Analysis of US envoy's letter

Many Pakistanis have special affection for US envoys (see "Recap" on the right) and hence the letter of Anne W. Paterson on August 16 hurt the sentiment and reason of many, as they wished that it had been worded differently. Why? The answer comes in a candid repartee by Kamran Shafi, renowned columnist of Dawn, the leading English newspaper:

Defies description, your letter, Excellency. I have read and re-read the account of Siddiqui’s alleged “firing — unprovoked” over the months since you wrote that letter. Of how Siddiqui came out screaming from behind a curtain where she was being held “unrestrained”, and, picking up an M4 US army service rifle, aimed and fired at an American (warrant) officer. She is said to have missed her target because an Afghan translator who was sitting at arm’s length from her leapt at her and deflected the rifle.

Excellency, for someone who has handled small arms as a soldier in the infantry; has taught them, and therefore has fired thousands of rounds from all types of small arms, I can’t for the life of me imagine even a first-class shooter pick up a rifle he/she did not know, cock it, find the safety catch and flip it, and fire it in under the three seconds that it probably took the alleged Afghan translator to allegedly lunge at Siddiqui and allegedly deflect her alleged shot. Unless, that is, a handbook on the use of the M4 and a certificate from a weapons training school somewhere in America that she was a trained M4 shooter were also found in Siddiqui’s handbag when she was caught by the Afghan police loitering outside the Ghazni governor’s compound!

You also do not tell us that if it is true that Siddiqui was prevented from hitting her target by the Afghan translator (and had probably been well and truly subdued for she is no Samson), why it was necessary for the American warrant officer to shoot her in the abdomen “at least once”. What was the point? Neither do you tell us what “at least once” means. Are we to think that the authorities who first held her in Afghanistan after the shooting, those that held her in New York City, and those who now hold her in Houston are still baffled as to how many times the woman was shot?

Also, you have nowhere in your letter mentioned the 13-year-old boy who was seen in a photograph taken soon after she was shot “at least once” sitting by her side. Indeed, you said in your published letter to the press: “The United States has no definitive knowledge as to the whereabouts of Ms Siddiqui’s children”. Then who was the teenager who was repatriated by the Afghan government and is now reunited with his mother’s family?

By the way Excellency, if you care to notice, Aafia Siddiqui is about your build and dimensions. May I suggest you get one of your Marines at the embassy to bring you a US army-issue M4 rifle. Now ask him to clear the chamber, affix the magazine, put the rifle on ‘safe’, and place it on the ground which would be the exact position in which Aafia Siddiqui found hers and with which she is alleged to have fired upon the US officer. You may very well fail to even cock it in 10 seconds, let alone find the safety catch, lift the rifle to your shoulder and fire it. Would that you had recalled the disgrace his handlers brought your former boss, the good Gen Colin Powell, when they made him tell fibs on live TV about Iraq’s so-called weapons of mass destruction, before you sent your letter to the press.

You can read the complete article by Kamran Shafi (who promises to write more) in Dawn, and see what an M4 rifle looks like at The Musings of a Silly Bachi.