in the once peaceful city of Bahawalpur. And our Eminencies once again led the ignorant in destructive marches all across the Land of the Pure.

Some writ, some application. How many times have we heard our General say what he has said one more time? I should think at least ten times, or is it twenty? He has said it every time gunmen of the opposing sect, or caste, or creed, or religion have murdered people. He said it when Namazis were killed in a mosque in Karachi; he said it when Shia doctors were murdered in Karachi; he said it when religious scholars across the sectarian divide were gunned down in three cities, one after the other, not too long ago. What in heaven's name will it take for the State's Writ to be applied? Isn't it time that the General took out his own swagger stick and applied it on the so-called keepers of our law and order? I have noticed he does not carry a swagger stick most times - isn't it time that he started to? Danda Pir Ae Mushtandian Naan as I have said before, my dear General, there is no way anything is going to move without that. Your appointees are secure in the knowledge that you simply will not take action against them, which is why they are not obligated to make the hard choice and take the law-breakers by the throat. They will let matters ride, for you are the one in the firing line, not them.

Here is what should be done (sorry Charlie, and your aunt) the next time any of the above happens, as has been said in our press in recent days: Afghans who destroy Pakistani property, indeed even throw rocks at passing vehicles, should be put into trucks, taken to the border and pushed into Afghanistan; exact same for the Eminencies and their bus-burners - let them go and fight shoulder to shoulder with the Taliban, not destroy whatever is left of our poor country. As to the poor Christians' ghastly murder, the local police thanedar should be strung upside down - he surely knows who the murderers are: our police, because it is corrupt to a fault knows all, for that is how it makes money. And as for the Kohistanis, or anyone else who dares to disrupt our lines of communication, which includes the telephone network, the stiffest action should be taken - they must learn that their very lives are at risk if they so much as look at Pakistan's infrastructure with a bad eye.

Here, a question for the Eminencies: Your Holinesses, what does the word "American" mean to you? When you say "Death to Americans", what precisely do you mean? Does the word "American" conjure up images of white, blue-eyed people only - Caucasians, in other words? My son just works here, he is a Pakistani; but Qazi Hussain Ahmed's grandson is an American, as are millions of Mexicans, Guatemalans, Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, you name it, people from across the colour spectrum, people from Gujrat and Faisalabad, Pakistan. Do the Jama'at's chanters of slogans get what I mean? Does Qazi Sahib get it? On another plane, it would be instructive for these hooligans to be told just what the demography of America really is. A good starting point would be the New York Times' "Portraits of Grief", the one-page that the newspaper has published every day since the Madness, and which lists the names and photographs of those who were lost. But what would Yahoos who kill others only because they belong to another faith, understand anything at all of what I am saying?

In an article to appear in the New Yorker magazine on November 5th, Seymour Hersh, the journalist who broke the My Lai massacre story during the Vietnam War, and last year accused US General Barry McCaffrey and his 15th Infantry Division of killing many hundreds of retreating Iraqi soldiers, is saying that the Americans are putting together a force of commando troops to go in to Pakistan and "disarm" our bums, if there is any danger that they may fall into the hands of "terrorists". Those Israeli Special Forces personnel who went into Entebbe, Uganda, and rescued the hostages aboard an El Al airliner that had landed there are training this force, according to Hersh. Rather far-fetched, I should have thought, for the trainers should surely be in their late-sixties by now!

Anyway, that is not the point. If Hersh is even half-right, the point is that this is what our born-again "ally" thinks of us, and our unstable state. And why should it not when it is widely reported that certain fundos who were big noises in our nuclear programme, are now the Taliban's greatest supporters. Furthermore, it just does not do for our spokesmen to deny the fact that one of them is under arrest by saying: "he is in hospital". Pat came the reply from the man's family in a letter to our General himself to the effect that it was no good the government "telling lies" when the man was under arrest, mayhap in a hospital.

So then, the original destroyer of Kabul, Engineer Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has crawled out of the woodwork once again. His latest beauty (we haven't forgotten the time when he was our ISI's blue-eyed boy, his compact with the great warrior Akhtar Abdul Rehman, and his connections with the heroin trade) is that "Zahir Shah has lost the capability to judge what is right and what is wrong." Beautiful. As if Gulbuddin always did the right thing when he presided over Afghanistan's demise. Alarmingly, this man's name is being bandied about as a possible candidate to head the next Afghan government. Have we fed this to the Americans? Does this man still have contacts within the powerful innards of the ISI? In an earlier piece, I had suggested to our General to clean out the ISI of all its rogue elements. This is now of the utmost import if we are not to repeat the Taliban disaster. May I further suggest that if the General is coming to New York for the UNGA, that he stop in Rome and call on King Zahir Shah. There is no harm, for after all the King is still the best bet, and our General's call on him will not only give Zahir Shah the respect he deserves, it will dampen the euphoria of the Northern Alliance, another bunch of thugs. The euphoria, do I have to add, is growing by the day ever since the Americans began to carpet-bomb the Taliban who are sure to fold up sooner rather than later.