Pakistan's Dual Allegiances: Betrayal and Opportunism
When U.S. President Donald Trump extended a lunch invitation to Army Chief General Asim Munir rather than Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, it sparked conversation about how Trump would have invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi if he needed to discuss matters with India. It was also discussed that if Trump considers India a friend, then why did he invite Munir for lunch? After the attack on Iran, it was understood that this was a lunch full of conspiracy. America showed the pieces and Munir ran away. The matter is not just this. Iranian media is alleging in very clear words that in the last week of May, Pakistani Army Chief Munir met Iran's top commander Mohammad Hussain Bakri and gifted him a smart watch. That smart watch had a GPS tracker. Munir gave access to that GPS tracker to Israel and within three weeks Israel killed Mohammad Hussain Bakri.
Bakri would not have imagined even in his dreams that Pakistan, which roams around with the flag of Islam, would betray it so much or that Munir would work like an agent of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. Bakri did not learn a lesson from history that Pakistan is one such country in the world on which those who trust always get betrayed, there are many more such incidents which show the treacherous role of Pakistan in the Israel-Iran war. On one hand, Pakistan condemns the attack on Iran and on the other hand, it does all those things which can cause destruction in Iran. By the way, General Munir is doing the same thing which his predecessor army chiefs have been doing. The army has made the nature of Pakistan such that whoever shows you pieces, you sell yourself to the one who gives a better price. If tomorrow someone else makes a bigger bid, you embrace him, when America needed Pakistan to defeat Soviet Russia in Afghanistan, then America opened its purse and Pakistan lay down in its lap and when China opened its bundle of wealth, it sat in China's lap without any delay.
When Pakistan became independent, it had only America's lap to lie down, even then it did not refrain from betrayal. It kept collecting a lot of wealth from America in exchange for Afghanistan and here it also kept hiding Osama bin Laden in its house. America was understanding this betrayal but it is no less a big player. It also used Pakistan a lot but now Pakistan also has one lap of China, now it has two laps so its disloyalty has also increased. If one lap gets angry, then the other lap will come for support. Both the laps know that it is disloyal but what to do, sometimes disloyalty is also very useful. Tolerating disloyalty a little becomes the need of the hour. Both the laps know that this is a commodity for sale, when they will put a price on it, they will make it sit in their lap.
But one feels like crying a lot on this bad luck of Pakistan. I have had the opportunity to visit Pakistan three times, interact with the people there and the media. Even now I keep meeting and interacting with Pakistanis living abroad. I try to understand why the situation in Pakistan is so bad. The pain expressed by people of Pakistani origin is spine-chilling. The pain of the owner of the car in which I was travelling in Canada, Mr. Wasim Ahmed, is completely different. He belongs to the Ahmadiya community. Mirza Ghulam Ahmed laid the foundation of this community in 1889 in Qadian in Gurdaspur district of Punjab. After independence, many Ahmadis went to Pakistan but they were treated very badly. When Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was the Prime Minister, he passed a resolution in the Parliament that the Ahmadiya community would not be considered Muslim.
Ahmadis went to court but dictator Zia-ul-Haq also issued a similar order, now this Ahmadiyya community is neither allowed to offer namaaz in mosques in Pakistan nor has the right to vote in elections. Thousands of people have been put in jail. In a place like Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the mullahs have massacred the Ahmadiyya community, the number of Ahmadis there was once 40 thousand which has now reduced to only 900. Where have the people of the Ahmadiyya community gone? Even the current religious leader Mirza Masroor Ahmed is living in exile in London. His passport has been cancelled.
This community's motto is truly beautiful: love everyone and harbor no hatred. But unfortunately, there is so much hatred against this community in the Pakistani rulers that the name of Prof. Abdus Salam, who got Pakistan its first and only Nobel Prize in science, was erased because he belonged to the Ahmadiyya community. Everyone knows the stories of persecution of Hindus and Christians in Pakistan, in fact Pakistan seems to be divided into three sections. One section is of the army and ISI who have taken over the country. The second section is of cowards and sycophant leaders. Betrayal is the nature of both of them and the third section is the unfortunate public who, if they try to prevent the country from becoming a saleable commodity, are trampled under the army boots. We sympathize with them but what can we do? This is the fate of Pakistan at the moment. God bless them!