Prime time News channels bring to many audiences in an average Pakistani household, news of political and social media activists making video recorded confessions about their role in anti-established order posts and weets. The other news item can be of either a rally for disappeared persons, or a person tortured beyond his capacity in the so called “Judicial Remand”. All these scenarios of news item being beamed into the households bring to mind for any student of mass communication student a harsh reality; the country which was brought into existence not through armed insurrection but through democratic means, is fast surrendering its democratic credentials and can be confused easily with any police state of the 1970s, 1990s, or the present. Apparently, these episodes might be treated as isolated happenings; however; the set pattern of the behaviour of the state clearly defines an imposing reality of hybrid arrangement overstepped.
Pakistan had its first internationally acclaimed political prisoner in the form of a Marxist radical Hassan Nissar who was killed in police custody in the famous Lahore Fort by the then military government of General Ayub Khan. Later it was not uncommon to see many journalists and political activists on the wrong side of the fence to face torture, being held in confinement for crossing the red line. Veteran journalist Husain Naqi had the unique honor of being held in confinement under successive left wing and right wing established order governments between 1973 to 1979. A Frontier Post journalist Zafar Samadani filed a story about a Zia ul Haque family member being sent for treatment abroad in 1986; he was brought to meet the chief of an elite intelligence outfit over his story. He was lucky that those were still decent times; when the established order was trying to conform to the civil order and behaving rationally. He was not put into the missing list and there was no bar on his joining more paying jobs in the then restricted horizon of print journalism.
That decent adjustment was very much the part and parcel during much of the 1988 to 1999 era divided between the PPP and PML(N) governments. Even the Musharraf government despite its overly military profile was careful not to disturb the balance between a country treated as a vast cantonment and a country as a civil domain in its entirety.
It was not until the 9/11 episode when the society started to regress into a police state. The renowned torchbearer of the missing persons’ cause, Amna Janjua, had her own episode of the family head picked up without trace to jump into the struggle for the missing people.
The period between 2013 to date has seen an escalation in the falling standards of the human rights standards in the Pakistani society. It has not been uncommon to see individuals from dissenting communities and groups pointed out or circled red on the basis of ethnicity, nationality or belief to be picked up without trace. The established order-controlled organs of the state have been deliberately slow in catering to the very meek demands from the judiciary for setting the record straight; meaning that sharing of the status which is even ingrained in the Constitution.
Pakistan might be a rosy picture from the distance but a rotten fruit invaded by ants when looked from closely. The people need to redefine their participation in the polity, failing which the society might lead a way towards anarchy or implosion.
Visibly emboldened not to answer even to the judiciary and further encouraged by the Hybrid arrangement in operation since the 2018 general elections; it was precisely the coincidence that the first victims of the emboldened body language of the established order were those very political trends which prided themselves with the “one-page doctrine”.
As things stand in Pakistan; despite the façade of a democratic system of government in order in the country; it is not difficult for a man on the street to feel that there are forces behind the curtain which are calling the shots and the front men are merely dancing puppets.
The recent judicial interrogation of Imran Khan confidante Shahbaz Gill can be cited as a test case. Videos available on Twitter displaying his medical position; the concern of his party and surprisingly low esteem of his party in defending him; all speak of a proverbial “republic of fear” (coincidentally title of a book written in the early 1990s about Baath rule in Iraq) syndrome which is fast taking roots in the Pakistani political and social culture.
The treatment meted out to the Khan confidante infact refreshes the treatment meted out by the then Ghulam Haider Wyne PML government to PPP/PSF activist Sohail Malik whose exposure to third degree torture was responsible for his demise at much younger age; had he not been meted out inhuman torture in November 1992.
Linked to that, the one-sided reporting on TV channels about people making confessions; which keeping in view the popular political/judicial culture of Pakistan, are well extracted under duress; completes the picture. A civil structure like sheep clothing worn by a wolf representing the real power.
The situation in Pakistan and no concern by the international human rights organizations and forums about the same raises concerns about the current placing of the country in the international arena. Undefined flight patterns of the RAF military transports between East European and West Asian destinations as visible in flight tracking servers and applications; Pakistan’s undefined character and role lauded by the Arab Sheikhdoms for no apparent reasons within the current month and similar unprecedented honours being bestowed on the COAS can raise questions for foreign policy experts where the international political grouping is headed to.
Pakistan’s slow economic recovery without doubt smacks of similar recoveries witnessed by economic experts in a north African state like Egypt. Egypt, ever since it crossed over to the western camp after Sadat’s rise to power in 1971 has been the West’s pampered baby all along. It has its bailout plans, write-off plans; not on the dint of any genuine economic recovery demonstrated by the early 2000 Turkey or Thailand for that matter. It has been purely geopolitical services rendered which have helped the deep state in Cairo to mount a coup against an elected president in 2013, massacre main opposition group’s rally without any reprimand from the international watchers and human rights organizations.
Given the track record of international engagements usually settled by one man and bypassing public debate or a parliamentary debate; the only exception the Yemeni/ Houthi campaign discussion in April 2015, the fallouts of the same have been pretty destructive. Pakistan’s re-entry into another war theatre, suspected; secret or otherwise, has the potential to have a fall out internally. For all practical purposes, the game of a monkey playing arbitrator internally favoring a favorite cat against the written-off one; lack of political discourse and a sort of McCarthyism practiced; which has been long defunct in its country of origin can be politically destructive.
The way forward for society is vague. The country can regain few economic indicators; which might make up for the signs of discontent; very much like what veteran Iranian Journalist of pre 1979 era Amir Tahiri wrote in his book on the events of 1979; that the real Iran was missing and the technocrat had a jargon loaded with figures.
Pakistan might be a rosy picture from the distance but a rotten fruit invaded by ants when looked from closely. The people need to redefine their participation in the polity, failing which the society might lead a way towards anarchy or implosion.
