Agha Iqrar Haroon
There are expectations as well as unconfirmed news that PTI would hold a protest against Pakistan Army during the Indo-Pak cricket match in New York on June 8, 2024. Everybody knows in Pakistan the level of hatred that Imran Khan has for the Pakistan Army and he does not leave any opportunity to discredit the military that is a symbol of Pakistan’s sovereignty. To see Pakistan as a failed state is an old desire of Imran Khan.
He has been expressing this desire to see Pakistan as a failed state in his speeches for a long time, and I believe that his foreign masters are always available to fund media campaigns to achieve his nefarious designs. Do we not remember that Imran Khan asked his followers in Europe and North America to burn down Pakistani passports and Pakistani flags and he ordered them to write letters to the United Nations against Pakistan claiming that large-scale human rights violations had been reported in Pakistan so Pakistan should be penalized. He also directed his party to write a letter to the IMF to stop loans to Pakistan so Pakistan could face bankruptcy.
Recently there has been an increase in derogatory and provocative posts by official X accounts and the recent one was a comparative study between Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Pakistan Army. The posts are especially targeting senior political and military leadership with vile rhetoric and baseless accusations. Now, the PTI’s website also has a banner for this campaign echoing the Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report. The press statement issued by PTI last week calling May 9 a “False Flag against PTI” consolidates the party’s decision to abuse the Pakistan Army instead of accepting the wrong deeds of the party’s leadership. The latest press release is an announcement of fresh war against military leadership and the tirade is a consequence of direct instructions by Imran Khan and it serves two purposes. First to push political or military leadership to the limits of patience and get the party banned. This helps the existing narrative of victimhood and stamps Imran Khan’s imprint on PTI’s ‘No Khan-No party’. Secondly, if the veritable axe of law doesn’t drop, the government and military look helpless and impotent. Either way, it is a win-win situation for PTI.
Several questions need answers including for what reason PTI has accelerated a campaign that is more lethal than the previous campaigns against Pakistan Army. This campaign has been launched when Imran Khan’s court cases are almost near for announcement of verdicts. Another question is that first PTI played below the belt against the Pakistan Army but now has firmly decided to blow the belt out and PTI is doing so at a political juncture where its followers are not ready to come out in the street to protest although Imran Khan has been calling his cult followers to come in street and protest against Pakistan Army. A group of politicians believes that a lethal attack on the military institution is a result of sheer desperation because PTI has failed to organize a single protest and the only limited success observed was via rallies in narrow streets of KPK with generous use of the provincial government’s administrative resources and money. This group of politicians claims that PTI has nothing else to offer but social media buffoonery. They claim that policies and actions of military leadership will not be dictated by social media trolls but firmly by national interest and will not follow reactionary mode. There is no doubt that it is a sane move that military leadership is focused on work instead of engaging in answering instigating moves of PTI, however, such hatemongering against state institutions can culminate into another May 9 Black Day-like situation. The 9th May Black Day was a series of events when Pakistan witnessed the writ of the State being challenged by the charged mob. It was the first of its nature in which the targets of attackers were military installations and even the monuments of national martyrs. More questions need their answers like; were May 9 undercurrents deeper than understood as they are? and who are our enemies who wish to see Pakistan like Iraq, Haiti, Afghanistan, or Libya and planned May 9th? Imran Khan recorded a video message a day before he knew that he would be arrested at the Islamabad judicial compound and in this video message he directed his workers to respond if he would be arrested.
It is a fact that Imran Khan had been working extensively to expand the proven fault line between the State and Citizens, so the ground was ripe to place the public against public institutions. Anyone who remembers the May 9th events can understand that it was a kind of action that Mukti Bahini had been doing against the Pakistan Army before the Indian Army officially attacked the Pakistan Army. All these events indicate that a heinous conspiracy is being hatched against Pakistan again similarly it was during 1970-1971.
