Rehman Malik’s strange ways

EDITORIAL
THE FRONTIER POST

Strange are the ways of interior minister Rehman Malik

– dumbfounding, bewildering and unquestioningly baneful. He is ambiguous where he should be specific and circumspect where he necessarily should be bluntly outspoken. Over these times, not once but on many an occasion he has said gunmen from an African country land into Karachi in the morning, perpetrate bloodletting in the city, and then fly back in the evening to their base. Curiously, never ever has he said what collaboration had he sought, if at all, with the African country for its not becoming the sanctuary of those gunmen, what measures had he taken to prevent their lethal influx into the country and how many gunmen had his security apparatus apprehended when in the port city to soak it with innocent blood. He now says that “an African country” has supplied Pakistan a list of people involved in Karachi bloodletting. Presumably, he is alluding to the African state he has spoken of frequently in the past, and the list probably pertains to the gunmen who he has been saying land in the port city in the morning and return to their African sanctuary in the evening. It isn’t unusual that the world intelligence agencies share information with one another on terrorists and criminals for action. And if that African country’s intelligence has passed on to Islamabad the information about criminals coming from there to perpetrate vile acts here, one has to thank it gratefully. But that still leaves the question unanswered as to what diplomatic steps has Rehman, or for that matter the government of Pakistan, taken for the shutting down of the sanctuary of the Karachi-bloodying gunmen in that African country. More pertinently, why is Rehman so puritanically shy of identifying the African country as well as the gunmen? He must know that the world is now not just a global village but because of the information technology revolution a leaky sieve as well. Secrets now do not stay in lockers or cupboards for long. It is not just the WikiLeaks that has laid hold of a dump of confidential US diplomatic cables. It is not that hackers often break into the tightly-secured secret lockers. With its numerous mediums of websites, blogs and what not, the internet has turned into a formidable information-disseminator and secret-buster. And then that ancient information-peddling tool, the personal information, still lives in all its pristine glory. No matter what devices Rehman may employ to cloak over the identity of the African country and the gunmen in question, the reality is coming out to the public fore. The people are talking. They are not only naming the country, the most prominent democratic state of Africa. They are even naming a particular community of Karachi that has carved out a whole part of that African country’s capital city as its redoubt. As such, muffling over the truth by Rehman for the political expediencies of the government he is part of wouldn’t do. That indeed would hurt this nation more, and may not even be helpful to his own government in the long run. Speaking up unambiguously and specifically in all probability may end up in the closing down of that African hideout for the gunmen to the great relief to the nation, especially the distressed residents of its beleaguered port city of Karachi. His eccentricity otherwise spells nothing else but all the more pain for his nation. But this abnormality has evidently become Rehman’s inseparable part, for which the country is paying a heavy price in multiple ways. With his reticence, he is letting the Indians get away with wholesale denigration of Pakistan over the issue of the Mumbai episode. Neither does he speak out persistently or emphatically that it is for want of due cooperation of the Indians that the trial of the suspects in Pakistan’s custody is getting delayed. Nor does he speak loudly of the legal hitches that stand in the way of providing the voice samples of the accused that the Indians want. He only mumbles sporadically; and that too, too feebly to be audible.Rehman must change. His eccentricities are creating more problems and difficulties for this country and its people. He must speak up where he must necessarily; and stop to be ambiguous and circumspect. He must open up with specifics and actualities.