For credibility’s sake, Pakistan needs to answer a few questions

Harcharan Bains

Freelance journalist and adviser to former Punjab CM Parkash Singh Badal

I write this in deep anguish, but I write this still as an unabashed and unapologetic lover and friend of the people of Pakistan. I totally trust Gen Raheel Shareef (retd) and Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa’s claim that Pakistan has suffered a bloodbath in its war against Jehadi terrorists, in which more than 70,000 innocent Pakistanis — schoolchildren, rickshaw pullers, Pak armed forces personnel, etc, have perished.

I know also that even Prime Minister Imran Khan has passed a cybercrime legislation “to fight ideologies that incite religious or ethnic hatred, bigotry, and violence against individuals or communities.”

I know and trust all this.

From this trust follow the questions that I am humbly posing to the media and spokespersons of the Government of Pakistan. The questions are in response to the Pakistan government’s query on how the Government of India, without investigation, could blame the terror attack of Thursday on the “establishment” of their country?

I honestly wish to hear the well-meaning and saner Pakistani journalists and their vibrant human rights outfits on the Indian government’s narrative that Azhar Masood, chief of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), a UN-listed terrorist outfit, resides in Pakistan.

For the record, JeM is ‘banned’ in Pak – exactly in the manner in which its chief had been “detained in protective custody” after the terror attack on Indian Parliament. A year later, the Lahore High Court ordered his “release”, all of which proved at least one thing, that the chief of the self-proclaimed architects of the Pulwama attack had been an official guest in Pakistan, even addressing an estimated 10,000 gathering in Karachi where he proclaimed, “Muslims should not rest in peace until we have destroyed India.”

And despite this, the Pakistan government said Azhar faced no charges in their country. What more evidence do you need to know that your soil is being used openly to spread hate and terror?

In 2014, the Pakistan government had claimed that Masood was not in Pakistan. But within days, the bad guest embarrassed the good hosts, spilling the beans decisively by addressing a public rally in Lahore on January 26 that year. My friends in Pakistan would perhaps understand why, even forgetting the discovery of Osama bin Laden close to an army garrison in Pakistan, their governments always suffer from a credibility deficit on international fora.

This was all in the past. And now, the JeM has, in a social media video, claimed responsibility for the Pulwama terror. Neither Masood nor anyone else from the JeM has denied or disowned the claim.

In the circumstances, the Pakistan government could have done itself a favour by declaring that the proud claimants of terror are terrorists.

In fact, the Pakistan Army can and should prove the bona fides of its operations such as Zarb-e-Azab and Rad-ul-Fasaad (War on Terror) by liquidating the self-proclaimed sponsors of international terror, including Masood, who in the past has himself exposed Pak denials onregarding his presence on their soil.

A humble query to my well-meaning friends in the Pakistan media is that if the government continues to treat the issue with exasperating ambivalence, then how would it expect its claims of innocence to be taken seriously by even its friends?

These questions need answers, not for the satisfaction of those who are busy spreading the gospel of hate and senseless violence, for they will never be satisfied. But there are people in both India and Pakistan who genuinely want love, peace and friendship between the two countries. These questions need answers to vindicate them; answers which are simple and to the point, instead of re-starting the process of retrospective justifications for terror – in Kashmir or Balochistan.

I am willing to buy the Pakistan media theory that the country does not stand to gain anything from a war with India, and “why would they push the envelope when their own government is mired in a fiscal mess?” But in the times of Gen-5 wars, the envelope doesn’t really have to be pushed on the border: terror and sabotage are the Gen-5-war tools to hit investor confidence in a flourishing “enemy” economy.

And could Pakistan hit 150 km inside India, ask some of my friends in the Pakistan media. No, it can’t. It doesn’t have to if it can use the locals, precisely the Pakistani allegation against India in places as far away from the Indo-Pak border as Pakhtunkhwa.

For every single ideological justification for an act of terror in India, there will at least be one for each one of the 70,000 innocent Pakistanis killed by terrorists in Pakistan — including, as in India, members of their patriotic police and the army.

Even in this atmosphere of hate, let some voices from both sides be raised to avert a crisis which neither side can afford. As things stand, at least in the prevailing atmosphere today, it will help if these voices originate from Pakistan.