Selective memory and ‘kutti’ diplomacy

By staying away from the Bonn conference we showed that we are unsure of ourselves & our place in the world.

No, the Punjabi word above does not denote ‘female dog’; it means getting upset as kids do sometimes with their playmates and do kutti (making a clicking sound by drawing the thumbnail under their upper front tooth and saying ‘kutti’ before picking up their marbles and stalking off home). Which is exactly what we did in the matter of the Bonn conference on Afghanistan.

This is not how diplomacy is conducted in the adult world, sirs: if we had a strong case against Nato we should have gone to Bonn with much fanfare; and there loudly and strongly, before the whole world, made our case about what the Deep State calls the deliberate bombing of our border post in which some 26 of our soldiers died horrible deaths.

We could have said that we had come to Bonn despite the outrage committed by Nato because we believed in a future for Afghanistan that was stable and prosperous and peaceful; that despite the deep anger we felt at being treated so lightly as allies, we were in Bonn as a responsible (and grown-up) member of the comity of nations, dedicated to peace not only in the region but in the world at large.

What, pray sirs, did we achieve by sulking and staying away from the conference? Nothing whatsoever, except telling the world one more time that we are a people unsure of ourselves and our place in the world; a people who are champions at shadow-boxing and that, too, above our weights.

And now for selective memory, which is another great hallmark of us Pakistanis, damn honesty and propriety. Amid all this furore surrounding the Murky Memo; the sudden sprouting of haloes on many a head; the self-righteous calls for initiating treason proceedings; hanging people immediately if not sooner; disbanding traitorous political parties, and generally doing great and lasting harm to many people so help them, God, a memory flickered.

I recalled that some years ago, I saw a TV talk-show with Hamid Mir on which Imran Khan had alleged, in response to allegations relating to Sita White laid at his door by Babar Ghauri, that Altaf Hussain had said that Partition was the greatest blunder and that India should open its doors to those Mohajirs who wanted to migrate back to India.

And sure enough, there it was: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VV6cpMEQqU. Now then, how is it that the Ghairat Brigades, who are pursuing those accused in the case of the Murky Memo with sticks and knives, do not react in like manner against Altaf Hussain for this public (and recorded) statement? I mean, what Altaf Hussain said negates all of the foundations upon which this country rests according to the Paknationalist narratives of the Ghairat Brigades. Yet, there is not a squeak out of them?

Then there is the alleged letter Altaf Hussain allegedly wrote to then British Prime Minister, Tony Blair on September 23, 2001, http://www.pakistankakhudahafiz.com/2011/08/29/altaf-hussains-letter-to-tony-blair-asking-for-isi-to-be-disbanded/, in which he allegedly offered all kinds of human intelligence to the West in return for the canning of the ISI which would otherwise ‘continue to produce many Osama bin Ladens and Talibans (sic) in future’. Not a squeak on this either.

Readers will note that I have used the words ‘alleged’ and ‘allegedly’ in the above paragraph — simply because they remain allegations unless they are proven in a properly constituted court of law. Yet, while there has been no reaction from the Ghairat Brigades on what Altaf Hussain said/is alleged to have said, all hell has broken loose where the Murky Memo is concerned. Indeed, if you go down the thread of what has been going on in this saga, the latest is that Mansoor Ijaz now takes the entire credit for putting the letter together! Yet, there are blood-curdling calls for the present government to hang by the tallest pole, and NOW!?

Is this plain and simple dishonesty, or something far deeper, far more sinister? Is this a plot to finally remove popular and mass politics from the country, in an attempt to limit it to the urban-centred and favoured pressure groups that owe their fealty to the Deep State? If one notes the mass migration of the Musharraf-era political elites aka lotas and turncoats (several times over!) to Imran Khan’s ‘tsunami’ banner, one certainly comes to that conclusion. What it does to his oft-repeated refrain that politics was corrupt before his advent only he can tell us.

Tsumani reminds me of something I read only two days ago, can’t sadly remember where, because one would like to acknowledge the person who came up with the thought. And that is that whilst Imran has described the support he has received over the past six months or so as a veritable tsunami, tsunamis are extremely destructive things. They decimate all and everything in their path, leaving death and destruction and broken lives and dreams in their wake.

Now, while I have said, and believe, that Imran is a decent man who wants to do good for the country like every other Pakistani, his dangerous stand on the Taliban and on terrorism, for one, can lead us to total disaster. He quotes Rustam Shah Mohmand, the former chief secretary of the then NWFP as the authority on the better way out in Afghanistan. But we must remember that Mr Mohmand, who is a friend, was part of the JI/USIP Foreign Policy Elites who came up with the quite mind-boggling JI/USIP Report on Afghanistan.

That report in and of itself is the greatest indicator of what these elites, and their friends in high places within the Deep State, want to see happening in Afghanistan when Nato (read the Americans) leaves that country. And that, friends, is a disaster waiting to happen. I might be repeating myself here, but it bears much repetition: if our Deep State really attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of Afghanistan following its own formulations, that country and ours will slide into sure civil war.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 9^th, 2011.

Correction: In an earlier version of this story, Rustam Shah Mohmand was incorrectly written as Rehmat Shah Mohmand. This has been corrected.