DIRTY DICTATORS- With Regrets

By
Lt Col (Retd) Tariq Mahmood Butt,TI(M)

The word dirty implies, unclean, grimy, filthy, soiled foul, sullied polluted and grubby. Were Gen Zia and Gen Musharraf all that? Gosh, we had almost 19 years 9 months of all that. Irk--- that is really depressing. I looked towards the collage on my wall and found that many of my Army career pictures, which I once cherished to see and share with pride were suddenly filthy, I started hallucinating manure pouring out of my one dearly held memories. A group photo with Gen Zia on my passing out parade. Really good photos with Gen Musharraf on exercises and a commendation on my book of poetry. Dam I even got my promotion at his hands not to mention the encrypted Tamgha-e- Imtiaz.
Correct me if I ‘am wrong. Does filth produce filth? Well if that is true, at least two major share holders of today’s parliament are products of Zia and Musharraf respectively. Can they deny it? Its all part of history, but wait there is a lot of talk nowadays on rewriting and abolishing certain portions of South Asian history. The other day I read an article titled “Revisiting Sheikh Mujib-ur Rehman” by Javed Qazi dated 21 March 2010. The author argued on rewriting South Asian History. History, I believe is usually a chronological record of events, as of the life or development of a people or institution, often including an explanation of or commentary on those events. The formation or determining of actual history takes a long time. People tend to write their beliefs and viewpoints as factual information, when that is not always the case. It can be very difficult to determine what is true when different people are presenting different "truths." Time passes, people read these things, and believe them to be true, as the authors believed them to be true. The huge problem is, oftentimes we really don’t know what the actual fact is. Current events in our case, ‘The lawyers Movement’ and Musharraf’s stepping down are being observed by us, we are aware as we are reading opinions. But at some point in time someone's opinion turns into history. The dilemma of Erstwhile East Pakistan is all part of history. Changing known facts is definitely an Interesting opinion....one, I think that is actually far more complicated the more you think about it! But my humble opinion is, it should never purposefully be rewritten because the best shot we have at not repeating history is to be aware of it and aware of what failed as well as what worked.
Coming back to the “Dirty Dictators” the web is filled with the chronology of what all these dictators did. We got to remove them as well. I wonder why they skipped Field Marshall Ayub, was it becoz he gave them Islamabad? Now Islamabad can’t be dirty, you know the parliament is there and many other things etc. etc.
All gloomy I went to the web to get a list of all the dirty dictators of the world --- to my surprise the word dirty has been used so extensively that I was feeling all better. In Punjabi culture(American as well), a bigger abuse depicts a greater personality, affiliation and realtionship. The funniest part, topping the list was a blog http:// www.dirtydictators.com titled “sweet dreams”. Clicking the address I found picture of Dr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hugging another dirty chap. With no text written I cliked once again and found Eurythmics singing “Sweet Dreams”. A lovely song I couldn’t resist singing and dancing along. The lyrics went about some corruption and abuse of power etc. But hey! what if 2 of my ex services Chiefs were dirty and why the hell should I listen to sweet dreams I ‘am more then contended with Amir Khan’s Three Idiots version of, "ALL IS WELL "

REPHRASING HYENA CULTURE

REPHRASING HYENA CULTURE
(THE PAKISTANI PERSPECTIVE)

