Pick and choose

Do we have a litmus, here, for liberal values? Will the present episode in the crisis of missing persons separate the wheat from the chaff?
When this paper, like several others, protests against the illegal detention of Baloch political activists, it finds supporters in the chic new breed of urban liberati. When it protests against the illegal detention of suspected Islamist militants, however, it loses that support. Not too lonely a position to take, however, since there are many from those against the war on terror to begin with (a war which this paper supports) that would chime in there.
That the intelligence agencies should be allowed to pick up individuals on mere suspicion and keep them incarcerated in one case and not the other is a very dicey argument, one that cannot hold water against objective external scrutiny. When this internal inconsistency is pointed out, there is much hemming and hawing, not much substance.
According to the Criminal Procedure Code of Pakistan, no individual can be held for more than 24 hours without having to appear in front of a civil magistrate. The latter can review the case, there can be a judicial remand or a police remand but under no circumstances can an individual be held indefinitely without charge for purposes of “investigation”.
Mouthing tautologies is the occupational hazard of those discussing our dysfunctional republic but here goes: it is the job of intelligence agencies to collect intelligence. They should stick to that. Pass over credible and, on good days, actionable intelligence to the government so it can proceed through the police or, where it has been called out, the army.
An aside: the aforementioned chic urban liberati are comfortable with the agencies’ “dirty Harry” approach of messy-but-gets-the-job-done with the Islamist militants. Yet they constantly accuse the agencies of aiding and abetting the Taliban and going soft on them.
Wrong on so many levels. Perhaps a conference for this breed of liberals where they can all sit down and figure all of this out, preferably before sundown?