They’re leaving, you know…

US, Nato are in process of LEAVING, not entering Afghanistan! Why are JI/PTI stopping foreign armies from leaving.

Being fully aware that my long-dead mother will be cursed by the ‘intelligent, young, professional and dedicated’ members of the PTI at what I am about to write, write it I must. I must, because the party insists on a path that can only spell doom for this poor country as the PTI and its soulmate, the JI career, minds and eyes closed towards the abyss, dragging the country along with them. Particularly the PTI’s young supporters, I believe, need to be warned that there are extremist elements in the party that can do it, and the country, great harm. So here goes:

Right in the middle of meeting upon meeting of the ‘Core Committee’ of the PTI modelled on God only knows what: the Core Committee of the PPP? (and look where that Core Committee landed the party!), arrived friend Charles Timothy ‘Chuck’ Hagel, defence secretary of the United States of America, who served for 12 years in the US Senate and was selected by President Obama to be in his cabinet.

Hagel has served in the US Army in Vietnam where he was twice wounded and was twice awarded the Purple Heart, and later as a professor at the Edmund A Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, chairman of the Atlantic Council, and co-chairman of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board. (Thank you, Wikipedia).

A man you would agree, who has considerable knowledge of the axis of the planet and how the earth turns upon it, and knows exactly which way the poles lie. A man, you would agree, not to be trifled with, most particularly because he heads the mightiest military in the whole wide world. A military that belongs to a country that is headed by a highly intelligent man under whose careful guidance that country is reaching out to even those nations the mere mention of which was considered taboo just a few months ago, and for decades before that.

During which time other countries made full use of the geopolitical situation and milked the Americans for all they were worth. Need I say more, except to bring to your attention the excellent article “An incoherent foreign policy” by Kaiser Bengali in Dawn of December 10, 2013, in which the good man has extrapolated that given the opening of relations between the US and Iran, the future of the region could well change to the utter detriment of our country if we don’t wake up and “smell the ralli-milli chai”.

Indeed, a spate of articles has appeared in the immediate aftermath of Hagel’s three-hour visit to Pakistan during which, uncharacteristically for the Americans, he publicly wielded a big stick made up of billions of US $s warning us in no uncertain terms of the costs our country might have to bear due to a cut-off in US aid of various kinds, most critically for our defence forces that depend almost entirely for sophisticated weapons systems and their spare parts that we hold in our inventories. To name just one: the F-16 fighter-bomber, the pride of our air force.

What he did not say was that the US also exerts great influence on what the IMF and the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank lay out in development loans and on which, let us face it, our country depends. The JI/PTI slogan is that this country can well do without monetary help so long as we do a, b, c, and x, y, and z, so to hell with the US/Nato. Good and well, as my friend and colleague Brigadier Ashraf Khan Afridi used to say 40 years ago when we served at the Infantry School, but could they wait until the US/Nato exit Afghanistan before they start doing a, b, c, and x, y, and z?

For, and I wonder what news they and their leaders read and watch, whatever I have read or seen tells me the United States and Nato are in the process of LEAVING, not entering Afghanistan! Why, then, are the JI/PTI stopping these foreign armies from leaving please? Why, indeed, can’t they have one-way traffic out of Afghanistan so we are rid of Nato the soonest? In any case, it ill-behoves the ghairatmand JI/PTI government to go on using up to US $500 million aid on various projects while it stops their goods. It should immediately stop these projects in their tracks and return the balance left over to the Americans (until they stop the drone attacks, of course!).

We are a contrary people, we know, but the contrariness being shown by the JI/PTI leadership, which is so quick to put any criticism of their acts and ‘strategies’ down to ‘hate’ for their parties, borders on utter stupidity. Childish and puerile, I’d put it down as. Would that they realise that even the lightest of sanctions applied by the Americans and their friends can pull our country back decades. And that the most powerful countries are not about to let their soldiers starve in Afghanistan no matter what action they might have to take.

Elsewhere now and to senior schoolmate Masood Hasan’s article last Sunday, December 8, in The News. Yes, our school is also located in the Wah Valley that I wrote about last week. Every weekend, (and on week-days, quietly!) we used to go for walks along the beautiful Dhamrah catching fish as we went along, and swimming whenever it took our fancy. And shooting doves for the pot with airguns and pellets that would be issued to some of us on Sundays and other holidays by the principal himself.

And what great men they were: Mr H. Catchpole; Squadron Leader N.A. Beg, and Lt Col A.W.E. Winlaw. For the interest of old boys, I was introduced to Col. Winlaw’s nephew in Gloucestershire by my chum Henry Shepherd-Cross who was going out with his daughter some years ago. I forget his name but he called all of the Winlaw family telling them how he was lunching with one of ‘Uncle Winnie’s’ pupils! I had also told him I had got six of the best from ‘Uncle Winnie’ for not learning math which news was also passed along to the mirth of all.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 13^th, 2013.

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