The General’s new enemies

Two friends smsed me from jail in Lahore. Amna Sharif and Bilal Minto are 40 or thereabouts, not political activists — they won’t march up and down for anything, though they are writers and have developed political views. And being successful professionals they don’t have time to waste.

On the night of November 3, they, who grew up under Zia-ul-Haq, couldn’t stomach Musharraf’s speech after he did a Kargil on the judiciary.

The morning after, they went over to the Human Rights Commission office in Lahore for a public meeting. They were courting arrest, and soon were arrested along with others, since fundamental rights had been suspended by the Emergency and the regime was cracking down on civil dissent.

Politicians say the stupidest things, but what can a Pakistan General say that is worse? And what can be so bad that it can goad a professional from Pakistan, who has learnt to digest everything, to such drastic action?

We must remember that this is a class of people that Musharraf has drawn support from in his early days.

Both Bilal and Amna were released on the night of November 6 and made to sign a declaration that they would not break the law again, the law of course meaning what Musharraf happens to be currently saying.

Late that night, Bilal let me know that he was packing his bags for ‘a month in prison.’ I gathered he was going to court arrest over the next few days.

Why is he doing this?

Both of them have moved on from the Zia era which was both about the general and the responses to him: his genius was that he marketed hypocrisy.

His habits dripped piety though that demeanor masked realpolitik. This caught the public imagination; many emulated him, and many despised him. But the
Zia legacy generally underwhelms their imagination.

So why is Musharraf the bumbler getting their goat when masterful Zia did not? A friend, a Delhi-based writer, said that what disgusted him watching Musharraf’s speech was when rambling on in Urdu about how the he was fighting terrorism and that extremism had grown and therefore the country needs more of him and his institution,

Musharraf suddenly switched to English while talking about democracy — presumably for a foreign audience. We are not ready for democracy like America and Europe, he said.

The professionals must have been livid. To infantalise his people to the West is repellant. But is it bad enough to go to jail in protest?

Since the Emergency, Musharraf has only arrested political workers, lawyers and human rights activists and not a single militant.

The authorities did not let the PPP hold a rally in Rawalpindi on November 9 and Lahore on November 12 and have intimidated students and journalists who have been holding rallies in Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, Lahore University of Management Sciences and Punjab University.

This is particularly cruel since campuses have not seen political marches in three decade . On the other hand, the regime has released 20 militants in exchange for the release of 200 soldiers captured in Waziristan. And it has announced elections, but under the Emergency, and wants to try civilians in military courts. Is it surprising that the professional classes are turning against Musharraf?

To many of this ilk, the general is a jihadi, and not of the holy kind. They have pointed out his regime’s links to the Lal Masjid clerics, to the Mulla Radio of Swat Valley, as well as to the would-be assassins of Benazir Bhutto.

It is well known that the regime turns up and turns off the infiltration tap into Kashmir. A jihadi should be defined as any one who violently disrupts civil life, which is what he does. The fact that such a person may or may not yell ‘Islam’ while doing the deed is not so important as the nature of the dastardly act. Would you call a singer ‘sufi’ just because they occasionally yell Allah-hoo?

Ajmal Kamal, 55, a Karachi-based Urdu publisher says that the new  generation in Pakistan doesn’t know how to “behave” under martial law. It’s  clear that their elders are not with the programme either.

Email: r_ansari@dnaindia.net