Contributed By

Lt Col (Retired) Tariq Mahmood Butt

The Hyena is a vaguely sturdy build, high shoulders, and long muscular limbs. It has a large head, broad, rounded ears. The Hyena is parasitic and borders on laziness. Being unproductive, doesn’t use its brain, thus its capability to think and cultivate honest ways of survival is barely negligible. Of the three species of hyena, none is found in our beloved country, as in their usual self but we do have their replicas in human skin generously spread all over Pakistan, with large concentrations in the headship encampment.
With intelligent hunting skills, the Hyenas surround a toothless old hyena at the edge of the thorny hedged cattle kraal and bite it so hard that the only escape is to push through the sharp thorns. Once an opening is created; an army of fierce hyenas will go into a meat grabbing spree. Mostly associated with cowardice, hyenas will bite off cows' udders and goats' bowels before they even seek to kill their prey. They would go to the extent of also scavenging for food from graves and feed on the leftovers by lions and cheetahs. But sometimes the pride(group of lions) turns back and attack. This is exactly what happened with Mr Zardari. Knowing well that the swiss case is likely to come up, the Party and all coalition parteners pushed him into the cattle kraal, not at all expecting for the pride to turn back. To their utter disappointment, the pride did turn back (Judiciary and the media)… Who all are on the spree? Is an easy guess to make.
The most vicious type is the smaller, and even shyer brown hyena (Hyena brunet), which of course is the deadliest as it seems to be the most humble but yet the most corrupt. Corruption in Pakistan has surged by whooping 400 percent in the previous couple of years, said National Corruption Perception Survey 2009 carried out by Transparency International. The National Corruption Perception Survey 2009 (NCPS 2009) indicates that the overall Corruption in 2002 has increased from Rs 45 Billion to Rs 195 Billion in 2009. Police and Power maintained their ranking as the top two most corrupt sectors.
Our Great Quaid and old chiefdoms made relentless efforts and our predecessors(men,women and children) shed a lot of blood for independence and creating Pakistan. On their departure, the sincere and loyalist left a big carcass that we literally refer to as government. Employing the hyena strategy and armed with axes and machetes, the elites have been fighting over the carcass left for over 63 years now. No time has been spent by Pakistanis on sharpening hunting tools and moving deep into the forest to get their own animals. They have all taken up the hyena instinct of scavenging what is left behind and what the so called friends still feed them.
The most horrifying part is that a young breed of hyenas is springing up and learning the art of circling old ones for another meat-grabbing spree! The crime rate has soared as unemployed youth and elderly seek unconventional means to hunt for riches. The outlook is not promising when one considers the fact that Pakistani youth are sinking deeper in the menace of modernism in the name of so called “enlightened moderation”. It is opined that cultural invasion is much more dangerous than a religious inveigh. Being trapped in material pleasures, the DVD madness and openly devoting songs to sweet hearts on media was not meant to be and cannot be envisaged in moderation, not in this country, definitetly not in our religion or culture.
As political elites fight for spoils in government, the future of our nation is on the verge of total collapse with no where to go. Imagine what would happen if the majority of the young begging for a place in society got hold of loaded AK-47s and machetes, what would be the result? As if to add fuel to the fire, companies are being taxed to help run expensive programmes, forcing them to lay off another team of professionals. The mix is a time-bomb! In an already troubled and terrorist threatened atmosphere
Faced with a financial crisis and economic slowdown, countries that command 85 per cent of global economic output keep on coming up with strategies to safeguard their interests. To paraphrase US, EU, World Bank and the policies of their cronies are the real threats facing Pakistan. Not a single penny was given as aid, all loans, another thermal plant was promised; why not a nuclear plant to get rid of the menace of power shortage, why not waive off all our loans and the beauty is no body raised an eyebrow. The time is up for Pakistan to defer those who simply bring home meat from a carcass. Too much focus on external assistance has destroyed local investors by driving the majority to informality and forcing our minds to neglect our abilities to harness nature to our advantage.
If Pakistan does not take quick steps, the country will be faced with two types of future leaders: those who watch too many TV soap operas and movies and who become mere celebrity political leaders; and those voters hooked on demanding kinde. The kinde and celebrity leadership will provide a perfect avenue for the country to be sold in exchange for exotic whisky, mirrors and guns. In such a scenario, an external hyena need not use an old guard to gain entry (as has been done in the past) it can simply walk in and grab yummy meat!

This must serve as a wake up call to our 'hyena culture'. So fixated are we on looting and collaborating with those who plunder Pakistan that instead of pushing for productivity and cutting down on lavish expenditure on political elites, we simply play hyena games on people's earnings. Taxes are increased not to offer services to Pakistanis but simply to feed the carcass-chopping frenzy. Let us get rid of the hyena culture and save our motherland.

Finally, a Hyena's giggle is not actually laughter, but a sound of frustration or call them fighting words. Until now these squeaky cackles were not well understood by scientists. Researchers recorded the sounds and did the first ever acoustic analysis to understand how the calls vary between individuals, and when they are used. The scientists found that hyenas usually make these noises when they are fighting for food, or in some kind of social conflict. "When a group of hyenas is feeding upon the prey you hear a lot of these giggles, especially, during conflict between two individuals,"

The mere giggling of our leaders while commenting on every aspect of the state of affairs makes me nauseatic. Is this giggle out of frustration? a social conflict? sheer desperation; or do these squeaky cackles indicate the greed for fetching every bit and piece of the final kill.