Karachi: They want you to believe this is a reaction to Pesha-war. But they’ve wanted this for a long time: military courts. It wasn’t possible before. Too difficult. Then Peshawar happened. Peshawar was not sui generis, an atrocity that changed all the rules. Peshawar was the logical culmination of a long, persistent struggle. It began somewhere in the late 2000s. The game of cat and mouse between the military and anti-Pak militants had begun to morph. No longer confined to Fata, it had spread to the cities.
What to do about the men captured alive? Sometimes, you wanted to capture them alive. Other times, you had no choice but to capture them alive, to take prisoners. For years, the problem was small enough. Just an irritant. Some were killed, no questions asked. Others were handed over to courts, released and then picked up again.
Swat, South Waziristan and Iftikhar Chaudhry changed all that. In Swat, they were picked up in thousands. There were packed into anywhere with a lock and a key and a guard. The Pakistan Army wasn’t willing to let them go — the victory in Swat was too bitter to forget. But feed them into the system and most would escape.
The system hadn’t caught up to the fact that a war was being fought. From South Waziristan, they spilled out into the cities, travelling to Karachi, turbocharging the militant threat everywhere, forcing the system to capture more and more, leaving darker and darker tales. It all eventually got too much. For Iftikhar Chaudhry, anyway. What the hell is going on, the crusading CJ asked. Bring us all these people, Chaudhry demanded. What are you doing to them, the Supreme Court yelled.
Think missing persons. They became a thing because of Chaudhry and his court. People started to ask questions. The excesses began to be talked about. The spillover into Balochis-tan began to be debated. It started to become uncomfortable. Think the Adiala 11. That wretched lot, accused by the Army of some of the most audacious attacks, set free by the courts and then scooped up from outside the gates of Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail on May 29, 2010.
No one remembered Adiala 11. Except the court. The Army refused to budge. The court pushed harder. Eventually, the broken bodies began to turn up. Then, the horrifying spectacle in the court itself, barely recognisable humans brought in front of collapsing relatives. The public was repulsed. It all became too much. Swat and South Waziristan had already set the wheels in motion. Ideas were canvassed. Opinions were sought. We need a system to make these guys pay, the boys insisted.
Slowly, they began to get their system. You’ve heard of it in recent years. Strange names. Actions in Aid of Civil Power, Fata, Pata. Anti-Terrorism Amendment Ordinance, VII, VIII. Fair Trial Act. Protection of Pakistan Ordinance (POPO). Amended POPO. It was all legislative and administrative. All done by the civilians. All engineered by the boys. Sometimes, it was presented as a favour: if you want us to do this, then these are the tools we need. Other times, it was postulated as a necessity. It edged us closer to a hermetically closed system. Plucked from the battlefield, kept in secrecy and done to whatever is necessary. Then, marched to either a cell or an execution chamber, depending on how relevant you are and how lenient the system wants to be.
Think of it as a stone-crushing factory. Truck pulls up, dumps a bunch of boulders on to a conveyor belt. The boulders bump along the conveyor belt, a few pulled off on occasion by someone or the other. Sorry, we needed that one. No, you can’t ask us why. We know what we’re doing. Let us do our job. Occasionally, a boulder is returned to the belt. Eventually, the surviving boulders arrive at the crushing site.
They stay in there a while. All that emerges are neatly packed bags with powdered stone. Nope, you can’t ask us what went on in there. No, you may not ask how they were selected. We know what we’re doing. Let us do our job. Trust us. Okay, goodbye.
And then, the neatly packed bags of powdered stone are loaded on to trucks and driven away. That’s what a hermetically sealed system looks like, militarily, administratively, legally. That’s what they’ve wanted and, now, with military courts, that’s what they’ve got. Peshawar didn’t invent this; Peshawar gave them the excuse. We know what we’re doing. Let us do our job. Trust us. Okay, goodbye.
By arrangement with Dawn
