Adieu Arshad Sharif

We may never know who killed Arshad. That is not how Pakistan’s judicial system works. That is not how Pakistan’s investigative and intelligence arms function. That is not why he was killed in the first place. A long list of high-profile murders is awaiting justice. Not to forget that most of these cases went through a threadbare investigation under the supervision of judicial commissions. In the case of Benazir’s assassination, even United Nations was involved; Scotland Yard’s investigative services were hired. Still the matter was closed for lack of substantial evidence. Welcome to Pakistan. No sarcasm is meant here. It is a sorrowful tale of a willow that had to wither in the same hands that had watered it all these decades. It was naïve of the willow and people like Arshad to consider the water safe. The truth is that this country has been fed with malice, deceit and duplicity to the advantage of those who now have complete control over the pause button.

Arshad is undoubtedly not the only journalist to have died in mysterious circumstances. He was also not the only journalist with the guts to call a spade a spade. Neither was he the only prime-time anchor with a sizable audience in Pakistan and abroad. So then, what makes Arshad different?

It was his thirst to cut out the umbilical cord that has been nourishing Pakistan’s corrupt elite for the last 75 years. He was convinced that unless it was taken out of the system, the willow would never grow. He pursued every fact diligently. He was a firm believer in empirical research; therefore, his word carried weight. He had complete control over his emotions and never allowed them to bolt out in the frenzy of media glitz or the reputation to rub shoulders with the powers that be.

Then what went wrong to make him the only journalist who had been chased to death in a foreign country — a country that matches the human rights credentials of Pakistan and where the law is at the beck and call of mafias like we have?

Like Plato’s charm for the Philosopher King, which lived in utopia and is probably still there, Arshad had also built his entire narrative of beating the so-called mafia-turned-political-elite around a philosopher king. He believed that once he marshaled the truth in the direction he was guided to by all the King’s men, Pakistan would be on the path to rediscovery, maturity and success. Little did he know that the so-called guardians only used him to scare off politicians and square their feuds with them.

As the scale fell from his eyes, he behaved precisely how he had been behaving before; with the only difference now in his crosshair were the philosopher king and company.

The fall of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz resulted from the carefully kneaded dough of revenge and the delusional spirit of owning Pakistan even at the cost of morally and financially defaulting it. The scheme has been that until the bark is intact, it hardly matters whether the willow is withering or blossoming. Keep a few roots entrenched and watered with sanity. The rest may rot. Arshad has been very helpful in giving this dough as many shapes as was required to frame PML-N as the only party that had prevented Pakistan from becoming a responsible and respectful country. Not that he painted them thieves out of nowhere; he had evidence to support his argument. However, it was not the whole truth. There were a few and far pressure and threats for the Pakistan People’s Party for breaching its social contract with the people of Pakistan, especially those of Sindh, where the party has been in power for the last 15 years. But, since PPP was in the same bed as the King, there was not much one could do.

Notwithstanding the dicey mechanism Imran Khan chose to get into the prime minister slot, most of us, like Arshad, had a sense that at least with a relatively honest prime minister by his side, the King would step aside to give his aide the space to take the country out of the moors; to heal its broken branches and to treat the rotting roots with appropriate policies and if needed stringent actions. But, unfortunately, the PTI government failed miserably. The skeletons from its cupboard began to come out. Like a true journalist, Arshad never refrained from bringing them into the media spotlight too. On the flip side, he also gave massive airtime to the PTI to defend their position, and one is sure, with the very purpose, of helping the party steer the country in the right direction. As the cliché then went: we had no other choice but Imran.

Like always, it was not to be. Imran Khan failed to reign in the Mafias, for which he was purportedly brought to power. That was just a charade, after all. The King was part of the problem and not the solution. Imagine how Arshad had felt when in a matter of no time, the same PML-N that was the bad boy in the gulley became the blue-eyed boy.

The night of April 10 not only breached Arshad’s faith in the King’s philosophy, replete with manipulative scheming, but it also woke the entire nation to the reality that every person of Pakistan has been used in the dirty game of the throne.

We do not know what transpired between Arshad and his Philosophical King behind closed doors, but we know that he was wanted in several sedition cases once he questioned the King’s move to replace Imran’s government with the crowd of “once-upon-a-time thieves” assembled in the Pakistan Democratic Movement.

Those who think Arshad fled Pakistan out of fear have the wrong perspective. He had concluded that the time had come to bring the original sin to the fore. This war had become personal. It was Arshad Sharif’s war against a system that had used him and his country. He may have died in the battle, but the fire he has ignited will eventually devour the King.