The smell test — I

Imran Khan, supporters must understand is you have to have a big heart, thick skin to succeed in electoral politics.

First a loud, vociferous and angry complaint to Imran Khan: For heaven’s sake, Imran, rein in your acolytes, admirers and worshippers. They are arrogant; rude; vulgar; abusive; use gutter language and worse and will damage you and your party greatly if a halter is not put on them immediately, if not sooner.

The situation is so bad that even a senior person like Brigadier (Retd) Samson Sharaf, hitherto known only as a fellow-traveller of the Deep State, now boasting the grand title of member Central Executive Committee Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and spokesman for defence and security or some such, arrogantly dismissed my complaint to him in these words: “Kamran please do not jump to score brownies. This is a cyber world with all sorts of people and Trojans’.

Brownies? Trojans? The man in question who writes out of Canada and whose motto is: ‘I live and die for PTI and Imran Khan’ has been heaping abuse on me since November 6. If those tweets were not his, how come he did not notice his account had been hacked for over 10 days when my eye caught the offending tweets?

This is pathetic, Imran, and shows the conceit that has gripped your party just because of one successful jalsa. Well, what happens if you have another big rally? Will your followers seek out those of us who do not agree with you and shoot us dead? Is this the level of tolerance you people have for your detractors? What happens if you come to power and someone criticises you? Will you put them into concentration camps?

Indeed, what will happen in the immediate future when other politicians open up their heavy artillery on you, as I cautioned two weeks ago? What then? Will the PTI set fire to the whole blessed country? What you and your supporters must understand is that you have to have a big heart and very thick skin to succeed in electoral politics. Dammit, your people are sounding like Hitler’s SS.

Just ask your press wallah to go back into my archives and see my attacks on Mr Nawaz Sharif and on President Zardari, even on the much missed, much lamented Benazir Bhutto! In stark contrast, I was most gentle with you, and yet I am called all sorts of filthy names? And other, more senior columnists than I? Watch it my friend, otherwise these people will destroy you.

And now to, what else but the latest storm to engulf our conspiracy-ridden country where everything has to do with deep, dark doings hatched by the CIA/RAW/Mossad/Teletubbies/Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fudd combine. As an immediate result of which our ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, has offered his resignation if it will help lay to rest this Mansoor Ijaz-fuelled crisis. Let us try and understand some of it, in Mansoor Ijaz’s own words.

This is what he says in his article published in the Financial Times: “Questions about the ISI’s role in Pakistan have intensified in recent months. The finger of responsibility in many otherwise inexplicable attacks has often pointed to a shadowy outfit of ISI dubbed ‘S-Wing’, which is said to be dedicated to promoting the dubious agenda of a narrow group of nationalists who believe only they can protect Pakistan’s territorial integrity.

“The time has come for the state department to declare the S-Wing a sponsor of terrorism under the designation of ‘foreign governmental organisations’. Plans by the Obama administration to blacklist the Haqqani network are toothless and will have no material impact on the group’s military support and intelligence logistics; it is the S-Wing that allegedly provides all of this in the first place. It no longer matters whether the ISI is wilfully blind, complicit or incompetent in the attacks its S-Wing is carrying out. The S-Wing must be stopped.

“The ISI embodies the scourge of radicalism that has become a cornerstone of Pakistan’s foreign policy.

“The time has come for America to take the lead in shutting down the political and financial support that sustains an organ of the Pakistani state that undermines global antiterrorism efforts at every turn. Measures such as stopping aid to Pakistan, as a bill now moving through Congress aims to do, are not the solution. More precise policies are needed to remove the cancer that the ISI and its rogue wings have become on the Pakistani state.

“Pakistanis are not America’s enemies. Neither is their incompetent and toothless civilian government — the one Admiral Mullen was asked to help that May morning. The enemy is a state organ that breeds hatred among Pakistan’s Islamist masses and then uses their thirst for jihad against Pakistan’s neighbours and allies to sate its hunger for power. Taking steps to reduce its influence over Pakistan’s state affairs is a critical measure of the world’s willingness to stop the terror masters at their very roots”.

And now his rebuttal of “press releases, op-ed pieces and editorials in the Pakistani press regarding the Memorandum, my role in delivering it, the expected denials of the Foreign Office”: “I have withheld, pending an official investigation by certain organs of Pakistan’s government, names, telephone numbers and email addresses of those involved — this data will only be provided to the official bodies who request them from me and who demonstrate their independence and concern for learning the truth from these facts. The memorandum will remain out of public view unless the official bodies of Pakistan’s government deem it appropriate to release it”.

Er, does Ijaz mean that the “certain organs of Pakistan’s government” that will carry out an ‘official investigation’ in this matter are the exact same ‘narrow group of nationalists who believe only they can protect Pakistan’s territorial integrity’ and ‘terror masters’ who should be stopped by the United States ‘at their very roots’?

Dictionary meaning of the ‘smell test’: An informal method of determining whether something is authentic, credible, or ethical, by using one’s common sense or sense of propriety. This whole tamasha does not pass the smell test.

(To be concluded)

Published in The Express Tribune, November 18^th, 2011.