They have nothing but hate, acrimony and disdain for Pakistan. They will love to dismantle this country sooner than later. After the fall of Dhaka in 1971, many among them thought the rest of Pakistan would crumble in due course of time. It was not to be. Pakistan soon re-discovered its inherent strength to survive, despite some serious flaws in its leaderships. Bhutto had feudal instincts. And Zia ul Haque had a massive sense of guilt. Hadn’t he hanged his benefactor? Hadn’t Bhutto’s flawed personality driven the country to potentially destructive polarization?
Yet both of them did enough to build a wall of security around their country. Both despite their follies were great patriots. Both were eliminated because of their patriotism. Without Bhutto’s vision, and without Zia ul Haque’s commitment, Pakistan would not have been a nuclear power, and would have capitulated to the designs of Washington on the one hand, and New Delhi to the other hand.
It is a long subject, and I will analyse it in greater details in the times to come, but I do want to pay homage here to both of them for their patriotism, irrespective of the fact that in the eyes of the polarized factions of our political culture they are symbols of antagonism and mutual hatred. Isn’t it customary to state that Mian Nawaz Sharif is a product of General Zia ul Haque’s dictatorial dispensation? No, he is not. He is product of a mind-set that places ‘greed’ above all deities, and for whom man’s conscience is as good as its worth in terms of money. Mian Nawaz Sharif’s first political destination was Air Marshal Asghar Khan’s Tehrik-i-Istaqalal, where I happened to sit on the same National Working Committee with him as early as in 1979. He and his family were on an ambitious fortune-hunt. He landed in the lap of the generals of his time. They did not shape his character.
They bought the merchandise he was selling. “If you want to cut Benazir Bhutto and the PPP down to size, back me, and put your faith and resources behind me.”
The generals needed someone like him. General Zia ul Haque was obviously enamoured by his deceptive innocent and harmless looks.
No one had thought even in one’s wildest thoughts that this man carrying the looks of a ‘simpleton’ harboured longings that had no boundaries.
Such was the intensity (and the reach) of these longings that the eyes of history were to watch him open his arms to ‘arguably the greatest enemy of Islam and Pakistan on the earth.
I have written at the start that ‘they have nothing but hate, acrimony and disdain for Pakistan. ‘They’ of this proposition is ‘Modi’, who to me is not just an individual but a multitude of Hindu mindset. They hate Pakistan. But they love Nawaz Sharif.
Why?
You may have a different answer. I have only one. They know they can use his love of money to complete their unfinished agenda regarding Pakistan.
I am not saying that our Prime Minister is not a patriot. But to be a patriot one has to have a country. Pakistan is not Mian Nawaz Sharif’s country. It is his OPPORTUNITY.