Pakistan without a khaki-clad president looks un-Pakistani
Masood Alam Khan | Tuesday, 26 August 2008
The process of our cognitive impression, a part of our genetic behaviour, is based on what we see, what we hear, what we smell, what we taste---and what we read in newspapers and what we view in audiovisual media like televisions and the internets.
Whenever an impression is registered in our mind, a thread is immediately tagged with it; a thread that may take the shape or form of a symbol, a colour, a song or even a fragrance. So, whenever we listen to a song, threads relating the song and the accompanying experiences retrieve a sequence of past events from thousands of our separate memory shelves inside our brains and our mind travels back to ruminate over our old reminiscences.
Therefore, when we talk about Awami League (AL) the symbol 'boat' appears in our mind and 'a sheaf of paddy' waves at us when we hear about Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
Whenever we read any news about Ethiopia, pictures of hungry and emaciated people flash up in our minds and whenever we hear about a head of the government of Pakistan, we are prone to visualize Ayub Khan, Yahia Khan, etc., in their khaki fatigues.
Governance of Pakistan for the last sixty-one years has been dictated by the country's army chiefs, half-time onstage and the rest offstage mostly based on their own versions of militarized democracy. The present democratically elected civilian government of Pakistan may be just an interlude between two military rules: one rule by General Musharraf that just ended on Monday, August 18 and the other, which may be in the offing, by a future General who has perhaps been watching the stage performance from the wings.
Coalition leaders, the vanguards of the PPP and the PML-N, who were always at daggers drawn, had for about nine years forgotten their old mutual rivalry for the interest of opposing their one common enemy General Musharraf, whose demise had been inevitable since August 7th, when the coalition leaders said they would impeach him.
Now that the General has departed the scene both the political parties have already started brooding over their old fetid sores and scores to settle. How the Pakistan government now deals with the General's succession---and whether it leads to a power struggle---is a looming question.
Pakistan, already weakened by Musharraf's mishandling of political, moral, religious, economic, diplomatic, military, and nuclear issues, may again be poised to plunge into deeper crises----crises that make military leaders in Pakistan caress their mustaches in the expectation of opportune moments to swoop in for a new phase of military rule.
Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape---more known by their acronym "SERE"---is a crucial programme each and every soldier must learn during their training as a major focus, an integral part of war preparedness of an army.
A military trainer evaluates his soldiers' ability to participate in a war not only on their nerves of steel, but also on their SERE dexterity---a vital skill an escapee or an evader must use in an attempt to depart a battlefield in order to return to friendly lines when the chance to penetrate into enemy lines is slim or when the probability of being trapped by an enemy in a pincer movement is high.
So, in the event of staging a coup d'
Whenever an impression is registered in our mind, a thread is immediately tagged with it; a thread that may take the shape or form of a symbol, a colour, a song or even a fragrance. So, whenever we listen to a song, threads relating the song and the accompanying experiences retrieve a sequence of past events from thousands of our separate memory shelves inside our brains and our mind travels back to ruminate over our old reminiscences.
Therefore, when we talk about Awami League (AL) the symbol 'boat' appears in our mind and 'a sheaf of paddy' waves at us when we hear about Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
Whenever we read any news about Ethiopia, pictures of hungry and emaciated people flash up in our minds and whenever we hear about a head of the government of Pakistan, we are prone to visualize Ayub Khan, Yahia Khan, etc., in their khaki fatigues.
Governance of Pakistan for the last sixty-one years has been dictated by the country's army chiefs, half-time onstage and the rest offstage mostly based on their own versions of militarized democracy. The present democratically elected civilian government of Pakistan may be just an interlude between two military rules: one rule by General Musharraf that just ended on Monday, August 18 and the other, which may be in the offing, by a future General who has perhaps been watching the stage performance from the wings.
Coalition leaders, the vanguards of the PPP and the PML-N, who were always at daggers drawn, had for about nine years forgotten their old mutual rivalry for the interest of opposing their one common enemy General Musharraf, whose demise had been inevitable since August 7th, when the coalition leaders said they would impeach him.
Now that the General has departed the scene both the political parties have already started brooding over their old fetid sores and scores to settle. How the Pakistan government now deals with the General's succession---and whether it leads to a power struggle---is a looming question.
Pakistan, already weakened by Musharraf's mishandling of political, moral, religious, economic, diplomatic, military, and nuclear issues, may again be poised to plunge into deeper crises----crises that make military leaders in Pakistan caress their mustaches in the expectation of opportune moments to swoop in for a new phase of military rule.
Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape---more known by their acronym "SERE"---is a crucial programme each and every soldier must learn during their training as a major focus, an integral part of war preparedness of an army.
A military trainer evaluates his soldiers' ability to participate in a war not only on their nerves of steel, but also on their SERE dexterity---a vital skill an escapee or an evader must use in an attempt to depart a battlefield in order to return to friendly lines when the chance to penetrate into enemy lines is slim or when the probability of being trapped by an enemy in a pincer movement is high.
So, in the event of staging a coup d'