Cleaning up the mess

A civilian government, which doesn’t, and has never had, any say in such matters, has been thrown in the line of fire.

It was painful watching our prime minister fumble through a policy statement following the killing of the world’s most wanted man on Pakistani soil.

You see, whether the entire episode is a case of collusion or incompetence is secondary. It is secondary to the initial fact that these questions are for the military to answer. Yet a civilian government, which doesn’t, and has never had, any say in such matters, has conveniently been thrown in the line of fire.

And the prime minister knows that. You could see it on his face while he read a statement that was clearly not his or his speechwriter’s. You could see it on the face of Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir a few days before that.

Let us go back a few days before the speech. In a meeting of the troika at the Presidency, it was decided that the civilian leadership would take the lead in responding to the fiasco.

He may have not known at the time, but while the premier was trying his best to regurgitate generally untenable answers to questions, which clearly were not his to answer, on the floor of the National Assembly, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani was busy kicking-off the great escape for the truly accountable. He suggested that our embarrassment was fuelled largely by an “inadequate national response”— by the civilian leaders of the country, of course. He said he wanted democracy to play its role.

Really?

Aside from being bullied in almost all aspects of governance, the military has controlled, exclusively, security and foreign policies since this country’s inception. (On a side note, a report in the Guardian suggests that the US was granted permission by the last military ruler to conduct unilateral raids to get bin Laden.) In fact, just before they handed over the controls of an aircraft in nosedive, the corps commanders’ huddle came up with another typical unilateral foreign policy announcement — that the US would be told to reduce its military presence in the country.

The civilians have always been kept out. And now they want the ‘bloody civilians’ to face the nation as well as the international community?

Yes, there was an ‘inadequate national response’ — because the only adequate response from a collective civilian political standpoint to our military leaders should have been: “You have made this bed, now lie in it. We are not going to bail you out.”

No.

It is time that you are held accountable for the mess that you have got us into. For double games, and for imposing policy without a mandate for so many years.

Chaudhry Nisar made a good analogy, unwittingly surely, when he said that this was the biggest debacle in our history since the fall of Dhaka.

That was the lowest point, in particular, for our armed forces, and Bhutto had the opportunity to ensure that the military would finally take its rightful place in the command chain: Below an elected government.

But he bailed the military out. No one was held accountable. Reports were buried and the guilty either promoted or allowed to retire peacefully in serene countryside lodges.

And then they came for him.

Today, President Asif Ali Zardari is confronted with a similar situation. And judging by the response, the government is in no mood to stand up to an institution that has tried to dominate it at almost every turn over the last three years — from the restoration of the chief justice to the Kerry-Lugar bill.

While stooge politicians such as Shah Mahmood Qureshi are calling for the resignations of the prime minister and president, they, in turn, are covering up for the services and intelligence chiefs responsible — the ones who should resign, or, in fact, be sacked.

Make no mistake: The fiasco of the cover-up is greater than the crisis itself.

And it is painful.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 11^th, 2011.