A MOST respectable gentleman has written to me to clarify certain aspects of Dr Fai’s case, principally that the FBI (read the US government) was certainly not taken by surprise.

In his words: “I am also surprised that you couldn’t see the obvious context in which the FBI was ‘shocked to find’ (to quote the famous line from Casablanca) that KAC had connections with ‘the boys’. KAC has been operating under the very nose of all the intelligence agencies in the US for at least two decades.

It developed a close network of relations with the State Department, the White House (during the four administrations) and with both houses of Congress.

“Dr Fai and his KAC was facilitated by the US officials (and not by ‘the boys’) to present the Kashmir case before several UN-affiliated bodies both in New York and in Geneva for years. The ‘links’, therefore, were of several dimensions and, for years, part of the games that humourless people were playing with both Pakistan and India, and trying to develop independent access to the relevant actors in Kashmir, especially the Indian side, along the way.

“I was really surprised that a person of your analytical stature would so easily accept and endorse the FBI’s stated position.”

He also goes on to say that Dr Fai was jailed in India-administered Kashmir and that he escaped from jail and came to the US via Pakistan whereupon his Indian passport was cancelled in the early 1990s. And that he himself attended the 2006 Washington D.C. conference during which he can “vouch that Dr Fai showed the draft before the conclusion of the conference to the participants.

The draft did include the right of self-determination. However, all the American and Indian participants refused to sign the declaration if this phrase was there.

“A compromise phrase of ‘political rights’ was agreed on the suggestion of Mr Yousuf Buch and some prominent Indian Kashmiri delegates who were eager to seek signatures from the American and Indian delegates. Dr Fai was not happy but he went along when the KAC board chairman agreed to the revised version.”

He also suggests that Khalid Hasan did not get on too well with Dr Fai, therefore his unfair remarks on the self-determination issue.

Which is all very well. But, respectfully, the point still remains that Dr Fai operated outside US law if the allegations made against him of getting undeclared funds from a foreign government aka ‘the boys’ is true. The point still is that the démarche made to the Americans on behalf of an American citizen was idiotic.

As for the matter of the US government looking away, if not exactly helping Fai along in the past, time and events have moved on. The fact is that Pakistan, prodded by the Ghairat Brigades, now has a testy relationship with the US.

The fact is that Pakistan, let’s face it, is a client state of the US upon which it depends for the weapons of war, upon which in turn its Deep State bases its intransigence; and plain good old cash. The fact is that this relationship is an unequal one.

The fact is that the junior partner in any relationship cannot strike attitudes and pretend it calls the shots. For if it does, the senior partner will hit back. Ergo, Dr Fai’s troubles. And more troubles to come, rest assured, friends.

For we have not yet seen the light. Just a few days ago, the American ambassador was stopped at Islamabad airport on his way to Karachi and asked to show the FO’s permission to travel to Karachi! I ask you! What if the Americans stopped our ambassador from flying to, say, Chicago?

Do the movers and the shakers of the Deep State, for it is them surely, not understand the dictum tit for tat? Do they not understand that the wheel has come full circle, that there is a growing realisation in America that we Pakistanis are unreliable friends out to make a buck any which way; that we sucker our friends mercilessly, and that there is a certain resolve now to teach us a lesson?

Are the Rommels and the Guderians reading the signals emanating furiously (word chosen advisedly) from Washington D.C.

particularly from their former buddies the Republicans? Are they aware of the repeated references to the Kakul raid and the need to get more bad boys in the same manner soon? Unilaterally?

Is this then the time to strike attitudes, and strut about puffing out their puny chests or is it time to tell the Americans that the past is past and that in the future they will do the right thing and fight terror in the way and manner it should be fought: with sincerity and honesty of purpose because the fight is ours too.

Gentlemen, time is running out faster than you think. For the love of God spare our country more pain and sorrow which is sure to be ours if you continue to be bad boys. So stop whingeing, see reality and come down to earth immediately if not sooner.

In the meanwhile, there is a debate raging in the western world about whether Anders Behring Brevik is a Christian terrorist/extremist or not with most commentators, among them clergymen, saying that he is. But of course he is, as was Timothy McVeigh who blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Terrorists are terrorists: Christian, Muslim, Jewish, whatever.

kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk