Daily Times

Pakistan’s history after General Ziaul Haq’s advent into power can singly be defined as a catalogue of running with the hareand hunting with the hounds. In this context, hare signify the Mulla community as manifested in Taliban and dozens of proxy mercenariestaking up arms for puppet masters. As opposed to the runningwith the hare is to hunt with the hounds that Americans and the Western world represent free society. The tug of war is on between the twoever since 9-11 bombing of Twin Towers in New York, destroying of Afghanistan through fratricidal unending conflict and the war within Pakistanwhere it seems to have learnt to sleep with the enemy. Despite its claims to have quashed terrorism incidents such as Quetta bomb blast the other day in which five persons were killed with several injured-speaks of the lack of performance by law enforcers.

Despite the undeniable fact that Pakistan after having betrayed Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s vision of a secular, liberal, democratic andprogressive social welfare state has been brutally fractured and its ideological moorings twisted into a security state that has a constitutionand a parliament but where powers flow from the barrel of the gun. Life in Pakistan has been rendered into short, brutish and nasty. According to a report in Journalist Diaries of ‘The Centrum Media’,’Pakistan is considered one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a journalist. Ranked 142nd out of 180 counties by the WorldPress Freedom Index Pakistan is seen to have low level of pluralism media independence and respect for safty of journalists. In the last twentyyears dozens of journalists have been killed in line of duty while many others have reported assault, harassment and even torture.

While journalists are exclusive targets of vested interests that lead to their forced abductions, the way youngsters are being raped and killed is yet another blood chilling chapter of the rapid deterioration in the law order situation

‘The Centrum Media’ brings the ‘Journalist Diaries’ telling the brave stories of the men and women who not persevered in this context but also delivered some of the hardest hitting news. They reflect on the experience doing the work they love for which at times they risk their lives.’ Remember gruesome murders of Saleem Shahzad, Daniel Pearl and lately Aziz Memon in Sindh.

While journalists are exclusive targets of vested interests that lead to their forced abductions, the way youngsters are being raped and killed is yetanother blood chilling chapter of the rapid deterioration in the law order situation. There is hardly a day when one does not come across any incident ofchild kidnapping and rape. The number of Paedophiles too is increasing and the most unfortunate part is that most men involved are shameless clerics.

One of the demands put up part of their negotiations by the Labaikis was the release of Padeophiles belonging to them. It is regretfully notedthat most of cases of rape and murder of women children take place in the largest populated province of the country where police is supposed to haverendered Punjab into a police state. The murder of a senior police officer is nothing but a sad reflection on the performance of the police.In the post 9-11 Pakistan’s main problem was terrorist infiltration. Hordes of armed Taliban were running riot in the country.

Pakistan has accordingly informed global terror financing watchdog Financial Action Task Force (FATF) that Masood Azhar, founder of terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) has disappeared. Azhar was listed as a designated terrorist by the United Nations Security Council 1267 Committee on May 1, 2019. Independent analysts believe that conviction of Hafiz Saeed is to influence the FATF that is presently reviewing Pakistan’s case to see if it fulfils the global standards criteria to combat terror financing. However, American official spokesperson Allice Wells has welcomed the conviction. The FATF is an inter-governmental body established in 1989 to combat money laundering, terrorist financing and the FATF is presently reviewing Pakistan’s case to see if it fulfils the global standards criteria to combat terror financing. It is indeed, unfortunate that despite best efforts of Pakistan to combat terrorism, its western friends continue to see it as part of the continuing game of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds, that is, keeping itself at best of terms with both.

The writer is former High Commissioner of Pakistan to UK and a veteran journalist