So, there we have it. The verdict is in. Hafiz Saeed is a free man. This is what it has come to in today’s democratic Pakistan. We are now a country that can no longer be bothered even with the trouble of sham trials. Our courts simply let a proscribed global terrorist walk.
The significance of this cannot be overestimated. Not when it was the government that had requested the courts to extend the house arrest of the one-time front man for LeT and JuD, under the country’s anti-terror laws. Yet this latest move simply strengthens the ruling PMLN’s claims that the most powerful in the land are pulling the judiciary’s strings. While also underscoring how the so-called project of mainstreaming of former proxies is in full swing ahead of the elections. It may well be that Saeed leads the MML, the new political reincarnation of the JuD, to the polls next year.
Pakistan is now hurtling along a very dangerous path. This has already been seen as direct provocation aimed at our eastern neighbour, India. Saeed, after all, has long been linked to the Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2008. Indeed, he has wasted no time in spewing hate. Soon after his release in Lahore, there he was leading a Friday sermon; where he was quick to engage in anti-India rhetoric. He also lambasted Nawaz Sharif as a traitor for having tried to talk peace with New Delhi before he was deposed from the premiership. This is to say nothing of the harm his release will do to the government’s serious endeavours to revisit UNSC resolutions over the Kashmir issue. Then there is the US, which, following Mumbai, slapped a $10 million-bounty on Saeed’s head. And this was before the belligerence of the Trump administration came our way. If Pakistan didn’t splash so much cash on maintaining its security apparatus — a cheeky wag somewhere might venture that the latter was hoping to cash-in on the bounty. Sadly, this is no laughing matter.
We are taught that democracy means respecting the rule of law. Though this was something that the US found hard to swallow when the Scottish courts released on compassionate grounds the mastermind of the Lockerbie attack. But what has happened this week here in Pakistan is far worse than a case of sour grapes. Just as it proves a far greater risk than finding ourselves embarrassed on the world stage. The move suggests that our democratic pretensions are a lie. Moreover, it also hints that those who are said to run the show here may already have a good idea of just who will come out ahead at the ballot-box.
Thus the people of Pakistan ought to be afraid, very afraid. For their country’s very survival is at stake. *
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