Visas, scanning and the know-it-all bimbos

[Lahore_Real_Estate]

By Saeed Minhas

ISLAMABAD: Dossiers on Pakistanis arrested abroad are becoming a routine for our government, especially for the Interior Ministry, and after custom-made initial denials, they ultimately agree just to get it off their chest so they won't have to dig deeper and get rid of the root causes of the matter.

This time a dossier has come from our "embedded" friend in deed and sometimes in need - the United States - entailing the information squeezed out of Faisal Shahzad, the main suspect of the botched Times Square New York bombing. We found that four youngsters, including those from well-off families of Islamabad - such as the co-owner of Hanif Rajput, the owner of a computer showroom in Blue Area who uploaded the alleged tape of Hakimullah Mehsud praising the attempt, an employee of an Oslo-based telecommunication company serving in Pakistan under a blue triangular flying symbol, and an ex-uniformed man - have been rounded up.

Whether these gentlemen will end up somewhere at the Bagram airbase like Dr Aafia or the marine-cut investigators want to have a "chit chat" with them in the safe abodes of our "intelligent men", remains as fuzzy as our Interior Ministry, which until Friday was claiming "we're not involved".

The diplomatic community in Islamabad was certainly shocked because Hanif Rajput's catering company had become the first choice for many of them, and after the warning issued by the US embassy in Isloo, many were seen scurrying through the list of their staff, even security guards. The gossiping machines were thinking that this would further isolate the diplomatic corps from local vendors, as investigations of domestic and official staff and security guards have already been ordered by many excellencies. One can only wonder that such a scenario would even further handicap these diplomats regarding their much-purported public diplomacy.

Some bimbos, nonetheless, would continue to spoon-feed them the shallow info-bites, which eventually would make policy makers sitting in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, and Brussels or elsewhere devise a plan, which in due course will prove worthless. There is a common phrase that if you have only visited Islamabad, then you haven't visited Pakistan and such is the case with these know-it-all bimbos who, while sitting in Isloo, will make these info-starved diplomats believe what the Pakistan Army is thinking, how Karzai called them last night and what happened with the much-hyped taping incident.

Our diplomat friends, however, had some other issues of concern engulfing them throughout the past few weeks. The range is so diverse that it's hard to compress them here, but other than the permanent security concern, the visa issue seems to be developing as a real tug of war between western and Pakistani authorities. Whether you talk to Britain's Rob Murphy, Alastair King-Smith, Sharon McDonald or America's Larry Schwartz, Rick or the visiting dignitaries from the EU and Brussels, they at least agree on opening up western markets for Pakistani products and easing the visa procedural checks.

We will touch upon what they are humming about on this a bit later but first a classic example of procedural delays. A phone call from the US embassy to a popular editor of a media group, Huma Ali, asking, "Why do you need a visa?" It was not the question that baffled her but the fact that the call came after two and half year of her application.

Anyway, the few friends mentioned above and many others from the EU countries were more concerned about the visa-delaying tactics by the Pakistani Foreign Office because, according to our sources, the Pakistani high-ups seem to have evolved a tit-for-tat strategy in this regard.

Dozens from the UK, EU and especially the US, are still held in their respective countries for months on the pretext of procedural requirements. That may be an issue of concern for all these diplomats because they believe that by denying their people of visas, Pakistan is delaying the execution of various "development" plans - something, which the FO is least bothered about as it is convinced what those "plans" are.

But hang on, how can we end without giving you the real buzz flying around in the diplomatic enclave and this is much more sinister as I heard it at an Argentinean reception at the residence of HE Rodolfo J Martin-Saravia.

Many of the diplomats from the EU and the US have objected to the scanning of their diplomatic bags. When I tried to argue that if the same was happening in Britain, Canada and even in the US - everything passes through a scan - then what's wrong with it happening in our land of pure. They retorted that it's the detailed checking that worries us.

Some western diplomats at the same reception confirmed it by saying they are awaiting response from back home, because it has irritated many in their respective capitals. One popped up to question that what if some of us pack up and go home in protest against your intelligence agencies' meddling because the thorough scanning is against the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961.

A retired spy agency chief sitting on another table said if it's another ploy to pressurise us then it's a different story, but otherwise Pakistani agencies are doing as much of scanning as is being done to their nationals in "the developed and civilised world". The emphasis of an ex spy on "civilised" was quite obvious because after all these are not childish games and there certainly is more than what meets the eyes, and in our case, hits the ears.