ALI SUKHANVER

Pakistan has recently shot down a spy drone of India and India has arrested a spy-pigeon of Pakistan. The owner of the pigeon Habibullah, a Pakistani villager, has warned the Indian authorities to refrain from ‘victimizing innocent birds’. He has urged the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to return his pigeon, currently being held in India on charges of spying. According to the details, Habibullah lives just 4km from the border between India and Pakistan and pigeon-flying is his hobby. He owns a dozen pigeons. All his pigeons wear a ring in a leg and a plastic-paper piece is attached with every ring which bears his mobile phone number. During the Eid days, one of his pigeons lost its way back to home and ‘crossed the sensitive border’ between the two countries. Somehow the Indian security authorities caught that innocent bird and started a well organized campaign against Pakistan blaming that Pakistan has once again sent a spy-pigeon to India. This is not for the first time that innocent birds are being dragged into the battle-field of two nuclear countries; in May 2015, India had ‘arrested’ a white pigeon after it was spotted by a 14-year-old boy in a village close to the border. Next year in October 2016, another pigeon was taken into custody after it was found with a note ‘threatening’ the Indian prime minister, according to the Indian media.

Blaming the neighbours and just adding fuel to fire with the help of such childish gimmicks has become the part of the temperament of those few war-mongers in India who simply desire to see the world without peace. Though such people are very little in number but somehow or the other they are in a dominating position there. It is not only with Pakistan, India’s relations with all other neighboring countries are also always at the verge of war. Most of the neighbours complain that India keeps on trying to interfere and intrude their territory by using all fair and foul means.  Experts say that the Modi government would have never shown such a brutal hostility against the neighbours if US were not at its back.

It has always been a misconception of the Mr. Modi and his political followers that all their right or wrong actions would be legitimized with the backing and support of the US government. Same has been the mode of thinking of Afghanistan’s President Mr. Ashraf Ghani. Under the supervision of Ashraf Ghani government, the Afghan forces always try to provoke Pakistani Forces by throwing bomb-shells across the border. These shells not only cause damages to the houses of innocent civilians living near the borders but also snatch the lives of children and women living there. After every such incident some of the Afghan and Indian media agents start maligning the actual situation by blaming Pakistan. They misreport that shells were thrown into the Afghan area by Pakistan and the people killed as a result were the Afghanis not Pakistanis. In short Mr. Modi and Mr. Ghani and their followers rank US as a never-declining ultimate authority. Now all their dreams seem shattering as a series of pathetic events and incidents has proved that US is not the ultimate power.

Today, the so-called world super power US is passing through the ever-worst phase of its history in shape of racial-riots. On 31^st May 2020, the Washington Post said reporting on the worsening law and order situation in US, A day of widespread protests devolved into a night of fire and fury across the nation as tensions boiled over in dozens of American cities. Police cars and government buildings were set aflame, windows were shattered, stores were ransacked, monuments were vandalized and authorities in riot gear fired pepper pellets, tear gas and rubber bullets at demonstrators who had amassed to protest the death of George Floyd, a black man killed at the hands of police.” The US is already badly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and these racial-riots are simply adding a lot to the misery. At present, more than 24 cities are under curfew and about 12 states are being controlled by the National Guard. Astonishingly in spite of all these security measures, reports say, scores of police officers and protesters have yet been injured many of them are in critical condition. Even the White House is not safe at the hands of the protesters as there have been reports of serious clashes between Secret Service agents and demonstrators outside the White House.

It is also something very alarming that after the racial riots and after the Covid-19 pandemic, the country is facing the worst type of losses to the economic structure. Shopping-Malls are being burned, shops are being looted, houses demolished and vehicles smashed. The entire situation is so depressing and disappointing particularly for the business community that America’s one of the giant business corporations The Target has decided to close 175 of its stores across 13 states. This corporation owns and operates more than 1844 departmental stores throughout the country. Its head-office is in Minnesota, the same Minnesota where from the story of riots started. Certainly this step of the Target would lead to the unemployment of thousands of workers. In such a horrible situation of the present and with a dark, gloomy picture of the future, how US would be able to patronize Indian hegemonic designs in the South-Asian region and Afghanistan’s baseless hostility against Pakistan; this is an important question.