What a political catastrophe? The Military’s 8-year cultivation is void overnight. The Army just didn’t loose a crop; it lost the ground as well. And after this bitter harvest, there is no will to till the ground. Frankly, all the ground the ground troops had captured (while the Chief was in the air) is gone. The only land still in the Khaki possession is probably in the Defense Housing Schemes.
 
This season you need young dedicated soldiers who can die for Pakistan without a fight. Why without a fight? Well, the enemy just would not give them a chance to fight. In the ongoing war, the enemy has an upper hand in choosing the battle ground and the time. It strikes like lightening without any clouds. Death has no timing. The soldiers and officers may have barely finished breakfast and are just off to work when a suicide bomber on wheels can hit their bus. Even the trigger ready escorts can’t do much once the enemy strikes. The only meaningful consequence is for rescue workers and rushing paramedics in ambulances.
 
For the past eight years, the military leadership was assuring the juniors it would clean Pakistan. The husband of an ex-prime minister was in the dock and another prime minister who would not let the Army Chief land in Pakistan was to answer for all his invisible tricks. After the military takeover, the young officers were instructed to treat the corrupt politicians in a befitting manner. The politicians in police custody were even denied the food from their homes during the holy month of Ramadhan. The Military was determined to treat them strictly by the law and anyone seeking a concession was stared like a referee stares at a foul. For few days, Pakistan was following rules. An unforgiving general called Pervez Musharraf was in command and he was conducting just like a new battalion commander acts in the first couple of weeks.
 
Now things are back to normal. Frankly, even much relaxed than the normal! In the new terminology, the moral ‘turnabout’ is called “National Reconciliation”. The Army has moved like the earth moves on its axis. All that was unfair in the dark is now fair in the daylight. The Military has been asked to concentrate on the war, i.e.; the opportunity to die, while the political burden is exclusively shouldered by the ex-Army Chief.
 
This is an interesting arrangement indeed. The entire credit for the bloody war goes to a single person, and the punishing is collective. The good thing in the soldier is that he doesn’t think and the Punjabi soldier is a non-thinker. This year has been declared as the “Soldier’s Year” and no serious thinking is expected in the remaining 10-months.
Elsewhere in this magazine you may read all that you would prefer to be happening in this Republic. And you may not necessarily recall all that the Army did in the last 8-years to streamline the Constitution. The Supreme Court has recently sealed the discussion by rejecting a review petition. All the 16 judges were assembled to hear the petition against a judgment of 7-judges. The Rules of the Court specifically lay down that the review petition shall be fixed before the same bench and shall be argued by the same attorneys. Why did the Court make that Rule? Why all other review petitions are heard that way and what was so special about Dr. Zahoor Mehdi? What exactly inspired the Doctor to seek a review just a few days before the general elections? But what was the hurry in the hearing? Hundreds, no thousands of review petitions are still pending in the same Court that is to treat all petitioners at par.
 
The verdict by the people is surely against Pakistan if Pakistan Army did anything meaningful in the last 8-years.  Apparently it seeks to reopen all that the Supreme Court had quickly and thoughtfully closed before the Friday prayer. You can’t endorse October 12 and February 18 at the same time.