The ‘Panama Papers’, the latest treasure trove of secrets to be leaked on the internet didn’t bring any amazing revelations. They just confirmed what was basically an open secret: The world’s rich and powerful protect their wealth by hiding it in secret overseas accounts. The leaks have brought down at least one Prime Minister and sent the global elite scrambling. In Pakistan, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif finds himself in the cross hairs, but he is hardly alone.
Rehman Malik has also found himself getting attention for his ownership of a company in the Virgin Islands during the 2000s. The former Interior Minister has admitted that he was an owner of the company but that it was dissolved after a few years due to suffering losses and insists that everything about the business was perfectly legal and legitimate. Rehman Malik may be telling the truth about the legitimacy of this business, but what is more interesting was his first response to the leak, which was to term it a ‘RAW conspiracy‘, even though the documents exposed over 500 prominent Indians also. This is worth noting because it actually tells more about our problems than corruption.
If one thing has been learned from the ‘Panama Papers’, it is that corruption is not a Pakistani enterprise. It is a human one. What is a Pakistani enterprise, though, is trying to dismiss everything negative as a foreign conspiracy instead of admitting fault and fixing the problem.
Corruption in Pakistan is a Pakistani problem, just like corruption in India is an Indian problem. So also, terrorism in Pakistan is a Pakistani problem. Whatever Kulbashan Yadav was involved with, it does not explain every act of terrorism in Pakistan. Terming terrorism as a ‘RAW conspiracy’ to destabilise Pakistan only distracts from stopping the problem just like terming the Panama Papers as a RAW conspiracy attempts to distract from the corruption that is taking place here. Let us stop blaming RAW for everything. It gives too much credit to the Indian agency, and it prevents us from addressing our own problems.
