Image via indiatoday.com
For once, just for once, the Tehreek-e-Taliban and the Indian government have come together on the same plank to jointly condemn JuD chief Hafiz Saeed for tweeting that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘new security team’ was behind the gruesome attack on Karachi airport that claimed 37 lives.
The tweet raised hackles both in the Indian establishment and the top ranks of the Tehreek-e-Taliban, so much so that they decided to issue a joint statement. “I was all pumped up after my boys carried out the raid on the Karachi airport and had logged on to Twitter to check out the reactions,” Mullah Omar, told The Unreal Times Khyber Pakhtunkhwa correspondent, Rahat Afridi, from his wi-fi enabled hideout near Quetta. “I was basking in the glory enjoying the tweets until this Saeed chap’s tweet completely punctured my euphoria. What the hell is that, yaar? We take so much pains and efforts for these things and this chap shoots his mouth off!! Even AAP leader Kejriwal does not make such loose allegations, boss,” the supreme commander of both the good Taliban (that which attacks only American forces) and the bad Taliban (that which attacks both Pakistani and American forces) wailed.
Mullah Omar claims he immediately got in touch with the Indian Minister of External Affairs, Sushma Swaraj, to broach the idea of a joint statement. “Yeah, it sucks that I have to do business with a woman but what to do. But boy, she has one heck of a shrill pitch. Glad I was never a parliamentarian at her receiving end. How did Dr Manmohan Singh ever cope with her?” Mullah Omar trailed off.
As soon as the two leaders got off the hotline, they directed their respective foreign secretaries, Sujatha Singh from India’s side and Mullah Daud (their ambassador at large, just back from Guantanamo Bay) from TTP’s side, to draft a joint statement. After many iterations and awkward moments, this was what they produced:
“Both the Indian government and the Tehreek-e-Taliban are extremely disheartened by and unequivocally reject JuD chief Hafiz Saeed’s preposterous and baseless allegation that PM Narendra Modi’s team was behind the awesome (removed at Sujatha Singh’s insistence though Mullah Daud wanted to retain it) attack on Karachi airport.
While the Indian government admits some of its members felt intense schadenfreude that Pakistan is now bearing the brunt of fostering non-state actors, staging terrorist attacks and that too in partnership with the likes of the TTP is way beyond the Indian government’s competence and capability.
Our means of settling scores with Pakistan are limited to calling off official talks, cancelling India-Pakistan cricket tours, issuing strong statements, and constantly nagging Pakistan to dismantle its terrorist infrastructure. The TTP, on the other hand, believes in blowing up airports, hotels and what not to get even. The TTP insists that they, and only they, are responsible for the attack and the Indian government believes credit must be given where due.
In the end, we wish to reiterate that the Tehreek-e-Taliban wishes for a extremely fundamentalist, highly violent, and prosperous Pakistan while the Indian government wishes for a peaceful, strong, prosperous….actually it just wishes that Pakistan stop paining India.
That said, if the TTP wants to stage an attack on Hafiz Saeed’s headquarters in Muridke, the Indian government will wholeheartedly welcome it.”