More smoke, fewer mirrors

The WikiLeaks saga is one of those gifts that just keep on giving. The latest local twist to just one of innumerable tails is that former interior minister Rehman Malik has written to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif asking him to form a judicial commission in order to investigate the WikiLeaks allegation that the Americans were given access to the national identity database during the course of his tenure. As the saying goes — be careful what you wish for. A brief perusal of the colourful career of Mr Malik suggests that there is a cemetery full of skeletons ripe for exhumation in the event of any investigation of anything he has touched or been associated with in government.

The latest request for the services of an increasingly stretched judiciary concerns a diplomatic cable which was leaked in 2011 and tweeted by WikiLeaks on June 6^th. If there is a single thing that characterises all the WikiLeaks material it is that its veracity is unchallenged. This material is not faked or made up; it is a genuine record of events and documents, this latest leak being no exception. The cable details meetings between the former US Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and a range of senior Pakistani officials, including Mr Malik. The sensitivity lies in the reveal that Prime Minister Gilani and Rehman Malik went to the American Embassy and offered up of their own free will access to the National Database and Registration Agency (NADRA). The leaked item concludes, ‘It seems to me that that is a theft of some national treasure of Pakistan…’

Indeed it may well be, and Mr Malik — and Mr Gilani for that matter — need to tread very carefully before seeking to look into in public the contents of a WikiLeak because they are dangerously packed with that trickiest of commodities — the truth.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 10^th, 2017.

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