Hell hath no fury like Nawaz Sharif ousted from power. Disqualified in a Panama Papers scandal related case and facing corruption references in a NAB accountability court, he has been hurling accusations at the judiciary and the military for his troubles - which actually arose from a foreign source, Germany-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Lately, he had started threatening to reveal "[state] secrets buried in my chest." Following up on the threat, last week he arranged a special interview with a sympathetic newspaper's reporter to pour out his anger, making the startling claim that the security establishment was involved in the Mumbai terror attacks carried out by non-state actors, and that little had changed since.
India, of course, could not be more pleased to have an endorsement of its stance from a former prime minister. Its media has had a field day with the story. Nawaz Sharif's intention was to embarrass the military establishment, but he has also put his party in a disconcerting situation as his statement is widely seen as a grievous blow to the country's image at a time it is already having difficult time with the Financial Action Task Force. While the statement was roundly condemned by all opposition parties, Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi convened the National Security Committee (NSC) meeting, on the military's request. According to a statement issued by the PM's office the meeting "unanimously termed this statement as incorrect and misleading." And further that the issue was presented by the former prime minister "in disregard of concrete facts and realities ... because of opinions arising out of either misconceptions or grievance." All this while Abbasi and PML-N President Shahbaz Sharif have desperately been trying to control the damage the statement has caused the party's electoral prospects, claiming that the remarks attributed to the PML-N supreme leader were misreported by the newspaper and blown up by the Indian media. But Nawaz Sharif stuck to his guns. Speaking to the media he not only rejected the NSC statement, but also read out from his mobile phone his published remarks: "Militant organizations are active. Call them non-state actors, would we allow them to cross the border and kill 150 people in Mumbai? Explain it me. Why can't we complete the trial?" He then asked the reporters what was wrong with his remarks.
At least two things are wrong. One is that so far there is no broadly accepted evidence suggesting those terrorists acted in collusion with state agencies. Indeed, several people associated with the government have acknowledged that the perpetrators of the Mumbai mayhem - from the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) - plotted and planned their appalling deed in this country, and that they need to be gotten rid of. Notably, those killed in the attacks were from 15 countries other than India, including the US. Mastermind of the atrocity, David Hadley, a Pakistani-American, has been in the US custody. Yet although the LeT and Jem are on the UN list of terrorist organizations, the US is not known to have directly accused Pakistani agencies of complicity in the carnage.
Second, Nawaz Sharif is under oath not to make public any state secrets to which he became privy as the prime minister. The issue at hand is not about patriotism but about responsible conduct by a holder of the nation's highest office. If his claim is valid, he should have taken a stand inside the relevant forum, the NSC. But during his four years at the helm he did not bother to call even regular meetings of the committee.
To be sure, the Kashmir-centric non-state actors used in the past as an instrument of foreign policy are a serious problem that needs to be addressed urgently. The trend though is not peculiar to this country. The US, its Western as well as regional allies have been using militants for the last seven years in Syria to bring about regime change in that country, causing in the process at least 354,000 deaths and rendering millions homeless. Earlier, in this part of the world the US waged its proxy war against the erstwhile Soviet Union in Afghanistan by training, arming and financing jihadists on Pakistan's soil to go fight the Red Army(apparently, that is where our military men got the idea of using non-state actors for the furtherance of certain regional objectives). Before that the US used Cuban exiles to create trouble in their country of origin. In the 1980s, it prepared Contra militants to destabilize the leftist government in Nicaragua. In fact, there are several examples from recent history wherein the US provided support to terrorists to undermine governments it did not like. Closer home, back in 1971, India trained and armed Mukti Bahini to give grief to its rival.
Abominable as this practice is there is a big difference, nonetheless, between theirs and our modus operandi, and the consequences grave for this state and society. Whereas in the aforementioned examples outsiders used local elements, ours were all homegrown militants. Some of them have turned against the state, others may not be doing that at present but they can go the same way unless a determined effort is made at course correction. Going by Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa's statement at a recent interaction with journalists, lessons have been learnt. Said he, if Pakistan has to survive and prosper as a normal state, the monopoly over violence shall have to unequivocally rest with the state, not non-state actors; adding that they are neither acceptable any more nor relevant to the ideals of a functional, law-based democratic order. It is unclear though if these good words are being translated into action.
But Nawaz Sharif is not the lone crusader, as he is trying to present himself, against wrong policies. He has nothing to show for his efforts towards controlling violent extremist elements who have repeatedly been killing innocent people all over the country. Much of the political consensus-based Nation Action Plan, formulated in the wake of the Peshawar Army Public School carnage, remained unimplemented under him. He is driven only by a personal grievance. The cause of his angst against the army seems to be its chief's periodic statements to the effect that application of laws is essential if Pakistan has to extricate itself from the vicious cycle of misgovernance and selective application of laws. Which means Nawaz Sharif's men are not be allowed to launch a physical attack on the courts, as they did in '97 merely because the then chief justice of Pakistan Sajjad Ali Shah had summoned him in a contempt of court case. This time a lot more is at stake.
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