I was very disappointed to hear Mr. Pervez Musharraf's remarks at the launching of his new political party in London, the UK.
Mr. Musharraf wants the war on terror to continue 'until the end', even when Obama himself has changed its name and wants to end it one way or the other. No words to condemn the deliberate US/NATO murder of 3 Pakistani soldiers. His 7-point agenda in 1999 was more coherent than the 'party program' he announced today. When he was done, I said to myself, 'The paid-TV show is over. Now let's go back to the mess he created and ran away from.'
He probably tried to signal to his past allies in Washington and London that he's still good for the 'war on terror'. He repeated the line, 'Al-Qaeda is in Pakistan' without qualification or explaining who exactly is in Pakistan from that group. His implicit message was that he will stop the 'Taliban' from taking over our country.
The truth is that no one is 'taking over' Pakistan. Mr. Musharraf is still repeating the lines that Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld used to repeat in front of him.
Afghan Taliban are fighting in Afghanistan. The terrorists in our border area, who receive support from the Americans and Indians and their Afghan proxies, will be finished off the day CIA stops its dirty games in Afghanistan.
Yes, there is the issue of religious extremism among a segment of Pakistanis. But the solution to that is not to allow CIA to bomb them from the air. They are our people. It's our internal issue. We can solve it if foreign meddling in our region is ended for good.
A supporter of Mr. Musharraf's new party tried to counsel me to keep my opinions to myself and simply 'report' the event and let the people decide. His argument was that, while I was criticizing Mr. Musharraf, journalists were packing the hall in London where Mr. Musharraf held his event.
What a lot of people don't know is that Mr. Musharraf' party aides made generous offers to prominent journalists across Pakistan, offering 'all expenses paid' trips to come from Pakistan and cover the event in London. Which is exactly what Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto used to do. Nothing has changed.
Pakistan is in a deep mess today, and especially for the past five years, thanks to monumental blunders by Mr. Musharraf. One of his biggest mistakes sits right now in Aiwan-e-Sadr in Islamabad.
To say, 'Well, I made some mistakes, everybody does' is not a very persuasive line for someone who's trying to get a second shot at a job he failed in the first place.
Its not only Musharaf who didn't said anything on the NATO attacks,no one in Pakistan care about the three soldiers of F.C who embraced Shahadat...I wonder can these politicians and generals sell their own children for money?I'm afraid they'll answer yes we can cause money infact dollars is everything for them!
ReplyDeleteI feel very disappointed with you Mr Quraishi,
ReplyDeletein the past I use to love reading your articles.
I love Pakistan and my people. But it seems that you have some how become blind to extremists and religious fanatics. That run around spreading hate amongst our communities. These people our like cancer, they our and will do more damage to Pakistan then any eternal threat.
Do you think we should always be concerned and entertained by USA related conspiracies.
While these extremists with AK47s our forcing our mosques, to only spread their twisted version of Islam. Blowing up the schools of and depriving innocent young Pakistani girls of education. Brutally killing and murdering any Pakistani citizen, from any city. When ever they feel like it.
Please Ahmed dont tell me extremism started after 911. Every Pakistani knows it was created by the general Zia government. We our now bearing the fruit, of what his government sowed.