In the last couple of years, no one with eyes even half open could have missed the long queue of countries desperate for membership in BRICS, leaving behind the US “Rules Based Order”. It was given only to our idiots in uniform that while the rest of the world was headed one way, we were being dragged in the other direction. Without giving a thought to the two way run of traffic, we abandoned our tried and tested relationship with the Chinese, and went eagerly into the US embrace after having found it wanting after decades of experience. The only thing that can put the treachery of the Generals who engineered regime change in Pakistan in the shade is their incredible stupidity. This makes them twice as dangerous.
For those who still stubbornly insist that the US did not instigate regime change in our country, as if wholly indigenous treachery made it more respectable, only one look needs to be taken at bleeding Gaza and our policy towards it. Ever since our independence, which has recently been subverted all over again, there were two issues on which our foreign policy remained constant. One was the issue of Kashmir, and the other was the cause of Palestine. Both were set in stone by M.A. Jinnah. About Kashmir, since abandoned, most people know, but few do so about Pakistan’s deep connection with the cause of Palestine. In both these cases, it fell to Pakistan’s foreign minister Chaudhry Zafarullah Khan, to lay out their legal foundations at the United Nations. This was only natural for him to do with regard to Kashmir. But he was also called in to prepare the case on behalf of the Palestinians and argue it in front of the UN General Assembly, because they did not have anyone of sufficient stature and legal standing to plead their case. Zafarullah presented his case for a united Palestine in Oct 1947. His laying out of the legalities of both these cases, were considered as brilliant tours de force. From then up to Oct 7, 2023, who ever ruled Pakistan, gave to the Palestinian cause their unwavering and unstinted support.
Since Oct 2023, Gaza has been subjected to a genocide like no other. All other genocides in comparitively recent history have been committed behind a cover of deniability. This is the only one openly accepted, advertised, and encouraged by the genociding government, and has been available more or less in real time for the world to see on video footage. It is the only genocide supported quite unashamedly by the “civilized” world led by the US. Never did the Palestinians need help and support as they do today. Never were they so shamelessly abandoned by their co-religionists and consganguine states as now. And never could it be imagined that Pakistan would be in the lead of this pack of deserters. Asim Munir, the current usurper of state power, will keep on speaking all day, every day, on every subject under the sun, but he has not let out a squeak on Gaza. And if he has let one out, it must be in the privacy of his washroom. Indeed, those who comprise his High Command, instead of raising their voice against the brutality being visited on Gaza, have been given to observe a minute’s silence for each Gazan death. And because they are being killed at such a rate, nothing but silence has come from our uniformed heros.
The eloquence of Asim Munir’s retincence with regard to Gaza is the true measure of Pakistan’s subservience to the US. This seems to be total. This could only have come about if operation regime change came right out of the US “School of Americas’ ” playbook in which Bajwa was their dormant mole, till he finally achieved the maturity of a fully formed traitor, fit to be activated. I believe that Gen Faiz Hamid’s transfer from ISI was the first indication that something untoward was afoot in Pakistan’s power architecture. I think this had to do with Bajwa’s fears that Faiz’s loyalties may have turned Imran’s way. Given what was on the anvil, even a remote suspicion of this could not be tolerated. So, Gen Faiz Hamid had to make way for someone more trustworthy. In my view therefore, the regime change conspiracy had been in the works long before anyone knew Donald Lu’s name, and was being fine tuned in Langley Virginia.
The total subservience of Gen Asim Munir to the US will militate against the possibility of the two main protagonists in Pakistan’s current civil and constitutional conflict coming to a negotiated settlement, as suggested in my earlier piece. The US will sabotage any such effort. Without this negotiated settlement Pakistan will find the only settlement which is possible. And that is a slide into horrific and escalating violence. This violence, once ignited, may well end with the country itself going up in smoke. This will be the price of our Army Chief’s subservience to a foreign power to which he and his predecessor sold us.
Why this will be the case has to do with the US objectives of bringing about regime change in Pakistan. These should be simple for most to understand. The way I understaood these objectives, I laid out in my piece entitled ” The Wages of Betrayal” posted on May 30, 2023, viz: “Operation Regime Change was put into effect because a] Pakistan had to be denuclified;b] it had to be retrieved from the embrace of China; c] Baluchistan was to be sheered off from it and d] any chance that the oligarchs who control every avenue of power under the neoliberal dispensation in the country could be done away with, [which Imran’s avowed policies seemed committed to doing], had to be eradicated.
I have little doubt that our nuclear capability has already been neutralized. We have already been yanked away from China. The sheering off of Baluchistan will follow in due course. And putting Imran on ice will ensure that our thieving oligarchs and the neo-liberal order which mothered and then protected them, shall keep thriving at the cost of the poor, the wretched, and the bedraggled.”
Today is May 28, the birthday of our bomb which is being duly celebrated. Yet I wonder if we still have the bomb whose birthday is being commemorated. And if we still have it, is it in its original state, or has it been circumcised i.e has it been compromised to the extent that it is now there only for the counting, and not for the using? Given that the two essential and sufficient conditions exist in the Pakistan of today to make this suspicion relevant i.e that of the “denuclification” of Pakistan being a prime objective of the US regime change in our country, and Pakistan having at its helm people who will willingly sell off their grandmothers for a pittance, would this not be a very natural question to ask?
If there is still a forlorn seed of patriotism somewhere in a beating breast high up, walking Pakistan back into the Chinese camp would be a relatively simple matter, but it would not be quite that simple to walk back the distance which may have been covered in fiddling with the protocols of our nuclear assets. And if some steps have been taken to compromise our nuclear wares, there is absolutely no chance for the Army leadership to sit down with Imran Khan and hammer out their differences. In their long roster of crimes, this will be one which shall not be able to find absolution.
In this case, Pakistan’s hopes become considerably slimmer, and they lie entirely with the generals who are not directly compromised. On the issue of the bomb, I think they would be in a considerable majority.
