Two hot issues: apology from the US and the drone attacks, are quite in the news these days. Our demanding an apology from the US is like the lamb asking the wolf to say ‘sorry’. Surprisingly, in our case the wolf had agreed, it was the lamb who told him to wait a little (for a parliamentary decision) and now the wolf is having second thoughts. You can’t schedule an apology. A sincere apology is always spontaneous. But what are we going to do with an apology anyway, even if we get one. An apology just takes the load of guilt off the shoulders of the perpetrator and relieves him of the burden of remorse. And it comes free.
We in fact should nourish the US ‘guilt’ — if there is any that is! We need to rub it in and get something more worthwhile in return. For a start we could ask for heavy compensation for the families of soldiers who lost their lives in the Salala tragedy whether it was deliberate or inadvertent. Insisting on an apology is pointless. Regarding issues of sovereignty and the drone attacks, Afghans and Arabs; Uzbeks, Chechens and Tajikis reside illegally on our soil with complete impunity. Heavily armed foreign combatants crisscross our Northwestern borders freely. Our sovereignty there is nominal. The target of drone attacks is foreign combatants. Our own F-16s are doing exactly what the drones do with much more collateral damage caused by our wayward missiles. If we had the technology and we did ask for it quite frantically not too long age, we ourselves would probably be using the same drones on exactly the same targets. The only difference would be a crescent and star painted on the tail.
Collateral damage in drone attacks is of the dedicated supporters of foreign combatants who house them and feed them voluntarily. Of course we condemn these civilian casualties. But compare them with the atrocities committed by the Taliban, foreign or Pakistani. They deliberately target schools and mosques. Their bombs send the shattered limbs of hundreds of innocent
children flying in the air: boys clutching school-bags and girls with ‘hijab’ around their little heads. Worshippers prostrated in ‘sajda’ inside mosques are blown to smithereens. We cannot allow these mindless killings of our own people in the name of revenge against the Americans: sovereignty or no sovereignty. Taking away the fear of drone attacks would mean giving these killers a free hand. We must demand a complete stop to the destruction of our educational institutions and the slaughter in our mosques and market-places before we start negotiating a halt to drone attacks. We have to stop soft-paddling with the Taliban, any Taliban for that matter. The so called ‘strategic depth’ is a pipe dream. We are losing friends and even international assistance because of them.
CAPT. S. AFAQ RIZVI,
Karachi, May 12.