IT was unbelievable. But Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao had no idea what was happening between the media and his government; or he was perhaps trying to feign ignorance to avoid being embarrassed in the wrong place at the wrong time. I tried my best not to ask the question for two reasons. First, I didn’t want to wash our dirty linen in a foreign country and that too in a gathering of intellectuals at UK’s highly prestigious think tank — the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI) -- where the Pakistan High Commission had organised a seminar on Pakistan: Strategic challenges and prospects on Tuesday last as part of the ongoing celebrations of 60 years of our independence. Secondly, my friendship with Sherpao Sahab goes back to the 1970s when he first entered politics in the government of late Mr Bhutto. I sincerely didn’t want to embarrass my friend before such a gathering.

Throughout the Q&A session after Mr Sherpao had presented his paper which otherwise was a fairly impressive one I kept fighting off my usual impulse of asking the wrong questions at the right places paying scant attention to the consequences until the chair said: Last question, please. Temptation got the better of me and after introducing myself I asked the minister if his government was so good to the media and had so much faith in press freedom as is being projected by his government would he please enlighten the gathering why it is punishing Dawn for its factual coverage of the Balochistan situation by withdrawing government ads and withholding its TV channel licence.

Mr Sherpao expressed complete ignorance about the matter, but said rightly, though, that Dawn was too sound financially to worry about government ads and secondly, he said, if it has any complaints Dawn could approach him in Islamabad. He conveniently missed mentioning the matter of the TV channel licence. As soon as the seminar was over, I was besieged by a number of participants who wanted to know the why and the how of the issue. Most said they found Dawn’s internet edition to be a highly useful and credible source of information about Pakistan and expressed their concern over Dawn’s troubles with the government.

In the afternoon session of the same conference Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema, the Director-General of National Crisis Management Cell, presented a thought-provoking paper on extremism and terrorism and the way Pakistan was combating the menace. I know Brigadier Cheema to be a highly competent officer and a person readily available to the media in Islamabad for all kinds of information concerning his cell.

However, when he passed the entire blame for the side effects on Pakistan of the first Afghan war (1980-8) to the US and the international community I couldn’t restrain myself from asking him why he had conveniently skipped mentioning how willingly Pakistan’s Army and the ISI had participated in the campaign of radicalising the madressahs along with the CIA and the intelligence agencies of other friendly countries and how the ISI had used the students of these madressahs (which now go by the universal nomenclature of Taliban) later to attempt to create strategic depth for Pakistan in Afghanistan vis-a-vis India and how the Pakistan Army had fought on the side of these Taliban against the Northern Alliance for almost 10 years.

Brigadier Cheema also gave a detailed account of the reforms the government has brought about in the madressahs in the last five years. But when asked if the madressahs had been so well reformed then how did he explain the challenge the government is now facing in Islamabad from the clerics of Lal Masjid and the students of Hafsa madressah, his answer was: We will not conduct any operation against the two.

The next day another event as part of the same celebrations was held in one of the conference rooms of the House of Commons. This time the topic of the seminar was Pakistan: Perception and reality. Mr Inamul Haq, former minister of state for foreign affairs, was the main speaker at this event. I had always found Mr Haq to be clear-headed and highly impressive whenever articulating his ideas. And despite being a consummate professional diplomat he had always appeared to me to be a man who is not afraid of speaking his mind. Still I found myself disagreeing with his observations on the state of democracy, economic achievements and the nature of corruption in Pakistan. And being the gentleman he is, he did not disagree with most of my reservations.

Completion of its tenure by the parliament is hardly a democratic achievement, I said, when three prime ministers had been changed during this period by the all powerful president. And before the next parliamentary election, the president who had once replaced another president under a law made by an army edict, who then got himself entrenched in the office through a dubious referendum and then had himself endorsed in the office by the electoral college, will have to contest under the constitution an election before Nov 16. I asked would the president fight this election in uniform and if so then what would stop, going by this example, the air force chief, the naval chief and the corps commanders to present themselves for elections if they so desired and then if at all he would contest the election in uniform which civilian in his right mind would contest against the country’s army chief.

Then I mentioned the legalised corruption which was going on in the country as under a law made by an Army General when he was the Chief Martial Law Administrator of the country (General Ziaul Haq) every army officer gets access to choice plots of land. And then there is this law made by the same general under which the defence forces enjoy a 10 per cent quota in civil services and, using this law, Musharraf has filled most of the important civilian jobs with military officers. Mr Inam did not contest my last two points and expressed the hope the president would give up his army post before the next presidential elections.