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The Sindh Cauldron

The Federal Government ordered the Pakistan Army in May 1992, at the “request” of the Sindh Government, to restore the rule of law in the Province. Rather than giving them powers under Article 245 of the Constitution as demanded by the Army during the Beg era, Article 147 was mandated as being enough to accomplish the mission. The complexities of the situation demanded that the first phase was to physically eliminate the various marauding gangs in the urban and rural areas. Their potential to foster anarchy having been destroyed, the second phase was to eliminate those who were actually responsible for controlling, aiding and abetting crime. While the first phase was a success, the ground rules laid down by Article 147 (notwithstanding the amendments made later) and divergence from the substance of the original mission frustrated the efforts of the Army in eradicating the root cause of the trouble in the Province.

Formerly Commander 5 Corps before he became Chief of General Staff and then COAS, late Gen Asif Nawaz was best equipped to disseminate his inherent Sindh knowledge in the successful tactical execution of Operation Clean-up but why are we still at square one (except in interior Sindh) as far as the strategic results are concerned? Gen Beg had been far-sighted in refusing to “chase shadows” with powers less than comprehensive to deal with criminals through the whole strata of society. The compelling circumstances being absolute anarchy around the corner in a crucial Province, late Gen Asif Nawaz had hardly any choice but to bite the bullet. The Army hierarchy was extremely naive in assuming that having had their chestnuts pulled out of the fire, the Establishment politicians in the Provincial Government had any sincere intention of allowing justice to take its natural course and allowing their supporters in the Army’s famous list of 72 “Untouchables” to be picked up. In American parlance, the Army was used, the military hierarchy was had, taken for a ride.

The mission in the urban areas was to focus on eliminating urban criminals, militant political elements among them. Expecting a bitter struggle in the face of dire threats by MQM diehards to make the Army fight for every inch, the local Army hierarchy used the MQM Haqeeqis initially in a Trojan Horse ploy to avoid bloodshed but were pleasantly surprised by the ease of the movement into the critical areas and occupation thereof as the MQM militants went underground wholesale. One must commend their discretion and maturity in not opposing the Army’s move, the resultant bloodbath would have been the death knell of this country. The identification and elimination of those criminally responsible went haywire as the entire moderate core of the MQM leadership also went into hiding, frustrating the Army game-plan of creating a conducive environment for the more moderate among the MQM leadership to emerge.

With the uniformed troops stymied for some time after the submerging of the MQM hierarchy and militants, the intelligence agencies took over the task of identifying their hideouts and hunting them down, their perceptions about MQM being much more deadly than the spirit of the mission actually given to the Army leadership which was to eradicate the active militants within MQM. Nurtured by the ISI in the early 80s, the MQM had grown beyond ISI control, ISI field operatives opined their mission to mean the eradicating of the MQM lock, stock and barrel and supplanting them with the faction under their control, the MQM Haqeeqis. The Haqeeqis should have been discarded but now obtained recognition as the officially-backed faction of the MQM. To quote from the article “Accountability without parameters” written for THE NATION by the writer on July 7, 1992, “the Army would be well-advised to now drop these Haqeeqi-types like so many hot potatoes. The frying pan is ever more comfortable than roasting in the fire, these characters are man for man worse than their former colleagues from whom they parted due to crass economic rather than ideological differences. Unfortunately an insidious campaign is now in full swing to show that the Army is favourably biased towards this faction, fanned along enthusiastically by the Haqeeqis themselves. To maintain its credibility, the Army must forcefully and forthrightly dispel this wrong perception forthwith, one telling measure would be to hold these gentlemen accountable for their past (and present) misdeeds and not to allow them to have the potential to run riot under the benign shadows of the Army’s guns,” unquote and quote “The failure of key elements within the MQM leadership cannot mean that we treat the entire MQM hierarchy with a broad brush, the crimes of the leaders cannot be visited on their loyal (albeit gullible) electorate. Objectivity must take over in the higher interests of the national good and without outright condemnation of the MQM. Let us endeavour to isolate those only who perpetuated such atrocities or allowed such rampant criminality to prevail and persevere, contrary to the normal modus operandi of tarring and feathering everyone” unquote.

Fostering of Quislings always causes a backlash and can never be lasting. The net result has been that the genuine revulsion of the broad mass of the Mohajirs against the excesses of the Altaf Hussain faction were submerged in their greater revulsion of the MQM Haqeeqis, whose lack of credibility became acutely apparent in their election “victories” in bye-elections to the Sindh Provincial Assembly on May 5, 1993 when they got a grand total of 23,500 votes out of an electorate of 1.9 million in 10 constituencies, a little more than 1%, an extremely expensive collection of votes given the enormous secret funds sunk in them. What the Army had won by “not bloodying swords”, to quote Sun Tzu, was unravelled by the combination of a lack of vision and immaturity of the field operatives of the intelligence agencies. Some individuals in command positions in regional offices of intelligence were pursuing their own individual agendas, some were removed to have even pilfered funds amounting to crores of rupees meant for political purposes. When you give the unworthy such licence, they almost never fail to misuse it. Overlords of the life and death of many MQM rank and file, a fair number of them being innocents, they conducted a parallel and surreptitious operation to that of the regular Army. In this, they have badly alienated the Mohajirs and to a great extent managed to rehabilitate Altaf Hussain’s image in the Mohajir mind by default. That is the tragedy of this country, that people without vision but with selfish attributes and moral deficiencies are put in such key sensitive intelligence appointments on the great “village connection”, when guilty of misdeamenour they are always posted to sinecures to enjoy their ill-gotten gains, and that is called punishment! These people have sullied the fine image of the Army Gen Waheed will have to clean out those responsible in ISI for this mess, from Islamabad to Karachi, whatever their rank. The Corps Commander, Lt Gen Nasir Akhtar should have never accepted the “parallel” mode of operations by remote control from Islamabad and Rawalpindi. By the time he and the GOC, Maj Gen Malik Saleem Khan, regained total control over field operations in Karachi, the damage had been done, for the sake of this country one hopes not irretrievably.

