Pindi — the dark side of a garrison city

By Kamran Rehmat/Islamabad

Poignant: Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto during her last public meeting minutes before she was assassinated

There is no other intriguingly symbiotic relationship between two cities in Pakistan than that between its federal capital Islamabad and what’s called its “sister city” Rawalpindi. The title of sisterhood on Rawalpindi is usually made relative to the perception of Islamabad being the “brother city”.And yet many of Pakistan’s expanding breed of hacks would swear the genders were the other way round really when it comes to these two cities. Consider: Rawalpindi is where Pakistan’s most powerful entity — the army — is based. Unabashedly flaunting its machismo, it will not be caught dead being referenced to the fairer sex. Indeed, the army being the final arbiter of political power in the country easily earns the mantle of being the Orwellian Big Brother.Islamabad in 2010 celebrated its golden jubilee. That’s a puny 50 years. Rawalpindi, of course, goes back a long way — 1,000BC, say the history books. Following the British invasion of the Indian subcontinent and their occupation of the city in 1849, Rawalpindi became a permanent garrison. The Pakistan Army made it its permanent home after partition in 1947. Military ruler Ayub Khan created Islamabad to also establish the garrison as a permanent political base and Pakistan has never been the same ever since.Rawalpindi, in time, has emerged as the fourth largest city of Pakistan after Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad with its population today at just over 3mn. In 1960, when construction of Islamabad began as the country’s new capital after Karachi, Rawalpindi had barely 200,000 people. Today, nearly half a million Pindiites commute to Islamabad daily for work ranging from day-wage labourers to some federal ministers, without whom Islamabad would shut down quickly. Very few who are based in Islamabad come to Pindi, as Rawalpindi is called in daily parlance, for work.If you can afford housing in Islamabad, they say here, you are rid of having to travel elsewhere. And certainly not to Pindi where getting from the Secretariat to Saddar by bus takes you up to 90 minutes and by your car up to an hour. Working in Islamabad, on the other hand, is a dream for every Pindiite for it means you have arrived. The most high-profile Pindi resident who goes to work in Islamabad is the guy who knows it all: the ISI chief. His inaccessible office has come to be known as Aab Para, where it is based, once and the very synonym for Islamabad.There is no doubt that the most distinguished of Rawalpindi’s peculiar characteristic is that it’s a garrison, the seat of army headquarters, or the GHQ as it’s known. The most powerful people in the country live and work in Rawalpindi and they’re virtually all in khaki. From the army chief to the chief of general staff (without whom the famous coup-savvy triple-one brigade can’t move and who is the second most powerful man in the army), and from the more ceremonial but influential chairman of the joint chiefs of staff committee to the big majority of Pakistan’s 29 lieutenant-generals — all operate from here.There are 11 corps in Pakistan and at least eight lieutenants-general command them outside Rawalpindi, across the country. However, they all congregate here regularly for the official “corps commander meetings” that somehow always excites the media. The media coverage of these meetings, whose minutes never make it to public, probably stem from the instincts it developed dating back to the days of when the army house and the presidency was one for a total of 20 years in the times of Generals Zia and Musharraf.The media gives these “corps commander meetings” equal billing with federal cabinet meetings or even parliamentary sessions in a setting that ranks arguably as the most manicured, organised and luxurious in Pakistan.It is also arguably the most visited non-American military headquarters for the most powerful generals in the world ranging from military leaders of such giants as America, Europe, the UK, France, China and Nato. Probably, the only powerful military leaders of major countries that haven’t made it to the Rawalpindi GHQ are Russia and India (General Petraeus would, perhaps, say it’s their loss).The other characteristic that puts Rawalpindi in relief is its seamless religious adjunct to the martial history of the city that has developed over the past 30 years. The jihadis-turned-terrorists even killed a lieutenant-general in Rawalpindi and twice nearly bumped off Musharraf himself. Even the GHQ was stormed by the militant fundos. This radicalisation has been brewing the likes of Mumtaz Qadri — killer of former Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer and another in a long list of Rawalpindi’s macho men who draw power from the city’s growing intolerant character, and who almost claim entitlement to influencing the rest of the country. But the most striking of Rawalpindi’s characteristic is its entitlement to being the theatre for the fight for the soul of Pakistan. This is the city from where at least three generals took over the country and forced their will on the nation bringing infamy and opprobrium to the military and stamping proof of Pakistan’s maverick, volatile instincts. And yet this is also the city where Pakistan’s elected leaders and democratic actors stage their last battles. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the country’s first democratic leader, went to the gallows here unbowing to a closet mullah of a military ruler. The military demolished the place where he was hanged and built an entertainment complex on the site.This is also the city where another elected leader and symbol of democracy, Benazir Bhutto, was killed in the streets for daring to defy the establishment’s timetable of politics under the watch of another general-president. With her death, Rawalpindi completed a bloody hat-trick — starting with Liaquat Ali Khan — of killing prime ministers; some even argue democracy itself.No other city in the world has the dubious distinction of producing so many self-appointed military rulers and sending so many elected leaders six feet under. This, then, is the defining legacy of Rawalpindi: seethingly calm at the surface and calmly violent at heart.

** The writer is a freelance journalist based in Islamabad and can be reached at kaamyabi@gmail.com