JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: On May 25, RAF Typhoon fighter jets scrambled to escort a Manchester-bound PIA plane to a London airport. Later in the evening, it came to be known that a family dispute among the passengers wherein one excited passenger threatened to blow the plane while in the air had caused the PIA crew to take the threat at face value and the pilot pressed the emergency button alerting the UK authorities of imminent danger to the 300 onboard passengers.
Now my question: if the RAF comes into action just on the pressing of a plane’s emergency button, then how come we are unable to fight the menace on our soil, which has terrorised the nation for the last decade? Even today, when we have already lost 50,000 Pakistani civilian and military personnel, we talk of peace deals with the Taliban. From June onwards, Pakistan is going to have right-wing governments at the centre and in three provinces, which have promised to strike peace deals with the Taliban. The incoming right-wing governments need to understand that appeasing the Taliban will only help the militants to expand their area of influence. Futile peace deals in the past, including the one reached in 2008, wherein the Swat valley was handed over to them to rule, prove that Pakistan has got only two options — either complete surrender and acceptance of what the Taliban are demanding, or staging a fight back till the Taliban and their hate-based philosophy is eliminated. The choice is in our hands.
Masood Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, May 28th, 2013.
