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A right jolly mess, what
By Kamran Shafi

SO then, the Commando has got us into all sorts of trouble, what, by continuing to hang on to the President’s Lodge (née Army House) by his manicured fingernails! Well, what did you expect of someone who wrote (allegedly, for the authorship of that absurd farce seems to rest more on someone else’s shoulders according to Musharraf himself — stand up Humayun Gohar) In the Line of Fire!?

Throughout the debate that has raged between the transitionists and the transformationists (among the latter’s number I proudly count myself) I have begged people to please, please read the book. “Please read the book to really know the extent of the trouble we are in,” I begged everyone.

For in it you see an adolescent in a full general’s uniform — I detest this new Americanism of one-star, three-star and so on — still proud of once being a 12-year-old young thug leading a gang of other urchins and beating people up on the streets of Karachi.

Or, indeed, of doubling up with laughter (alongside his cousins and brothers) when his “Uncle Haider”, allegedly once-upon-a-time an Air Force Academy “sword-carrier” i.e. a cadet under officer, slapped a bald man on the head, not once but twice in Frere Gardens pretending it was someone else. As an Indian reader informed me this was one of the scenes in an Indian film of the day!

Or indeed, in later years being proud of not giving a damn about the rules of behaviour under which gentlemen cadets at the Pakistan Military Academy conducted themselves, the very first being the honour system under which you ensured you did the right thing by yourself.

The instances the man quotes are gob-smacking to say the least. He even congratulates himself for having got away with cheating and taking a shortcut on the infamous nine-mile endurance test in which you had to run/walk nine miles in light FSMO (Field Service Marching Order) in under 90 minutes.

It was a cardinal sin to cheat at PMA, yet he felicitates himself for having been spared relegation to the next lower term, or indeed, being dishonourably discharged from the PMA for the very great crime he committed.

I write this on the early morning of Monday and have already seen some very interesting stories in this same newspaper; exactly the kind of stories you would expect in matters Musharraf. The first is that Rashid Qureshi, his press secretary, has said he is not resigning; no way. Vintage Macho Musharraf!

On the same page there is a long story on how the Americans want him to stay in the country in an “honourable” way after he resigns/is thrown out of office. Now, whilst the Americans are much practised in protecting their stooges who do their bidding — Nuri Al-Maliki in Iraq and Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, both of whom rely on American security contractors, read under-cover CIA operatives, to provide them close security — why in God’s name should the Americans be concerned about where in the world Musharraf lives after he is made to relinquish his vice-like hold on Pakistan’s jugular?

Could it be possible that the request for “honourable” stay in Pakistan was made by Musharraf himself to his tight buddy Dubya and that the Americans were demanding of the Pakistanis to provide the man the same level of security comprising regular army troops, three diversionary motorcades and so on, as a price of his leaving office? So he can play ‘president, president’ with his buddies forever?

That is, to continue being ‘presidential’ without the responsibility?! Is this Dubya’s parting gift to his “tight” buddy whose “tightness” became ever tighter as more and more Pakistanis (and poor Afghans as reports HRW, one of them a farmer who had a dispute with his neighbour) were sold to the Americans for bounty money at $5000 per?

But why should we the people allow that? Have we forgotten how every single elected leader was seen out of office by the establishment with the active support of the Pakistan army? Have we forgotten that every single time the “bloody civilian” leaders went home they went home via jail, even the hangman’s noose? If they weren’t assassinated and the whole thing shoved under the rather humungous Pakistani carpet, that is?

Why should we forget Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan’s murder in Liaquat Bagh; then Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s judicial murder in Rawalpindi jail; then Nawaz Sharif’s incarceration in Attock Fort and trial in an anti-terrorism court and then exile under the pressure of those whose $s are so valuable to any Pakistani dictator; then Benazir Bhutto’s cruel murder in Liaquat Bagh again with the crime scene being so carefully sanitised within minutes of her killing?

Which reminds me. Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist Ron Suskind’s just-published book The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism says President Musharraf phoned Benazir in Dubai and told her, “Your security is based on the state of our relationship.”

What sort of threat was that? And are we to read into it that Benazir was murdered precisely because she had become distanced from Musharraf in so many ways, even telling friends that she was a marked woman and had been “betrayed”, not only by Musharraf but by the Americans too?

Why then are they asking Musharraf be allowed to have an “honourable” stay in Pakistan? Shouldn’t the charges enumerated above not form part of the 100-page chargesheet the coalition is preparing against the man? Charges ranging from cheating as a so-called ‘gentleman cadet’ to threatening a murdered leader that she would be murdered if she strayed too far from the straight and narrow?

Stop press: on a TV programme called ‘Such to Yeh Hai’ on Monday one of the participants said that parliamentarians would vote according to their zameer on Musharraf’s impeachment motion, and another asked if they would not vote according to ‘General’ Zameer, referring to the infamous former director general of the ISI’s internal wing who was instrumental in manufacturing the PPP Patriots and other such dastardly stuff.

When it came my turn I asked a question of the present government that if it was serious about the impeachment why was it that the chief of the ISI, a man considered close to the general’s family, was still in his job. Especially when it was more than well known that the ISI buys/threatens people to change their political loyalties. The entire reference to the ISI was edited out of the programme.

So much for a free media.

P.S. What was the bounty on Dr Afia Siddqui’s head and who pocketed it please? Could someone tell us?
Posted by: john frum 2008-08-13
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=246903