fatman17
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The Wages Of Betrayal.......Saeed A. Malik.
Gangsterism was introduced in Pakistani politics by Z. A. Bhutto. It has been taken to its acme by the sitting government during the current crackdown and the unprecedented wave of repression it has unleashed. During this wave of brutality, the aim of which is the dismantling of PTI, more than ten thousand of its members are under arrest, and its leadership is either in hiding, in jail, or jailed and let out for good behavior i.e abandoning PTI.
Thinking about this I cannot help but recall the U.S slogan for the Iraq War: " Winning hearts and minds by shock and awe!"
The excuse for unleashing this wave of violence against the PTI, [which was supposed to stand for its valid justification], was the hooliganism which came in the wake of the arrest of Imran Khan on May 9nth 2023. The spontaneity, the thoroughness, the sweep, and the ruthlessness of the crackdown which followed, was itself proof that the crackdown had undergone tireless preparation.
When the following are is kept in mind, it is difficult to come to any other conclusion than that the government welcomed the hooliganism that erupted, and may well have enticed and guided it:
a. The public reaction to Imran's arrest should have been a foregone conclusion.
b. The date time and manner of the arrest was known by the authorities who had planned it .
c. In view of the anticipated reaction to this arrest, guards at certain locations should have been doubled, and checkpoints on routes leading there should have been twice as vigilant.
d. But videos clearly showed that guards at such locations were next to non-existent, while checkpoints, always so vigilant before, were either not manned, or were allowing free passage to all and sundry on that day.
e.After noticeably thin crowds attacked some expected sites, NONE of the security details, always earmarked to counter prescisely such an eventuality, came to the fore to discharge their duty.
It is therefore difficult to conclude that what happened on 9nth May, was not the result of an organzied effort by the government, in tandem with the army, to facilitate "guided" hooliganism which took place. And the further conclusion that this was the ultimate effort thus far to destroy PTI by holding it responsible for what happened in the wake of Imran's arrest, cannot be avoided.
The effort to dismantle PTI, initiated between Apr 9, 2022, lasting till May 9, 2023 and beyond, was unique in its dedication and persistence. It was a glowing example of sustained civil-military cooperation, specifically executed against the generality of the people of Pakistan as symbolised by its most popular political party.
Overtly, it unfolded on Apr 9nth 2022, when Gen Bajwa, at the behest of his foreign masters helped to bring down the PTI government. This was as clear a case of treachery as there has ever been in the long and shameful history of betrayal in the subcontinent. It displaced Mir Sadiq from his perch as the premier traitor in the recent history of the subcontintent, and supplanted him with Bajwa. In its full dimensions, which will take time to unfold, Bajwa's betrayal will prove to be monumental. It could, if the army does not veer away from the path it is following, prove to be the undoing of Pakistan. And this, not because of overthrowing Imran Khan, but more so because of replacing him with a gang of thugs and cutthroats so foul and odious, that they bring dishonour even to the occupation of professional thievery.
Operation Regime Change was put into effect because a] Pakistan had to be denuclified;b] it had to be retrieved from the embrace of China; c] Baluchistan was to be sheered off from it and d] any chance that the oligarchs who control every avenue of power under the neo liberal dispensation in the country could be done away with, [which Imran's avowed policies seemed committed to doing], had to be eradicated.
I have little doubt that our nuclear capability has already been neutralized. We have already been yanked away from China. The sheering off of Baluchistan will follow in due course. And putting Imran on ice will ensure that our thieving oligarchs and the neo liberal order which mothered and then protected them, shall keep thriving at the cost of the poor, the wretched, and the bedraggled.
To achieve these four aims Imran had to go because he was an obvious obstacle to all these objectives. And if he had to go, then obviously he was not to be allowed to return. And because he would win by a thumping majority, elections had to be held in abeyance, even if this meant the shredding of the constitution. And if they were to be held at all, they could only be held when PTI was on the ropes or banned, and Imran Khan immobilised by incarceration or eliminated by assassination. And even then, to make doubly certain, a fail-safe machinery to rig the elections to the satisfaction of the high and mighty needed to be put in place. For this Sikander Sultan Raja was already there in the form of a hammer. But an anvil was also essential. This would come in the shape of Qazi Faez Isa [the most hypocritical judge in Pakistan's recent history], as Chief Justice. But a waiting period was needed to allow him to get there.
