The Voice vanishes

In the age of the soundbite, spokespersons sometimes assume a larger-than-life image totally disproportionate with their actual role. Rememb...

In the age of the soundbite, spokespersons sometimes assume a larger-than-life image totally disproportionate with their actual role. Remember Ahmad Said Al-Sahaf8217;s last stand in Baghdad?

Even as the Americans closed in on the city, Saddam Hussein8217;s black-bereted information minister doggedly kept up the pretense that the world8217;s most powerful army was about to meet its Waterloo 8212; God willing!

So astutely did he maintain his steady stream of fibs, yarns and poses, that some entrepreneurs have since come up with a talking doll modelled after the man.

Closer home, there was the one and only Major General Rashid Qureshi, army spokesman extraordinary, who metamorphosed into General Pervez Musharraf8217;s Chief Voice in good times and in bad, in war times and in peace. Now when the ISI trains people in public relations you can be sure they do an extremely good job of it and Qureshi bore the ISI stamp with distinction.

He was, in fact, single-handedly responsible for some of the most belligerent anti-India rhetoric to emanate out of Islamabad, delivering his lines with the ferocity of a mastiff attacking a bone. Words came fast and furious and invariably there were an excess of them 8212; three words when one would do: 8216;8216;Trash, fictitious, baseless8217;8217;, he once pronounced to dismiss an accusation against his government. Or take that time when he hinted darkly into microphones that it was India which was responsible for the abduction of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl: 8216;8216;It has been a cause of concern and apprehension for us that there is an Indian linkage in this. It is very, very unfortunate, but I can8217;t go into details at this stage.8217;8217;

But naturally, the devil is always in the details, isn8217;t it! Sometimes he was required to do quick damage control for his president. When Musharraf lost it last December and informed a meeting of air force veterans in Karachi that India 8216;8216;should not expect a conventional war from Pakistan8217;8217; if they 8216;8216;moved a single step across the border8217;8217;, it was the major-general who was at hand with the clarification that 8216;8216;unconventional8217;8217; did not mean 8216;8216;nuclear or biological weapons8217;8217;.

Musharraf, however, is sharp enough to know that the next phase in Pakistan8217;s engagement with India would demand a more nuanced voice. However much he may miss his pugnacious batter, the general realises well enough that Qureshi would find it impossible to trade in his boxing gloves for the velvet glove.