Time to learn, and fast

Fellow Tweeter Amber Rahim Shamsi asked on Twitter as I was attempting to explain to the PTI warriors/ees that shooting down a US drone is easier said than done: “Doesn’t hyper-nationalism stem from deep-rooted internal and external insecurities”?

@kdastgirkhan @RajaArsalanKhan Doesn't hypernationalism stem from deep-rooted internal and external insecurities?

— Amber Rahim Shamsi (@AmberRShamsi) June 10, 2013

Yes, but the sad part is that these internal and external insecurities have been drummed into most Pakistanis by our hyper-nationalist press, egged on, and its wheels oiled by, our mendacious and dishonest Deep State.

Leaving external threats aside for a while, let us just look at the “internal insecurities” and what they spring from. Mainly the terrorists of the TTP killing both civilian and soldier alike, “terminating with extreme prejudice” all those that stand in the way of their triumph, to the extent of decapitating our brave young men.

Now where in the world did these murderers spring from? Are those of us who say they are a direct effect of the US assault on Kabul/the Muslim Ummah not the greatest hypocrites on earth? Have we forgotten that the catastrophe started in 1994 when Malakand Division was taken over; followed by Orakzai in 1997 and North Waziristan in 1998 whose tribal chiefs and Maliks were slaughtered, and so-called “Islamic justice” was used to decapitate the opposition?

But leave the Pakistani version of the Taliban alone, even though the Af/Pak Taliban are joined at the hip and have said so, only we don’t choose to pull our heads out of the sand. Let us just look at the Haqqanis and their apparent cosiness with our Deep State which is given as a reason for Pakistan not acting against them as they attack our “allies”, the Americans, in Afghanistan.

The Deep State’s movers and shakers tell us through their henchmen that the Haqqani’s are being molly-coddled, so that when the Taliban take over in parts of Afghanistan after the Americans leave in 2014, they will be our “friends” in the new dispensation. One has written this ad nauseum along with examples from recent history that this notion of “strategic depth” is cretinism of the worst kind.

Whenever it came to Afghan national interests, the Haqqanis have been Afghans first and our friends later (which is just as it ought to be with self-respecting nations) — the only nation in the whole wide world which will hurt its own interests in the pursuit of some nonsense such as the non-existent Ummah; or indeed to prove ourselves as the thekedars, aka maamas, of our common religion. As an aside, what could be more ludicrous than YouTube being available all across the Gulf States and not in the Land of the Pure?

But back to the Haqqanis ... we will never learn. Back in January 2010, I wrote in Dawn: “Case in point: the absolute and repeated refusal of even the Taliban government when it was misruling Afghanistan, to accept the Durand Line as the international border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, despite the fact that it was a surrogate of Pakistan — propped into power; paid for; and helped militarily, diplomatically and politically by the Pakistani government and its ‘agencies’.

“Indeed, it even refused the Commando’s interior minister, the loudmouth General Moinuddin Haider when he went to Kabul to ask for the extradition of Pakistani criminals being sheltered by the Taliban. We must remember that the Commando was pressing the Foreign Office till just a few days before 9/11 to have the Taliban regime’ recognised by more countries!

“This poppycock of  ‘strategic depth’ can only be explained by our great military thinkers and strategists and geniuses: it is not for mortals like yours truly to make sense of any of it. Particularly because this nonsense can only happen after the Americans depart from Afghanistan.

“Why this subject at this time, you might well ask. Well I have just been reading David Sanger’s The Inheritance in which he meticulously lays out the reasons why he believes the Pakistani ‘dual policy’ towards the Taliban exists.

“On page 247 he states that when Michael McConnell, the then chief of US National Intelligence went to Pakistan in late May 2008, he heard Pakistani officers make the case for the Pakistani need for having a friendly government in Kabul after the Americans departed.”

So there you have it, friends, “internal security concerns”. Before leaving you for a brief remembrance of a departed friend, let me ask the warriors/ees of the PTI to please go to Google and see just how many Carrier Battle Groups the big bad Americans have in the Arabian Sea. We will talk about shooting down US drones next week.

Late last night, old pal JR tweeted the sad demise of senior friend Chaudhry Zaheer Ahmad, in Karachi. Even though Zaheer had long been known to my cousin Anis Shah, I met him in Quetta in 1973 if memory serves, when he came seeking refuge with friend Minoo Marker as ZAB cracked down on the newspaper The Sun of which Zaheer was a shareholder.

The Sun could be compared with Private Eye of yesteryear, when all caution was thrown to the winds and most provocative stuff written. Anyway Minoo thought the safest place would be his, what he called The Mythical Marble Mines, out in the desert near Alam Reg rail station and from where Koh-e-Taftaan could be seen. So, all three of us piled into Minoo’s green 4-door Jeep Wagoneer and off we went.

Beautiful cool nights, right under the flight-path of East-West air traffic and while we could not hear them, the lights could be seen among a million, billion stars. One only had to be careful of the sidewinder vipers that infested the area but which were clearly seen in the light of torches, their diamond eyes blazing away. RIP Chaudhry Sahib, one of the brightest people I have ever known.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 14^th, 2013.

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