No man’s land
Winning or losing in a game should not matter, what matters is how you play the game. Nowadays winning is everything, given the money numbers that go with success. One could be disappointed in not winning Sunday’s Cricket World Cup Final to Australia at Lord’s, the way we went about losing it was both pathetic and disgusting. This loss is, however, not life threatening and we will survive. Wars are unfortunately not like cricket, here winning is everything. Pakistan cannot afford to lose, our very existence in the new millennium depends upon winning. Moreover, we cannot be content with at least achieving a stalemate 1965-style, which given India’s numerical strength in conventional numbers, would be a victory of sorts. If war is unleashed by India, that is the only chance we will have of capturing Kashmir without losing any major part in the rest of the country.
Pakistan has succeeded in internationalising the Kashmir situation but we have paid a credibility price for that. We have lost the propaganda war with India as evinced from G-8 countries calling, during their Cologne meeting, “We are deeply concerned about the continuing military confrontation in Kashmir following the infiltrators of armed intruders which violated the Line of Control in the disputed border region. We regard any military action to change the status quo as irresponsible. We, therefore, call for the immediate end of these actions, restoration of the Line of Control and for the parties to work for an immediate cessation of fighting”, unquote. The only silver lining other than bringing Kashmir out of deep freeze was that Pakistan was not indicted by name. Caught up in our own romantic connotation about showing off, we failed to recognize that we had walked into a credibility trap of our own making. While the Mujahideen were operating in “no-man’s land” in a virtually inaccessible area between the defended positions of the two countries, we accepted tacitly that Mujahideen had crossed the LOC. In fact both countries exercise intermittent control over this area during conducive weather, occasionally there have been patrol clashes over the past two decades. India upped the ante by bringing in aircraft to cover a major military blunder and inadvertently internationalised it by losing two MIGs and a MI-17 combat helicopter, the wreckage of two of the fighter aircraft strewn several kilometers on our side of the border. Once the fight was in the open the Indians gave a “spin” to the event, a version that would appeal to the international community and followed it up by a media barrage. Pakistan’s response was less than credible given that media professionals are in short supply in the government or in Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) anymore. Director ISPR is a good soldier who was extremely unfortunate not to be promoted on merit during the tenure of the previous COAS but his only claim to PR fame is a close association to the present COAS and that is hardly a qualification to handle the media. In the media disaster that has engulfed Pakistan the official media machine has to shoulder the blame. That did not have the sense or vision to use the private sector, its expertise and its innovations. A severe bout of inferiority complex prevents those in government from effectively using media-personalities to make the case in various forums. Nobody has better annunciated our weaknesses in the area of PR than a former Director ISPR and previous owner/publisher of “Defence Journal”, Brig (Retd) A R Siddiqui in his book, “ The Military in Pakistan, Image and Reality”. Because we are parochial and prone to favouritism we prefer loyalty to the individual to that of loyalty to the State, we can even be comfortable with mediocrity in contrast to professionalism, mostly at a cost to the State.
Our economic situation in a possible pre-war scenario is horrendous despite the fact we got temporary respite from the IMF that allowed our survival till now. Most of our continuing economic factors have negative trends with hardly any hope of reversing the situation in the present environment and by the current crop of economic managers. We cannot leave poor Ishaq Dar to fight the economic battle on his own. The Finance Minister must be helped by the man whose basic constituency of businessmen and industrialists in forefront are resisting the reforms necessary to increase the revenues. The PM must get into the act and speak directly to the whole spectrum of commerce in different centres so that they register themselves for (and pay) General Sales Tax (GST). The PM is prone to a lot of symbolic acts, why doesn’t he take a trip to the ultimate symbol of non-payment of taxes, Liberty Market Lahore and appeal to their patriotism? Why doesn’t he task the Khidmat Committees to do some real-time Khidmat to the nation by ensuring that those who can pay taxes, at least 3.5 million people more, pay the taxes that would lead to minimum of Rs.300 billion in additional revenues” And while we have a populist PM who believes in pumping in money into projects that will create more jobs and requirement of material, let’s focus on those projects that have socio-economic value that give back recurrent revenues.
And in this crisis we added to our woes by sacking the one symbol of good governance, Lt Gen (Retd) Moinuddin Haider, Governor of Sindh, and effectively supplanting in practice, if not on paper, Governor’s Rule in Sindh with that of the Chief Advisor to the Governor, Ghous Ali Shah, one of the greatest examples of bad governance in Pakistan, when not considering Asif Zardari’s misrule. As Chief Minister Sindh in the 80s, Mr Ghous Ali Shah set standards of corruption and malfeasance that were eclipsed only during Ms Benazir’s second tenure as PM. One does not hold any brief for Moinuddin Haider and in Pakistan one does not worship the setting sun but, because he trod a straight path of focussing on all of Sindh’s problems without caring for Party lines, his was a class act who did much to redeem the reputation of the uniform he once wore. Expecting war at any time, with the main political parties in Sindh estranged from both the national and political mainstream, we needed some already in the saddle to prepare the Province for war. War, when it comes, will include an attempted blockade of Karachi as a main option for the enemy. The new Governor hardly excites any confidence, in a recent conference on Law and Order he gave a confident projection, which he promptly reversed by 180 degrees when he found the Chair opposed to it. In true weathercock fashion, he went far more than even the Chair desired. As a puppet on a string, he will be useful to Ghous Ali Shah in his manipulations in Sindh.
While people are dying in Kargil, the nation was more focussed on cricket. Kashmir and the scenario likely to develop should occupy our minds in exception to everything else. We would be at war today but it does not suit India to attack in this weather. But who knows the devious nature of the Indian mind, just because we think so, they might still go ahead and attack us in strength, not only across the LOC but along the entire length of the international border. Because they presently hold the credibility factor in the world media they may use this advantage to paint us as the villains of the piece. While the weather for the next 60 days is not really conducive for all-out war, that may be the ultimate reason for trying to catch us off-guard.
One of the reasons we usually fail is because our “sacred cow” syndrome. In the face of possible war scenario, it was suggested all uniformed personnel be withdrawn from WAPDA to go back to their professional duties, one day it was reported that “all ranks upto Major have been sent back to the Army and only officers of the rank of Colonel and Brigadier remain”. The next day it was reported this was only a rumour and untrue, planted by “those who have a vested interest in having the Army withdrawn from WAPDA”. With war fever staring in the faces of the military hierarchy, what a position to take! Our problem is that we prefer personal preferences rather than depend upon sound professionals who have a habit of speaking their mind. What the nation desperately needs is people without myopic vision, people who do not suffer from an inferiority complex and people who are not impetuous. We need people who really believe in God, not those who give the Holy Koran lip-service in public while raising rose-tinted glasses to their lips behind closed doors. We need people who should have the strength of character to portray what they really are in private as they do in public, not having dual (and even triple) personalities. We need planners who will implement what they conceive in the national interest, not those who would send the flower of our youth to their deaths to serve their own narrow selfish vision of glory and ambition. Make no mistake, India will force war on us, sooner or later, if we want to exist in the new millennium let us get the character of our leadership structure right, sooner rather than later.
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