The government has failed rather spectacularly to contain the fallout of a sitting federal minister sharing a stage with globally proscribed terrorist Hafiz Saeed; the man that India and the US accuse of masterminding the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Regrettably, the Foreign minister appears to have made things worse.
While still in the US, an explanation was sought from Shah Mehmood Qureshi. Naturally, no one was expecting him to publicly throw a colleague to the wolves. Especially not when social media was rife with rumours that Noor-ul-Haq, the minister for Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony, had attended the Difa-e-Pakistan Council event on Kashmir at the behest of Prime Minister Imran Khan. That being said, there was absolutely no excuse for Mr Qureshi to refer to Saeed as a “political element”. The world stage is no place for such dangerous and mainstreaming vernacular. Not least when Pakistan had, just last week, spoken at the UN of how the country remains committed to strengthening its counter-terrorism frameworks and regimes; as a rebuttal to repeated Indian accusations of double-gaming on this front.
Thus the entire fiasco represents an own goal. Particularly from where New Delhi is sitting. A convenient means of deflecting the spotlight from human rights violations in -held Kashmir. Sadly, the PTI is familiar with charges of cosying up to those whom it should not for political gain. From indirectly throwing its weight behind the Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) as the latter held the federal capital hostage for three weeks; while crying blasphemy against the then PMLN government. Prior to this there had been murmurings of Khan wooing extremist groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Jamaat-ud-Dawa to make up the numbers at a rally calling for then PM Nawaz Sharif to step down in the wake of the Panamagate disclosures. Or, indeed, in April when the PTI chief reportedly submitted an adjournment against the suspension of Saeed’s so-called charitable endeavours.
That the ruling party appears to be pursuing the same trajectory in office demonstrates sheer reckless and a blatant disregard for the country’s precarious situation. For the Noor-Saeed fiasco comes at a time when Pakistan is not only trying to reset ties with the US; which does not believe it is doing enough on the terror fighting front. But when it also has to convince the soon-to-be arriving FATF delegation that it is taking appropriate measures against money laundering and terror financing. If things do no go well, the country could join Iran and North Korea on the blacklist. Yet the PM appears indifferent to all this.
Someone somewhere should tell him that the financing of terrorism is perhaps the worst form of corruption. And that it needs to be tackled most urgently. What is not required, however, is hobnobbing with extremist figures with untold blood on their hands. For this helps no one. Especially not the Kashmiris. *
Published in Daily Times, October 5th 2018.