The commencement of judicial proceedings on the infamous Mehrangate has triggered off a public debate, which is fundamentally deeply flawed. Both the commentariat and chattering classes would have it that devil in the scam was the military and the ISI. But that is patently a duplicitous talk. No lesser culpable could be the political eminences named in the scandal. After all, they were no toddlers who their fondling moms or taunting nannies could have led by a finger to wherever they wanted. They were grown people, masters of their own wills. And if they became the IJI adventurism’s part, they obviously did it volitionally, not at gunpoint.
Hadn’t MQM supremo Altaf Hussain refused the proffered slush fund and declined becoming the IJI conspiracy’s part, and admirably? Those who sold out too could have rebuffed the ISI’ overtures had they so wanted. And they were no paupers, either. The Sharifs, the Jams, the Jatois, the Jamalis, the Marris, the Bizenjos, the Abidas, the Kakars, et all are all people of means, rich and wealthy. If in spite of that they hopped on to the ISI-driven chariot blithely, what does it tell if not they are no politicians of conviction but mere political operators and just professional mercenaries? Greed for money and lust for power is their creed, not the public service or the people’s weal? What else could it be?
And yet the commentariat and chattering classes would have in the dock only the military and the ISI and leave the political eminences out as the wronged party. Isn’t it an outright rank doublespeak and some intrinsic antipathy’s sheer manifestation? If the military or the ISI was a sinner in this political venture, weren’t the political eminences that knowingly joined it up, too? How could one set of sinners be held accountable and the other exempted from accountability? How would the commentariat and chattering classes square up this inherent contradiction in their stance and how would they justify their disgraceful shyness of calling a set of sinners the crooks that they actually are?
And who was it who indeed inducted the ISI in political engineering works? Wasn’t it the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto? Wasn’t he a politician? Didn’t he gift this premier intelligence agency with a political cell? And isn’t it that even his daughter Benazir Bhutto didn’t shut this cell down during her two prime ministerial stints, despite the fact that the IJI was specifically cobbled up to block her electoral triumph? And isn’t it that Mian Nawaz Sharif too was quite fan of the ISI all through his spells in the prime minister’s office? So enamoured of it was he that he first brought in a favourite maulvi general of his to head it and then gave it to the command of a general who he later abortively promoted to head the army. Isn’t it?
When all these facts are very much in the domain of public knowledge, do the commentariat and chattering classes have to do a doubletalk? How can you expect a rectification or reformation if you demonise one set of crooks as culprits and eulogise the other set of crooks as innocent? Hasn’t this skewed giving of clean chit been our political culture’s biggest bane? Who doesn’t know that many a political career had its genesis in the garrisons’ wombs and a lot of eminences strutting on our political landscape were nursed in praetorian laps? Wasn’t ZA Bhutto launched into the political arena under first military ruler Ayub Khan’s fondling guardianship? Wasn’t the Sharif Inc introduced to the political ring by Lt. Gen. Ghulam Jilani and patronised by military dictator Gen. Ziaul Haq? And hadn’t Benazir Bhutto returned home from self-exile after a power-sharing deal with dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf?
And isn’t a fact that retired Air Marshal Asghar Khan, on whose petition the judicial proceedings on Mehrangate have been kicked off, had himself asked the military not to obey the orders of ZA Bhutto against whose government the opposition had mounted a street agitation over poll rigging charges in 1977 and he was among star leaders of that movement? And isn’t an open secret that presently Shahbaz Sharif and another PML (N) stalwart Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan have met the army top command in the darkness of night? Then who are the commentariat and chattering classes kidding? They have been hosting Roedad Khan as a frequent fixture on media talk shows and as regular newspaper columnist where he has been lecturing on political morality and ethics, even though he was part of military ruler Yahya Khan’s junta and the czar of Benazir-specific accountability drive of president Ishaq Khan. He too has been named in the Mehrangate.
There really is something perturbedly amiss with the act of the commentariat and chattering classes. Military definitely must not interfere in civilian affairs, and not at all in political matters. But how can it happen if you issue a certificate of good conduct to a delinquent political class and pronounce only the military and the ISI guilty. To put an end to an evil, you have to call a spade a spade. And both the commentariat and chattering classes do need cleansing up of their own act, really.
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