Daily Times

It was an honour and privilege to consider the late Salmaan Taseer a very close friend. He was an extraordinary person. A successful businessman and politician, Salmaan possessed extraordinary intellect; an abundance of courage; an exceptional sense of decency; a dry and rapier sharp wit; with no tolerance for the substandard whether in government or conversation. After his assassination in Islamabad on January 4, 2011, as a tribute to his life, I began to write a weekly column for this newspaper.

From birth, Salman’s life was remarkable. Born in Shimla, British India on May 31, 1944, his father was Muhammed Din Taseer — a man of Kashmiri descent, who earned his PhD in Britain and was professor at Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College in Amritsar. His mother, Christobel George was British and after marriage, converted to Islam.

In 1950, at age 47, Taseer’s father died. Taseer, aged six, and his two sisters were raised in relative poverty with strong Christian influences outside local Pakistani culture. He attended the Christian missionary-run St Anthony’s Schoo where one of his classmates, Nawaz Sharif, would go on to be a future thrice-elected prime minister, before attending Government College University also in Lahore. He went on to acquire an accounting degree in London from the Institute of Chartered Accounts .

Taseer was a very successful businessman He set up several chartered accountancy and management consultancy firms early on in his career. In 1995, he established the First Capital Securities Corporation (FCSC), a full-service brokerage house with the US firm Smith, Barney, Harris, Upham. In 1996, Taseer founded the Worldcall Telecommunications and Multi-Media Group. He later started the English channel Business Plus and of course, this newspaper, Daily Times.

Salmaan was a man for all seasons. A decade later and the world still has not seen another like him. And likely won’t for a very long time

Salmaan’s political career began as a student in the 1960s when he joined Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s PPP. He remained a strong advocate for Bhutto’s release following the latter’s conviction for treason at the hands of the his former military secretary, Gen Zia-ul-Haq, who by that time had already assumed the presidency. Needless to say, Salmaan opposed the eventual execution, prompting the publication of his biography Bhutto: A Political Biography in 1980. And he became a trusted aid to Bhutto’s daughter and twice-elected prime minister, Benazir. After her assassination in December 2007, Salmaan worked closely with her husband Asif Ali Zardari who would go on to be president.

Salman was elected to the Punjab Assembly in 1988, losing several later elections. A minister in a caretaker government, he was appointed governor of the Punjab in May 2008 by then President General Pervez Musharraf. As governor, he used that “bully pulpit” as an outspoken critic of the country’s draconian blasphemy laws and the conviction of Asia Bibi. Salmaan took up her case and faced deadly consequences. In 2018, she was finally acquitted of all charges and was released the following year where she sought asylum abroad.

I recall one of Salmaan’s visits to the US and my home in 2010. At that point, one of his sons had been kidnapped by known militants and would not be released until 2016. His other son and daughter-in-law had just been forcibly removed from a flight at Dulles Airport in Washington and interrogated as if both were suspected of being al Qaeda terrorists.

Salmaan was outraged, as he should have been. Fortunately, I was able to contact senior officials in the Obama administration to whom he could relay his displeasure. The secretary of State was embarrassed by the ludicrous detaining the young Taseers.

Salmaan was a man for all seasons. A decade later and the world still has not seen another like him. And likely won’t for a very long time.

Dr Harlan Ullman is UPI’s Arnaud de Borchgrave Distinguished Columnist and Senior Advisor at Washington, DC’s Atlantic Council. His latest book is ‘The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Threat to a Divided Nation and the World at Large’