Afrah Jamal

Written many moons ago when i was an Asst. Ed with Social Pages. Published in Defence Journal September 2006 Republished in PROBENEWS(2006) Legend has it that a Sabre took off from Sargodha airfield to intercept Hunters on a fateful September morning & landed back with an Ace . 120 Seconds: Squadron Leader Alam in a Sabre is on Air Combat Patrol accompanied by his wingman. Upon observing IAF Hunters exiting after an unsuccessful air strike over Sargodha, Alam sets off in hot pursuit of the enemy formation. He pursues a fleeing Hunter and eventually shoots it down with a missile shot. He spots the other members of the Hunter formations flying very low and as he approaches the trailing member he is spotted and the entire formation breaks (violent turn) in the same direction - a fatal error as in less than two minute Alam has taken out four of them, (as confirmed by more than one independent eye witness) 1 bringing his tally for the mission to five…… And an Ace is born - ...

By Afrah Jamal Published in Daily Times / Saturday, April 30, 2011 The visiting media (excavation) team who rifled through Faisal Shahzad’s past had hit a brick wall last year. Because he is a naturalised American citizen and the son of a senior Pakistani air force officer, the foreign press must have been just as baffled as their Pakistani counterparts. And since they found little of value in these archaeological expeditions, they gave their terrorist a back story to go with the popular narrative. Putting up the failed Times Square bomber’s upbringing on trial alongside his present probably made it easier to explain this anomaly. If the world they fabricated out of fantasy and myth appeared alien to Pakistanis back home, it is probably because it was. Faisal, who went through the system without triggering red flags, was depicted as a zombie being drilled in violent Islam and fed anti-western lies as a child, getting in and out of fancy cars followed by a trail of nannies, raise...