I HAVE said it before, let me scream it again: ‘Not in my name’, your shenanigans, sirs!

I aim my angry shout at those who have brought our country to its present sorry pass — no prizes for guessing who ‘they’ are, of course — the recent raft of allegations being akin to several last straws on the poor camel’s back. The camel being our poor country, of course.

Whilst we will leave Saleem Shahzad’s brutal murder aside for a bit, it is poetic justice, is it not, that the dagger that has plunged deep into the back of the Deep State was wielded by none other than its own one-time hero, the oft-crowned with gold crowns (I kid you not) father of Pakistan’s bum, Dr A.Q. Khan, aka Mohsin-i-Pakistan.

By golly was he a sight to behold once upon a time; doing what he willed; striding across the Pakistani stage like a colossus; giving not a whit for elected prime ministers and other such, encouraged by the generals who had complete control of our bums and the factory out of which they came, and whatever went on within its secretive walls. And now that same man accuses a former COAS and another general of bribery.

Before we go any further, a little anecdote about His Arrogance. In 1989, when I was the sorely missed Benazir Bhutto’s press secretary, Khalid Hasan did a critical piece on AQ Khan in The Muslim, an English-language newspaper that used to come out from Islamabad.

AQ scrawled the prime minister a letter in pencil, on a paper torn from a child’s notebook (I ask you) to the effect that thegovernment was so ineffectual that it could do nothing about journalists like Khalid Hasan etcetera.

The PM marked the letter to me which I returned some minutes later with the remarks that there was complete freedom of the press and the government could do nothing at all in the matter; that the only course open to AQ was to sue Khalid Hasan/the paper.

I also added that he needed a quick course in staff duties, especially in the proper and appropriate way to address a D.O. letter to the prime minister of the country. Do I have to say that the note, file and all, disappeared, never to be seen again?

It is ironical is it not, that it was none other than the army high command who raised A.Q. Khan to the level of a demigod, so much so that even relatively junior officers would not hear a word against this hero. I remember a cousin and platoon-mate and buddy who was a colonel at the time, walking out of my house just because I said AQ was getting too big for his boots — this was 1989 — I had left the army in 1976.

Then you-know-what hit the fan and the then army chief kicked him off the totem pole and (like the Commando he was/is) went on kicking him until he was black and blue.

All of the blame was put on AQ as if anyone would believe that he was the only one involved in selling nuclear materials and know-how to others. Indeed, he simply could not have proliferated without the tin-hats knowing; I mean for God’s sake, C-130s take off in the middle of the night from Chaklala airbase and no one knows? Duh?

Remember also that AQ was the most well-protected, well-watched, well-spied-on person in the Land of the Pure. And they didn’t know he was flying off to North Korea, or was seeing off his precious cargo?

I am not saying Jehangir Karamat or that other chap mentioned in the letter leaked by AQ himself took those dollars and jewels, what I am saying is that AQ could not have sold nuclear technology by his lonesome self. And that the tin-hats (or some of them) would have asked for their share of the loot ... I mean we, er, know their proclivity to make money. The fact is that our country has been very poorly served by the tin-hats — to the point that we are the pariahs of the world with all of us carrying the can for them. Serve them right that their own creation has come to haunt them.

Of course, the propagandists of the Deep State are again spreading it about that this is, what else, but a Jewish/Indian/American plot to do in Pakistan. Why do they simply not ask AQ to say he did not leak the letter or that it is a fake?

So then, the Ghairat Brigades led by our Rommels and Guderians must be thrilled that the Americans are putting the brakes on military aid — just what our sovereignty needed, if you ask me.

One hopes one will see a demonstration on the lines of the one praising the ISI with well-painted and expensive placards that was taken out in Islamabad after the Osama/Abbottabad affair, to the effect that Pakistan’s ghairat is at last restored.

What we will wait to see, however, is what other sources of military aid our geniuses come up with, to ensure their continued angry belligerence towards the rest of the world.

And now to Saleem Shahzad’s horrific murder. Surprise, surprise that the commission looking into it has announced its disappointment at people not coming forward to testify.

I should have warned the concerned to beware of Justice Saqib Nisar who is not afraid to say it like it is — good on you, My Lord — as I noticed during the hearings on the 19th Amendment in the Supreme Court. Well, they are terrified of being beaten to death themselves, even those who know exactly what happened to Saleem: please understand that you are dealing with a monster, My Lord. n

kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk