WASHINGTON: The United States has succeeded in defanging a toxic Pakistan by neutralising its entire nuclear arsenal - on television.
In yet another American TV series that will expectedly drive Islamabad ballistic, Pakistan is portrayed as a dangerous, unstable, failed country, with the United States having to keep a constant watch on its nuclear arsenal as the country spirals into an abyss - not very different from what many analysts discuss in real life.
But in keeping with the general belief that Washington has contingency plans to take over or neutralise its nuclear weapons, the TV drama 'Madam Secretary' - whose fans include Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton - pushes the envelop further in a recent episode titled 'Render Safe.'
Naturally, the plot is not without drama and complications. The US plan is to send commandos to a dozen bunkers in the north where the bombs are stored, while Russia takes care of five in southern Pakistan. Right as they put the plan in motion, the Russians bail out, telling the Americans they are backing the foreign minister who wants to take over the country.
Left to deal with the situation themselves, the Americans manage to neutralise most of the arsenal but a few bombs have been spirited away by a terrorist group Hizb al-Shahid. But the terrorists don't have access codes to the bombs and they have to be rewired by a rogue scientist - naturally, a Russian renegade. Of course, the Chinese are also in the mix - resentful of the US attacking Pakistan but also offering to "help."
The TV drama is the latest amid a raft of western entertainment that shows up Pakistan as a terrorist-infested country with extremists having a free run amid an inept and divided civilian leadership and military.
The portrayal infuriates Pakistan, which believes it is unfair and denigrates the country, although the reality is that many terrorist attacks against western interests - from London to New York to California - have Pakistani origins or connections.
After Pakistan was shown as a terrorist hellhole in the hit TV series 'Homeland' in its fourth season in 2014, a Pakistani official, hinting at blowback it not payback, moaned that "Maligning a country that has been a close partner and ally of the US... is a disservice not only to the security interests of the US but also to the people of the US."
Since then, ties between the two countries have unraveled further with unnamed US officials recently suggesting that the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI poisoned the CIA's Islamabad chief to retaliate among other things for the Abbbottabad raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
The entertainment world has taken much of the material from real world incidents or playbook. For instance, the "Render Safe" programme to neutralise Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is said to be taken from Washington's actual contingency plans under the same title.
A Homeland episode where Pakistani terrorists seize the US Embassy in Islamabad traces its origins to 1979 when the US Embassy was indeed overrun by extremists.
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