Stay out of the conflict Mr Prime Minister

Nawaz Sharif should desist in getting involved in a brawl between two countries with which we enjoy good relations

What has gotten into Nawaz Sharif ? Why is he trying to involve Pakistan in a conflict which, under the current circumstances, it is ill-equipped to handle? We all know that he is very close to the Saudi royal family and the two countries enjoy cordial relations. But I don’t think Nawaz Sharif or his cabinet has either the moral or the legal right to speak on behalf of everybody in this country. He doesn’t own Pakistan. The country belongs to the people — to the farmers, the miners, the workforce, to the seamstresses sweating in under-ventilated dungeons surrounded by Stygian gloom, the students, the unemployed, the beggars and the doctors and nurses healing the sick. But the way things have turned out, it appears to belong to the people with the stick — the cabinet, the assemblies, the military, the police, the industrialists, the landowners, the civil bureaucracy and the heads of religious parties who claim to be spreading the word of God while some of them are secretly supporting the insurgency against the men in uniform.

The Saudis have been fighting Iran in Pakistan for many, many years. It is their war… not ours. And if the theatre has now also shifted to Yemen, it is still their war… and not ours. I strongly believe we should stay aloof from the conflict. The only sane political voice which I have heard so far on the Yemen imbroglio is that of Syed Mushahid Hussain who said we should first put our own house in order before embarking on a military adventure in another country. Pakistan, as even the guy on the street corner knows, is beset by a host of problems including the fact that by 2025, there is likely to be such a shortage of water that riots will be widespread. But currently the main threat to the system is militancy, fuelled either by idealism or monetary gain.



The military is doing its bit and some of the politicians have, of course, made the necessary noises to condemn the Taliban menace. When Nawaz Sharif said, shaking his fist, that militancy will be crushed, bringing depths of certain hauteur into his voice, I sincerely believe he hoped it would happen because it was screwing up the economy and inhibiting foreigners from investing in the country. Even the PTI chief, now that he has been vaulted out of his caravan, has apparently given a friendly nod, even though he is still sore about the American drones. Some of the others have also made similar pronouncements basically to pacify the military that they are right behind it.

But the general impression is that there is considerable apathy and indifference in the country due either to inertia or the belief that it doesn’t concern them. What I have been saying all along is that unless the whole country stands behind the military as the Vietnamese population did when they fought against a superpower, the lads in uniform will find their task increasingly more difficult as the war against crime syndicates and fifth columnists in the cities is far from over.

In all fairness to Pakistan’s prime minister, he has one hell of a job governing a country which is crawling with anarchists of various hues and persuasions. So far, he appears to be doing all right, making the right noises at the right time. But if a country that could not come to the aid of the people of Gaza who were crying for help and whose land had been illegally occupied, he should desist in getting involved in a brawl between two countries with which we enjoy good relations.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 29^th, 2015.

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