IT seems that no matter how frantically the nation cries out for some mature leadership, those at the top keep finding new ways to let us down. The blame and premature accusations that have been traded following the attack on former prime minister Imran Khan are a disappointing reminder of how far we still have to go before we can begin to call ourselves a mature country. In one corner, we have the victim of a violent crime — understandably angry, but too obsessed with his politics to realise that any careless finger-pointing at this time may do lasting harm to national unity. In the other, we have the establishment — unused to an unrelenting wave of frontal attacks from civilians, and completely clueless about how to respond without going overboard. And then we have the PDM government — relegated to the status of cheerleader in the ongoing civil-military stand-off; the establishment’s water boy during the latter’s confrontation with the PTI. It feels as if the struggle for power is no longer a battle of wits and political guile, but a blood sport being played by increasingly desperate sides.

We may be losing our way because of this protracted fight. It is deeply regrettable that the day after the attack, the defence and interior ministers blamed Mr Khan for ‘inviting’ an assassination bid upon himself. This act of victim blaming was perhaps the most disappointing thing the PML-N has done in its desperate fight to stay relevant against Mr Khan. Did the two ministers forget that the actions of a religious fanatic should never be justified? If they did, we might as well start dismantling every narrative against religious extremism and terrorism that was painstakingly built over the past two decades. No matter what Mr Khan or any other political leader says — whether by mistake or out of ignorance — nobody ‘deserves’ to be the target of a zealot with a vendetta. Too much blood has been spilt in our land by the actions of bigots and fanatics who see themselves as working on some ‘divine mission’. If the government truly believes that this was the work of a religious extremist, it must show what it is doing to dismantle the ideology that influenced him, not encourage more to take the same route by justifying it as ‘inevitable’. To use the religion card to put an opponent down is the lowest a Pakistani politician can stoop to.

Published in Dawn, November 6th, 2022