Those who mauled the constitution

RALEIGH: This is with reference to Syed Masudul Hassan’s “Those who mauled the constitution” (July 6). Reading the first few paragraphs of this piece one might be forgiven for thinking – here is a military man who accepts the institutional responsibility of the military for destroying Pakistan’s political system. But after a few paragraphs, one realises that this is simply another attempt to cleanse the image of the military by dissociating it from the “unconstitutional acts of a few generals” who “never represented the views of the rank and file of the armed forces.”

So, just because Musharraf was unpopular because of his pro-west policies and backchannel talks on Kashmir, we are now supposed to start respecting the supporters of the counter-coup against him (including luminaries like Hamid Gul and Aslam Beg) as true democrats?

Published in The Express Tribune, July 7^th, 2010.