In the process what has happened is that the " 90 Day Election" clause of the constitution, which is so watertight that it admits of no other interpretation than would be clear even to an ***, has been repeatedly violated in ever novel ways. By this the constitution, though much flawed, has lost further in terms of both sanctity and authority, and this has also fatally undermined the authority of the Supreme Court. Essentially this has laid the groundwork for the constitution to become all things to all people. A "non-document".
Without the constitution the Federation will not hold.
This situation found its birth in treacherous intent on Apr 9nth 2022 and found its first [temporary] culmination in the brazen lie of May 9nth 2023.
The moment the coup was pulled off, it became immediately clear that a huge blunder had been committed on the basis of the miscalculation that Imran had lost his support. More than adequate proof, that this was delusional thinking on the part of Bajwa and his cohorts, was furnished the very night of the coup, when huge crowds, totally unsolicited, came out to protest against Imran's ouster, in every nook and corner of the country.
There was only one way for Bajwa to remedy this situation. And that was to walk Pakistan back to the status quo ante or to hold immediate elections. If resort was not to be made to either of these courses of action,lies and falsehoods would be needed to cover up the betrayal and to pretend innocence. And then, to sustain the new structure of power in Pakistan, the lies initially perpetrated would have to be constantly reinforced. With each new effort at this reinforcement, new lies would have to be told. With each new lie, bits of the credibility of our army would keep crumbling. And with the passage of time, nothing would be left of this credibility.
The government which had replaced Imran Khan's, on the other had, would suffer no losses. It never had any credibility to begin with! It could only be expected to plumb ever new depths of incomptence mendacity and ignominy, and scale ever higher peaks of corruption. And these it has successfully been doing.
In the event however, Bajwa did not walk Pakistan back to the status quo ante, nor did he resort to fresh elections. He did not do so because he could not. His hands were tied by the following:
a.He had to deliver on his commitment to his masters to denuclify Pakistan. And this would take time.
b. He had committed a crime by violating Article 6 of the constitution for which he could be hanged.
c. He had been bribed by Nawaz Sharif to let him flee the country, and at least taken the biana for getting rid of Imran and restoring the Sharif family back to power. And the proof of this exchange was securly held by Nawaz Sharif, who would have made this public had Bajwa reneged on his committments.
And because he could not walk Pakistan back and restore status quo ante, he had to resort to a fallback position i.e officially sponsored lies to the effect that no foreign power drove the regime change; the army had no role to play in operation regime change; and that the army had gone neutral well before regime change; and that this neutrality had continued thereafter!
Subscribing to these lies has become the new creed of Pakistani citizenship. Those who do not subscribe to it and are found out, are being weeded out of jobs. And those who are protesting against this set of lies, are being thrown in jail.
Thus a new Pakistan has been resurrected on the ruins of the one brought down. It differs fundamentally from every previous model of the country by being FORMALLY founded on a grid of lies. Every Haji, every Hafiz, every Thief, and every Cutthroat, who has taken an oath to uphold these lies, is equal and free in the eyes of the law. And those who stand in opposition to this rule by lies, form our new criminal class!
Between Apr 9,2022 and May 9, 2023, the current setup has been sustained by an unbroken stream of egregious falsehoods by the army i.e " we did not do it; we were and are neutral". This has ruined the credibility of the army with the people, and caused the rank and file to view their high command with marked suspicion. With such a record of brazen lies behind them, how the army expected to sell its narrative about May 9 to the people of Pakistan and its own rank and file, God alone knows.
But fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
And so the army moved to mend this situation. It was driven to fall back on its martyrs to dig it out of the hole it had dug itself into, by overthrowing a legitimate and popular government, and then falling back on lies and hypocrisy. Out of the blue a Martyr's Remebrance Day was announced. It would have been so much better that a day for the betterment of the living had been declared instead. But the living "bastards" [as our greatest current soldier chose to remember them] were asking too many uncomfortable questions. So the dead were asked to lend a hand to pull the mother institution out of the mud.
