Doctor Aafia and ISIS – The Pakistani Paradox

At a time when the Pak­istani media is fix­at­ed on Islam­abad; prais­ing and con­demn­ing the ongo­ing protests, a news item that came from Mid­dle East has gone unno­ticed.

The ISIS after their bar­bar­ic act of slaugh­ter­ing jour­nal­ist James Wright Foley declared that they held anoth­er hostage, Steven Joel Sot­loff. The trag­ic event brought back mem­o­ries of 2002 when Daniel Pearl, a US jour­nal­ist, was exe­cut­ed in sim­i­lar man­ner by Al-Qae­da in Pak­istan. The ISIS has made a bar­gain­ing offer that con­cerns Pak­istan as well. Dr. Aafia Sid­diqui, a Pak­istani who is cur­rent­ly serv­ing her jail term in US for her alleged involve­ment with Al-Qae­da, has been demand­ed to be freed in return for Steven Joel Sot­loff.

With already three days gone, the For­eign Office of Pak­istan has yet not offi­cial­ly respond­ed, and giv­en the polit­i­cal dra­ma which is cur­rent­ly tak­ing place in Pak­istan a response is unlike­ly. Pak­istani gov­ern­ment who has prin­ci­pal­ly main­tained a pol­i­cy of sup­port­ing legit­i­mate gov­ern­ments in Syr­ia and Iraq (also the oper­a­tive regions of ISIS) may find itself in an inter­est­ing posi­tion. Whether Pak­istan’s reac­tion will be sym­pa­thet­ic or not, is for time to tell. What should be much rel­e­vant is; a) Dr. Aafia’s con­nec­tion with ISIS, b) Can such deal pos­si­bly be made?

Dr. Aafia, a PhD in neu­ro­science is on a term of 86 years in US prison for act­ing as a couri­er to Khalid Shiekh Mohammed of Al-Qae­da (also in US cus­tody). The­o­ries place Ms. Siddiqui’s for­mer hus­band also an active Al-Qae­da oper­a­tive. Rumors has it Pak­istani gov­ern­ment has been try­ing to extra­dite her from US in a pos­si­ble swap deal for Dr. Sha­keel Afri­di (serv­ing term in Pak­istan for trea­son for his role in locat­ing Osama bin Laden). The female doc­tor, being high pri­or­i­ty and a sym­bol of courage for mul­ti­ple indi­vid­u­als, her ele­va­tion to a per­son of inter­est for ISIS is mind bog­gling. Al-Qae­da main­tains its dis­tance from ISIS activ­i­ties call­ing them un-Islam­ic. The Al-Qae­da is believed to be an orga­ni­za­tion work­ing with­out defined hier­ar­chy in a cel­lu­lar mod­el. Whether Al-Qae­da wel­comes any such deal is again a ques­tion of future. Sim­pli­fy­ing the equa­tion is the mes­sage of extrem­ist uni­ty. For now Al-Qae­da may alien­ate itself from ISIS but can it realign for the greater cause of Islam­ic suprema­cy is a sep­a­rate ques­tion. The sit­u­a­tion fur­ther becomes com­plex due to the US’s exit from Afghanistan. The ISIS were smooth­ly able to cap­ture ground in Iraq and till the time hold most of their ground. Afghanistan may turn out to be a sim­i­lar case for Al-Qae­da, and for the sake of broth­er­hood it can def­i­nite­ly host ISIS for its non-Mus­lim oper­a­tions.
With all hypo­thet­i­cal sit­u­a­tions, are Pak­istani strate­gists sight­ing this future pos­si­ble alliance? Both the Al-Qae­da and ISIS have com­mon grounds on Dr. Aafia, imag­ine their future hand­shakes. Can Pak­istan keep an igno­rant or even a soft response towards the offer made by ISIS? Can Pak­istan allow such hard­lin­ers with a pos­si­ble future in Afghanistan devel­op sym­pa­thet­ic feel­ings among its pub­lic? Giv­en the reli­gious sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty of mass­es in Pak­istan, even rais­ing this as a pos­si­ble deal would give ISIS sig­nif­i­cant sup­port.

For the lat­ter query, can the deal be made? The offer Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion would find itself in a dilem­ma of its own. Crit­i­cized for not being proac­tive for late Mr. Foley, it may not be that easy to pull off a swap.

The pub­lic swap deal of US marine Bergdahl held hostage in Afghanistan for promi­nent Al-Qae­da and Tal­iban com­man­ders has already invit­ed crit­i­cism by repub­li­cans. Can Mr. Oba­ma trade a weak, men­tal­ly par­a­lyzed female for an Amer­i­can nation­al? Would the Pak­istani admin­is­tra­tion be asked for guar­an­tees? If the neu­ro­sci­en­tist does return, would that be account­ed as a weak­ened US in the Mid­dle East? Being skep­ti­cal over US pol­i­cy on ISIS one may not have all answers but clear­ly finds a cer­tain refrain­ing pat­tern.

Devel­op­ing or not devel­op­ing our con­cern still remains the stance for Pak­istan to make. We have already faced the con­se­quences of our pre­vi­ous mis­takes and can­not afford any fur­ther extrem­ism or even part­ner­ship. The Pak­istani Gov­ern­ment should respond in a tone which should not be wel­com­ing. Per­haps there will be anoth­er time for Dr. Aafia to return home.