When Mush comes to shove

mar 13th, 2007

why old mushy can expect to be in an "accident" shortly.

or else the guy might disgorge a few taliban or al qaeda, and then all will be hunky-dory again.

none of this is going to be of any benefit to india, as whoever replaces him is going to be no better and no worse: another mohammedan fundamentalist.

we are wrong to have any personal animosity towards mushy. he is merely playing out his role, and in fact doing a much better job for his country than the Invertebrates do for india. any other person who comes into the pak president job will be equally bad, so the known devil may be better than the unknown one.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kanchan Gupta

The Pioneer / Edit Page / March 14, 2007

 

When Mush comes to shove

 

Kanchan Gupta

 

Military aircraft, especially those as sturdy as the US-built Hercules C-130, are not known to crash immediately after take-off in good weather. Yet one of them crashed on August 17, 1988, soon after taking off from the Pakistani military base in Bahawalpur. Among those who perished in that fiery crash were Gen Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, Pakistan's military ruler and a frontline ally of the America-funded jihad against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, his top commanders and US Ambassador to Pakistan Arnold Raphel. That incident, not mourned by too many Pakistanis, marked the end of a particularly vicious dictatorship which, bereft of all legitimacy except that accorded by a cynical US Administration, sought shelter in the arms of mullahs who delighted in the opportunity to impose Wahabi Islam on every facet of Pakistani private and public life.

It is only natural that nearly two decades later, details of that crash, which was neither fully investigated nor properly explained, should have faded from public memory; neither Gen Zia nor his rule, literally enforced by flogging people, whose highlight was the execution of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, has proved worthy of remembrance. For most people in Pakistan who had to live through the terrible Zia years that lasted from July 5, 1977 to August 17, 1988, it was a nightmare best forgotten. For those who kept the struggle against military rule alive, he was nothing more than a puppet of the US Administration, which he was, to be scorned in his lifetime and relegated in death to the footnotes of Pakistan's history. Strangely, the mullahs, never comfortable with America even before 9/11 happened, chose to overlook Gen Zia's source of power. Perhaps the seductive lure of American dollars proved to be stronger than the call of Islam.

But the fatal crash remains firmly etched in the minds of those who rule Pakistan today. Gen Pervez Musharraf, who was supposed to be appointed military secretary to Gen Zia but instead found himself commanding the Twenty-fifth Infantry Brigade in Bahawalpur, makes a rather elaborate mention of the crash in his memoir, In the Line of Fire. "I remained there (Bahawalpur) for about eight months, and left just a month before President Zia's C-130 crashed… with some of the top officers of the Pakistan Army, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, Gen Akhtar Abdur Rahman. Also killed were an American brigadier-general; the American Ambassador, Arnold Raphel; and, Najeeb (military secretary). I was saved by the grace of god," Gen Musharraf recalls in his memoir. There is nothing revealing about these details. However, what is interesting, and relevant in today's context, is the paragraph following the one recording the incident.

"The cause of the accident still remains shrouded in mystery," Gen Musharraf writes, "The report did note that the investigators found traces of potassium, chlorine, antimony, phosphorous and sodium at the crash site. Since these elements are generally associated with the structure of an aircraft, the inquiry concluded that internal sabotage of the plane was the most likely cause of the accident. Mysteriously, the case was not pursued further. The black box was recovered but gave no indication of a problem. It seems likely that gases were used to disable the pilots. But who unleashed them, we don't know. I have my suspicions, though."

With word out in the US media that the Bush Administration has begun to tire of Gen Musharraf's constant attempt to game the Americans and the increasingly high-pitched bipartisan clamour on Capitol Hill for Washington to turn the screws on Islamabad for not delivering on its promise to crack down on the neo-Taliban and the Al Qaeda leadership, both of whom are camping on Pakistani territory and launching attacks inside Afghanistan with amazing impunity, at least one man has reasons to feel worried while another happy to have made his exit.

The fact that The New York Times, not known to indulge in frivolity on such issues, has, in an article by Mark Mazzetti headlined 'One Bullet Away From What?', gone to the extent of naming his successors — Gen Ahsan Saleem Hyat as leader of the Army and Mohammedmian Soomro, a former banker, as President — if he were to fall to an assassin (or be blown to smithereens   by a suicide bomber), cannot but cause concern in Rawalpindi's Army House. Gen Musharraf, we can be sure, is at the moment haunted by his "suspicions" of what happened on August 17, 1988. Meanwhile, we can also be sure, US Ambassador to Pakistan Ryan Crocker is happy that his tenure is over and he will not be a participant in any gory denouement to the Bush Administration's passionate affair with its "stalwart ally" that may occur in the near future.

Faraway from the theatre of unfolding drama, in Washington, Pakistan's Ambassador to the US Lt Gen Mahmud Ali Durrani   has, through a not-so-stray comment, added grist to the mills working overtime to churn out reports that paint a bleak future for Gen Musharraf. "Such pressure tactics could destabilise Pakistan and may even bring down President Musharraf," he told a Western news agency soon after the US Senate had rubbished Gen Musharraf's claims of fighting jihadi terror and pushed for a cut in aid to Pakistan. Asked if it might lead to Gen Musharraf's ouster, he said, "I don't know. Possibly, it could bring him down." Subsequently, Lt Gen Durrani was recalled for "consultations".

The importance of what Lt Gen Durrani had to say has been highlighted by Ayaz Amir in the weekly column he writes for the Pakistani newspaper, Dawn. "As commander of the First Armoured Division, it was at his (Lt Gen Durrani's) invitation that Gen Zia flew down to Bahawalpur to watch the evaluation tests of the American M-60 tank, a trip from which Zia never returned," Ayaz Amir writes, adding, "When an insider like Lt Gen Durrani, a military Brahmin, talks of military politics, his words are not to be taken lightly."

In Washington, the perception gaining ground, as Jim Hoagland puts it in The Washington Post, is that the Americans "have got Gen Musharraf right where he wants us". In Rawalpindi, the man who believes it is his destiny to save Pakistan from imploding under the weight of jihadi Islam's inner contradictions, believes he can game the Americans through the looming crisis. Yet the "suspicions" remain.

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