The day chosen to disturb the peace of the martyrs in their graves, and to salute them was May 25th. With equal care, to emphasise loyalty to his policy of betrayal and sellout, Bajwa was chosen as the chief guest for the occassion. Was this a display of "dare", cynicism, or idiocy!
"Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad."
The tungsten rope running through this entire period of unending ineptitude and repeated criminalities of the government, has been the unflinching support and repeated lies of the army. Without it this gang of thugs would have broken and fled in a fortnight.
In my life thus far, the longest lie, most tenaciously held, and most brazenly trumpeted was the lie put out by the army that they were not behind regime change of 2022, having "gone neutral" well before then, and that they have been neutral ever since. The utter hypocrisy behind this oft repeated falsehood is such that even the blind could be faulted for not spotting it.
But among those who saw this clearly from day one, I finally understood why, when there was such a rich roster of juicy sins to choose from, was hypocrisy considered to be the sin of ultimate gravity behind only "shirk".
Hypocrisy destroys the allegiance to every oath, every vow, every loyalty, every promise, every committment, every value, every moral. In short it destroys every pillar which binds society and holds it together. And thus it destroys society itself.
It also became clear to me that such momumental levels of hypocrisy could be bred only among those who have got used to subscribing to the idea of a "free" Haj, oblvious of the fact that this is a contradiction in terms, and takes a fair bit of hypocrisy to come to terms with!
So what lies ahead? The short answer is "consequences" lie ahead. Because actions have consequences. For this to become very clear, harken back to the Battle of Uhad. Here an unguarded flank overtuned victory into defeat, despite the fact that it was Holy Prophet whose army was robbed of victory. The lesson to draw from this, if anyone is willing to draw one, is that the Almighty does not play favourites, and that when rules, teachings or laws are infringed, consequences follow.
The consequences of what has been inflicted on Pakistan will soon be seen and felt. But there is not much liklihood of a eruption of civil war despite the havoc being heaped on the people. It is more likely though that the incipient insurgency in KP will spread its wings, and draw any number of ready recruits from the greatly expanded pool of hungry and embittered Pakistanis. The performance of our army during the last such upsurge was commendable. But there will be no repeat of that. Then, the people of Pakistan were fully behind their army, but today they are largely alienated. Then, the rank and file had implicit faith in their generalship. But today, after just a fraction of Bajwa's assets have become common knowledge, suspion has replaced faith.
Today the insurgents in K.P are likely to stand their ground with greater resolve because this time THEY will have the support of their people. Should this happen, the army will be hesitant to move. Logjams in battle are likely to become the rule for engagements. Sooner or later the army will come to rely on artillary, armour, and the air force to break through. This will create massive casualities among the people. And a simmering insurgency will transition into the first stages of a civil war. And from K.P the conflagration is likely to spread to other areas.
Unpopular armies do not win wars, and least of all civil wars.
Just as in 1971 a civil war cost us half our country, the next one for which seeds have been sown, may cost us the other half.
A clutch of cowardly dissipated generals, with a like political leadership in tow, drove us into the first civil war. The core reason was that power was willfully and illegally denied to the party which had the mandate to rule. The result was defeat, surrender, and disgrace.
Today is a repeat of the old story. The party which clearly enjoys the greatest popularity is being denied power by denying it the means to prove its mandate, violating the constitution in the process for which the punishment is death by hanging. Except that they have displayed the courage of violating Article 6 of the constitution,the generals are equally cowardly and dissipated as they were in 1971, but this time politicians are in front with the generals leading from behind. But there is no difference between the essential ingredients of the powder keg which exploded in 1971 and the one which is simmering today, except that today there is no India between the logistic base and the potential theater of war. That is the only reason that this time the civil war will begin as a slow burn.
In short the aspirations of the people are the same as they were in 1971; and as in 1971 these are being sought to be crushed; and the instrument to do the crushing is also the same. So why is it that the generals are repeating an old experiment with the same ingredients but with the happy expectation of getting a different result?
Every general who's gone down the path to disaster in the past, has done so in the firm belief that earlier generals were blundering buffoons and lacked that spark of genius which he so clearly possesses!
