New Delhi: Adviser to Pakistan’s Ministry of Information, Ahmad Hassan Al-Arabi, went on international TV to justify former PM Imran Khan’s solitary detention. And Pakistanis have questions. They want to know— who is he?
The answers range from “the country’s lowest-budget ‘intellectual’ to “an extremely insufferable idiot”. No one in Pakistan apparently knew that the man held an official position. They didn’t even know if the country had the post of information adviser.
Former Dawn editor Cyril Almeida simply asked, “Who… is this chap?”
Others were geographically confused. “This Al Arabi folk comes from Arabia? He is totally pointless here repeating a specific narrative!” Pakistani X user Jehad Zafar asked.
Mystery of the information advisor
Sky News on Tuesday shared a clip of a conversation between news anchor Yalda Hakim and Pakistan’s Al-Arabi, where Hakim can be seen asking him if the ISI and the Pakistan military are scared of Imran Khan and have therefore kept him in solitary confinement without access to his family members.
Khan’s sister, Aleema Khanum, was finally permitted to visit Khan in Adiala jail after protests erupted last week amid global reports of Khan’s death and multiple social media posts by his son, Kasim Khan.
Also read: Who is Aminuddin Khan? Now the sole custodian of judicial review in Pakistan
Arabi on Wednesday, however, kept reiterating that Khan has been kept in jail as “punishment” and is “physically fit.” However, amid the heated exchange between both, Pakistanis had a larger question about who Arabi actually was.
“Who is this idiot? This is genuinely embarrassing! He’s addressing the news anchor the same way politicians shout over each other on Pakistani talk shows, interrupting, raising his voice, and refusing to let her even ask a question. He knows he doesn’t have answers, so he falls back on the same old-age tactic of shouting to shut down the conversation,” Pakistani freelance journalist Adeel Habib wrote on X.
“Thanks to @SkyNews, we finally discovered that this incompetent is also an advisor of Minister Information. It perfectly exposes how this entire setup is run by unqualified people sitting on a stolen mandate, experts only in lies and deception….,” one user commented.
Many Pakistanis are simply embarrassed. “Some of our folks walk into international media (Like Sky News/Yalda) thinking it’s the same controlled Pakistani media circus—shout a bit, deflect a bit & somehow walk out looking smart. Global outlets don’t play that game. Either learn the craft or stop embarrassing the country,” Pakistani journalist Raza Dotani added on X.
Al-Arabi’s LinkedIn profile claims he is an international relations scholar and makes no mention of his government profile. There is no publicly available information about his appointment. A few months ago, he also appeared on a TV debate on an Indian news channel, Republic TV.
He even shared the exchange, calling it “fiery” on his X account. He did get validated there with labels like “a well-informed true patriot”.
In all of this, a Pakistani social media user, Daniyal Naqvi, clearly irked by the X discourse around the interview, simply declared: “Two extremely insufferable idiots arguing about a third highly insufferable idiot”.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)