Saudi Arabia's leading English daily 'The Arab News' has strongly criticised international media for wrongly and unfairly blaming Pakistan for extremist activities. In its editorial published on July 27, the paper stated it was wrong and unfair to demonise Pakistan simply because there were sympathisers of al Qaeda and Taleban.
It draws attention to the fact that there were supporters of al Qaeda in the UK, Turkey, Italy, Spain, France and in dozens of other countries. Yet no one blames those places for international terrorism.
Reflecting upon such incidences the editorial says "for years, the British refused to extradite to France an Algerian accused by the French of masterminding the 1995 Paris bomb attacks it was only last month that the British government changed its bid, but not before the French accusations that Britain was soft on tacking global terrorism."
The paper presents the argument "if Pakistan can be accused if not doing enough to counter the militants, then London and Madrid certainly deserve similar condemnation well after 9/11, both allowed foreign militants to flourish unchallenged.
Another reason for stopping denomination of Pakistan according to the editorial is that since Pakistan government is working hard to isolate the extremists and it is committed to the war against terrorism, the anti-Pakistan attitude would undermine those efforts.
It could alienate public opinion and push it into a siege mentality and the only people to gain advantage from that would be militants.
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