Gangsterism was introduced in Pakistani politics by Z. A. Bhutto. It has been taken to its acme by the sitting government during the current crackdown and the unprecedented wave of repression it has unleashed. During this wave of brutality, the aim of which is the dismantling of PTI, more than ten thousand of its members are under arrest, and its leadership is either in hiding, in jail, or jailed and let out for good behavior i.e abandoning PTI.
Thinking about this I cannot help but recall the U.S slogan for the Iraq War: " Winning hearts and minds by shock and awe!"
The excuse for unleashing this wave of violence against the PTI, [which was supposed to stand for its valid justification], was the hooliganism which came in the wake of the arrest of Imran Khan on May 9nth 2023. The spontaneity, the thoroughness, the sweep, and the ruthlessness of the crackdown which followed, was itself proof that the crackdown had undergone tireless preparation.
When the following are is kept in mind, it is difficult to come to any other conclusion than that the government welcomed the hooliganism that erupted, and may well have enticed and guided it:
a. The public reaction to Imran's arrest should have been a foregone conclusion.
b. The date time and manner of the arrest was known by the authorities who had planned it .
c. In view of the anticipated reaction to this arrest, guards at certain locations should have been doubled, and checkpoints on routes leading there should have been twice as vigilant.
d. But videos clearly showed that guards at such locations were next to non-existent, while checkpoints, always so vigilant before, were either not manned, or were allowing free passage to all and sundry on that day.
e.After noticeably thin crowds attacked some expected sites, NONE of the security details, always earmarked to counter prescisely such an eventuality, came to the fore to discharge their duty.
It is therefore difficult to conclude that what happened on 9nth May, was not the result of an organzied effort by the government, in tandem with the army, to facilitate "guided" hooliganism which took place. And the further conclusion that this was the ultimate effort thus far to destroy PTI by holding it responsible for what happened in the wake of Imran's arrest, cannot be avoided.
The effort to dismantle PTI, initiated between Apr 9, 2022, lasting till May 9, 2023 and beyond, was unique in its dedication and persistence. It was a glowing example of sustained civil-military cooperation, specifically executed against the generality of the people of Pakistan as symbolised by its most popular political party.
Overtly, it unfolded on Apr 9nth 2022, when Gen Bajwa, at the behest of his foreign masters helped to bring down the PTI government. This was as clear a case of treachery as there has ever been in the long and shameful history of betrayal in the subcontinent. It displaced Mir Sadiq from his perch as the premier traitor in the recent history of the subcontintent, and supplanted him with Bajwa. In its full dimensions, which will take time to unfold, Bajwa's betrayal will prove to be monumental. It could, if the army does not veer away from the path it is following, prove to be the undoing of Pakistan. And this, not because of overthrowing Imran Khan, but more so because of replacing him with a gang of thugs and cutthroats so foul and odious, that they bring dishonour even to the occupation of professional thievery.
Operation Regime Change was put into effect because a] Pakistan had to be denuclified;b] it had to be retrieved from the embrace of China; c] Baluchistan was to be sheered off from it and d] any chance that the oligarchs who control every avenue of power under the neo liberal dispensation in the country could be done away with, [which Imran's avowed policies seemed committed to doing], had to be eradicated.
I have little doubt that our nuclear capability has already been neutralized. We have already been yanked away from China. The sheering off of Baluchistan will follow in due course. And putting Imran on ice will ensure that our thieving oligarchs and the neo liberal order which mothered and then protected them, shall keep thriving at the cost of the poor, the wretched, and the bedraggled.
To achieve these four aims Imran had to go because he was an obvious obstacle to all these objectives. And if he had to go, then obviously he was not to be allowed to return. And because he would win by a thumping majority, elections had to be held in abeyance, even if this meant the shredding of the constitution. And if they were to be held at all, they could only be held when PTI was on the ropes or banned, and Imran Khan immobilised by incarceration or eliminated by assassination. And even then, to make doubly certain, a fail-safe machinery to rig the elections to the satisfaction of the high and mighty needed to be put in place. For this Sikander Sultan Raja was already there in the form of a hammer. But an anvil was also essential. This would come in the shape of Qazi Faez Isa [the most hypocritical judge in Pakistan's recent history], as Chief Justice. But a waiting period was needed to allow him to get there.
