Aamir Hussain
PDF THINK TANK: CONSULTANT
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- Jan 28, 2007
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Well i know first hand that most officers with integrity had strong dislike for Zia...
The damage Zia did to Army and Pakistan is tremendous.
The ideology of Pakistan was hijacked and our culture was tied to just that of the Arabs, we were made to feel a nation which had to borrow its history from others...we are Muslims but we have a separate heritage as well, that of one of the most ancient civilizations of the world...all this was jeopardized by Zia and his cosmetic Islam...
Our Army was politicized and promotions were based on Yes Sir basis, many good officers were not promoted...
We imported the extremists from all around the world without a care for our future and that of our children...the Jihadi culture we see was not just a result of US led Afghan Jihad but also our own stupidity and ignorance in not ensuring a roll back of the Jihadi networks...a wolf on an empty stomach has to eat something when starving...too bad we did not figure it out in time...
Musharraf has had a very good account of himself from the economic
development point of view, key roads were constructed and mega projects were continued, lots of educational reforms including huge spending on supporting scholarship programs, many economic indicators were good.
Now also see that a major calamity occurred in the form of earthquake and still the country absorbed the shock both from the tremendous support of Pakistanis but by a huge spending from government as well...
Yes, the strategy displayed by Musharraf regarding the TTP was not very effective, but he was faced with a situation which no other leader in Pakistan had encountered before...difficult to judge him against Zia who was in the good books of his American masters for a good 10 years and had much more soft concessions from US due to the much more covert nature of US operation...
In the War on terror the US gov was like a holy avenger and they were not playing soft so Musharraf was always doing a circus act between pleasing everyone and trying to do the right thing for Pakistan...
I will not deny that i do not see eye to eye with Musharraf over everything he did but still he was much more balanced person than Zia... both however were not legal heads of states...
I agree with most of what you have written. However, I would like to point out that most of us Pakistanis do not have a good track record of sane and unbiased thinking.
If you take into account the professional careers of most of the most successful manager in this world ( I am talking about the top 100 corps.), you will find out that they only took 20% correct decisions out of many hundreds that they took during their careers. However, these 20% correct decisions changed the destinies of their companies.
The issue of Afghan Taliban and not pursuing them in totality by Mushi in Pakistan -- in hindsight -- was correct since now the very same links have elevated the position of this country when US is about to leave this region.
He did make some mistakes ( one of them was the judges the other one was getting in cahoots with the nincompoops of Q-League-- I for one do not call the Lal Masjid a wrong decision -- they were the very same people who later turned out to the Pakistani Talibans that we are dealing with today) but you have to judge his tenure based upon the batting average and not just one or two bad shots!!!
One must give credit where credit is due. You or I might not like some of the things he has done but let us be fair -- overall he started taking us out of the Mullahism of Zia-ul-Haq era. The Kashmir issue was at a breakthrough point (Corroborated by both our ex Foreign Minister and the ex Indian ambassador on Business Plus).
Ask any industrialist or small business man and they will tell you how good things were during his tenure business was booming and orders were coming 7th December broke our back. I for one had a personal experience in negotiating a contract with Pakistan Railways during the early part 2002 -- I was apprehensive about kickbacks as PR has a bad track record. In the end, got the contract on merit, did not pay a dime!!!! PR was being overhauled with professional management.
In my line of work I generally come across very small business men from rural areas - all of them clearly acknowledged the progress made -- access roads, Telecommunications, empowerment (through the local bodies system), working gates on canals etc. But when I asked them who they will vote for, they surprisingly adhered to their traditional power bases of PPP (In Sind) and Baradari Voting in Punjab.
I happen to be associated with the Program for Economic Revival of Karachi (PERK) in a small way back in 2001 to 2003. Attended some meetings and sat through some of the planning sessions with Mushi in attendance. To me he came across as a fiercely nationalist with a hunger to change things. In the end the shape of Karachi did change. I remember when a Rs. 7 Billion plan was finally taken to him by the committee -- he said It is too little -- you guys need to think big. In the end he told us to re-plan for a major upgrade ( At that time there was a JI Nazim in KHI) he did not know where the money was going to come from but he gave the green light to go ahead start upgrading the basic infrastructure. In the end KHI got Rs 21 Billion over seven years -- I wonder where the funds came from!
I remember the time I had to travel to Nagarparkar ( right on the Indian Border) on a WWII open truck ( Called a Cakera-- crab) over sand dunes and rough it out -- Three years ago there was fully functional mettled road with an emergency landing strip on it!!!
I am not going to talk about the growth rates, the media freedom (till today loves to beat upon him daily), slow crawl back of our moderate views or the brinkmanship he displayed when getting US & China to work against each other to the benefit of Pakistan (this was being done very successfully by India in the case of USSR for decades) or the sending of hundreds of young scholars ( funded by ISI through HEC) to western universities to pursue non-traditional subjects including journalism on scholarships to ensure that these future journalists will become the future Riz Khans of CNN & BBC etc. ( BTW India has been doing this for atleast two decades) and get settled in those countries.
I feel sad that if actual work is not acknowledged and we keep on "Party and Bradari Bazi," we are doomed. The essence of Democracy is deliverance and not "My Chacha comes to power." Unfortunately the masses love democracy for this very reason in Pakistan!!!! This is not democracy!!!!
Let us call "A spade a spade" for a change!