The War within Islam
Pakistan, Mind Your Language!
By Dr Tariq Rahman
June 19, 2012
Now you can get hair-splitting legal and say Afridi was sentenced for things other than Osama. But this is not the signal conveyed no matter how hard our ambassadors get red in the face arguing like this. Or you can get on to the high horse of national honour and claim that no country can excuse a man who collaborates with a foreign intelligence agency as Afridi admittedly did. This is correct in principle. But now consider the particulars of the case. Here was a man who was wanted by the world and Pakistan had pledged that he would be treated like the most wanted person he was. This State had no qualms about handing over people without a trial to the United States (indeed Musharraf boasted about it) but no sooner was Osama caught, did the state go into utter confusion and then denial. The military chose to be accused of incompetence rather than complicity and one year later, the message going out to the world is that the establishment was not really happy about the whole thing. Now can we afford to give this message? Forget the particulars of the case — that he was associated with Mangal Bagh and a tribal administrative order is not a judicial judgment from the courts — and come to the gist of the matter which is that the world feels that somewhere deep down, someone in real power (guess who?) is unhappy over the whole thing and would like to see Afridi punished.
