Dear Mr Khan,
You stated on numerous television channels that once your mind is made up, you never change your opinion. You even stated that others are confused on the Taliban issue while you have been steadfast and absolutely clear about the rightfulness of your opinion for the last nine years. While you are absolutely right that it is difficult to make you change your mind once you form an opinion (no wonder the saner lot within the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf [PTI] finds it so difficult to justify your statements), but you have failed to explain how many times you formed a faulty opinion, stuck to it for as long as you could, crossed all redlines in justifying your wrong opinion and ultimately, made the most silent of U-turns. In fact, come to think of it, you are a champion of taking U-turns.
Let me explain why I say this. I remember you crossing all lines while defining Altaf Hussain as a terrorist killer whom you would hunt down in England. You created quite a stir in the country when you pressed your opinion on the issue and made many people in this country believe that here is a man who can actually bring about the fall of the tyrant from Karachi. You went to England. God knows what happened there. You came back and one fine day labelled Muttahida Qaumi Movement as the only political party with which your PTI could have a natural alliance. Nothing was ever heard from you against Altaf Hussain until the day of the murder of a PTI activist near the elections. Period.
Second, of course, is your past opinion about Sheikh Rashid and your ultimate assistance to him to get back into parliament. There are many other U-turns that I can distinctly remember but I believe I have aptly put my point across. You certainly have a way of putting up and emphasising your point of view. Looking at you talking, it seems that here is a man who knows what he is talking about. You have a knack for creating an impression when you talk, with all the gesturing and facial expressions. You tend to repeat the same thing over and over and over again. If one listens to one talk show of yours, that is enough to miss 30 other talk shows where you would make appearances and repeat the same lines with the same facial expressions and body language. Of course, media channels have also been quite generous in offering you airtime. While you sound as if you are the ultimate authority by repetitively explaining your point of view, you probably fail to realise that overemphasising a wrong opinion does not make your opinion right. That is perhaps why you have been unable to convince a large section of your educated audience over the rightfulness of your opinions on the Taliban issue over the past nine years. Therefore, now you are venting your frustration upon them by labelling them as liberal American agents, true to the political training you have received from your political mentors such as Hamid Gul and Jamaat-e-Islami.
Let me put across a few key lines that you have been putting up repetitively, which will remain wrong no matter how many times you repeat them in your public appearances and no matter how intense your body language and facial expressions may become.
You say: “The Taliban are all tribals and fighting against them means fighting against the people of Fata.”
This is where you remind us of the glorious war history of the people of FATA. The Taliban are not an ethnic group. They are a school of thought that encompasses any ethnicity that believes in it. The Taliban invaded FATA after the Taliban debacle in Kabul, killed all the elders and lashkars who resisted them, and ultimately created an independent emirate of their own, comprising of almost all the Agencies of FATA. It is true that the inaction on the part of our government is forcing more and more tribals into the ranks of the Taliban as they do not have any other means of survival. In essence, your ultimate tribal warrior (the ultimate romance of yours) is a defeated lot being ruled by the alien Taliban system of governance for the past 12 years.
You say: “We have been fighting a war in FATA for the last nine years and achieved nothing.”
We sent our army almost three years after the first hordes of the invading Taliban began their conquest of FATA after the fall of Kabul, in spite of cries of help from the tribal people to the then government. By the time the army was sent in, it was already too late. Out of nine years that the army was positioned in FATA, eight years were spent on wheeling-dealing between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ Taliban, and only a year or so of sporadic fighting. And thus the 13 rounds of peace talks we had in between this period of time. The one year in which we engaged in some real fighting, we were ultimately able to liberate the Malakand Division, Bajaur, Lower Orakzai, South Waziristan, and almost all of the other territories of FATA except North Waziristan, now the last stronghold of both the good and the bad Taliban from where they are coordinating their strikes not only in the liberated parts of FATA but also in the rest of the country.
(To be continued)
The writer is a businessman and a social activist based in Lahore. He can be reached at [email protected] and on twitter @Mujahidkmir