Adding some glamour and glitter to anti-drone campaign

Politics is all about finding ways to live with grey areas. It also requires a leader to keep moving horizontally and deal with the plethora of issues that keep surfacing on the political scene.

Imran Khan is made of a unique material, though. He loves to retain the reputation of an ‘outsider’ to our ‘dirty politics’ and continues to act like a populist while obsessively focusing on one-point agendas intermittently. Stopping the drone strikes on Pakistan’s ‘sovereign territory’ has become his latest obsession.

Although his party leads the coalition government in the K-P, the provincial authorities have yet to announce banning of the flow of Nato supplies from its territory via a duly issued notification. In its stead, the PTI workers have been launched on a particular exit point in Peshawar to intercept all vehicles carrying goods to Torkham. Like the usual vigilantes, these workers bully the hapless drivers to present documents and let the seals of their containers broken to ensure that they are not carrying any goods for Afghanistan-based ‘US troops’. In spite of generating visible heat in media, these random checks by rowdy PTI workers have now exhausted their steam.

No wonder, on the first day of another national assembly session Imran Khan needed to add some glamour and glitter to his campaign against the drone strikes. He summoned the provincial chief minister and his colleagues to Islamabad. After assembling in the K-P House Thursday afternoon, they all walked on to end staying put in front of the parliamentary building and eventually the dharna-connected motions and meetings did succeed in overshadowing everything that went on in an ‘elected and sovereign house’.

During the initial days of Imran Khan-inspired pickets for blocking supplies to Nato troops, the Americans and their allies preferred to act indifferent. Finally, the US president’s point man on Af-Pak discreetly landed in Islamabad two days ago. He held lengthy meetings with Sartaj Aziz and Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan. Reliable sources have revealed that both the interior minister and prime minister’s adviser on foreign and national security affairs failed to furnish assuaging assurances for the US envoy.

Some PTI hawks have also claimed that in desperation, the US envoy tried to meet Imran Khan, but instead of receiving him at his Bani Gala residence, the Captain left for Peshawar to charge up his container-stopping workers. The proclaimed ‘snub’ seems to have forced the Pentagon spokesperson to announce halting of ‘retrograde’ traffic of the Afghanistan-based troops and weapons via Torkham in the end. The story does not end there.

Ishaq Dar, the finance minister, has now been told in ‘polite diplomatic words’ that Pakistan should not expect early payment of the promised tranche of the Coalition Support Fund. Dar and his government were anxiously waiting for this tranche to stabilize the value of Pak rupee and while anticipating the same, the finance minister had already bragged that he would bring the value of a US dollar equal to 98 Pak rupees ‘not after some months but within some weeks’.

Through the diplomatic channels, Islamabad is also hearing loud whispers that Afghanistan can formally approach the UN with complaints regarding the flow of transit trade to this landlocked country. And, if nothing worked in the end, the US could itself move to ensure execution of directions that the UN Security Council had issued through an appropriate resolution to its member states in the context of waging the “war on terror” in Afghanistan, immediately after the events of 9/11.

Three influential ministers of the Nawaz government reluctantly confirmed the stories that I had heard from diplomatic sources during ‘off the record’ conversation with this correspondent in their chambers. None of them could explain, however, as to why their government was so shy of sharing these ominous possibilities with proverbial Joes of Pakistan.

At least two of these ministers rather appeared more worried over the blowback of Tariq Malik’s sacking. The studious and good-reputed head of Nadra had been summoned to Lahore three nights ago. Ostensibly, the Chief Minister of Punjab required his ‘expertise’ to collect data on the marginalized ones who deserved government-furnished subsidies. Instead of Shahbaz Sharif, Malik had to suffer tough talking by Rana Sanaullah when he reached Lahore. Since it did not work, the chairman was sacked via a late-night notification, although the Islamabad High Court turned down the termination order the morning after.

Notwithstanding the hard facts, the truth is that public perception has connected Tariq Malik’s sacking with ‘forensic analysis of the votes cast’ in two key constituencies of the national assembly in Lahore and in spite of delivering a highly charged speech in the national assembly sitting of Thursday, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has failed to negate this perception.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 6^th, 2013.