Islamabad. Geneva. The timing could not have been worse. For it signifies a country seemingly at war with itself. In the Pakistani capital, protestors from the religious right have had the city under near total lock-down for more than a week. And they say they won’t be satisfied until they have the Law minister’s head on a stick over a ‘clerical error’ that saw the electoral reform bill affect the declaration of the Khatm-i-Naboowat (finality of prophethood); effectively reducing it from an oath to a mere expression of personal belief. And this being Pakistan, supporters of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik, which had arranged the prolonged sit-ins, were soon calling for all those belonging to the Ahmadi community to be publicly hanged. Meanwhile, over in Geneva, the country’s Foreign Minister has been sitting before the Human Right Council to present Pakistan’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) to apprise just about everyone of the improvements that the country is making on the human rights front; or at least the 117-odd countries involved in this process. Predictably, someone somewhere has called for Pakistan to repeal its draconian man-made blasphemy laws that put this ‘crime’ firmly in the eye of the beholder. This time it fell to the US. And while we remain steadfast in our position that these laws do, indeed, require reforming — we think the West should get smart. Meaning that the Pakistani state is already fighting a religious war that seeks its overthrow; and part of the rallying cry for such subversion is tied up with anti-American sentiment, not least due to what is seen as the latter’s occupation of only Muslim lands. But this is our problem. And the US and the West should rethink strategy. Because, sadly, it is only when Washington talks tough and withholds our due military reimbursements that our leaders suddenly seem to get serious about tackling our ‘liabilities’. Here, we are choosing our words carefully. Meaning that we are deliberately suggesting that this carrot-and-proverbial-stick be linked to reimbursements for the war on terror and not international aid. For many Pakistanis — including us — were left with a bad taste in their mouths when, in the immediate aftermath of the 2010 devastating floods, certain American lawmakers tried to make the international relief effort conditional upon repealing these laws. For us, this simply represents strategic opportunism minus the, well, you know, strategic part. Yet ultimately the burden of responsibility for this naturally rests with the Pakistani state. And it is up to the civil-military leadership to demonstrate how serious it is when it comes to turning its back once and for all on certain proxies. Yet with the security apparatus seemingly fixated on its ‘mainstreaming’ project, we don’t hold out much hope on this front. What say you, Mr Asif, can it be done? Or should we now be addressing this question to you, Gen (rtd) Musharraf? * Published in Daily Times, November 15th 2017.