Now Malik seeks opportunity to brief parliament in camera!

I have been watching the phenomenal rise of Rehman Malik on our power scene since 1993. Politicians from elitist families and DMG-style bureaucrats dismiss him as an outsider, an ‘upstart’. As if to cultivate a parallel posse of admirers, Malik often tries to go an extra mile to win influential journalists. They relish favours maneuvered by him, but cannot maintain the friendship for long. The reason is simple: Malik is obsessed with keeping his cards too close to his chest and getting sensational, headline-worthy news from this secrecy-driven person is next to impossible.

Little wonder, he is mostly seen operating as a lone wolf. Only a few people realise that he seldom behaves like one. With a clear head, he quickly discovers the ‘real boss’ of the setting he operates in and does everything to win the latter’s confidence by delivering as per the boss’s desire. These days, he remains one of President Zardari’s most trusted aides. That often upsets the Prime Minister, but Rehman Malik hardly cares.

The usually dispassionate Malik turned very emotional, however, when pleading for approval for the interior ministry’s financial demands. Some PML-N members attempted to block these demands through cut motions. All of them, with the exception of Ayaz Amir, miserably failed to build a convincing case against the ministry. They wasted the opportunity by ridiculing him and taunting him by referring to his hyper active appearances on 24/7 channels whenever terrorists strike.

Abid Sher Ali kept harping on the 7000 visas allegedly issued by our embassy in the UAE, “for people who spy and commit acts of terrorism in Pakistan”. It was obvious that this PML-N MNA from Faisalabad was trying to create a hype with the story, the invisible handlers of journalists from our ‘sensitive institutions’ say in whispers.

The story they want us to believe is that thanks to ‘blind patronage by President Zardari’, Rehman Malik has been littering Pakistan with American spies. By killing two youths in a main square in Lahore, Raymond Davis exposed these trigger-happy types in public. The unchecked issue of visas to such persons eventually led to the Abbottabad incursion.

Ayaz Amir remained the one and only from the opposition benches, who tried to make the government realise that without establishing an umbrella organization, diligently sifting through the intelligence pooled by all information-gathering agencies, civil and military, Pakistan cannot effectively confront the menace of terrorism. From the day the Zardari-Gilani government had outsourced the task of fighting terrorism to “a building in Aabpara in Islamabad and the headquarters of an organisation situated beyond Hotel Pearl Continental in Rawalpindi,” the situation remains practically hopeless.

Rehman Malik could have certainly helped his ministry by building up a case from this point, but he refused to join the fight. He requested fellow legislators to appreciate that the ISI and the IB do not fall under the command and control of the interior ministry according to the constitution. Having said this, he should also have shown the courage to inform the National Assembly that the ministry led by him should be spared the taunting barbs when discussing deadly acts of terrorism in this country. “Ask the ISI or the IB,” should have been his refrain. Instead, an emotional Rehman Malik made empty vows to completely root out the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, ‘even if it results in my murder’.

The interior minister tried, perhaps rightly so, to convince the house that the majority of Pakistanis were yet not aware of the ‘dark and sinister side of the Taliban’. It was time to expose them, he warned. He kept on pleading but in vain that he be given an opportunity to brief parliament ‘in camera’ so that he could tell the whole truth about the Taliban. He thought such a briefing would enable elected representatives to understand the deadly nature of the menace.

He conveniently forgot that he happened to be a powerful minister of the Zardari-Gilani government. He can always ask the government to fix any date for such a briefing and all legislators would love to attend. It’s time that the government he represents should honestly admit that the job of fighting terrorism has really been outsourced to institutions Ayaz Amir kept referring to sarcastically in his speech.



Published in The Express Tribune, June 22^nd, 2011.