Cyril Almeida is in the centre of the storm for the second time. This time, as opposed to Dawn Leaks, there is lesser discussion on him personally. Why? Because as opposed to his earlier triangulation of anonymous sources, this time, he was simply quoting verbatim former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who can do the subsequent damage control on his own.
In one aspect, however, the two cases are similar: the broad subject area. Both relate to the presence of militant networks operating out of Pakistan. Why is a former prime minister saying these things, the talking heads on television are raging ever since.
Well, they aren’t quite raging about this ever since. The interview was published and it didn’t get much traction. Well, it did, but only because the former prime minister is infamously private and doesn’t give any one-on-one interviews. The content of the piece was pretty much the same as his mujhe-kyun-nikala mantra. No surprises. The bit about how militants from Pakistan had conducted attacks across the border, though risque, was also not entirely virgin territory. He had suggested something to the effect before, as had many others, including former army top spinmaster Athar Abbas and former National Security Advisor Muhammad Ali Durrani.
It was radio silence till some probably-young Indian newsroom subber, tasked with the drudgery of mining Pakistani news outfits for possible content, stumbled on to the interview, the penny dropped, showed it to his/her shift-in-charge, and they decided to go with it. The rest of the Indian media would have monitored it from them and it would have brewed into the sort of storm that the Pakistani media would have then picked up. When Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi says the Pakistani media picked it up only after the Indian media did, he has a valid point.
Back to Nawaz Sharif: yes, giving an interview to Cyril Almeida, the Dawn Leaks guy or, for that matter, giving a one-on-one interview to anyone at all, might be interpreted as Sharif having had a plan. But I think it was just off-the-cuff reiteration of his earlier narrative. In the fallout, however, the man’s decided to dig in his heels.
The League doesn’t seem to have its act together in the aftermath of the interview, possibly because there isn’t an act, so to speak, in the first place. No wargaming took place because it was business as usual. The leader Sharif just said what he says and, confronted by the repercussions, stood his ground.
His younger brother and the prime minister, however, were left scurrying about. It was misinterpreted, this statement of his.
The ISPR came into action. There is to be a meeting of the National Security Council tomorrow to discuss and deliberate on the former prime minister’s statement to a private media outfit, read their press release. The problem here: there was no words from the civilian side. It had appeared that the military had summoned the meeting.
An NSC meeting did, in fact, take place, with the notification saying that it was unfortunate how some words were twisted out of context.
Well, if damage control was the purpose, the elder Sharif certainly threw a spanner in those works. It is distressing that the NSC has come to decide this, he said, while coming out of an appearance at a NAB court. We used to have a peaceful country, he continued, is it that much of a secret as to how things got the way they are?
This is a problematic situation for all the Leaguers, not just the Punjab CM and the prime minister. The section within the party that wants to mend fences with the establishment is non-plussed, the section within that wants the party to buck up and say it like it is does not want to rub the prime minister-in-waiting, Shehbaz Sharif, the wrong way. Recently, when asked who arranged the infamous interview, the younger Sharif replied that it was arranged by enemies of the party.
Post-script: Though there is a difference of opinion on what exactly happened there, but it would appear that a press conference conducted by the prime minister was blacked out on state television. Even if this is not true and was intentional on the government’s part, it’s sheer plausibility is scary.
