A warrior falls
Those who mattered already knew him. But for the public at large, Colonel (retd) Shuja Khanzada became a household name when he became the Punjab home minister in the reshuffle that followed the Model Town incident of 2014.
All portfolios are the chief ministers’ portfolios, yes, but it is a convention in the provinces (apart from Sindh, of late) that the home departments are held by chief ministers themselves. For there to be a separate home minister in the Punjab, whose micromanaging chief minister was shy even of letting go of the health and education departments during his last term, was quite something.
More interesting still was the fact that a Punjab-centric League, which doesn’t even have a token, symbolic Pashtun in the federal cabinet, gave this important ministry in the Punjab to a Pashtun – the retired colonel belonged to Punjab’s only Pashto-speaking constituency.
A veteran of the ’71 war, who also did his bit in Siachen in ’83, he served in the ISI later on in his military career.
Starting his political career with the PTI, he made a detour towards the Q League before joining the PML-N. He was elected thrice from his constituency.
A man’s man, the charismatic minister was equally at ease in military circles as he was in political ones. He was a hands-on home minister, with a strong work ethic and a keen intelligence. And, in the fight against terror, a lot of guts and clarity for a man whose boss had, in his last term, famously asked the Taliban to spare the Punjab.
Perhaps because he had personal emotional investment in the war on terror; he had lost three male cousins, all of them only sons, in the Mardan funeral bombing of ’13.
When Malik Ishaaq, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi’s infamous target killer, was finally bumped off by the state, the colonel took full responsibility and had said this was all a part of the National Action Plan.
There was bound to be a fallout and this was it. A suicide bomber struck his political office back in Hazro where the friendly and accessible minister was meeting his constituents.
The PTI has done some political point-scoring around VIP security in the aftermath of the Bilawal incident in Karachi. But, as the ANP has found, as the PPP has found, as the JUI-F has found, as the PML-N is finding and, as the PTI will eventually find out: there is a dire need for VIP security protocol for politicians in general and anti-militancy politicians in particular.
Plenty have remarked that with the demise of Khanzada, the League has lost its only vocally anti-militancy member. That can’t be true. Surely there would be others ready to take on the mantle. But none would be able to inspire the same courage and confidence quite the way he did.
