PTI’s Taliban links

Apparently English proverb ‘there is craft in daubing’ can’t replace the depth in its counterpart in Urdu — “Naqal kliye aqal chahiye”. Since last week PTI Chairman is in the news for revealing the fact that few years back a Talib leader was treated in his cancer hospital in Lahore and he came to know about this only when he received a letter of gratitude and thanks from Taliban. Since then the PTI leadership has been trying its best to do some damage control and dilute the revelation that terrorists got treated in their chairman’s hospital. As is said you need to learn craft in daubing, came party’s spokesman Naeem-ul-Haq’s statement, Jan 07, that the Talib leader Mullah Mohammed Rabbani was treated in Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital (SKMH) in 1999 while Taliban were ruling the Afghanistan.

You don’t need to do much research to get to the bottom of this statement. Obviously the treatment in 1999 is not something ‘few years back’; however, let’s ignore that as confusion on the part of Khan. The real point is: Mullah Mohammed Rabbani was one of the founders of Taliban movement; being number two in leadership hierarchy, he served as prime minister in Taliban government in Kabul. He died while fighting against liver cancer in a military hospital in Pakistan, April 2001. Should we take Naeem-ul-Haq’s statement on its face value that SKMH’s management was not aware that the prime minister of a friendly neighbouring country was being treated in their hospital? Even a kid can imagine the extent of security by Afghan and Pakistani security and intelligence agencies during Prime Minister Rabbani’s stay in a Pakistani hospital. PTI leadership should come up with something more convincing in support of their chairman’s confession that terrorists were treated in his hospital.

I still wonder where the invisible and invincible leaders of ‘Quetta Shoura’ are treated in Quetta — in a government or private hospital, or —.

MASOOD KHAN

Jubail, Saudi Arabia