The trap that must be avoided by the Pakistan Army
I strongly believe that the discussion started by PTI about the Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report is a well-knitted trap that must be avoided by the Pakistan Army. PTI’s foreign planners hoped that the Pakistan Army would react and would try to portray Gen. Yahya Khan as an innocent person and try to establish that the Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report was trash. Once such a statement comes from the military leadership, a series of social media graphic campaigns will be launched by using already available interviews/talks related to Alqleem Akhtar Rani alias General Rani and stories of alleged relations of Gen Yahya Khan and a late popular singer that had been a part of newspapers archives. The stories of Lt Gen Niazi and Begum Bokhari are also available in news archives. There is no doubt that the Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report is not an authentic document but this document is nothing but documentation of several interviews of army officers who were directly linked with Dhaka Fall incidents. Such army officers included even well-known army officials who retired as Lt Generals and served in important posts during Gen Ziaul Haq’s era. The full Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report is still a classified document but a summary of the Report was made public by former COAS Gen Musharraf therefore the then-military leadership took the responsibility of the authenticity of this document. So instead of getting involved in the admissibility and credibility of the Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report and the possible innocence and good conduct of Gen Yahya Khan and Lt. Gen. A.K Niazi, the military leadership should avoid getting involved in protecting characters of bygone days.
Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report does not only talk about the alleged role of Gen Niazi and Gen Yahya Khan but the report also indicates barbarianism that was conducted against people living in East Pakistan who were against the disintegration of Pakistan. The Report indicates:
“In the circumstances that prevailed in East Pakistan from the 1st of March to the 16th of December 1971, it was hardly possible to obtain an accurate estimate of the toll of death and destruction caused by the Awami League militants and later by the Pakistan Army. It must also be remembered that even after the military action of the 25th of March 1971, Indian infiltrators and members of the Mukti Bahini sponsored by the Awami League continued to indulge in killings, rape, and arson during their raids on peaceful villages in east Pakistan, not only to cause panic and disruption and carry out their plans
of subversion, but also to punish those East Pakistanis who were not willing to go along with them. In any estimate of the extent of atrocities alleged to have been committed on the East Pakistani people, the death and destruction caused by the Awami League militants throughout this period and the atrocities committed by them on their own brothers and sisters must, therefore, be always be kept in view. In fact, however, the army was constantly engaged in fighting the Mukti Bahini, the Indian infiltrators, and later
the Indian army. It has also the task of running the civil administration, maintaining communications, and feeding 70 million people of East Pakistan. It is, therefore, clear that the figures mentioned by the Dacca authorities are altogether fantastic and fanciful”.
The factors that must be highlighted
The factor that should be focused on is that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had a deal with the Indian Army to break Pakistan and this deal has been reported by Indian historians, Indian politicians, Indian government officials and even Indian Army officials who still boost for conducting successful “Operation Jackpot” in former East Pakistan. Indeed, explaining the reasons for the Fall of Dhaka is not as simple as saying that West Pakistan did not respect East Pakistan’s mandate rather the decision to form Bangladesh was made by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman with the help of the Indian Army right after the debacle of elections in which Mother of Nation Fatima Jinnah was disgraced by Gen Ayub’s administrative as well as political machinery. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman took maximum benefit of these elections and his hatemongering did work as today’s hatemongering of Imran Khan worked well to pitch his followers against the Army on May 9, 2023. PTI is trying to drag the Pakistan Army into a debate in which it might try to protect its former generals and that would give a chance to PTI to throw more filth from the past. Islam says that everybody is responsible for his/her deeds and this golden principle should not be forgotten. Whosoever did wrong in the past, he/she was responsible for his/her deeds so sitting civil and military leadership have nothing with those who are a part of history now.
It seems that PTI playing a gamble by portraying myths as realities but it depends upon the victim–the civil and military leadership to handle the dodge carefully and move on without being a victim of a trap spread by PTI in the form of Fall of Dhaka saga.
Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in this article/Opinion/Comment are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the DND Thought Center and Dispatch News Desk (DND). Assumptions made within the analysis are not reflective of the position of the DND Thought Center and Dispatch News Desk News Agency.
