Coconut Republic

The writer is former executive editor of The News and a senior journalist with Geo TV.

A stitch in time saves nine. We know this. What we often overlook is that if there is no stitch in time it will cost nine. Or nineteen. Or 90. This simple logic has never registered with our state institutions, both civil and military, and as a result in most important spheres of life a Tom-and-Jerry type of comedy continues that has no end, just new episodes.

The arrival of the Kamal-Qaimkhani duo in Pakistan and the Hollywood-like spurt of exciting events that have followed since is the latest testament to this sad fact of our national existence. At the national level, there is no sense of direction or any clear-eyed vision as to how the country’s financial jugular vein is to be allowed to breathe freely. What we have instead is endless drama that plays well on screens but does nothing to address the core issues of the city.

The public indictment by the break-away members of the MQM’s central command of how their leader, Altaf Hussain, sold the mohajir mandate short and at the behest of India wreaked untold violence upon hapless citizens has not become the spectacular concern it was supposed to. The PPP has dismissed it as old news. The federal government has kept quiet. The prime minister has flown off to Saudi Arabia. The interior minister has made some formal noises and that is about all.

There is a carefully-designed media campaign to make the two new saviours look angelic and lily-white by giving them interrupted air-time through handpicked mediapersons. But we don’t see widespread outpouring of national outrage at their ‘revelations’. This is because, for the most part, what Kamal has said carries the inevitable smell of stage-management. (His unfurling of the national flag in the long press conference only proves that sometimes nationalism is actually the last refuge of the rogue.)

The nation has witnessed so many episodes like this that now a repeat performance (and that that too without any artfulness or ingenuity) is immediately found out to be what it is. Moreover, the crass attempt at proving themselves innocent and accusing their master, whom they once didn’t tire of worshiping, is a poor product to market before sensible public opinion. But most importantly, the duo’s pitch to the mohajir voter is not backed by any solid plan of political action. Voters won’t swing allegiance wholesale if they do not find the so-called alternative practicable.

The only reason to take seriously Kamal-Qaimkhani’s arrival on the magical and mystery carpet that has brought back others like them – like Uzair Baloch – is in the context of Altaf Hussain’s physical incapacitation or his legal problems in the UK landing him in jail. Already positioned, these two can then be made heirs to the political mandate of the MQM, ensuring that the city would not plunge into near civil war. However, there are many steps towards this lofty aim that no one can be sure of.

The hardest step is to establish the credentials of the two as repentant and clean alternatives. For now there is such a disconnect between what these two say and what their record points to that it is hard not to throw up at their lectures on morality, peace and virtues of good citizenship. Another difficulty is how to speed up marginalisation of Altaf Hussain, who seems to have developed a fairly robust team to defend his position – especially when he is seen under attack. Also so far there is no mass exodus from the ranks of the MQM to the Kamal’s ‘unnamed party’ (how silly can it get!). If anything, Altaf’s trusted men are busy taking their ex-colleagues to the cleaners.

All in all, this serious move to liberate Karachi from the mafias of Altaf has not taken off. It might gather pace and momentum in the days ahead but that would require the Hi-Octane of Pakistan’s establishment to come into play. Without that input it would continue to sputter – stuff of media talk-shows rather than an actual solution to Karachi’s deep crisis.

This event itself shows how wide are the wounds the state and different governments have inflicted upon Karachi. A long delay in tackling the fact of Altaf Hussain’s foreign connection and in finding a long-term and permanent solution to the structures of terror that has operated with impunity for decades has made matters devilishly hard now. What was about to be solved in 1995, looks intractable in 2016. What a pity! What a mess.

We certainly did not need the Kamals and Qaimkhanis of the world to take us through the horror house of their system. Pakistan’s intelligence agencies’ files are loaded with evidence that corroborates many of these allegations. But the state did not act as it should have. It sat by idly and let events happen. Or intervened in the most nonsensical and political way. In-between it attempted to find stopgap arrangements to cover its own dirty tracks.

Now how can there be an honest and purposeful investigation of Altaf’s cult without discovering its root connection with, say, General Pervez Musharraf? How can there be a no-holds-barred probe into the ‘foreign connection’ without leads going as far as London and Washington – our global allies in the war against terror besides being long-running benefactors of the ruling elites and their families? Who will say it at it is? No one. So Kamal and Qaimkhani are being paraded as solutions.

Even where issues aren’t as complicated as Karachi has become, the state and governments show exceptional laziness in action, missing repeated opportunities to set the house in order. Qadri hanging’s aftermath that stunned so many had nothing stunning about it. It was there in our midst, in mosques, madressahs, in social marginalisation, in unemployment, in glorification of our divine mandate to rule the world, in segregation of the dispossessed through an elite order that believes only in taking and not in sharing or giving.

But typically, the state’s response has been to deny that the problem exists. It imposed a total ban on the media coverage of the funeral and the protests. That is akin to switching off the radio when the weather report on a gathering storm is telling of torrid times, and imagine that things will turn out to be fine just because we can’t hear the bad news.

Lesser important challenges are tackled the same way. Take cricket for example. The prime minister’s formation of a probe committee to discover what went into the collapse of our team in the Asia Cup is both laughable and tragic at the same time. The demise of team spirit, its internal fragmentation, the silly personal and turf wars and thugs that run the whole cricket system do not require investigation. The information is out there. It requires fixing, something that should have been done long ago. But then sorting out cricket is no different from sorting out Karachi: it entails killing our own demons and monsters. Who would dare do that?

The story of Pakistan’s past being its present and also its future is a story of governments and state institutions living for the day and preferring patchwork to the actual mending work. This does not make Pakistan a banana republic – small Latino state, captured by foreign capital, governed by autocrats, and sustained by single-crop: mostly bananas.

But it does make it a Coconut Republic – a hard exterior of defence and security, a substance-filled layer of democracy, a free press, an independent judiciary, but then there is this watery hole within where everything is directionless.

Kamal, Qaimkhani, Qadri, and Cricket are the latest examples of state and governments preferring anodynes to painful invasive procedures that require guts, capacity, commitment and, most important, focus on genuine national purpose. These are the tidings from the innermost life of a Coconut Republic.

Email: syedtalathussain@gmail.com

Twitter: @TalatHussain12