Peculiar business, this hijacking affair. But with far-reaching consequences.
The four young men were all travelling on meticulously forged documents pretending to be former Al-Zulfiqar activists who, it turns out now, are alive and rehabilitated in London, Dubai and in the NWFP.
They were ‘armed’ only with a couple of firecrackers, a pen knife and some Singapore Airlines cutlery. In desperation, they threatened to set the plane on fire by sprinkling Scotch Whisky and Vodka in the cabin. Behaviour most unbecoming of desperados.
They demanded the freedom, amongst 9 others, of Mr Asif Ali Zardari, who is universally disliked by Sindhi extremists and PPP hardliners. Most incomprehensible.
Within 24 hours of the hijacking, thousands of posters of Mr Murtaza Bhutto were plastered all over Islamabad and Rawalpindi. The foreign press advisor to the Prime Minister who sits in the PM’s secretariat was already geared up to fax old details of Al-Zulfiqar to newseditors. The Sindh Chief Minister, who had earlier inexplicably cancelled a foreign trip along with an entourage of 60 friends and officials, was at hand to accuse the PPP of perpetrating this crime. The Interior Minister, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, as well as the Information Minister, Sheikh Rashid, too, were more than quick to point a finger at Ms Benazir Bhutto. Most suspicious.
On the face of it, it appears the objectives of those who planned the hijacking were twofold: (1) to spirit Mr Asif Zardari out of Pakistan and consign him to the same useless fate as Mr Murtaza Bhutto. This is credible because in 1981 the Pakistan government acquiesced to the demands of the hijackers and exchanged political prisoners for the safety of the passengers. (2) to thoroughly discredit the PPP and knock out Ms Bhutto from the political game for all times to come.
Certainly, the assured, concrete, fleet-footed response from high government functionaries in lambasting the PPP suggests a conspiracy hatched in some invisible dirty-tricks department somewhere. It is also worth recalling that two weeks before the elections last October, when reports indicated that the PPP could sweep the polls, certain officers of a particular agency went round newspaper offices ‘planting’ incredible stories of a potential threat from Al-Zulfiqar to unleash a chain of violence in Punjab and Sindh in order to sabotage the electoral process. Why a long-defunct Al-Zulfiqar should resort to such tactics precisely when the PPP appeared to be gaining ground was left unexplained.
It is also clear that the four naive hijackers were set-up. anyone who knows a bit about Mr Lee Kwan Yew knows that if the hijackers had hung around at Singapore airport for some length of time, they wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving. Well and good, someone must have thought, if they succeed in spiriting Mr Asif Zardari away; if not, no skin off our backs if they’re rubbed out and leave no tell-tale evidence behind. Whatever happens, the PPP will get it in the neck, the thinking must have gone. Imagine the fallout if Ms Bhutto had been woken up and unwittingly trapped into talking with the hijackers. There is no point in speculating about what she might have said; but the fact of simple communication would have established a ‘linkage’ of some sorts. And this surely would have undermined her credibility.
Even as it turned out, an already beleaguered Ms Bhutto has nevertheless had to defend herself aggressively. The PPP leadership has publicly singled out Brig Imtiaz who runs the Intelligence Bureau in Islamabad. While no proof of our chief spook’s involvement is available, the gentleman’s enviable reputation, at least in PPP quarters, precedes him — as Mian Nawaz Sharif’s right-hand trouble-shooter, he masterminded the IJI’s election campaign which sent the PPP reeling amidst allegations of rigging.
The net result of this wretched episode is the undesirable mudslinging which has followed. It has thrown a spoke in the negotiations underway between the government and opposition to end the PPP’s boycott of the National Assembly. As if all the cases against ms Bhutto and Asif Zardari and the terrorism against her party in Sindh were not enough to satisfy hr detractors, it appears that some people are bent upon precluding a rapprochement between the civilians.
The PM should realise that this policy of continuously tightening the screws on Ms Bhutto can harm him more than the PPP. Bitter, frustrated and cornered, the PPP could easily be tempted to grasp at straws. ms Bhutto says she is willing to support a no-confidence move against Mian sahib. But what if hr persecution forces hr to acquiesce to a martial law which throws Mian Sahib out and promises to redress the balance? All this ominous talk of a ‘national government’ under a Presidential system should not be shrugged away easily.
The PM has constituted a commission to investigate the hijacking. he should welcome representatives of the opposition to be part of it. Otherwise the mud will stick. And only the civilians will lose out.