Talking Like
Robin Hood
By Mohammad Ashraf
Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA
One day, while shaving, Mark Twain cut himself.
He recited his entire vocabulary of swear words.
His wife, hoping to stun him, repeated all the
swear words. Then, Twain turned to her and said,
“You have the words, my dear, but you don’t
know the tune”. Political loyalties sometimes
constrain people to assume that tune. They attempt
to talk and shoot like Robin Hood even though
they can’t even bend his bow. Difference
of opinion is one thing, ungentlemanly expression
of that difference another.
It was shockingly unbecoming on the part of a
reputed, seasoned and mature journalist-cum-ex-ambassador,
like Mr. Wajid Shamsul Hasan, to use abbreviations
like, “FL” for his own party’s
ex General Secretary, Mr. Farooq Leghari in his
article, “Bajour Mayhem & Pakistan’s
Power Mafia”, published in Pakistan Link,
November 17.
There would have been no problem with readers
like me to take “FL” as a curt and
convenient expression, had Mr.Wajid not chosen
to elucidate the pun on these two alphabets. He
writes, “To cover up their extra-territorial
operation President Farooq Leghari popularly known
as, “FL” among his close friends for
obvious reasons of usability and instant disposal
as well, order his media mongers to give the raid
the spin of an ISI operation helped by the Americans”.
Mr. Wajid uses this expression twice, defending
Aamil Kansi’s right to defend himself in
a Pakistani court. Mr. Wajid eulogizes Aamil Kansi
by using such laudatory phrases as ‘Like
all daring Balochs, he (Kansi) decided to singe
the CIA beard in its den in Langley in Feb. 1993…he
masterminded his entry into what is known as a
steel bunkered cobweb of concrete spread over
several thousand square meters of land…
he made a mince meat of the high security network,
violated it most brazenly and in broad-daylight…
shot dead two CIA officials…like James Bond
he managed to escape …unscathed”.
Earlier in the article, Mr.Wajid has tacitly acknowledged
that “Mir Aamil Kansi, a Pakistan Baloch,
had been a CIA operative during the American jihad
against Soviet occupation”.
True, Kansi should have been given the right to
defend himself in a court of Pakistan and his
extradition process should have been approved
by a court of the country. Otherwise a laudable
and desirable procedure, What would Mr. Wajid
say to the extra-judicial killings of the MQM
workers in the streets of Karachi in 1995 and
1996. One reason Mr. Leghari, PPP’s own
President dismissed Benazir’s government
was, in the words of Mr. Hussain Haqqani in his
book, “Pakistan: between Mosque and Military”
p.241, “Leghari accused Bhutto of failing
to ‘put an end to extra-judicial killings’
‘undermining the independence of the judiciary’,
and ‘corruption, nepotism, and violation
of rules in the administration of the affairs
of government”. How do these charges which
Mr. Wajid levels against the present government
of president Musharraf, and against Leghari, differ
from those that led to the twice dismissal of
Ms. Benazir’s government? If this is wrong
now, it could not have been right then. Personal
vendetta and bitterness should not take away from
us the gift of using the kind of language that
we would not dislike when used against us. One
can sympathize with Mr. Wajid because he lost
his ambassadorship in the UK, because Mr. Leghari
backfired on Bhutto’s government on November
5, 1996. As a veteran journalist, and a close
associate, was it not his duty to caution Ms.
Benazir that it was coming? What would he say
to the editorials written at that time, invariably
in all the papers orchestrating the same theme?
One such summation of the then government, as
highlighted by The Friday Times is, “She
was an arrogant, reckless, capricious and corrupt
ruler who surrounded herself with sycophants,
lackeys and flunkeys and squandered away a second
opportunity to serve the people of Pakistan”.
I am not at all a lover of Mr. Farooq Leghari.
He has never been a holy cow, and certainly not
now that he should be held in any high esteem.
But, the use of the expression, FL, and then the
intended pun, is entirely in bad taste. Who should
know better than Mr. Wajid Shamsul Hassan about
the services Mr. Farooq Leghari rendered for the
PPP?
Of course, it is not proper to mention here what
NNI wrote in September 1997, six months after
the dismissal of the PPP government, in which
it allegedly linked PM Benazir Bhutto to the looted
art treasures from Afghanistan. The most disturbing
part had been the accusation it leveled against
Mr. Wajid Shamsul Hassan for facilitating the
custom-free clearance of some eight crates of
such artifacts as Babur’s and Ahmad Shah
Baba’s swords and antique guns, flown by
PIA without charge from Karachi to London in the
month of April. But that is all history and we
must not talk about it. Do whatever you want to
do with Pakistan and in Pakistan, but do one last
favor to it: stop defending the criminals and
terrorists.
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