In the process what has happened is that the " 90 Day Election" clause of the constitution, which is so watertight that it admits of no other interpretation than would be clear even to an ***, has been repeatedly violated in ever novel ways. By this the constitution, though much flawed, has lost further in terms of both sanctity and authority, and this has also fatally undermined the authority of the Supreme Court. Essentially this has laid the groundwork for the constitution to become all things to all people. A "non-document".
Without the constitution the Federation will not hold.
This situation found its birth in treacherous intent on Apr 9nth 2022 and found its first [temporary] culmination in the brazen lie of May 9nth 2023.
The moment the coup was pulled off, it became immediately clear that a huge blunder had been committed on the basis of the miscalculation that Imran had lost his support. More than adequate proof, that this was delusional thinking on the part of Bajwa and his cohorts, was furnished the very night of the coup, when huge crowds, totally unsolicited, came out to protest against Imran's ouster, in every nook and corner of the country.
There was only one way for Bajwa to remedy this situation. And that was to walk Pakistan back to the status quo ante or to hold immediate elections. If resort was not to be made to either of these courses of action,lies and falsehoods would be needed to cover up the betrayal and to pretend innocence. And then, to sustain the new structure of power in Pakistan, the lies initially perpetrated would have to be constantly reinforced. With each new effort at this reinforcement, new lies would have to be told. With each new lie, bits of the credibility of our army would keep crumbling. And with the passage of time, nothing would be left of this credibility.
The government which had replaced Imran Khan's, on the other had, would suffer no losses. It never had any credibility to begin with! It could only be expected to plumb ever new depths of incomptence mendacity and ignominy, and scale ever higher peaks of corruption. And these it has successfully been doing.
In the event however, Bajwa did not walk Pakistan back to the status quo ante, nor did he resort to fresh elections. He did not do so because he could not. His hands were tied by the following:
a.He had to deliver on his commitment to his masters to denuclify Pakistan. And this would take time.
b. He had committed a crime by violating Article 6 of the constitution for which he could be hanged.
c. He had been bribed by Nawaz Sharif to let him flee the country, and at least taken the biana for getting rid of Imran and restoring the Sharif family back to power. And the proof of this exchange was securly held by Nawaz Sharif, who would have made this public had Bajwa reneged on his committments.
And because he could not walk Pakistan back and restore status quo ante, he had to resort to a fallback position i.e officially sponsored lies to the effect that no foreign power drove the regime change; the army had no role to play in operation regime change; and that the army had gone neutral well before regime change; and that this neutrality had continued thereafter!
Subscribing to these lies has become the new creed of Pakistani citizenship. Those who do not subscribe to it and are found out, are being weeded out of jobs. And those who are protesting against this set of lies, are being thrown in jail.
Thus a new Pakistan has been resurrected on the ruins of the one brought down. It differs fundamentally from every previous model of the country by being FORMALLY founded on a grid of lies. Every Haji, every Hafiz, every Thief, and every Cutthroat, who has taken an oath to uphold these lies, is equal and free in the eyes of the law. And those who stand in opposition to this rule by lies, form our new criminal class!
Between Apr 9,2022 and May 9, 2023, the current setup has been sustained by an unbroken stream of egregious falsehoods by the army i.e " we did not do it; we were and are neutral". This has ruined the credibility of the army with the people, and caused the rank and file to view their high command with marked suspicion. With such a record of brazen lies behind them, how the army expected to sell its narrative about May 9 to the people of Pakistan and its own rank and file, God alone knows.
But fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
And so the army moved to mend this situation. It was driven to fall back on its martyrs to dig it out of the hole it had dug itself into, by overthrowing a legitimate and popular government, and then falling back on lies and hypocrisy. Out of the blue a Martyr's Remebrance Day was announced. It would have been so much better that a day for the betterment of the living had been declared instead. But the living "bastards" [as our greatest current soldier chose to remember them] were asking too many uncomfortable questions. So the dead were asked to lend a hand to pull the mother institution out of the mud.
