Bitter, but truth is only way

Stunned, I refused to believe him. 8216;8216;This is baseless propaganda by the foreign media against Pakistan8217;8217;, the 15-year-old son shouted at his father, who had once been a military officer himself. Only four days earlier, Radio Pakistan had announced that no Pakistan troops had surrendered in East Pakistan. 8216;8216;The question of any surrender is ruled out because our troops are determined to lay down their lives.8217;8217;

Only in the afternoon of the 16th, and around the time the surrender ceremony was being held at the Paltan Maidan of Dhaka, did ISPR release a 27-word statement. It read, 8216;8216;Latest reports indicate that following an arrangement between the local commanders of India and Pakistan, fighting has ceased in East Pakistan and the Indian troops have entered Dhaka.8217;8217;

But still, things were sufficiently normal for President, General Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan, to schedule an address to the nation to announce his plans for a new constitution.

I learnt two lessons from the episode. First was, of course, the personal one of deferring to superior wisdom and hard facts. The second lesson relates to realising that public relations and accusations of 8216;8216;propaganda by foreigners8217;8217; are not a substitute for analysis of ground realities.

Having worked in government, I am aware of the tendency of Pakistan8217;s rulers to consider critics as enemies. In actual fact, sometimes the critics and the harbingers of bad news are the only true friends of the nation and the state. Those pretending that 8216;8216;all is well8217;8217; or that decisions made in the national interest need no explanation beyond the assertion of their being in the national interest are often proven wrong.

Civilians are not soldiers and therefore do not turn on the command of a superior officer. They have to be persuaded and reasoned with. In the age of multiple sources of information, they also have access to the historic record.

General Musharraf8217;s military regime often claims credit for Pakistan8217;s free media but the relative freedom of the media in Pakistan is as much a product of changed times. In 1971, for example, my father had access to BBC radio only for one hour each in the morning and evenings and that too on short wave. The government could ban all foreign newsmagazines and newspapers. Now, the government cannot afford to limit access to 24-hour TV news and the Internet.

At his briefing on June 11, General Sultan described pro-Taliban Pashtun tribal militant Nek Muhammad as 8216;8216;a petty local facilitator8217;8217; who has been hiding foreign militants for 8216;8216;small financial gains8217;8217;. He may be right. But on April 24, Lt General Safdar Hussain had garlanded the same 8216;8216;petty local facilitator8217;8217; in the glare of ISPR-facilitated publicity. If he was so petty, why depute a Corps commander to shake hands with the man? If he is important enough to be greeted by a Lt General, why describe him as 8216;8216;a petty local facilitator8217;8217;?

Similarly, the government announced that it had bombed a compound used by Al-Qaeda financier Abdel Hadi al-Iraqi. But that person was reported captured in January 2002.

The problem is that admitting mistakes interferes with the establishment8217;s design of ruling the country indefinitely. When voices like mine in the media point out the internal contradictions of the establishment8217;s grand design, we should not be accused of Pakistan-bashing. The establishment is not Pakistan, though it wants to think that it is.

Husain Haqqani is a visiting scholar at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC. He served as adviser to PMs Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto and was Pakistan8217;s ambassador to Sri Lanka