Statements that don’t help

It doesn’t matter whether it was suicide bombing or not, what matters is that eight lives were lost.

Trust Interior Minister Rehman Malik to arrive on the scene and make an already bad situation even worse. With investigations barely underway into the Karachi attack that targeted Sindh CID police officer Chaudhry Aslam, the interior minister contradicted what the police had said earlier and claimed that the attack was not caused by a suicide bomber but by a planted bomb. The interior minister was going by initial Federal Investigation Agency findings that no parts from any vehicle, which would have been used had it been a suicide attack, have been found in the crater that was created by the blast. At this point, it is far too early to know with any certainty whether the attack was a suicide blast or not, but it is also far too premature for Malik to be contradicting the police. It would have been far better to wait for all the evidence to come in before making a pronouncement. As it is, the minister has now created a rift between the police and the FIA, which is only going to hurt this and other investigations into terrorist attacks.

This is not the first time the interior minister has interrupted an investigation into violence with some poorly thought-out remarks. When Karachi was plagued by target killings, Rehman Malik thought it apt to speculate that most of the killings were being carried out by irate wives and girlfriends. Investigations into the PNS Mehran attack were only just underway when the interior minister said that the attackers resembled Star Wars characters. For a man in such a sensitive position, the interior minister should have learned by now that discretion is the better part of valour. Since that lesson has obviously escaped him, it is time that the president and prime minister muzzle him. He should no longer be allowed to make his bizarre and unhelpful statements so soon after tragedy has struck.

In the controversy over Malik’s statements, we should also remember that ultimately it doesn’t matter whether the bomb was planted or if it was detonated by a suicide bomber. It still took eight lives, including that of a child. In due course, investigations will prove what kind of attack it was. Far more important, though, is that the investigations find out who was behind the attack.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 26^th,  2011.