Two countries that cannot even play soccer propose to nuke each other, and we are all supposed to sit back and enjoy the show. At least they could hold the fireworks here in South Asia until the World Cup is over in East Asia. We will root for Argentina, we will cheer for Senegal, and not consider it at all incongruous that India and Pakistan are not on the field – they probably never will the way things are progressing. Irradiated people make bad football players and vapourised people are not even there.
Funny thing is, much of the Indus and Ganga plains, where these fierce fighting people live, is ideal soccer territory. It is flat, see. And it is a terrible place to test your ballistic nuclear missiles. Because it is populated, see. It is not as if Noida or Orangi are empty like Lop Nor or the Bikini atoll. If only the great strategists on Star News and PTV discussed the reasons why we cannot make it to the World Cup… the stunting, the malnutrition, the diet, the facilities, the training, we would begin to get a glimmer of the misplaced priorities. Hai nn? Lekin, till the bile rises up the gullet, they will talk about "coercive diplomacy" and nuclear throw-weight, kilotons and megatons.
Okay, the Americans and Brits – and Scandanavians, Japanese, Untied Nations staff, and even the Koreans – want their citizens out of the confrontation zone and have already evacuated. See how they value the lives of their citizens? But whoever said EU and ASEAN lives are more precious than SAARC ones?
Sheikh Hasina – sorry, Begum Zia – should immediately pick up the phone and call someone, anyone, and order the evacuation of the millions of Bangladeshi labourers, domestics and sweatshop workers from Karachi, Gujranwallah, Delhi (both cis- Jamuna and trans-Jamuna), and Hissar.