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http://www.dawn.com/weekly/kamran/20090113.htm
WHETHER it be Baroness Manningham-Buller, former director general of Britain’s MI5, or Jonathan Evans, the present DG; whether it be George Tenet, former director of the American CIA or Gen Mike Hayden, the present director, no spy chief has ever said anything even halfway controversial to the press. Their interviews, if any, are completely innocuous in content.
Indeed, this is what the Independent newspaper had to say about the press interview that Evans gave on Jan 6, 2008: “The head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, was on display yesterday after he had invited selected journalists to visit him in his office in Millbank, overlooking the Thames, so that he could make a few uncontroversial comments to mark the centenary of the spy network.
“It was the first time in MI5’s 100-year history that a serving head of MI5 had met the press — and even on this occasion, Mr Evans was cautious about which journalists were invited. He gave nothing away.”
I have often made the case that we Pakistanis are a most unique people and our country a most unique place where anything goes. Where, most critically, no cognisance is taken of what anyone in authority says or does, the country be damned.
Those that rule us think it their absolute right to say what they jolly well please; to be utterly loquacious when it takes their fancy; to show off and preen themselves as if the light shone out of their left ears alone and from nowhere else.
Here is what our DG of the ISI said in so many words — if you don’t believe me, please go to the Der Spiegel site — in an interview published in this most respected of Germany’s highest brow print-media journals: “We may be crazy in Pakistan, but not completely out of our minds!”
I ask you! Is this how the chief of an agency accused of much chicanery by most of the world should address a question of this magnitude? Especially when there is every evidence that hard-core and cruel extremists, albeit very few in number, have been allowed to hold this country and its good people by the throat for too long?
Der Spiegel goes on: “However, it is worth listening closely when the general explains why he too is unwilling to apprehend the Taliban leadership, even though many claim that Taliban leader Mullah Omar, for example, is in Quetta….
“‘Shouldn’t they be allowed to think and say what they please? They believe that jihad is their obligation. Isn’t that freedom of opinion?’ he asks, defending extremist rabble-rousers, who are sending more and more Quran school students to Afghanistan to fight in the war there. Such words from Pasha arouse the old suspicion that the ISI is playing a double game.”
As it should arouse suspicion, because the Taliban don’t only say what they “please”; they also behead and shoot as they “please”, and cut off other people’s ears as they “please”. Just as they cut off the ears of five tribal elders belonging to a peace committee in Khar the other day.
It is hardly a matter of their “freedom of opinion”, because their freedom of opinion extends to blowing up schools, in recent weeks not only girls schools but ALL schools in Swat. And effectively taking over completely, that once peaceful and very lovely place. Ask the poor Swatis.
The Taliban’s “freedom of opinion” extends to kidnapping senior and well-guarded government officials such as on Jan 11, when they took the Additional Political Agent of South Waziristan in broad daylight. We must note that whilst he was protected by “more than 20 heavily-armed” guards, just five masked men spirited him away. What in God’s name is going on? Chills you to the bone does it not, this interview by the head of Pakistan’s Mother of All Agencies?
There is much more that is completely inexplicable. One of our English language newspapers had this story in its Jan 11 publication: “militants affiliated with the Swat chapter of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) attacked the house of former federal minister and ANP leader Muhammad Afzal Khan ‘Lala’, burnt another government school, and lashed two drug addicts publicly.”The news report goes on to say that the militants invited the townspeople (no, not women, who are not even allowed into Swat bazaars any longer on pain of death, remember) to witness the flogging of the addicts in the main bazaar of Matta Town which they duly carried out a few hours after making the public announcement.
We are also told by the newspaper that when Lala’s house was attacked the security forces “in an unusual move” engaged the attackers and “made them flee”. What in heaven’s name is going on, sirs?
Afzal ‘Lala’ is a well-known and respected politician of Swat who has courageously refused to leave his home in that ravaged part of our country because, simply, he will not be cowed; will not leave his home. My deepest respects to him.But why did the “security forces” act “unusually” in his case only? Why don’t they act “usually” when parliamentarians’ houses are blown up, when ordinary people are abducted in the dead of night and butchered, their headless bodies hung on electricity poles in public squares in Swat’s major towns like Mingora itself? And when schools are blown up?
Reportedly, there are 30,000 or so regular army soldiers stationed in Swat, apart from the civil armed forces and whatever police that have not deserted out of fear of beheading, what else. Are there more Taliban than these “security forces”? Is the army out-gunned by the Taliban? Do the Taliban have tanks and artillery and helicopter gunships and an air force too? What the devil is going on there for God’s sake?
Visitors to Swat tell of Pakistan Army and Taliban check posts a few hundred metres apart, army vehicles passing through Taliban check posts too. Why? Are they cooperating to strike the fear of God into our hearts? And for telling their paymaster, Amreeka Bahadur, that the problem is far bigger than it really is, so go on coughing up those luscious dollars?
Let me caution the powers that be in this tortured and unfortunate country: Barack Obama will soon be in the White House. Beware, sirs, for he is a highly intelligent man who will very quickly see through all of the charade and the subterfuge that seemingly is on shameful display in the citadel of Islam. He is not a duffer like your ‘tight buddy’ Dubya! So beware, if not for your own sakes, then for this poor country’s and its hapless people’s. I beg you.
Bushism of the week: “So I analysed that and decided I didn’t want to be the president during a depression greater than the Great Depression, or the beginning of a depression greater than the Great Depression” — President George W Bush; Washington D.C., Dec. 18, 2008.
P.S. Governor Taseer, who fashions himself as a leftie Piplia these days, and who was on the TV programme Jawab Deh recently, should at the very least know that Pablo Neruda (who he purportedly met whilst in the company of Faiz Sahib in London) was Chilean, not Cuban.
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
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