From 1977 through 1999, the Pakistan Army removed five popularly-elected governments at its leisure proving that the people could rule their country only with the blessings of the military. The rule of terror, too, is no exception. The terrorists trample Pakistan with the blessings of the military; they are simply the hirelings of the army.

The army decides that the terrorist hijackers of the Indian plane enjoy sanctuary in Pakistan whereas Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif spend years in exile. The people have to know that it is the army which makes all the decisions.

Attacking Data Darbar, the Pakistan Army, through its hirelings, has sent the following messages to the people of Pakistan:

We, the military, are powerful enough to confront, challenge and offend the entire population of Pakistan.

You, the people, are not safe anywhere.

We, the military, can kill you people anywhere.

SURRENDER!

The minds of the people register the attacks on the other targets as localized incidents. A Shiite procession is attacked. An Ahmedi mosque is attacked. A shopping mall is attacked. Video and music shops are attacked. Girls schools are attacked. Political rallies are attacked. Hotels are attacked. All such attacks involve targets situated across one social chasm or, the other.

The shrines, on the other hand, are a symbol of the social and cultural unity of the people of Pakistan. Not just members of all the Muslim sects visit the shrines, but the people of other faiths– Hindus, Christians, Sikhs and others–go there. Strangely, even the atheists visit the shrines.

The shrines stay above the religious, sectarian, political and social divides; they are the symbols of the ultimate social and cultural consensus, representative of the absolute majority.

An attack on a shrine is an attack on the absolute majority intended to instill paralyzing fear in the people to make them surrender to the army through the terrorists.

The people of Pakistan would have to know that the Taliban and other terrorist groups are the hirelings of the Pakistani military operating strictly under its command since 1980.

As the U.S. military chased the Afghan Taliban out of Afghanistan in 2001, the Pakistani military took them in and gave them complete control over Swat and other northern areas. In a span of over eight years, Pakistani Taliban outfits, too, were created and groomed and the area attracted terrorists from all over the world.

The local population of these military-sponsored-terrorist-controlled areas groaned under tyranny as the army gleefully used this situation to extort the confused Americans of billions of dollars.

The people of the northern areas suffered more as the Pakistan Army staged it’s mock war with long-range howitzers and aircraft. The trained terrorists ducked and moved on whereas millions of inhabitants had to flee their homes to escape the Pakistan Army bombardment.

The terrorists destroyed girls schools and hand-picked people to be killed with assault rifles, hand guns or, knives.

The Pakistan Army destroyed the very homes of the people of the northern areas with its blanket bombardment, killing men, women and children indiscriminately and rendering the survivors homeless refugees.

As the refugees return to the ruins of their homes, the army-sponsored terrorists, too, are coming back to overlord them once again.

The army’s mock war against it’s own hirelings taught the people of the northern areas and the tribal areas a simple lesson; the tyranny of the terrorists is not as deadly and destructive as the bombardment of the army, at least, in the short run.

Now, it is Punjab’s turn.

Through the attack on Data Darbar, Lahore, the people of Punjab have been told to submit to the ruthless rule of the mindless terrorists. The people of Punjab are told not to ever ask the Pakistan Army to intervene and liberate them from tyranny. The army will gladly respond with artillery and aerial bombardment of the towns of Punjab just like it did in the northern and the tribal areas.

So far, the army appears to have achieved the following objectives:

Terrorizing the population to the point of total submission. Rising poverty, rampant unemployment, malnutrition, lack of clean drinking water, power outages and complete lawlessness have already rendered the masses utterly confused, unable to think clearly; they are ripe to be enslaved to an unprecedented degree.

The other objective the army has achieved is that of keeping the politicians on the leash. The politicians obey the army blindly. They allocate funds for the military budget as directed. They let the military decide the defense policy. Also, the politicians never bring the military-sponsored terrorists to justice.

It is an effective working formula for the military. Absolute lawlessness in the country further discredits the already discredited venal politicians and makes the thieving, scheming, manipulative military look better than the politicians. For the military, it is a win-win situation, except in the long run.

The illiterate terrorists ruling the population suits the military better than the government of the semi-educated politicians. With the schools and the hospitals closed in future, the education and the health allocations can be diverted to the military budget.

Another achievement of the army is that of keeping the Americans happy to a level where the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee of the United States, Admiral Michael Mullen, recently had nice things to say about the Pakistani military. To quote from Government Security News: “When asked if he felt the military leaders of Pakistan were doing a good job of safeguarding that nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons, Admiral Mullen was surprisingly upbeat. “I’m as comfortable as I can be that the weapons are safe,” he said.”

If Admiral Mullen was trying to appease the Pakistani top brass, he was certainly in league with Chamberlain.

With the above achievements, the military feels secure and confident with no one to match it’s might.

In a country already suffering from half-a-century-long acute brain drain, doctors, professors, scholars, scientists, teachers, thinkers, writers, social workers and intellectuals are being murdered at a rate reminiscent of the Pakistan Army’s campaign against the Bengali intelligentsia during the last days of East Pakistan.

The fear of suicide-bombers eliminates political rallies and all chances of a mass uprising. The people are afraid to go to their traditional religious processions, to the shrines of their saints, to the house of their god.

Now, the only power to look up to and to fear and to bow before, is the mighty military and it’s terrorist hirelings.

Syed F. Hussaini is a veteran journalist and social commentator. He blogs at www.chowk.com