Unforgettable pictures of where we are

A picture of small children being frisked by a soldier, another of a man completely out of his depth, looking scared.

March 31, 2014 will go down in history as the day on which, for the very first time in this country’s star-crossed history, a former military dictator was produced in a properly constituted court of law made up of judges who were correct and polite and who, despite the unfair tactics, for they were nothing else, of the rabble of “defence” counsel, persevered until better sense prevailed and the Commando appeared before them to be duly indicted.

We recall the tactics of the defence team to get the Commando off the hook. We well remember the loudly garrulous Ahmad Raza (Duke of Kasur) Kasuri, who seemed to be leading the other defence attorneys by the nose, accuse a reporter of being an Indian agent and worse. Not to be left behind, another lawyer whose name escapes me, a former minister in the Commando’s Punjab government (I ask you!) actually threatened the prosecutor that he would tear him limb from limb.

What surprised most of us was the fact that even graceful and well-known counsel like Dr Khalid Ranjha, and Anwar Mansoor Khan, a former attorney general of the country, merely sat and looked on, as their fellow defenders repeatedly abused court decorum and behaved abominably, once prompting My Lord Faisal Arab, who heads the bench, to leave the courtroom. Disgusting, if you ask me.

But leave that be: what else would one expect from anyone who was as close to the Commando as to represent him? We do recall, do we not, that the Commando, flexing his uniformed muscles, had even threatened to box political leaders who had been elected several times to the highest elected office in the land: the late lamented Benazir Bhutto and now three-time Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and that he would “kick” them; that the last punch would be his. I ask you.

But leave all of this aside too. Just two days ago, two photographs appeared on the social media and in the newspapers which will remain for long in the memory of those who saw them. One was most poignant, indeed heartbreaking: that of two small children, one six and the other four or five years of age, being frisked by a soldier, arms askance. The other was of the Commando sitting on his hospital bed just before finally leaving the safety of the AFIC hospital to go to the Special Court.

There he sits, a man completely out of his depth and looking scared. Arrayed in the background are the various medical appurtenances that are found in any state of the art health facility: oxygen tubes, heart monitor, and various other accoutrements. Also seen is a plastic mineral water bottle.

This then is the last picture with which this country will remember the brave Commando’s foray into Pakistan to lead his millions-strong political party to victory in democratic elections. I wonder if he saw the 10 or 15 “party supporters” who turned up holding placards in his favour?

But let’s leave this sorry picture and go back to the photograph of the children being frisked. Twitter was all a-Twitter at the picture that shows that the terrorists whose cruelty and cold-bloodedness knows no bounds have succeeded in dragging us to such abominable depths that we have to search little children for fear that they might be used by the savages to carry explosives/grenades through security checkpoints.

And it is not as if children have not been used as “mules” (in the parlance of drug smugglers) in the service of the terrorists. Indeed, children as young as eight and 11 years of age have been used as suicide bombers and have inflicted huge damage unwittingly and innocently ending their young lives too.

Heaven alone knows what the poor little children are told when they are loaded with suicide vests: “You’ll get toffees and sweets as soon as you press this button”; or “You and your family will get a new home with electricity….”; or “Your younger sister and you will get new shoes….”? How do they convince small children to do their bidding? Do they themselves not have children, and brothers and sisters?

FLASH: There is news that the Commando has “survived” an attempt on his life when a bomb went off making a one-foot crater. According to this newspaper of record: “Former president Pervez Musharraf narrowly escaped an assassination attempt as a bomb went off shortly before his convoy was due to pass early Thursday (April 3), police said. The former military ruler was on his way to Chak Shahzad farmhouse from the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology, where he has been staying since January 2, when the bomb went off.”

According to another national daily newspaper: “Pakistan's former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, who is on trial for treason, narrowly escaped an assassination attempt as a bomb went off shortly before his convoy was due to pass early Thursday, police said. The bomb was planted on Musharraf's route from an army hospital where he has been staying since January to his home on the outskirts of Islamabad.”

And yet another daily newspaper had this to say: “A powerful explosion on Thursday hit Faizabad bridge just after the convoy of the former president Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf passed from it... Musharraf was being shifted early Thursday from the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology (AFIC) to his farmhouse in Chak Shahzad when the huge blast occurred just after the convoy crossed the bridge.”

Whilst there is a dichotomy in the news, two items saying the bomb went off 20 minutes before his convoy reached there, and the third saying it went off after he had reached his house, one doesn’t know what to really think for one knows that the terrorists are not THAT inefficient. When he was “president”, they actually blew the roof off of his car!

So, was this one of those “incidents” which were stage-managed on all the occasions that he was supposed to appear in court until his brilliant advisers came up with the “bad heart” theory and spirited him to the AFIC where he holed up until everyone was red-faced with embarrassment? And asked him to please, please go? Ludicrous man!

Published in The Express Tribune, April 4^th, 2014.

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