FACT CHECK: Fake News Alert - Just read this article by a thulla(police wala) turned gener...

🚫 FACT CHECK: This Tweet Contains Misinformation

Claim: Just read this article by a thulla(police wala) turned general in Pakistan Army. Here is a rebuttal to this GT Road ka Pathan, who is har dum 'TAYYAR' to sell his soul to the highest bidder: Inam Ul Haque at height of his intellectual dishonesty , “In the Defence of Defenders,” is not really a defence of Pakistan’s soldiers. It is a defence of military supremacy, political engineering and constitutional usurpation—wrapped in the shroud of martyrs so that anyone questioning its logic may be branded disloyal. Let us begin with an important distinction. Maulana Fazlur Rehman is no consistent champion of constitutionalism. His history of transactional politics and accommodation with the establishment is well known. He often discovers the sanctity of civilian supremacy most loudly when the establishment excludes him from its arrangements. But an opportunistic messenger can still make a valid argument. Fazlur Rehman’s political history does not magically convert military interference into a constitutional function. His language about soldiers receiving salaries was needlessly crude. A soldier’s death can never be reduced to financial compensation. Nevertheless, Inam suppresses the context in which those words were spoken. Fazlur Rehman was responding to demands that local people raise lashkars and fight armed groups themselves. He said the state was asking civilians who receive no salary for national defence to take up weapons, while the officials constitutionally responsible for security would eventually complete their postings and leave. The civilians, meanwhile, would inherit vendettas and bloodshed lasting generations. One may criticize his choice of words while still recognizing the substance of his argument: national security cannot be outsourced to improvised civilian militias. Inam turns this refusal to raise a private army into an abandonment of “civil responsibility.” Yet he cites no law supporting this supposed obligation. Article 256 of Pakistan’s Constitution states that no private organization capable of functioning as a military organization may be formed. Article 245 assigns defence and aid to civil power to the Armed Forces acting under the direction of the Federal Government. Citizens have a duty to obey the law, report threats and cooperate with lawful authorities. They do not have a general constitutional duty to assemble private armies because the state has failed to establish its writ. Inam’s manipulation becomes more serious when he moves from Fazlur Rehman to Pakistan’s history. He argues that military takeovers were products of civilian failure and were therefore effectively “necessitated.” That is the vocabulary of every usurper: the country was unstable, the politicians were corrupt, institutions were fighting, and therefore the man with the gun had no choice but to seize the state. A crisis may explain a coup. It cannot legalize one. Motive is not jurisdiction. Inam’s history is remarkably selective. He refers to three martial laws but virtually erases Yahya Khan’s separate imposition of martial law in 1969. He then discusses the denial of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s mandate mainly through Bhutto’s conduct—as if Yahya Khan, the military ruler exercising the coercive power of the state, were merely watching events from the visitors’ gallery. Pakistan was dismembered in 1971 after thirteen consecutive years of military rule. Even if Haque wishes to condemn Bhutto—and there is much to condemn—he cannot write the military ruler who controlled the country out of the catastrophe. Pakistan’s own Supreme Court subsequently described Yahya Khan as a usurper. The same trick is performed with Zia. The disputed 1977 election, Bhutto’s authoritarianism and the political confrontation with the PNA were grave matters. None conferred constitutional authority upon an army chief to suspend the Constitution, postpone elections, imprison political leaders and rule for eleven years. Inam then describes Musharraf’s coup as the consequence of Nawaz Sharif removing an army chief while he was abroad. The location of an army chief cannot determine the Prime Minister’s constitutional authority. A general does not acquire sovereignty because his dismissal displeases him or occurs while he is sitting in an aircraft. Inam offers economic growth as retrospective absolution. But GDP growth does not amend Article 6. The World Bank has documented that Pakistan’s growth spurts under military regimes were strongly associated with external assistance and political continuity. It also found those episodes unsustainable, noted poorer social indicators under Musharraf compared with preceding governments, and described the 2003–06 expansion as a credit-driven boom that reversed into stagflation. Truck drivers displaying Ayub Khan’s photograph are evidence of nostalgia, not an economic time series. Truck art is not constitutional jurisprudence. Most revealing is Inam’s boast that when he challenges seminar participants to say what they would have done differently from military rulers, he receives a “dumb, awkward silence.” What precisely was the decision? What information was available? Who attended these gatherings? What alternatives were presented? Were participants expected to challenge a retired general publicly about decisions defended by his own institution? He tells us none of this. His anecdote establishes only his satisfaction with his own performance. A citizen does not have to formulate an alternative coup to prove that a coup was illegal—just as a patient need not perform surgery to prove malpractice. The burden rests upon those exercising power, particularly power seized without constitutional authority. Inam’s most sordid sentence is his suggestion that the military and deep state should maintain a “watchful eye” over civilian politics, supposedly as they do throughout the world. No, General. In constitutional democracies, elected civilian authorities oversee the military. The military does not supervise the electorate, manufacture political parties, distribute money among candidates, remove governments or decide which politicians are sufficiently honest to rule. Pakistan’s Supreme Court answered this question decisively in the Asghar Khan case. It simultaneously honored the sacrifices of the Armed Forces and held that senior officers had violated the Constitution by interfering in the 1990 election. It declared that the ISI and MI have no role in forming or destabilizing governments. That judgment destroys Inam’s false choice between respecting soldiers and demanding accountability from generals. A nation can honour its martyrs while prosecuting commanders who violate their oaths. Indeed, genuine respect for the institution requires exactly that distinction. The oath of a Pakistani soldier is to uphold the Constitution and abstain from political activity. It is not an oath to protect the reputation, privileges or political ambitions of serving and retired generals. Inam also claims that military critics “mostly get away with it.” For those who have endured intimidation, disappearance, censorship, prosecution and punishment for criticizing the establishment, this statement is not merely false—it is insulting. I myself have been tried and sentenced in absentia alongside journalists and other retired officers. Human-rights lawyers have received lengthy sentences over social-media criticism. Journalists and activists have disappeared, been prosecuted or forced into exile. Inam’s suggestion that dissenters casually “get away with it” mocks the people already paying the price for speaking. Finally, Inam poisons the well by portraying critics as gullible youths, TikTok scholars, seekers of foreign funding and instruments of hostile powers. He produces no evidence. This is not rebuttal; it is the familiar authoritarian technique of converting disagreement with those in power into disloyalty to the state. The state is not the military. The military is not its commanders. And the commanders are not Pakistan. Fazlur Rehman may be politically opportunistic, but Inam’s answer is intellectually worse: he uses the Maulana’s rhetorical excess to smuggle in a wholesale justification of military guardianship. He does not “put the record straight.” He bends the record until it salutes. Soldiers who die defending Pakistan deserve the nation’s permanent gratitude. Their blood, however, does not belong to generals as political currency. It cannot wash away coups, validate election manipulation, excuse constitutional destruction or purchase silence from citizens. To respect the soldier is not to worship the general. To defend the Army is not to defend every act committed by its commanders. And loyalty to Pakistan means fidelity to its people and Constitution—not submission to a permanent military veto over national life. https://t.co/TtNeNwGcGU

Source: Twitter/X post by @soldierspeaks