The Siege Within

JANUARY 2004 - In 1958 when Martial Law arrived in the shape of a Field Marshal who was not really a Field Marshal, we, riding our bicycles to college, registered this change in our public life, by noticing the appearance of wire netting on all the meat shops. The years passed, the flies returned and the Field Marshal became a part of our daily existence. Now and then, people would huddle in groups and moan about the absence of democracy. Invariably, someone or the other would pipe up and admonish everyone. “What would happen to Pakistan if something were to happen to the Field Marshal?” would be the question that would stump everybody. A lifetime later, the same situation, now with another figurehead presiding at the table, elicits the same response. On the night of Christmas, a few hours after the ambush that nearly got the chief, the air was full of the same question and the answer 45 years after Ayub Khan was still the same. Who said time doesn’t stand still?

With every flower pot in the country subject to intense scrutiny and a gargaluntan network of security, expenditure on which is unknown to man or beast, in operation at all times, even morons are wondering what is really going on. Threats to the President have been common knowledge for weeks. There have been detailed accounts of the Karachi attack, which failed, and the rumour mills grind on, raising spectres of other attempts that have not been made public. Al Qaeda or whatever it is called these days has wasted no opportunity to issue dire warnings to this country. Bin Laden’s sidekick, Ayman al-Zawahiri, speaking about the President recently called him, “a traitor who sold out the blood of the Muslims in Afghanistan.” There is a plethora of information available to the spook chiefs that is flowing in fast and free from the FBI, CIA and all the other dozen agencies, some known some not known, which indicate that many wheels are in motion, all with the express task of eliminating the man who has supposedly betrayed our country and our religion to the enemies of Islam. So, we all wonder what is going on, that the head of this country should be surrounded by apparently the biggest goof squad of all times. Supposedly equipped and trained to do their job, why do they repeatedly fall flat on their collective faces each time a situation arises? It is the same sense of wonder that engulfs more common folk, who open their newspapers one morning and find out that what saved the President’s life on that bridge in Rawalpindi was not his eagle-eyed trouble-shooters, but a jamming device on his limo. This may have been public knowledge to everyone in Islamabad’s corridors of power, but it was a good example of sensitive information that should not have been revealed to the people. Whoever decided that information about the jamming device be made public should be asked the rationale behind such an extraordinary declaration. Precisely who gained by this disclosure is as obvious as Mr. Jamali’s ponderous presence in the capital of the country. Such startling disclosures leave most Pakistanis astounded and as we all know, it takes a whole lot to astound the Pakistanis.

On the day when the two vehicles charged the Presidential motorcade, some reports stated that there were at least two Presidential motorcades in motion that day when the President left Islamabad. Two identical motorcades, yet only one was attacked. The right one – and this time, both attackers knew that the jamming device left no other option but to execute a suicide run. It was only the body of a policeman that one of the vehicles rammed into, that gave the Presidential limo that extra few seconds and at the reported speed of 80 mph, the few seconds were the difference between living and dying. When the Presidential motorcade left Islamabad, were there telltale signs that anyone with half a brain could register and make the right conclusion? In other words, was our customary brilliance at work again? They often say that military intelligence is a contradiction in terms and if that was the case, the suspected leak inside the President’s outfit may not be accurate. On more than one occasion, stopped by the military police as the President left Army House for Islamabad, one noticed that as four black limos, identical in every detail swept out for the trip to the capital, the various assortment of guards, posted around the road, remained rigid as poles as limo one and limo two left the gates, but snapped to attention as soon as limo three came into view. Limo four received the same response as given to the first two. It did not require too many brains to figure out which limo carried the President - and most of us are no sleuths.

And what about Muhammad Jamil, the 23 year old Jihadi who died in the onslaught ramming a vehicle loaded with 40 kg (?) of explosives at the motorcade? Reportedly a veteran of the fundamentalist drive into Occupied Kashmir and later in Afghanistan, he was arrested in Kabul in March 2003 and brought to Pakistan. Here, the intelligence agencies grilled him and then cleared him – status ‘white’ or in the spook parlance, ‘not a threat to the state.’ What irony that he almost blew up the motorcade and missed out glory by a few seconds. Many Pakistanis believe – President Musharraf’s silent majority, that the various jihadi parties are alive, flourishing and kicking. As late as October 2003, Jaish-e-Muhammad (Muhammad Jamil’s party) chief, Maulana Azhar Masood was on speaking tours, unhindered, in Pakistan. This party was the one the President praised pre- 9/11, when he was asked about them in a press conference in Washington. Of course times have changed since then, but the party now has a new enemy to contend with. The Lashkar-e-Taiba, a fundamentalist group set up by the military establishment to fight in Kashmir, is reportedly training Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah and the links between the establishment and such groups, run deep. With the ink hardly dry on the new patchwork quilt made by the government and the MMA, the murky waters in which all those who matter today are sailing, have become murkier. Sign pacts on the one hand and eliminate them on the other. The President is supping with those very people who directly or indirectly or both, support and aid the parties and outfits that are involved in attacks on his life. There are rumours that the militant groups have now infiltrated the very elaborate security network that protects the President, which may explain their uncanny ability to avoid the decoy and go for the real McCoy. The anonymous 15 who died on Xmas day have been quietly lowered into their graves. The investigation has gone hush hush.

Wheels within wheels, ships that pass in the night, shadows in the alleys, whispered hints of deeds yet to be done – Pakistan is in a strange bind as another year opens its doors. After half a century and more, we are at the mercy of individuals, bereft of any system, any continuity and any institutions worth the name. Our volatile existence is as precarious as ever before and there are so many forces at work in a mad crisscross of conflicting ideologies and ambitions. Each day that passes without an incident should be seen as a gift from the gods who have all but abandoned us. A curfew-like scene holds Islamabad in its thrall as delegates gingerly step on to our soil for the SAARC summit. The city is under siege and everyone is suspect, even the pine trees that Ayub Khan planted.