The day chosen to disturb the peace of the martyrs in their graves, and to salute them was May 25th. With equal care, to emphasise loyalty to his policy of betrayal and sellout, Bajwa was chosen as the chief guest for the occassion. Was this a display of "dare", cynicism, or idiocy!
"Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad."
The tungsten rope running through this entire period of unending ineptitude and repeated criminalities of the government, has been the unflinching support and repeated lies of the army. Without it this gang of thugs would have broken and fled in a fortnight.
In my life thus far, the longest lie, most tenaciously held, and most brazenly trumpeted was the lie put out by the army that they were not behind regime change of 2022, having "gone neutral" well before then, and that they have been neutral ever since. The utter hypocrisy behind this oft repeated falsehood is such that even the blind could be faulted for not spotting it.
But among those who saw this clearly from day one, I finally understood why, when there was such a rich roster of juicy sins to choose from, was hypocrisy considered to be the sin of ultimate gravity behind only "shirk".
Hypocrisy destroys the allegiance to every oath, every vow, every loyalty, every promise, every committment, every value, every moral. In short it destroys every pillar which binds society and holds it together. And thus it destroys society itself.
It also became clear to me that such momumental levels of hypocrisy could be bred only among those who have got used to subscribing to the idea of a "free" Haj, oblvious of the fact that this is a contradiction in terms, and takes a fair bit of hypocrisy to come to terms with!
So what lies ahead? The short answer is "consequences" lie ahead. Because actions have consequences. For this to become very clear, harken back to the Battle of Uhad. Here an unguarded flank overtuned victory into defeat, despite the fact that it was Holy Prophet whose army was robbed of victory. The lesson to draw from this, if anyone is willing to draw one, is that the Almighty does not play favourites, and that when rules, teachings or laws are infringed, consequences follow.
The consequences of what has been inflicted on Pakistan will soon be seen and felt. But there is not much liklihood of a eruption of civil war despite the havoc being heaped on the people. It is more likely though that the incipient insurgency in KP will spread its wings, and draw any number of ready recruits from the greatly expanded pool of hungry and embittered Pakistanis. The performance of our army during the last such upsurge was commendable. But there will be no repeat of that. Then, the people of Pakistan were fully behind their army, but today they are largely alienated. Then, the rank and file had implicit faith in their generalship. But today, after just a fraction of Bajwa's assets have become common knowledge, suspion has replaced faith.
Today the insurgents in K.P are likely to stand their ground with greater resolve because this time THEY will have the support of their people. Should this happen, the army will be hesitant to move. Logjams in battle are likely to become the rule for engagements. Sooner or later the army will come to rely on artillary, armour, and the air force to break through. This will create massive casualities among the people. And a simmering insurgency will transition into the first stages of a civil war. And from K.P the conflagration is likely to spread to other areas.
Unpopular armies do not win wars, and least of all civil wars.
Just as in 1971 a civil war cost us half our country, the next one for which seeds have been sown, may cost us the other half.
A clutch of cowardly dissipated generals, with a like political leadership in tow, drove us into the first civil war. The core reason was that power was willfully and illegally denied to the party which had the mandate to rule. The result was defeat, surrender, and disgrace.
Today is a repeat of the old story. The party which clearly enjoys the greatest popularity is being denied power by denying it the means to prove its mandate, violating the constitution in the process for which the punishment is death by hanging. Except that they have displayed the courage of violating Article 6 of the constitution,the generals are equally cowardly and dissipated as they were in 1971, but this time politicians are in front with the generals leading from behind. But there is no difference between the essential ingredients of the powder keg which exploded in 1971 and the one which is simmering today, except that today there is no India between the logistic base and the potential theater of war. That is the only reason that this time the civil war will begin as a slow burn.
In short the aspirations of the people are the same as they were in 1971; and as in 1971 these are being sought to be crushed; and the instrument to do the crushing is also the same. So why is it that the generals are repeating an old experiment with the same ingredients but with the happy expectation of getting a different result?
Every general who's gone down the path to disaster in the past, has done so in the firm belief that earlier generals were blundering buffoons and lacked that spark of genius which he so clearly possesses!
