The Lone Wolf

Let there be trial of everyone who helped Musharraf overthrow elected government, insult us as a people, commit murder

“The lone gunman” is a term that came into use to describe the murder of the US President John F Kennedy (JFK). JFK was shot by an assassin named Lee Harvey Oswald and the investigations came to the conclusion that he acted alone, as a lone gunman. This may or may not be true. However, not everybody bought that. In recent times, there is an increasing use of the “lone wolf terrorist” and “gunman”. There is one distinct advantage to this use of language and this pattern of thought of presuming a leaderless or follower-less, structureless deviant individual going berserk, namely that “justice” is easy. Once you have apprehended the individual you punish him and move on with life. You escape from history quickly, with a semi-clear conscience and insufficient reflection.

Should General Musharraf be tried for treason? Yes. Should he be tried as a “lone wolf”? No. It is the easy way out, to display bravado while still not having to uncomfortably reversing the gaze completely. Treason is an offence against the polity; it is overtly political in nature. Regardless of our courts tendency of dabbling into the political, it is not for them to decide, at least not completely. Musharraf as an individual should be tried for the murders of BB and Bugti amongst others. The treason trial is about closure. The truth and reconciliation model in South Africa had its flaws; but it had one simple, beautiful principle at the core, namely that there is value in telling the truth and there is value and comfort in having it told. The abettors and collaborators need to be accounted for. To ask for each and every one of them to be tried is useless, since to ask for everything is to ask for nothing. No, they need not be tried in courts of law; they need to be compelled to tell the truth, to admit that they were wrong.

To make recollection difficult, to make discourse stagnant, you have to make something holy or turn it into unspeakably evil. The abettors of Musharraf were not Nazi collaborators; they were small time opportunists, some simply political wrong in judgment, some were simply looking for hope. They were all wrong, unquestionably. After the Fall of Dhaka, generals were fired; the army stood discredited, Yahya Khan was declared a “usurper” by the Supreme Court. Yet, before the decade could turn, a coup had been mounted, an elected prime minister hung. How did that happen? Yahya Khan was the “lone wolf”, while the Hamoodur Rehman Commission was kept under wraps. The tragedy, it was decided, was too horrific to look at and Yahya Khan was declared a “usurper” once he was gone. It was an individual act and the individual has to be removed from the army, from the context and treated in abstract, as some abomination, an irregular phenomenon. The morale of the institution is to be safeguarded. That is how. This is how Ziaul Haq lives on because he was not properly dealt with. He died prematurely and cheated justice. And because he was dead, we forgot about catharsis, of cleansing our body politic of his impurities.

General Musharraf as an individual could have neither taken over in October 1999 nor have proclaimed the emergency in November, 2007. He needed and got the support of the formation commanders, of the Supreme Court and of politicians. Many of them have redeemed themselves since. However, it would be nice to hear that, “we are sorry”, nothing more. The judges who gave him the power to amend the Constitution (without him even asking) and those who gave him permission to contest the presidential election while still in uniform. The army generals who complied with blatantly illegal orders. The politicians who vowed to have him elected “10 times” in uniform. Where are they now? Just to tell them, this is not on. The treason trial has to be conducted in parliament, in the talk shows, in the newspapers, before it goes to court, which it should eventually. The Commission report this time should be real time and public.

To argue that an all-encompassing truth and reconciliation will lower the spirit of our soldiers is absurd and condescending. Our soldiers are martyred every day, while the shameful circus of talking to their murderers continues. Their morale and resolve is rock solid, even when we fail to acknowledge their glorious sacrifices. The morale of a few “fat cats”, on the other hand, is insignificant to bother about, or perhaps should be dampened.

Let there be a trial of everyone who helped him to overthrow an elected government, to insult us as a people, to commit murder. Musharraf will, of course, be at the centre of the trial, because a wolf, lone or not, is still a wolf.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 30^th, 2013.

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