Blood Money The revelations by Azam Hoti, ANP leader and father of the former CM of KPK, Haider Hoti may be shocking for the general public but to those privy to inside information in Pakistan’s political arena, the exposés are not shocking. In fact, an Ambassador of a Brotherly Islamic State had revealed the same quoting his country’s intelligence chief during a diplomatic reception soon after the ANP came to power in KPK in 2008. Muslim history is replete with instances where our leadership has sold us, often quiet cheap. The young wife of Bahadar Shah Zafar, the last Mogul Emperor, convinced him not to publicly endorse the 1857 rebellion in return for the Colonial offer of making their son a ceremonial king after crushing the rebels fighting for freedom. We all know the fate of Bahadar Shah Zafar after India was formally annexed to the British Empire. Significant part of the forces that retook Delhi from the rebel troops were Muslim soldiers led by British Officers. A Frontier Force Regiment of the Pakistan Army is even today named the ‘Chattak’ Battalion for making it to Delhi in record time to crush the rebels holding on to Delhi. At the height of the ‘Cold War,’ most of our political leadership was either on the payroll of the Soviets or the U.S. The only difference between them was the color of their shirts and flags. The military establishment has always preferred western toys and trainings and at critical junctures proved their loyalty by responding to the U.S. distress call. Our military’s national security doctrine is almost entirely focused on India with little forbearance to the overall concept of national security of a sovereign state whose citizens need to be protected from the East, West, North, and South or for that matter from within. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, most diehard socialists shed their red shirts and allied with the West with a convenient smokescreen of promoting secularism and/or fighting terrorism. Our leaders, civil and military, never stop boasting about the sacrifices made by civilians and soldiers killed in the war on terror. In reality, they treat us as mere cannon fodder or sheep and goats to be herded in a certain direction and sacrificed at the altar of patriotism, a virtue of the vicious. If given a choice, not one of the thousands would have volunteered to sacrifice their life in the latest foreign war that our nationals, civil and military, paid the price with their blood. After helplessly witnessing the hanging of her father by a U.S. backed military dictator, Benazir Bhutto plausibly came to the conclusion that to survive and prosper in Pakistani politics, the nationalist policies of her late father had to be buried with him. Her gamble never paid off as when she was assassinated only a few kilometers away from the site of her father’s hanging, another U.S. backed dictator presided over the affairs of the country. A generation fed with slogans of revolutionary changes instead of being led to demolish the decayed political system is left wandering with the party of their choice slowly but surely being strangulated by symbols of status quo under a leader whose revolution does not envisage soiling his hands. To stop any forest or bush fire from spreading, fire lines are created before dousing the flames. We lit that fire in late 2011 but before it could spread, fire lines were created to isolate the leader by toying with his mundane gullibility bordering on culpability. And, now the flames of change are being doused by forces of status quo that now symbolize the party. Treachery is not just accepting foreign money. Intrigue, deceit, and petty ambitions that derail a national endeavor from reaching its destination are no less.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Oct 2013 18:16:40 +0000
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