The Lucky Javed!
By the Editor

ABDUCTED employee of the Pakistani embassy in Baghdad Malik Muhammad Javed is once again a free man. Javed, his family and in fact the entire nation has taken a sigh of relief over the end of the agonizing episode.

The Government and especially Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz deserve full marks for securing safe release of the hostage. The Prime Minister and Foreign Office authorities took keen interest in the matter and succeeded in negotiating his release.

The piece of information, announced by Shaukat Aziz during programme arranged at the Convention Centre in honour of the cricketers, came as a pleasant surprise because many people were pessimistic about a positive outcome.

However, the way the Government tackled the incident gives, for the first time, an impression that lives of Pakistanis also matter.

Reports pour in from different parts of the globe at the regular interval about arrest, conviction and even murder of Pakistani citizens in questionable circumstances but authorities concerned often fail to act in a responsible manner to mitigate sufferings of such souls.

Malik is also lucky in the sense that the two Pakistanis kidnapped by some Iraqi groups in July last year were ultimately killed.

However, at that time there was an impression that they were abducted and murdered because of the possibility of Pakistan contributing its troops for Iraq.

The subsequent events clearly showed that it was a wrong perception and the Government was determined to resist the pressure in this regard (dispatch of troops) due to political and physical risks involved.

Scores of foreigners have been abducted in Iraq over the past year, some by groups seeking to pressure foreign troops to leave the country and others by criminals seeking ransom.

It is not yet clear how the Government was able to secure his release, whether through negotiations and goodwill of some friendly countries or after paying the ransom but any how it is a good development.

With gratitude for Premier Shaukat Aziz for seeking the safe release of an innocent soul from the cage of his captors, we congratulate the family of Javed Malik and wish to see him join his loved-ones as swiftly as possible.● 

 -  Mumtaz Hamid Rao
www.MumtazRao.net