ISLAMABAD: The official Twitter handle of the United States Embassy in Islamabad Thursday tweeted a message widely interpreted as straightforward, but also believed to be encrypted, as it said, “Babar Azam ain’t shit.” The development comes after the US Embassy retweeted a tweet drawing parallels between the ouster of Donald Trump with a similarly anticipated departure of Pakistan’s current leader.
The US Embassy has apologised for the retweet, prompting Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi to declare the ruling Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf a ‘superpower’ and the first Pakistani government to extract an unconditional apology from American officials. It remains to be seen whether the US Embassy retracts its claim that ‘Babar Azam ain’t shit’.
Diplomatic experts dub these developments evidence of the growing schism between the US and Pakistan, which has clearly chosen to side with China in the ongoing cold war between Beijing and Washington.
“By bringing Babar Azam into the diplomatic trash-talk, the US is clearly targeting Pakistan’s valuable assets, which Washington still fears could land in the wrong hands,” notes Michael Kugelman, Senior Associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson Centre.
The timing of the tweet is also drawing scepticism among security analysts, given that Babar Azam was this week announced as the national team’s captain for all three formats.
The Pakistani skipper is also on the back of ODI and T20I series wins against Zimbabwe, the latter seeing second-placed Babar Azam close the gap to David Malan at the top of the batting rankings, as the all-format captain remains the only batsman to feature in the top five rankings of all three formats.
“Babar Azam is a joint Pakistan-China venture and a leading project of CPEC. An attack on Babar Azam is an attack on CPEC, which is an attack on Pakistan’s sovereignty,” maintains leading security analyst and China expert Javed Miandad.
