Parting the Sea - Imran Khan and his People
The recent tragedy at Murree, resulting in the deaths of around forty citizens, has gripped the hordes (I will abstain from using the word "nation") into a state of frenzy. Such incidents follow a familiar pattern now –There is a terrible event that makes everyone blame the others for the carelessness and indifference, followed by a ritual of introspection. There is a period of mourning and then we forget if anything happened. It is a vicious cycle that keeps repeating itself. For such behavior, I have coined the term
“ The law of diminishing effects". According to this law, the more a pattern of events repeats itself, the less it surprises the people.
At Murree, the people died when, due to a snow blizzard, they could not find shelter in any of the hotels because the hotel owners demanded exorbitant rents for the accommodation. The tourists, largely, had arrived without any proper clothing, sleeping bags, and the necessary gear required for an excursion. They just wanted to see the snowfall. Denied any place for the stay, they were forced to spend the night in their vehicles. Trying miserably to stay warm, they left the engines of their vehicles running and the heaters on. They died due to exposure to Carbon Monoxide which filled the vehicles because the exhaust pipes were choked.
A few days before it happened, the meteorological department had issued warnings about the impending heavy snowfall. In vain, the traffic police, though half-heartedly, tried to stop the vehicular traffic moving from Rawalpindi and Abbottabad towards Murree.People were in no mood to obey the traffic police. Physical scuffles took place when the traffic police tried to block the traffic towards Murree. Some women accused the traffic police of harassing them.
A lot of recriminations followed the disaster. The
media, as usual, led the hysteria and accused the civil administration of
criminal neglect and apathy. After some time, the anger was turned against the
armed forces. A segment of the media,
politicians, and civil bureaucracy accused the army and the air force of
indifference. Despite the armed forces' employed on disaster relief duties,
snow – clearance, and traffic regulation,
these segments blamed that the army and the air force should not have
waited for the government orders to take control of the situation, that they
should have taken the initiative and vacated their installations and messes
"sprawled over acres" for the stranded citizens. The opposition, as
expected, took full advantage of the situation and tried to dovetail it into
the political agitation it is hoping against hope to foment against the
government.
The Rawalpindi garrison, with its military establishments - units, training schools, command headquarters, workshops, and depots- was established by the British at the beginning of the 19th Century. At about the same time, they declared Murree as the summer capital of Punjab- the strategically important province that the British had wrested from the Sikhs. After a few years, whereas the summer capital was shifted to Shimla, the military infrastructure stayed put.
Soon after the independence, Pakistan was embroiled in the First Kashmir War with India. During the War, Murree was the logistics base for the movement and maintenance of the Pakistan Army troops fighting the Indian occupation army. During the early years after the independence, PAF also established its training and administrative establishments in the vicinity. Murree is still the logistics base for provisioning the army and air force units deployed in AJK and GB.
The disaster at Murree has exposed the national fault lines more than ever before. As a result, Imran Khan is again in the eye of the storm. The former cricket captain is a visionary. In the wake of the more than thirty-year game of musical chairs between the Noon League and the PPP, he had emerged as a ray of hope for the people of Pakistan who were plundered mercilessly by the two ruling dynasties. Like Moses leading his people out of the tyrannical rule of the Pharoah, he symbolized salvation from poverty and misrule.
After becoming the PM, Imran Khan has failed to rise to the occasion and remained confined to the cocoon of his cricket captaincy. Now, the captain of a cricket team is responsible for leading his team into victory against the rival teams. However, the team selection, training, administration, logistics, etc., is the responsibility of the cricket control board. Imran Khan, after entering the corridors of power, has remained in the same Cloud Cuckoo World (pardon me if I have used the wrong expression) in which he lived during his captaincy.
Not that Imran Khan has failed altogether. He has tried to tackle the hopeless state of the economy that he inherited from the Noon League – a laissez-faire economy where the government resorted to massive foreign borrowing to keep the dollar exchange rate artificially low, where there was no documentation and money laundering was the order of the day, and where the dirty rich squirreled away their ill-gotten wealth in foreign banks and properties.
There are moves in certain quarters to provoke the Army into declaring martial law in the country. Who will be the beneficiary/s? I had written:
“All the politicians, starting from ZAB, down to Nawaz and IK, came to power by concluding some sort of understanding or deal with the Army. All of them, backed by the Deep State, performed according to their abilities and were shown the door when they had either outlived their utility or earned enough money to last for a lifetime. This is what happened with the Sharifs and Zardaris.
What is the Way Forward for Pakistan?
The present internal
situation in Pakistan, impacted by external pressures, will result in the
elimination of the entire political leadership which today rules the country or
benefits from the political system directly or indirectly. It will be replaced
by a new crop which understands and is capable of standing up to the challenges
which Pakistan is going to face in the remaining part of the 21st Century.”
If history is not to be limited
to mere teaching in educational institutions, now is the time to learn from our
experience and not to repeat our past mistakes. Taking stock of what mistakes
we had committed in the past, we need to take the following actions:-
Don't be Another Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic was Germany's government from 1919 to 1933- the period after World War I until the rise of Nazi Germany. It is remembered as a shaky republic that could not stand up to the challenges Germany was facing during the post-WWI era. The present economic, political, and security situation, marred by uncertainty, cannot be addressed within the present political framework. Neo-leftists, representing the armchair liberals, and the religious carpetbaggers are waiting in the wings to exploit the chaos and collapse the already tottering government. The vacuum, thus created, will be filled by the Fascist forces. Bold decisions will have to be taken. This implies holding the 1973 constitution in abeyance and declaring a state of emergency in the country.
Look Inward
"Consolidate the country and concentrate on building up the economy., even as the Japanese did after Commodore Perry‘s blockade of the Tokyo Bay on 8th July 1853. It was only after building up its industrial and military power when Japan defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese War. Japan was defeated during WW2 because at that time America was the sole nuclear power."
"Pakistan's economy will have to be re-engineered if we want to exist, not merely survive, as a strong and self-reliant nation. For this to happen, our reliance on foreign remittances will have to be replaced by an economy based on value-added agricultural and industrial exports. If we start today, it will take at least a decade to restructure the economy and establish it on firm foundations."
“Finally, IK may be a weak ruler – governance is different from playing cricket. But rest assured that Shahbaz Sharif, despite sending funny Tweets and donning an equally funny hat, will not be the replacement. So is the case with Bilawal – Zardari’s public face.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1481364059161247747
Saleem Akhtar Malik
12 January 2022
The author is a Pakistan Army veteran who regularly writes on national and international affairs, defence, military history, and military technology. His talks on these subjects are aired on his YouTube Channel "The Observation Post". His blog "Sam1953.blogspot.com" features his articles. Tweets @saleemakhtar53.
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