Politicians rush in where angels fear to tread

ISLAMABAD: A dime-a-dozen cynics may not agree, but Sheikh Rashid Ahmed did act big in the National Assembly on Friday.

At around 10:30 late Thursday evening, 24/7 channels broke the news that the vehicle carrying this blunt-speaking loner from downtown was fired at while passing through a relatively dark and least crowded avenue. Sheikh Sahib was on his way to Lal Haveli after talking solo in a TV show beamed live from Islamabad.

In his interview, the rebel from Rawalpindi took on the praetorian elite with vengeance. He blamed our generals for staying put as passive “onlookers of ceaseless plundering by politicians” and desperately prayed for the surfacing of a deliverer in khaki.

The story of firing at his car, in this context, stirred people to connect the obvious dots and point fingers at the usual suspects. Many champions of democracy and free speech from the opposition benches also felt disturbed and they wanted to make the right amount of noise over the matter. Sheikh Sahib was just not interested.

Still, the interior minister especially came rushing to the house to report that after initial probe, the police felt that Sheikh Sahib was not a designated target. Perhaps a stray bullet has hit his bulletproof car. Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan was not satisfied with the report. He had ordered a fresh report “that must be filed after scientific and forensic study of the incident.” After announcing this, he went to Sheikh Sahib’s bench and sat for long with him in visible sympathy.

Before leaving his seat, the interior minister also clarified that during one of the briefings that he had from various law enforcing and intelligence gathering agencies during a recent visit to Karachi, “Passing references were also made to a group calling itself Mohajir Republican Army.” Although, he did not give much importance to this name and the group, the interior ministry included this name in the list of terror-spreading groups that operate in Karachi; the list was presented to the Supreme Court Thursday. “Now we are in the process of correcting the mistake of naming this group in such a sensational manner,” he concluded in a regretful tone.

Chaudhry Nisar, it seems, reacted too casually and perhaps late in his attempt at damage control. He had been the main handler of the MQM throughout the previous two governments of Nawaz Sharif. As an all-powerful special assistant of the premier during his first term, he was deeply upset with the then COAS, the late Asif Nawaz Janjua, and the military-led outfits of intelligence gathering who had deviously leaked a report to justify the launch of an operation cleanup in Karachi in mid-1992. That report had accused many MQM leaders of clandestinely working to separate Karachi from Pakistan and name it “Jinnahpur.”

For another time we have been hearing loud talk of “Operation Cleanup in Karachi,” throughout this week. MQM, ironically, took the lead in demanding this by ferocious shouting and speechmaking in the National Assembly. Now it seems to be having second thoughts, however, perhaps after realising that the federal government does not want the army to lead the desired operation.

The sneaky surfacing of a never-heard Mohajir Republican Army sounded too sinister in this background. MQM milked this surfacing to the hilt to vent the feeling that the third Nawaz government was preparing to launch another operation in Karachi, primarily to weaken MQM’s political base with sheer use of the state force. The prime minister will now find it very hard to sell his work plan for restoring order in Karachi during the special meeting of the federal cabinet in that city on coming Tuesday.

Sartaj Aziz, the adviser on national security and foreign affairs, finally came to the house and read a typical statement. For the past four days, the opposition members have been hurling questions in the National Assembly in a bid to gauge the government’s position on many issues related to national security. They also wanted to know about how Pakistan would react to a possible-looking US attack on Syria.

Scoring points on grave issues of complicated nature, our representatives behaved recklessly oblivious to reality that diplomacy remained the art of staying ambivalent on tricky points. Diplomats seldom speak the whole truth, that too on a public forum. Sartaj Aziz is a hardened bureaucrat anyway and he strongly believes that secrecy is the ethos of effective governance. He did not inform and educate any of us on questions put to him even by reading a lengthy statement. Reading the fine print of his statement, however, I keep wondering whether the third Nawaz government is no more interested to pursue peace with India through bilateral means, “which did not seem to have worked so far”.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 31^st, 2013.