…where they don’t belong
As if things were not twisted enough, The New York Times has just played devil’s advocate. The ‘internal’ security is, as the expression so evidently suggests, an internal matter of a country to deal with. The NYT and other US government and military official’s interference in the said affairs would not be welcomed, not even if the relations with the two states were of the ideal sort.
This new barrage of claims, unfounded and baseless as per the ISI, has clearly brought up a tangent in this already-strained relationship circle. That a foreign entity, in this case a newspaper, would ask for the removal of the head of a spy agency is surely an interference, an unwarranted one at that, in the affairs of the state. Internal security, by all conjectures, is considered to be the sole jurisdiction of a state itself. Calls for such an action should actually be transmuted into a diplomatic tone, and conveyed to the relevant authorities in more of a concerned tone rather than one of warning.
Adm Mike Mullen’s allegations are somewhat subdued in tone but more serious in nature. As investigations into the circumstances leading to the death of journalist Saleem Shahzad are nowhere near completion, putting the blame on an agency or the government does not sound logical though this very logic also does not absolve them of the same. But if the US knows something or two which it has based its allegations on, they must come forward and share it with the government, again through proper diplomatic channels.
Cameron Munter’s ‘concern’ about the Karachi violence might be justified but its public expression is not. The world would become a hodgepodge of ‘concerns’ if every country starts poking their noses in other countries’ affairs. Still, on the home front, a lot needs to be sifted through. All institutions, including the sanctimonious military and security agencies, must be held accountable. Had this been done and had the parliament asserted its role in the national affairs, as envisaged by our oft-amended constitution, much of this brouhaha would not have arisen in the first place.
I wonder how the USA would feel if a Pakistan newspaper were to do exactly the same or more – suggesting who should be the next president of the USA
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