The super-rich European Union has decided to be magnanimous to Pakistan, throwing to our poor country some crumbs of trade concessions after much begging. We had to promise ‘civilised’ behavior in return; putting on hold the hanging of terrorists convicted by courts despite weak laws and prosecution. Why is the European Union so concerned about saving the lives of these terrorists that it is hunting and killing in so many different places in partnership with its Uncle Sam and ‘civilised’ cousins? Does it really consider human life to be so sacred? Seems like the white man is not done with telling us stories about its so-called burden?
Going by what’s going on in the name of that burden for centuries, and given the continued predatory role of this super-rich imperial clan in the contemporary world, one can only treat all such compassionate claims with more than a bit of suspicion. The philanthropic civilising mission, re-labeled as human rights and democracy these days, continues but it is a hard-sell in a better informed world. The contradictions are too many and too glaring to ignore and the smokescreen of fantastic stories, commissioned by the empire to distract us, is growing too thin to mask its monumental crimes against humanity.
The narrative of the empire is full of fairy tales about a rosy future that can only be realised if we put our destiny in the hands of its all-knowing magical arms and agencies. It doesn’t matter that those who have done it for decades are worse off than before. The fuss over capital punishment is one such fairy tale that ends with the same moral; obedience begets rewards. But that’s not all. There are scary tales too, complete with hordes of revolting monsters and invincible knights in technologically advanced armours, wielding wondrous weaponry. ‘War on Terror’ is the current epic in this series, complete with its stories about religious extremism and sectarianism. There are sad stories too, about poverty in dark forbidding lands and cruelty of societies there.
Of course, there are people going around blowing themselves and innocents up. After all, terrorism, sectarian strife, poverty and cruelty in our world are not pieces of pure fiction. But the tales spun by the empire around these themes are meant to blind us to the actual reality and the factors underlying such grave problems. These imperial yarns are like cobwebs around our eyes. Like bed-time stories, they are meant to put us to sleep so that the emperor could rob us and kill our brothers and sisters with no resistance.
What makes these stories of the empire outrageous is the role of hero that the empire ascribes to itself in all of them when, in fact, it is the villain in each and every case. The empire, we are told, has nothing to do with breeding and feeding the monsters, and steps in only to slay them in order to save the helpless humanity when, in fact, the empire not only nurtures the monsters but also creates them for the purpose of its stories. Remember the CIA-sponsored Afghan ‘mujahideen’, the precursors of all shades of TTP? See the Syrian rebels who are not Syrians? Would their menace be what it is, had the empire not funded, trained and armed them? Are they spreading democracy and human rights by beheading innocent people?
Would Africa be so poor without the plundering of this super-rich imperial clan? Why is the condition of the poor improving, in Venezuela since Chavez showed the door to the empire, and in other Latin American countries that have arrived on the same page as him? Wouldn’t the lot of the people been better in so many countries, had the empire not assassinated popular anti-imperialist leaders to replace them with corrupt and cruel, but compliant, dictators? Where poverty has not been caused by the empire, its hunger for poor people’s resources has exacerbated it. Wouldn’t the world be better off without the IMF that has actually increased poverty in the world due to its anti-poor policies, policies that are meant to help us but are actually designed to keep us poor and dependent?
The mainstream media chants in harmony with the empire and its misleading stories. So the gory story about increasing sectarianism is used to paint entire societies as barbaric masses of ignorant people hungry for the blood of all those who do not subscribe to their views. The real story never gets reported; the story about tolerant societies where people belonging to various religions and sects co-existed peacefully with rare aberrations and about how a lunatic fringe of violent fanatics is determined to sow chaos among them; the story about how this lunatic fringe is bred and fed by the empire and its proxies. We are told stories about the imaginary tussle between terrorists and the empire every day. Not a word about their secret marriage.
It’s hard to believe that leaders of the European Union who have been on a killing spree in dark forbidding lands hand-in-hand with their other ‘civilised’ relatives, care about the sanctity of human life so much that they would arm-twist our governments to save some lives. These are leaders who do not bat an eye-lid as drones murder people without trials, not only terrorists but a much larger number of innocents including grandmothers in the field, women in their homes and children in their schools. Do they not know that convicting terrorists in Pakistan is very difficult and those finally convicted by the courts were obviously involved in terrorist activities? Have they not heard of jailbreaks in which terrorists set hundreds of their friends free?
So why press Pakistan not to hang them at a time when we need to check terrorism with an iron hand and make a horrible example of those who spread it? One story of the empire is about Pakistan being a failed state nearing disintegration? Does the empire want to save its assets groomed for enacting that story and to ensure that things are brought to that end?

The writer is a freelance columnist.

Email:hazirjalees@hotmail.com