Zardari vs. Pak Military

The current turmoil in Pakistan basically pitches Pakistanis and their military against a combine of Zardari-Haqqani-Malik and America.

This means the President, his Ambassador to Washington, and his Interior Minister, backed by the United States, versus the judiciary, the nation of Pakistan and the military.

If you are a keen observer, you will not miss the telltale signs.

One of them was on display today, Dec. 24, on the front page of The News International, Pakistan’s largest English-language newspaper.

My colleague Mr. Rauf Klassra ran a juicy story titled, ‘When it comes to keeping gifts, army rulers outdo civilians’. It’s about two former military rulers of Pakistan illegally retaining state gifts presented by foreign dignitaries to Pakistani presidents and prime ministers.

The story, if accurate, is fair.

But a day earlier, the same author, my colleague Mr. Klasra, ran another juicy story titled, ‘Zardari excels in keeping foreign gifts worth millions.’

See?

It’s a tit-for-tat. The paper publishes a story showing a greedy President Zardari gobbling up state gifts. The very next day, another story appears that accuses military rulers of ‘outdoing’ civilian rulers in greed.

What does this mean?

First, it shows the mindset in the Zardari camp. They do see the Pakistani military as their prime target. This, of course, is no longer a secret. Mr. Zardari and his closest aides had their sights on the military and specifically on ISI from the day the incumbent government seized power last year. And this is not about any domestic Pakistani political agenda. It is about fulfilling conditions in the secret deal brokered by US Department of State that brought Mr. Zardari to power in Pakistan.

Second, this tit-for-tat reveals the fight-back strategy of the Zardari government. And it’s simple:

1.       Move the focus of the Pakistani public opinion away from the massive corruption and ineptitude of the incumbent government by turning this into a civil-military dispute.

2.      Raise the specter of rebellion in Sindh against Pakistan if Zardari is no longer in power.

This is the outline of the Zardari comeback plan. There is one more card up Mr. Zardari's sleeve and that's US diplomats in Islamabad quietly lobbying other key public figures to support Mr. Zardari in exchange for a piece of America's soft power in favor of this or that politician.

As for whipping up sentiments against the Pakistani military, it probably is already obvious to Mr. Zardari and his aides that this won’t happen any time soon. His government is so inept that it succeeded in pushing Pakistanis toward the judiciary and the military in less than two years. No one except idealistic fools have any faith in politicians.

As for the so-called Sindh card, I couldn’t come up with a better and more shocking retort than the following paragraph by Ameer Bhutto, Benazir’s first cousin who wrote an eye-opening op-ed in today’s The News:

“Sindh today is a far cry from the Sindh of 27 December 2007 and if anyone expects Sindhis to react in the same way as they did back then, they are deluded. One example illustrates my point: On 31 May 2009 the chief minister Sindh and some of his ministers held an open kutchery of mostly their own party workers in Naodero. So enraged was the public at the government's failure to give any relief that they not only confronted the chief minister and his ministers with harsh words, but were becoming so physically aggressive that the police had to herd the VIPs inside a rest house to save them from their own party workers. The furious people attacked the rest house and shattered the windows. Fearing the worse, the rangers were summoned and the VIPs were piled into bullet-proof vehicles and rushed away to a safe location, but not before the people succeeded in pelting the vehicles with stones. If the People's Party workers can do this to their own government in Naodero, Benazir Bhutto's hometown and the epicenter of the People's Party, then one can imagine the situation in other areas of Sindh.”

I can only add this piece of advice to the trio of Mr. Zardari, Mr. Haqqani and Mr. Malik:

The American-protected NRO is over. The man who facilitated it in Pakistan, Mr. Musharraf, made a better judgment and fled. The Pakistani military was dragged into the deal along with the people of Pakistan because some [like me, in the interest of full disclosure] erred by retaining some faith in that Mr. Musharraf won’t blunder. Now it appears the military is not interested in protecting US interest when the US won’t reciprocate.

The writing is on the wall. Pakistani nation has been through hell in the past three years. We won’t allow you or anyone else to serve a foreign agenda using our tax money.