Breaking the barrier

Posted on 9 months ago

Couldn’t this clarification of the army chief come earlier? That would have cleared the fog of confusion and suspicions that the US media reports have had created in our people’s minds about a purported joint operation by our military and the Afghanistan-based coalition armies in our North Waziristan Agency. Indeed, the leaks to this effect had started surfacing in the US media as the visiting ISI chief held meetings in Washington with the American officials.
One leak even had it that the army chief had himself given this understanding to the top commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan. Further grist to this leak-churning mill was lent by US defence secretary Leon Panetta, who seems to have anointed himself as the spokesman of the Pakistan army. He said that the army was going to launch this operation in the near future, but it would be targeted at the Pakistani Taliban, not the Haqqani network of Afghan Taliban.
But, regrettably, all through the security establishment had sat pretty. It made no move to dispel the erroneous, rather mischievous, impression these US media reports and official pronouncements were creating here at home. Some political segments in fact took exception to the purported joint operation and came out with hostile outpourings. Section of media too reacted sharply. And yet the establishment stayed mum. It has taken the army chief himself to speak out and set the record straight.
Someone from the establishment may have spoken to the foreign media on this. But it is talking to your own people than to foreigners that really matters and makes all the difference. As the army chief put it so succinctly in his Kakul azadi parade address, no army can succeed in its mission without the people on its back. But wherefrom can this people backing come if you do not talk to them, put across to them your viewpoint and try convincing them of its relevance, validity and urgency?
It really is so grieving that one often hears of decisions about security matters pertaining to us from foreigners, not from our own horses’ mouths. This barrier of communication that the security establishment has erected between itself and the people is proving hurtful to it alone, though no lesser to the national interests. For this, many of its tremendous accomplishments are going unrecognised and unacknowledged. The instances are many; but just to cite a few.
In Balochistan, the army has embarked on a massive nation-building enterprise. It is building schools, colleges, technical institutes and professional universities for the Baloch children and youth. It is also raising health clinics and medical centres for the local populace. Besides, it is engaged in helping the natives to exploit their mineral wealth for their own wellbeing and prosperity. But all that remains an unspoken truth; while a nonexistent army operation stays on the vested-interest tongues inside and outside the province.
In the tribal areas too, the military is engaged, apart from pacification operations, in a major development effort. It is constructing educational institutions, health facilities, roads, highways and irrigation systems in the cleared areas for the benefit of the tribal folks. According to the army chief himself, the army has spent from its own budget some 25 billion rupees on these development projects. Yet the security establishment has never told the people of this.
Indeed, the FATA secretariat moles whisper in the mediapersons’ ears that it is all their money that the army extracts from them for its projects, leaving just a paltry sum for the secretariat’s own plans and the tribal parliamentarians’ proposed schemes. Yet the security establishment has never bothered to come clean on it. It leaves this whispering campaign to go on uncontested, with the laurels that should crown its head falling on the wayside to its own great disadvantage.
A little bit of openness for this lip-tied security establishment is definitely imperatively called for, not least in the greater national interests. The armies the world over do practise this openness, less or more. Even they do it in the established western democracies. The Pentagon in the United States indeed holds the press briefing almost on a daily basis. Then why this shyness on the part of our security establishment? It must necessarily break this barrier of communication with the citizens. At least, on important issues involving it, it must speak out — promptly, frankly and candidly.
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