Why the neighbour swears by its terror playbook

When someone in authority and power goes on a rant, it is rarely just a rant. The rhetoric and sabre-rattling normally has a purpose. Or several. This could be to rouse sleeping rabble, to force alarm bells to ring in other quarters, to validate a specious stand to consolidate power. A few days back, from across the border, we’ve had yet another foam-filled mouthful. There was no need for this, except to tick the boxes mentioned above. That speech by Pakistan’s army chief seems to have achieved one objective — it has gone viral.

The lines above are what I had written before the heinous terrorist attack in Pahalgam took place. I have not edited them. They reinforce what one had first set out to say. The management guru, Peter Drucker, noted: “The greatest danger in time of turbulence is not turbulence itself, but to act with yesterday’s logic.” That template can be applied here.

For the rest, let me go back a couple of decades when Lahore’s golf team came to Shimla to play the local team. I was asked to take care of the ‘informal side of things’. A fairly large crowd had gathered to witness the tamasha. Dripping emeralds and rubies before breakfast, one of the ladies leaned over to another and said, “How can they allow people like that near the course? This would never have been permitted in Lahore.” The multiplicity of the ‘us’ and ‘them’ would become clearer over the following couple of days. Within a short while, one of the gentlemen from Pakistan sidled over. Like me, he was not playing. Over the course of the next few hours, it came out that he was the secret service man from Pakistan, sent to keep an eye on the brood. As I was also sitting around, he decided that I was the Indian equivalent.

The Pakistan team was the who’s who of that country. This was an army of landowning and business elite. They and their brethren called all the shots. Not only did they control the country, they owned it.

On all days of the tournament, liquor was freely available. This provided another revelation. Most could drink us under the table. They did not sip, or even swig, they held a glass of whisky to their lips and knocked it back like there would never be another. That went for some of the ladies too. This was Lesson No. 2: If you were a koi hai in Pakistan, you could get whatever you wanted and get away with it — and be holier than thou while you were at it. This was reinforced some years later, when on one of my TV assignments, the British crew came via Pakistan and gleefully shared footage (complete with sneakily taken live coverage) of a grand party they had attended. The barmen were soldiers in uniform, with machine guns strapped to their backs.

Towards the end of the tournament, one had become quite friendly with some of them. On the last official dinner, one of them mentioned that he had never had a drink in a bar. So off we went to the ‘limited-stocked’ bar of a sarkari hotel. The gentleman was nervous: “I can drink here? No one will stop me? Will I be reported?” Once he had thawed, he lined up about six shots of the whiskies available and had them all.

This became Lesson No. 3: These are lives lived constantly looking over one’s shoulder. If you can get away with something while no one is looking, go ahead. The happy drinks down, came Lesson No. 4. “Pakistan,” he said, “is a country without heroes. There are only two real ‘home-grown’ ones, Mohammed Ali Jinnah and, maybe, Imran Khan. As for the others, we have to borrow them from India and deny our shared heritage.”

Of late, one has listened to a couple of people who have served in positions of global influence. One was with a quasi-diplomat from one of the most powerful countries, who had served as a diplomat in Islamabad. In our freewheeling talk, where I did the listening, we spoke of our neighbours. At some point, the conversation turned to migration. A desire to exit the country is perhaps exceeded in Pakistan than it is in India. Once someone leaves, they won’t come back. Except to send money as a salve to conscience, or for purposes less than savoury.

On another note, the gentleman put it, bluntly: “The army is the only significant power in Pakistan. They, and the ISI, have a porous border and they move between services. Nuclear Pakistan would prefer annihilation to humiliation. In its absence, to escape humiliation, they sustain terrorism. That they have to do to justify their privileges, if not their very existence.”

— The writer is a Shimla-based author

Comments