KARACHI: Air Marshal (Retd) M. Asghar Khan yesterday [Jan 18] decried the Centre’s role in, what he alleged, “engineering divisive tendencies, causing confusion and, thereby, creating a crisis of confidence” between the provinces.

Addressing a Press conference in Karachi, he urged that this sort of power politics indulged in by the responsible members of the Central Government must be stopped otherwise, he warned, the responsibility for any worsening situation would be entirely theirs. While advising the Central Government to “behave in a responsible manner”, the Tehrik-i-Istiqlal chief said that strange things were happening in the intra-provincial sphere. A citizen belonging to one Province evaded arrest by taking refuge in the other. Arms licences denied in one Province were given by another Provincial Government. The permission to import goods, withheld in one Province, was given in another. … Mr Asghar Khan … [said] that events in Baluchistan were not all that “alarming” as were made out to be.

The Tehrik chief told a correspondent that the Government was withholding the publication of Hamoodur Rahman Commission report because it wanted to protect those responsible for the break-up of Pakistan. He recalled that he had declined to record his evidence before the Commission because its terms of reference … were designed to protect the “culprits”.

Published in Dawn, January 19th, 2023