Intelligence alert

Pakistan’s NSA shared intelligence about 10 terrorists having crossed over from Pakistan into India from Kutch

Pakistan’s national security adviser shared intelligence about 10 terrorists having crossed over from Pakistan into India from Kutch. While the quality of the input is yet to be determined, if the tip-off is indeed true, it could, perhaps, mark a new chapter in co-operation between New Delhi and Islamabad. Recently, Pakistan announced that the JeM chief, Maulana Masood Azhar, had been kept under detention, though the definition of ‘detention’, a sort of regulated freedom, was hugely sniggered at. Islamabad recently asserted that its own team would visit India soon to probe the Pathankot attack. While critics believe that the reality is far from this and that such one-offs are being masterminded only to mislead India and the world into believing that a new and real bilateral relationship is in the offing, I believe that it doesn’t hurt to be an optimist. India must stay alert and not get carried away by apparent honey-traps, but overt cynicism on its part isn’t going to help either. The painful reality is that there are going to be more terror attacks in India and it will continue living with this reactive approach. It’s sad that we continue to lose our passionate and skilled brave-hearts because there is no proactive strategy or vision to hard-tackle terrorism from its roots. To make things worse, we have pseudo-patriotic thugs sitting in air-conditioned university campuses, calling for the destruction of our country. 

Tailpieces

1) Mumtaz Qadri was hanged for murdering Salman Taseer but his saga is far from over. Hanging a criminal is a great beginning but it does not kill what he stands for, just like killing journalists is not going to kill the truth. The offering of caskets of flowers before the dead body of a cold-blooded assassin, the violent protests against his killing, including on Friday, a day marked for Jumma prayers, followed by vicious bomb blasts to avenge his death, exposes everything that’s wrong with the nation. Pakistan’s supposed war against religious extremism has only just started.

2) It emerges that the Pakistan government is attempting to rebrand and re-position PIA by contemplating a name change, other than toying with a host of cosmetic changes such as design, logo and slogan. It should take a leaf out of the failed exercise of rebranding Air India. While there is no argument about AI being infinitely superior in terms of network, fleet, infrastructure and service, the fact remains that till these carriers are run by government babus in some shape or form, they will remain blazing examples of corruption, laziness and ineptitude.

3) Kim Kardashian, a mother-of-two, who probably realised that the world hasn’t seen a risque picture of her in a long time, decided to manipulate the social media yet again by tweeting a self-censored selfie on Monday. Probably her idea of woman power, considering that her post emerged a day before International Women’s Day.

4) Lady Gaga, dressed soberly for once, delivered a pretty remarkable performance at the Oscars. Except that every time she raised her fist from the keyboard, as if to protest against the brutality of men, the piano kept playing.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 10^th, 2016.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.