The following article originally appeared in Pakistan Today. It references the July 28, 2010, crash of Airblue Flight 202 in the Margalla Hills north of Islamabad, Pakistan, which killed all 146 passengers and six crew aboard, and an attack at PNS Mehran, the headquarters of the Pakistan Navy’s Naval Air Arm in Karachi, Sindh, on May 22, 2011, which killed 18 military personal and wounded 16.
Recently, the defense minister of Pakistan gave the statement, reported in the papers, that the cause for the Air Blue crash was known to the government but the reasons could not be shared with the public. He is also reported to have said that there was information about what happened at the PNS Mehran that could not be shared with the public. In fact, it seems that the ministry has also told the relevant committee of the National Assembly that they currently cannot share the reports with them. So much for the power of the elected representatives who are supposed to be the fount of power for our democratic and state set up.
Usually, the government does not even go this far in “sharing” information with the people. Most of the time, in the past, they have either stayed mum about things, not even acknowledged them, or have chosen to lie to the people of Pakistan.
In this atmosphere is it any surprise that people will generate all sorts of hypotheses to explain what they see around them or try to connect bits and pieces of information that they might have with assumptions and hypotheses? These are usually then termed as conspiracy theories—and then Pakistanis are called prone to conspiracy theories.
What should we assume about the Air Blue crash? Could it have something to do with the war on terror? Isn’t that the cause, or effect, of a lot of what is happening in Pakistan? And whether it was one side or another, and one reason or another, it is likely a lot of Pakistanis paid the price while we do not even know how this was related to the war on terror. And if it was related to the war, was there U.S. involvement in it or not? Would it be surprising to assume that? Is the U.S. not involved, in one way or another, in the war on terror? But does this constitute a “conspiracy theory?”
When, post-9/11, journalists had started saying that the U.S. was using one of the air bases in Pakistan, it was either denied or not acknowledged. In fact, there were efforts to hide that information, to discredit reports about this and pressure was put on journalists not to publish such reports. These were termed conspiracies. And now we know Shamsi air base has been in use for a long time. When drone strikes started, again the same denials, repression, and talk of conspiracies. And journalists even lost their lives for having broken the story. And today we know that they were not only there, there might have been secret and/or tacit agreements that we still do not know about.
