Twitters of Same Flock: Tweeting Together

By Asif Chauhdary

The human Rights Commission is a nongovernmental organisation and that makes it more suspicious that, who runs this nongovernmental organisation then? The home page just describes the origin with few words like, “The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) was founded in 1986 by a prominent group of jurists and human rights activists in Asia. The AHRC is an independent, non-governmental body”. The majority of the advisory board members are of Indian origin they are four out of total ten members while only one member is from Pakistan. One of the directors is from India whereas there is no director from Pakistan. The funding sources remain mysterious and are not known to anyone neither are explained by the AHRC authorities.

 The AHRC is widely known for making mountains out of moles. Generally the majority of the Asian countries dislike this organisation for its black mailing attitude. The organisation has a large number of silent workers who are mostly known as ‘members of civil society’. Interestingly these civil society members, when come out on the roads to protest on some issue, are not more than hundred plus at one location. The fact is that no country can claim to be hundred percent following the human rights code of conduct and that’s where they are exploited and black mailed by the AHRC. The low profiled workers of the organisation are asked to initiate applications and petitions against the politicians, leaders and states.

One such interesting example has lately come into the limelight when Pakistan’s sacked ambassador to the USA, Husain Haqqani was trapped for conspiring against the military brass. It is said that the first reaction is always a candid reaction and that’s what the public saw in case of Haqqani’s confession and resignation but with the passage of time when he gained little confidence then it was realised by him and his ‘accomplices’ that something drastically wrong has happened. We usually hear an old saying quite frequently that ‘The birds of same flock fly together’ but for a change we saw the twitters of same flock tweeting together.

A group of pseudo liberal journos, self styled intellectuals who are abnormally active on Twitter conveyed to each other through their tweets to come forward for Haqqani’s rescue. Some have excessive visits to the US (but no one has ever questioned them), few more have frequent directives from the British Intelligence agencies to play down Dr Afia’s case. Then there are promising lawyers who look more of a saffron brigade’s members than some patriotic Pakistanis. Surprisingly they all have mostly the common followers on twitter. So silently an idea to give spin to the case was floated between the owner of a ‘Chirya’ (sparrow) and his friends to launch a counter campaign. The frequent meetings of these salvation army soldiers with various western and especially American ambassador turned quite helpful for them to streamline the strategy and as it was expected, execution of the first objective i.e. character assassination of the armed forces and the inter services intelligence wing was started.

The game was mildly started on Twitter and subsequently dragged out in media. Suddenly Asma Jehangir, a flag bearer of women’s rights, who was totally indifferent to Afia Siddiqui, leaped over to rescue a culprit who defamed not only the country but nation and the institutions as well. No one ever questioned him about his grudge for the armed forces despite the fact his links with the anti Pakistan American think-tanks are known to all and sundries. How one can forget the architect of ‘Carnegie Endowment’ (portion related to Pakistan) and the author of book Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military published in 2005. Lately an American think tank, Smith Richardson Foundation, has claimed to have paid 100,000 dollars to former Pakistan Ambassador Husain Haqqani to write that book. The organisation’s statement said that the purpose of the grant was to task Husain Haqqani to research and write a book on the relationship between Pakistan’s military and the country’s radical Islamic forces and assess the implications of that relationship for US security. But who cares? These two security institutions that have a great account of sacrifices and courage at their credit are being targeted and of all by those who have null contribution for the motherland.

The ‘Twitting Flock’ has now uploaded an application on AHRC’s website demanding to prosecute the director general ISI for hatching a so-called conspiracy against ‘Democracy’, whereas one wonders that this application should have been against the ‘Memocracy’.

The fact known to all is that it’s the armed forces who ensured that the current government despite its inefficiency and immature behaviour was always supported by the armed forces and for that the army chief and the DG ISI had to bag many negative citations from the opposition quarters. Without going into the details of the this application which is more of a sulking over the so-called grievances against the army than talking about the so-called crime and without questioning that in the presence of the statements submission by the army chief and the DG ISI how one can claim that Pakistan is a state where the armed forces are not held accountable before any judicial institution? Without inquiring that how Nawaz Sharif who is daggers drawn against the armed forces be called latter’s accomplice, just one thing will be highlighted and that’s the bottom-line of the application which is quoted below:

“It is also alleged that the ISI is involved in bomb blasts and assassinations in neighbouring countries and providing training to the Mujahideen”. 

Isn’t it enough to show that whose game these ‘Twitters of same Flock’ are playing? Instead of showing some lost sleep for such activities by RAW, CIA and other hostile agencies, own institutions are being stabbed in the back and that too at a wrong time. After all that’s what one can expect from a ‘watchdog’ having majority of Indians in their advisory board. Unfortunately it won’t fetch the desired results. There will be no more martyrs hence there will be no more sympathies. But this Twitting Flock must remember one thing that ‘One army has always to stay in your country and if you dislike your own then it’s certainly the enemy’s, so feel free to confess that what you are asking for.