Farrukh Khan Pitafi's Official Website

 I have told you a hundred times that my father was an army officer. We were raised to stand up when the national anthem played, to salute the flag, feel proud of the army that we hardly ever knew. I think I have told you earlier that there was a time when I would have wanted nothing else than to become a fighter pilot and to perish like Rashid Minhas. My myopia blew up the chance and perhaps a bit of my zaniness. It has nevertheless been ingrained in me not to doubt the intention of the army. For dictatorial rules I have learnt to blame the ambition and vileness in men rather than any flaw in the institution. For the concept of Milbus I have again found it convenient to blame the depravity of the human lust and perhaps the law of necessity. Did the Ottoman Empire not implode because the military officers were not allowed to own property or permanent interests? Did something of the same of the same sort happen to the USSR? These excuses have kept me loving the army and perhaps even living.
Unlucky for us that we grew up during the days of Zia regime. My older brother and sister still think that we have been raised in a fashion that we can never like the true democratic forces. Throughout my life I have tried to prove them wrong. But to them I am the odd one out, the traditional weirdo who exists in every family. To me, however, Zia was nothing other than a murderer. He employed an entire state’s power to kill an elected prime minister. He should also be remembered as the butcher of the Palestinians in Jordan. But to me he was the odd one out. Such anomalies do occur everywhere. Pakistan Army was benign in its essentials even though its leaders had power to hijack it. I was still a believer and a vociferous one at that. Today when I search my soul I am still the same believer. I still have the firm faith that the creases in the force’s discipline can be undone with carefully reasoned ironing. I really wish that I am not hoping for too much.

But if you think that the army does not have discipline issues then you are mistaken. With whatever excuses it could muster it has thwarted the democratic system and took over the reigns of power several times. Even if judged by the Machiavellian standards, that the end justifies the means, the country has never emerged healthier out of the military regimes.

When I can accept that with my permanent association with journalism as a vocation I can never be a good foot doctor or a pilot, why should an army officer think that he can run the affairs of the state or any civilian business with equal ease as his guns? If today I open up a Yunani tib clinic and start dedicating my time to quackery or herbal medicine, would I ever be able to do justice to my work as a journalist? I think not. So cannot the Pakistan Army. Whenever the army takes over power it tends to bite more than it can chew. First it was the mishandling of the East Pakistan crisis, then becoming a pawn in the great game of 1980s, and now perhaps the worst crisis of our very existence. No if you still do not get it, let me stir your imagination a bit. Whenever the army takes over it becomes the political representative of Pakistan. It is loaded with diplomatic and often financial liabilities which it cannot do justice to. And hence the country and army as an institution keep sinking into the quicksand of time.

While we may not know that we are losing, our enemy is not hoodwinked. Our each folly in the shape of our weakness provides an opportunity to the forces which do not want to accept our existence. Let us for instance think of people like AQ Khan who first come on television and apologise to the nation for their excesses and now do not flinch from implicating the army and perhaps the entire state. If this is a personal fight of vendetta between Musharraf and Khan, it has become a liability for the state and everything should be done to shrink it back to the personal level through the president’s removal. But pretending that no such trouble exists will only complicate things further. May I remind our friends in the khakis that the sole purpose of nuclear stockpile and a conventional force is to defend the nation? When the forces find themselves compromising out of the fear of foreign assault, the very rationale of their existence evaporates. And no I am not referring to the operations in the tribal areas. Extremism has to be fought and defeated at every cost and through whatever means possible. That is despite the fact that we cannot deny that there is foreign pressure too and that we have made our readiness to take pressure quite plain. I am referring to the fact that this time the army is involved in politics, you accept it or not, not out of its own desire but owing to the US involvement and pressure.

No matter how emphatically you portray Musharraf as a civilian leader the fact that he did not want to doff his uniform before being elected president shows that his main constituency and source of power then was the army. Even if the army wants to forget it, the people do not that it is the army which is responsible for the current mess. And in this way it is its responsibility to remove the vestiges of the last military rule. There are further complications too. The amendments in the Army Act made during the martial law have not been revoked.

That means that our civil liberties are still suspended in a way. While fighting extremism and terrorism is our collective duty, fighting democracy and liberty is not. If the army wants to regain its prestige and popularity it should adhere fully to democracy and try to work on the bit of discipline that once lacked at the top. As long as the president remains in power and his henchman head of the country’s premier intelligence agency the army cannot do so. It is time to turn a new leaf for the army is too crucial to waste. Through more accountability and discipline this institution can work wonders.