Excuse me, but we are sharks

We are at a serious risk of being mistaken for sharks that begin to feed upon themselves when driven by bloodlust.

I don’t think I need to repeat the events leading to this weekend. A rumour dressed up as news on our TV channels, a panicked meeting at the Supreme Court, a ruling based on an assumption, a hapless government running helter-skelter to explain something that was perhaps never intended, a whole public sector working day, costing tens of millions, lost in rumour mongering and gossiping. And no one held accountable.

There was a brilliant book I read a long time ago about crowd behaviour. The author had talked about many kinds of crowds, not just humans. What stuck to memory was a spine-chilling description of sharks caught up in a feeding frenzy.

When a group of sharks starts circling its prey, it is watchful, organised in the way it closes in and though tensed up for the kill, relaxed in the way it moves towards the moment of strike. All this changes the moment first blood is drawn. There is a sudden frenzy, a grab for the choicest bit of meat, all sense of organisation lost in a mad rush for the biggest bite.

At this moment, blinded by the alluring smell of blood oozing out of the victim, a shark accidentally bites another one. The feeding frenzy has reached a point where all distinction is lost. It doesn’t matter where the blood is coming from. Whatever its source, it is legitimate prey. The sharks attack their injured kind, making it bleed even more.

The chilling climax comes when the injured shark also turns upon itself. Like others in the pack, it can no longer tell where the blood is coming from. It chews upon itself as viciously as it would upon its original prey.

When all is over, the last morsel gone, all the blood diffused in the ocean’s brine, there are less sharks left in the pack than those at the beginning, the missing eaten by their own kind.

Does this sound familiar? The news chief of one of the private channels that ran the story told the BBC the next day that the story was based entirely on speculations and should never have been aired. But at the end of the day, it was no less a person than the Chief Justice of Pakistan thanking the media for alerting it to the “news” well in advance. Which one of the two is wrong? The chief justice or the news director? My vote would go to the latter.

And speaking of the judiciary, will any among them have the courage to ask themselves this question? Are they not behaving like sharks caught up in a feeding frenzy? Do they not realise that once the feeding frenzy is over, they will be left with one more limb severed, one more strand of credibility in tatters?

The situation over the weekend speaks more eloquently of the inherent instability of the Pakistani state than any number of attacks by the Taliban or any number of drone strikes by the CIA ever can. We, the media, the government and its organs, including the army as well as the judiciary, are at a serious risk of being mistaken for the sharks that begin to feed upon themselves once caught up in a frenzy driven by bloodlust. We are faced with a war today that is unlike any war ever fought in the history of warfare. It doesn't even matter whose war is it is. What matters is the fact that we are neck deep in it.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 16^th, 2010.