Imran Jan |
Mehreen Zahra-Malik wrote an Op-Ed piece for the Washington Post titled Who’s afraid of Imran Khan’s Pakistan? Almost everyone. She says Imran Khan during his campaign started “fires and fanned flames, calling upon his followers to suspend disbelief and vest faith in conspiracies.” Yet, she starts her piece with a conspiracy of herself, which appears as if plagiarized from some cheap novel.
According to her, there was an ISI intruder inside her house because of her tweet about the army’s blocking of Dawn. Her point is that we shouldn’t buy Imran Khan’s conspiracy but rather get a discount deal on her’s. One of the sentences in her piece about the ISI sounds as if she is talking about Indian atrocities in Kashmir.
She says these “aliens” are accused “of threatening and abducting journalists and human rights defenders who speak up against them, of “disappearing”ordinary citizens on terrorism or other charges without due process”. Omission is the worst form of lying. It is not what she says that’s troubling but what she doesn’t say. Mehreen doesn’t mention that Pakistan has seen many nefarious individuals disguised as “journalists” and “human rights defenders” on payroll of foreign intelligence agencies.
Not sure about journalism but Mehreen’s business skills are doubtlessly commendable. The entire peace has such a vivid odor of propaganda, it makes me wonder how rotten has this mindset become?
The “human rights defenders” she is referring to is a certain class whose hypocritical belief is that human rights are only for certain humans. Freedom of expression rights are advocated for but frowned upon when they’re exercised by the Islamist candidates during election. Mehreen finds Imran Khan’s language “poison-tongued” and his campaign “invective-laden” noting that he suggested that those who oppose him were “agents” of India and the “international establishment”.
Read more: Can Imran Khan bring Pakistan in from the diplomatic cold?
She forgot to mention that the editorial board of the very newspaper she has written the Op-ed for has called Imran Khan “a Taliban Sympathizer”. Does that count as “invective-laden” and “poison-tongued” language? Or is she too timid to stand up to her paymasters? The paper quoted Islamabad High Court judge Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui to highlight that the ISI orchestrated the court judgements against Nawaz Sharif without mentioning that the same judge had required people to declare their faith when applying for government jobs.
Mehreen isn’t satisfied with Imran Khan’s mild toned speech either. She says Khan’s overtures to India and Afghanistan are hollow. To support this ludicrous argument, she probably had Trump on her mind when she wrote, “His constant pandering to the religious ultra-right during the campaign and increasing support of conservative ideals suggest there is little reason to believe he is the person to lead Pakistan [his country] out of the clutches of extremism.”
According to her, there was an ISI intruder inside her house because of her tweet about the army’s blocking of Dawn. Her point is that we shouldn’t buy Imran Khan’s conspiracy but rather get a discount deal on her’s.
Allow me to break it to Mehreen that Pakistan is facing terrorism not because Imran Khan has an alleged love affair with the ultra-right religious parties, but because of the American aggression and policies in the region. Washington Post is owned by Jeffrey Bezos who is the founder of Amazon, where everything is for sale. Not sure about journalism but Mehreen’s business skills are doubtlessly commendable. The entire peace has such a vivid odor of propaganda, it makes me wonder how rotten has this mindset become?
Read more: Playing politics with religion: Imran Khan puts himself between a rock…
She says if Khan ever manned up to the military, he will be “removed in a coup or marginalized using a combination of media and courtroom trials over corruption and sundry charges.” The insinuation is that Nawaz’s ouster was military’s doing, as if Mossack Fonseca or the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists are on ISI’s payroll. Perhaps the idea of journalists not on some entity’s payroll doesn’t register with Mehreen Zahra-Malik. To her, that may be an alien idea in which case, she is innocent based on ignorance.
Imran Jan is a political analyst and can be reached at imran.jan@gmail.com. The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Global Village Space.