Much like the rest of the commentariat, ARY’s Rauf Klasra also subscribes to the blame-only-the-politicians school of punditry. It is very difficult not to, because that is a commodity that sells most in the local marketplace for ideas.
In this vein, it was interesting to see him being called out in the past on social media, for the difference in his coverage of the foreign visits of the prime minister and the army chief. For the former, he always whips out a calculator and starts crunching the numbers on how much the trip would have cost, boarding, lodging and all. However, when it came to the army chief’s trip to the US – an unsolicited trip, said the Americans – Klasra was far more muted about how much it cost the exchequer.
In all other matters, this attitude of holding back criticism when it comes to the military might be all well and good, but it becomes complicated when one wants to seek meaningful debate on the war against terror. Klasra, going by appearances, seems to be genuinely against militant organisations on a personal level. You see the problem.
He has, for whatever it is worth, tried to push the envelope. In the aftermath of the Pathankot incident, he was one of the very few talking heads on TV who suggested the idea that perhaps the ball is in Pakistan’s court regarding the placation of the Indians’ reservations. He also asked why the United Jihad Council’s claim of responsibility wasn’t followed up on.
Sometimes, he can go a bit further, as online readers can see in the clip below.
On this ARY programme, he played a recent (2016) clip of former ISI chief (former COAS?) Gen Ziauddin Butt, where the latter talked about jihadi organisations as assets and as a “line of defence.” He said that these individuals were well-trained and would be of use if “God forbid, we are attacked.”
On the programme, retired AVM Shehzad Chaudhry dismissed Butt’s views as relics of the past; that the army had changed much since Butt held sway.
Well, Chaudhry just might be right and it is hoped he certainly is. But Butt not only outranked Chaudhry many times over, but was also from the army, not the air force, thereby much better clued on the issue at hand. He headed the ISI itself. The very same views have been related by other ISI chiefs as well, most famously by General Asad Durrani on Al Jazeera.
The continued, uninterrupted presence of banned militant organisations in the country casts some doubt on the deep state’s supposed paradigm shift. Even if we argue that the cancer of fundamentalism cannot be routed out in one fell swoop, there is still the question of outright support to the Afghan Taliban.
These are all questions that need to be answered by the military itself and for that, we need meaningful debate. The coverage of the ongoing war on terror should not be limited to news anchors feverishly reading out ISPR press releases like automata.