Despite the excellent results achieved in urban Karachi by troops under the command of Maj Gen Saleem Khan, Comd Corps Reserve, the Army now suffers from a distinct lack of credibility in seeming to be aligned with MQM Haqeeqis. This perception has been reinforced by the electoral sham of May 5, seen universally as a “dress rehearsal” of the NA elections of July 14. While the Army’s duty was only to maintain peace, they are now seen to be part and parcel of the election process. The Mohajir community is grateful for the relative peace in the city but are bitter and frustrated over the ham-headed attempts to split them and/or impose a discredited leadership on them. The assassination of MQM moderate, Azeem Tariq is a compounded tragedy, with his demise the MQM, already dangerously isolated and estranged, is left with a pronounced vacuum in its upper hierarchy. The pro-Altaf Hussain faction (itself lacking credibility) was quick to sense the public mood and seize the opportunity by calling for a boycott of the PA elections, duly carried out not so much as obeying the call of Altaf faction but more as a combination of fear and lack of faith in the whole electoral exercise. Genuine political initiatives rather than political manipulation by the two major political groupings, the PPP, the PML (Nawaz Sharif) as well as the JI are necessary to fill this dangerous state of limbo, a situation ripe for exploitation by the Un-Godly. The confidence in democratic institutions can only be restored by enforcing the rule of the law among those who represent the authority of law in the Province. The enduring lesson of history is that puppets never deliver, they don’t have the capacity to. The Mohajir community and their forefathers gave great sacrifices for the nation, we must move Heaven and Earth to bring them back from the cold, to assuage their bruised perceptions about their national identity and contribution thereof.

In contrast to the urban area operations, the Army’s rural operations in the interior of Sindh started with the unmitigated disaster of the Bhalwal incident, a miniature My Lai except that Lt Calley did not have a vested personal interest in the Vietnam massacre as much as the selfish motives of the particular army officer concerned. To his credit, late Gen Asif Nawaz moved swiftly to bring to book the culprits of the actual crime. He also removed the hierarchy involved upto the Division level, including the GOC concerned. Before the media ferreted out the truth and made it into public property (which incidentally he tried desperately to cover up), the concerned GOC had held a spectacular briefing for the PM claiming credit for the uncovering of “terrorists”. The punishment for outright lies and fabrication for this senior officer, his controversial promotion in the face of many instances of authenticated evidence notwithstanding, was posting to an obscure assignment (out of sight, out of mind). With the demise of his nemesis, late Gen Asif Nawaz, he is set to make a comeback.

In a perverse way, the Bhalwal incident was Godsent for this Army and Pakistan, it brought into command in Hyderabad a man of great integrity, honour and sincere intent, the contrast was immediately discernible in field operations against dacoits. With purposeful intention and none of the contrived flamboyance of his predecessor, Army troops under the new GOC, Major Gen Lehrasab Khan, proceeded to decimate the Sindhi bandits in their strongholds. North of Hyderabad, Maj Gen Saleem Arshad, GOC Pano Aqil, was not found wanting either in the eradication and elimination of dacoits and kidnappers. Free of the horrible atrocities perpetuated on them for years by dacoits and their wadera mentors, the Sindh rural population breathed a sigh of relief. The hatred for the Army built up during the 80s decade evaporated and in contrast the Army is now being exhorted by the rural masses not to leave lest the dacoits comeback with a vengeance. The day of the “Sindh card” is over as two enterprising (and previously skeptical) journalists who undertook a recent tour of the interior can attest, a stunning (and welcome) sea change of attitude among ethnic Sindhis. These results have been achieved because there were no political considerations in the statement of the mission and the absence of the manipulations of the intelligence community. Today, the Army’s greatest success for many years is the adroit and adept handling of the Sindh interior, when you give good men like Lehrasab and Saleem Arshad a clear mission and don’t tie their hands behind their back, you get commensurate results. The problem about the mentors (the Untouchables) of the dacoits in the countryside remains as an omni-present Sword of Damocles over the integrity of the country.

The Army has succeeded in what it was mandated to do in the general sense, the lack of completeness of its operations in the urban area is a combination of the lack of sincerity of intent on the part of the Provincial Government as well as the rank stupidity of immature and irresponsible local intelligence operatives in mufti. Given the type of mandate Lt Gen Nasir Akhtar had, he should have had no compunctions bringing to book the infamous Untouchables. The easy way is for the Army to now walk away from this mess and leave the politicians to sort out their problems. That would be an abrogation of responsibility to the millions of urban-based citizens who have lived in terror of the militancy and greed unleashed by the privileged elite without any real democratic constituency. Those in the military hierarchy have a conscience, the fulfillment of duty requires them to have the moral integrity to strike at the source of Sindh’s urban (and rural) problems without fear or favour. That is their Constitutional responsibility. To leave a job undone would be to invite retribution by the Un-Godly on the intelligentsia and the masses. The choice is between career and conscience, very few have the courage and strength of character to choose the latter. That is why despite all the good work done, Sindh remains a cauldron.

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