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Decoding Pakistan National Assembly Resolution

Ziauddin Choudhury
OUR indignation at the resolution of the Pakistan National Assembly criticising the trial and punishment of a war criminal in Bangladesh is well understood. Equally well understood is Pakistan establishment's support to this resolution because the war criminal belonged to the political party that opposed our Liberation War. But why now?
The trial of war criminals has been going on for last three years, and people in the dock include many belonging to the same loyalist party. Some of those in the dock have been already sentenced by the court to life imprisonment or death. What prevented the Pakistan National Assembly or the political parties that supported the resolution from crying foul earlier? Does this timing of the resolution have something to do with the mayhem and anarchy launched in Bangladesh by some elements in the name of political protest?
Actually the proponents and supporters of the Pakistan Assembly resolution denouncing a purely internal legal process of Bangladesh are successors to military'- feudal political axis that was responsible for the breakup of Pakistan. This axis had launched the war on the then East Pakistan and had killed millions of innocent civilians with active support from their loyalists.
A sad part of this duplicitous war was that a section of general public were misled in the name of Islam in the belief Pakistan represented Islam and its true followers. They supported Pakistan and the Army's actions because they believed a breakup of Pakistan would be tantamount to the destruction of the country founded on religion.
The Pakistan Junta did not stop by simply brainwashing its people and its loyalists in the East Wing with its false propaganda of Islam in danger, and by characterizing the war in East Pakistan as fighting with foreign infiltrators. It sent out its emissaries abroad, in particular other Muslim countries with the message that its fight in East Pakistan was nothing but putting down an internal rebellion. Later it would escalate the term to putting down a secessionist attempt (accepted initially by some western countries including the US) to draw sympathies from Islamic nations. The Islamic nations, some of whom (like Turkey) had similar experience in the past, empathized with this line of propaganda, and never expressed support for our liberation effort. In fact many would carry this displeasure even after emergence of the second largest Muslim country
named Bangladesh.
One would like to believe that a propaganda that failed to save a country more than forty years ago would meet its natural death, and Pakistan would forge ahead putting the lie behind it. The Pakistan National Assembly resolution unfortunately negates that belief.
There may be many explanations for Pakistan Establishment's reaction, two of them are worth mentioning. First, the political scene that emerged in Pakistan since Bhutto’s demise. The country' has been ruled by two military' dictators for nearly half of this period. The first of the two dictators, General Ziaul I luq corralled support of different religious groups to buttress his rule in a pseudo-democracy and allowed growth of seminaries that would later spawn militant groups seeking establishment of a religious state. Second is the feudal base of the incumbent government in Pakistan which draws a significant amount of support from religious parties in Pakistan. So it is quite usual that the government will raise voice in support of their cohorts in Bangladesh.
Our concern should be the timing of this protest and its underlying threat... this is a sign to all the loyalists of a lost cause to regroup and fight.
Our concern should be the timing of this protest and its underlying threat. The radical forces that General Ziaul Huq helped grow in Pakistan have stretched their foot beyond the border, unfortunately also in Bangladesh. The current political crisis in Bangladesh is offering an opportune moment for the radical forces in Pakistan and their allies in the establishment to resuscitate themselves and make inroads into Bangladesh politics. The outcries heard from the Pakistan National Assembly are only an echo of the forces that would like to see a radical transformation of Bangladesh from a secular democracy to a country' that they wanted to be founded on their ideology. This is not simply a resolution denouncing the capital punishment of a fellow party man, this is a sign to all the loyalists of a lost cause to regroup and fight. I wonder if our leaders of both parties can read this sign.
The writer is a US based political analyst and commentator.