The issue of ‘the homecoming’ of Sharif brothers took an ugly turn on the 8th of September 2007 when the Saudi Intelligence Chief Prince Muqrin and the Lebanese leader Saad Hariri were compelled to hold a press conference in Pakistan’s capital in which they came out with an impassioned appeal to the ex-prime minister of Pakistan Mian Nawaz Sharif not to violate the agreement which had facilitated his honourable and safe ‘exit’ from a dreadful situation about seven years back.
This is a sordid affair, in which both the ‘contesting’ or warring parties—i.e. Sharif camp and the Pervez Musharraf administration — have a convincing (though not moral) case in their defence. Sharif brothers argue that though they respect their benefactors quite intensely, they are now honourbound to rise to the expectations of their political supporters and vote bank after the hard-earned relief they have been able to get from the born-again Supreme Court of Pakistan. Their clarifications regarding the undertakings they had given to their benefactors in the much-discussed agreement that had earned them amnesty and escape from years of imprisonment, have been full of evasive stuff and contradictory, pronouncements.
But as Pakistan’s apex court has ruled, nothing can be higher than the rights granted to people by the Law of the Land (particular when the Law of the Land is recognised to have its roots in the Laws of God). It happens to be Mian brothers’ birth right to come home as and when they desire. Of course they will be doing so with the fullest knowledge that they enjoy no exemption or immunity from their country’s laws. In this respect, the fact cannot be totally ignored or dismissed disdainfully that the agreement they have decided to set aside in favour of their ‘political rights’ does impose great many moral restraints on them.
The Government’s case is built purely on the argument that no matter what the legal position is and what the lawful ‘entitlements’ of Mian brothers are, it is ‘unalterably’ binding on Sharifs that they respect, both in letter and in spirit, the undertakings they made to earn timely respite from punishment and ‘hard’ times.
This argument further seeks to establish that as the undertakings of Mian brothers have such highly venerated guarantors as Saudi government and Saad Hariri, any effort on the part of Mians to ditch their benefactors is going to put Pakistan’s such trusted and respected friends, into a position of awkward embarrassment. The question that now arises is: “Who is more responsible for the embarrassment caused to the Saudi Government (Our great friend and benefactor without any shadow of doubt) and to the Late Rafiq Hariri’s son Mr. Saad Hariri?” Mian Nawaz Sharif and his brother? Because they have flouted the trust of their benefactors—Or General Pervez Musharraf’s government which has created the conditions that compelled our friends to send their emissaries to Pakistan to face a humiliating embarrassment that could have been avoided?
Why is General Pervez Musharraf giving an impression of being scared-to-the-heels, of the man he so gleefully humiliated in the days and months that followed the October 1999 events? Brave men fight their battles with their own guts, strengths, arsenals and firepower — not with the borrowed strength of a uniform, or of the shoulders of such embarrassed friends as Prince Muqrin and Saad Hariri — Where are our leaders heading towards — and taking us to?
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