Allow me to put things in context. We live in a country where it is possible to stop just about anything. Education, check. Industrial progress, check. Love marriages, check. Power supply, double check. Actually, the only thing apart from terrorists that we havent been able to stop is the rapidly multiplying population of rabbits that inhabit this country. Im talking about the 17 crore-something (and counting) muhib-e-watan Pakistani mules that wake up every morning and go to work (if they are lucky enough to have a job) to earn a living for their two sons and fifteen daughters. A typical Pakistani kumba, our very own plutonium family.
Western readers may be awe struck by the very concept, but for us desi people, having a large (not to mention extended) family is something of a social imperative, if not a status symbol. And more often than not, the number of sons in any given kumba is usually indirectly proportional to the IQ of the male head of the family. But math geniuses or not, you can be sure that every Pakistani is great at multiplying, and that too in large numbers.
This makes life particularly uncomfortable for those fortunate enough to be employed by the governments cushiest department, the Census Bureau. You see, every five years or so, nearly five million individuals swarm out of government offices, schools, universities and garbage skips everywhere to descend like locusts upon the hapless masses. These swarms go rampaging through homes and residences, jotting down names, number of dependents and rabbits in the household and asking all sorts of unsavoury questions, including How often do you and your wife use birth control?
You can imagine how badly this goes down with impressionable young four-to-ten-year-olds, who have to unlearn all that they have hitherto learned about life, the universe and everything. For example, the story about how Commander Stork from the USS Enterprise rescued little baby Asifa from the Romulan slave ship and brought her to her current home in Z-Block, DHA kinda falls apart at the seams. Instead, as documents unearthed at the Herat CIA centre and convenience store reveal, Baby Asifa was actually an Afghan refugee who, in an unusual gesture of kindness, was picked up by a passing Predator Drone and brought to safety. The Predator Drone in question, according to the internal Pentagon memo available on Wikileaks, suffered what rocket scientists call a moment of weakness. This, the engineers at General Dynamics promise, will never happen again.
Like the Predator, the terrorists dont discriminate. They arent very punctual either. This is why most bombings come at a very unfortunate time, especially for the morning editions. Obviously, no ones telling them how to deal with the media. I mean, why else would terrorists waste so much time meticulously planning attacks that specifically target the press corps. They should watch Natural Born Killers. In fact, Oliver Stone movies should be a mandatory part of the syllabus at the Qari Hussain Mehsud and Wile E Coyote School of Explosive and Detonator Sciences. If nothing else, the uber conspiracy theorists motion pictures would teach them the following things:
1. The Americans are way more screwed up than we think they are.
2. They are already killing each other fast enough without any help from beard-toting terrorists.
3. You can kill the messenger, but before you do, always make sure the camera has enough tape and battery to capture the action.
4. Oswald did NOT kill Kennedy. It was indeed an inside job.
And these are just the things that they WOULD get.
But I digress. The point of this article was supposed to be the effective capture (or not) of terrorists. Not suspects, mind you, but real-life, dyed-in-the-wool terrorists. How many of them have ever been caught? Not a lot, huh? Thats a little suspicious, considering the amount of dollars that the US has pumped into Pakistan for the express purpose of eliminating terrorists. But notice, if you will, the language of the US commitment. Terrorists must be eliminated. Not stopped, not captured, but eliminated. Kinda makes you wonder what theyre so afraid of. I mean, everyone knows about Special Agent Charlie Wilson and the fact that the mujahideen of the Afghan war and the Stingers the Americans gave them are the same people and weapons being used against hapless civilians the world over today. So what is it that these people are doing? Lets look at it objectively. Even though terrorists are being killed or captured every day, more civilians are biting the dust than ever. There has been no let up in the number of bombings and violent incidents. I mean, the only thing that even qualifies as being remotely positive in all of this is the fact that the 17-crore-strong rabbit population of Pakistan is being dented. Hey, wait a second could it be?
The writer is a broadcast journalist.
