Private Army of Ayaz Amir

For all the guns that this Pakistani politician owns, he should have been able to attend the funeral of a Pakisani soldier who belonged to his constituency.

Let me explain.

Mr. Ayaz Amir is a renowned Pakistani columnist. He is famous for criticizing the military and defending democracy.

He works for Mr. Nawaz Sharif’s party. He is a Member of National Assembly of Pakistan [MNA] from a rural area close to the federal capital. But despite close links to Mr. Sharif, or maybe because of them, he secured 29 special permits - or licenses - to carry banned weapons. These permits were granted to him by the government of President Asif Ali Zardari.

These permits can’t be obtained in normal circumstances.

The disturbing part of the story is this: the elected and democratic government of Pakistan has issued tens of thousands of licenses for banned weapons. These banned weapons include arms that only the country’s military and paramilitary agencies are allowed to own.

The result is that in today’s Pakistan, every small and big political party has a secret private army. These weapons are meant to reinforce the power of the families that run these parties and to intimidate opponents.

Pakistan has a violent, armed, family-owned democracy. That’s why it is a failure.

When I tried to do a TV show about it, most big-name politicians refused to participate.

While arming the Pakistani democracy, our ‘democratic warriors’ have also allowed the United States to create a covert private militia on Pakistani soil, manned by the highly trained former officers of the Pakistani military. Husain Haqqani in Washington granted them visas and Rehman Malik’s Interior Ministry let them establish outposts in and around the Pakistani capital. All of this was done in the past two years. Finally the Pakistani people and the military discovered what was happening and nabbed this scheme in the bud.

Why does someone like Ayaz Amir need 29 permits for sophisticated weapons?

US defense contractor DynCorp paid US$ 2,000 for each one of the 138 arm permits it received from the Interior Ministry before the whole operation was busted.

Was Mr. Ayaz Amir selling these permits in the open market? If not, has he created a small army for himself? Or is it part of a larger army maintained by his political party, the PMLN?

And then, all these weapons must have made you a secure man, Mr. Amir. But then, last year, he refused to attend the funeral of Lt. Faiz Sultan, who was an active member of PakNationalists, and an active duty soldier in the Pakistan Army. Faiz was a resident in the constituency of Mr. Amir. Faiz could also have been one of the youngest martyrs fighting the foreign-funded fake Taliban movement [a.k.a Pakistani Taliban].

Mr. Amir did not attend Lt. Faiz’s burial because the honorable politician was afraid he might become a target for the terrorists. This is what one of Mr. Amir’s local representatives told the family of Lt. Faiz.

So much for our armed democracy.