New Delhi: Pakistan’s defence minister is defending everything apart from his dignity. Khawaja Asif was caught in a soup after responding to an AI-generated photo showing Marilyn Monroe wearing a smart watch. The post had a picture of Monroe with the caption: “Eagle Eyes Only…Can you spot the one thing that doesn’t belong in 1956?” An excited Asif responded with a smiley: “Watch”
Pakistanis wasted no time in noting that while the country had emergency rule imposed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the defence minister had time for everything apart from his job. Pakistani journalist Naila Inayat even gave his new task a name: “the defence minister finalising the Monroe Defence Pact.”
Then came the multitude of memes, from the homeground. One said: “When Khawaja Asif sees a 10/10 baddie on his timeline”.
Pakistani journalist Mubashir Zaidi wrote in Urdu: “Aapki umar min ghadi hi nazar aati hay (At your age, a watch is the only thing that catches the eye).”
Samaa TV journalist Nadir Baloch was rather direct: “Check out the Defense Minister’s eagle-eyed gaze after the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa showdown. What can I say.”
A prominent Pakistani meme account captioned a picture of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Khwaja Asif deep in conversation: “Khawaja shukr karo k abhi twitter per LIKES private hen”.
Also read: ‘Their Faiz and ours’: Mohammed Hanif on Indian protesters singing Pakistani poet
Misplaced priorities
Most concerned citizens cannot seem to get over the fact that amid an emergency and police crackdown in KPK and with its ally Saudi Arabia at war in Yemen, the Defence Minister refuses to set his priorities straight.
Civil society chose to resort to mockery. Pakistani journalist Asad Ali Toor wrote on X: “One must appreciate at least KhawajaMAsif doing something and not sitting free, otherwise people think in #Pakistan defence minister is the most useless & irrelevant ministry!”
In all of this, it was a tweet by the US-based news outlet Drop Site that took the cake. In a tweet on the repeated Houthi offensive against Saudi, the outlet tagged Khawaja’s response and ended it with deadpan sarcasm:
“New: Saudi Aramco’s headquarters in Dhahran caught fire Tuesday night during Ansarallah missile attacks on Saudi Arabia… Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif, who said in September that the ‘Mecca’ defense alliance with Saudi Arabia and Turkey ‘will become operational’ if Yemen’s war spilled into the kingdom, has not commented on the latest attacks. His latest tweet is tagged below.”
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)