Crisistan

Nawaz Sharif’s ouster in a judicial coup has thrown Pakistan into political turmoil. The actors have changed but the tortuous plotline is all too familiar.

- Wajahat S. Khan in Lahore

Spoiler alert. The Red Wedding is a massacre during the ‘War of the Five Kings’, an episode shot in gruesome detail and chilling speed to be the season three finale of the hit HBO fantasy series, Game of Thrones. In it, Lord Walder Frey, a cynical wheeler-dealer, takes revenge against the robust contender King Robb Stark for breaking the marriage pact between House Stark and House Frey, kills young King Robb, his pregnant wife, mother, banner men and soldiers at a family wedding. Caught by surprise but convinced of their noble intent and entitlement till their last-drawn breaths, almost all the Starks are wiped out, in one violent, coordinated master move. In the game of thrones, writes author George R.R. Martin, you win, or you die. There is no middle ground.

If you’re a Pakistani, the plot line isn’t merely ironic. But unfortunately for him, Nawaz Sharif is no Game of Thrones fan, or he would have sensed what was coming. He’s never read the fantasy books, either, and is not in a position to predict any form of screenplay. In fact, it is said that Sharif doesn’t read much at all except for the summaries that have already been recited to him, and the op-ed section of an Urdu rag firmly allied with his party, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) PML(N). His consequent myopia in the Panama case too—including the tardy media planning, pushing the army’s buttons, flirting with India, bungling the equilibrium with the Arab states, a legal strategy that wouldn’t survive a day in a law school moot court, and a money trail more creative than an Ocean’s 11 heist—has been largely self-inflicted.