Pakistan: PTI's polemics

In his 'decisive-battle' speech on November 30 the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Chairman, Imran Khan, had threatened to shut down the entire country on December 16 - on this day 43 years ago the city of Dhaka fell to the India-led insurgent forces and Bangladesh came into being. Tuesday night, he said that if he were the prime minister he would not have sent army to the tribal areas, claiming 'the people of Fata are his army and he would not have launched military operation in tribal area', as if Pakistan armed forces are fighting the people and not the terrorists. As expected, his aides haven't lost any time in covering up their leader's crass insensitivity to people's pain and agony over the traumatic events leading to the break-up of Pakistan, and have extended the date by two days for the countrywide shutdown. Similarly, a cover-up of Khan's comment on the ongoing military operation against terrorist networks in the tribal area is expected in the name of clarification or alleged out-of-context reporting. Such wide off the mark comments and statement are unexpected from a person who wants to be the next prime minister of Pakistan. The dilemma is that this modern-day Sheherazade has got to save her neck by telling a new story to the king every night to keep him awake. So if the facts get twisted it's in the order of the 100-plus night dharna. But how long one is allowed to distort the facts and run down the national institutions by injecting germs of dissension in the body politic. Once the machinations to protect terrorists in the name of peace parleys had lost the steam the Nawaz Sharif government was left with no other options but to launch a military operation against them. 'I would not have sent army into the tribal areas if in power', that is not enough of a statement; Imran Khan should tell us as to what he would have done to curb or tame the monster of terrorism and extremism now stalking across Pakistan. Doesn't he remember that his yatra to enter the tribal area and hold peace talks with terrorists had to be abandoned to save his life? 

To think that the tribal areas are in turmoil because of military presence over there is nothing but treacherous polemics. The troops moved in against terrorist hideouts in tribal areas after these anti-state actors had played havoc with the country. They exploded bombs in bazaars, ransacked places of worship, demolished hundreds of schools and played football with severed heads of the country's defenders. And what do these barbarians want - a substitution of our democratic independence by a one-man archaic rule like the one Boko Haram wants in Nigeria and ISIS in Iraq and Syria. And, are they fighting on their own - certainly not; they carry highly sophisticated weapons and roll in millions, in sharp contrast to poor underdeveloped terrain they inhabit. These foreign-funded anti-Pakistan elements should have been given a tough fight and completely defeated early in the day. But political indecision and wrongly-assumed advantages of serving milk to these snakes have cost us dearly. Tens of thousands of innocent civilians and a very large number of men in uniform became their victims as concerned quarters failed to clinch a decision to fight sword with sword. For the sake of argument, is there an explanation on the part of Imran Khan for the bloody terrorist attacks in areas where there is no military action - for instance, at Wagha where scores of people including women and children were killed by a suicide-bomber gleefully owned by a terrorist outfit? Instead of insulting hundreds of men who sacrificed their lives to rid the country of these blood hounds the PTI chief should have paid homage to them. Fighting to finish the terrorist networks in tribal areas and elsewhere in the country is what the forces are doing, and deserve all praise - after all it is for Pakistan the forces are fighting for and Imran Khan wants to be its prime minister.