Actions speak louder than words

Samad Salik   Published December 02,2022

The Ex COAS General Qamar Javed Bajwa in his last address to the nation claimed that the fall of Dhakka in 1971 was to be blamed on political reasons rather than being termed as military failure and that the number of troops was 32000 instead of 93000 as claimed by different sources. This claim was backed by the statement that the rest of the personnel belonged to government institutes and were rather civil servants not army personnel.

Different views have been surfacing time to time as responses to this statement made by the former COAS of Pakistan Army.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari the grandson of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto has recently made a statement where he reportedly claimed that his grandfather was the one who brought back the 93000 soldiers who had to surrender in 1971 due to the failure of our national policy be it political or military.

On the other hand some people are of the opinion that even if it is true that the failure was due to political reasons then too the burden of the loss relies on the army as the political arena was entirely dominated by our establishment in that era.

All these matters of the past are debatable even as of now after a period of 51 years has passed. Although we are still trying to figure out who the blame needs to be set upon after such a long time. The nation is still under a lot of stress due to the worsening economic conditions and rising inflation. The inflation has been recorded at a staggering 23.8 percent in the month of November. On the other hand the security factor still prevails as there is a new uprising of terror threats and extortion calls that have restarted recently. Instead of going too far back in history and making verbal corrections regarding facts that will not change the past nor the history we should rather focus on the issues at hand such as this one. A formerly dealt with terrorist group that had been cornered and reduced to dust in the past few years are regaining ground now and we shall figure out the reason behind this or at least how to tackle such an uprising as just recently Pakistan got out of the dreaded FATF grey list which was mainly because of presence of such uncalled for groups. With the appointment of a new COAS and verbal assurance of the outgoing one that military will no longer be involved in the political matters of the country as sworn by the constitution and law of this country, the military should focus on how to get rid of this menace known as TTP and pave way to cleanse Pakistan of any such uprising in the future. There is no doubt about the fact that the new Army Chief has taken command at a very crucial time when there is politcal and economic unrest in the country. However, since political and economic responsibility does not rely on the military according to constitution and law of the land, the military should focus on defense and other matters related to terrorism. The England cricket team is in Pakistan playing test matches in the Rawalpindi stadium which sends a message to the world that Pakistan is a safe and secure place for foreigners and at such a crucial time news regarding uprising of a terrorist group are headlining. This shouldn’t have taken place in the first place if all responsible stakeholders of the country were only focused towards their responsibilites and duties levied upon them by the constitution.

It’s still not too late if we see the bigger picture and mend our ways be it political or military.