By this time she was moving around in ‘high society’ in Islamabad. Later, when Swati jumped ship to PTI in 2015, she worked her way into the highest sanctums of the PTI as well. Shahabuddin then became Cynthia’s route into the upper echelons of the PPP. Swati, then a Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUIF) Federal Minister for Science and Technology, in coalition with the PPP government at the Centre at that time, introduced Cynthia into senior political circles, and helped place her in a job in the Health Department headed by Cabinet colleague and friend, Minister Makhdoom Shahabuddin (who also stands accused of manhandling or harassing her then). In 2010, she also met Imran Khan at one fund raiser in the US, and according to her, stayed in touch. Cynthia used Farhana Swati’s NGO, ‘Humanity Hope’ as a vehicle to rub shoulders with affluent Pakistani-American doctors in the US. Farhana Swati, resident of Texas, US, and daughter of now sitting PTI senator Azam Swati, first introduced her to professional, well-off Pakistanis in the US in 2008, including the Association of Physicians of Pakistani Descent of North America (APPNA). It was during his tenure as DGISPR (2012 -2016) when her videos – cycling and romping in the Wild West of Pakistan – were circulated in the country. Though Asif Ghafoor weaponised Cynthia during his tenure (Dec 2016 – Feb 2020), it was the previous DGISPR, Asim Saleem Bajwa, who poached her from the PTI and PPP for his ‘Pakistan Positive’ image-building project. The niece issued an outraged video appealing to the perceived Pakistani and Islamic values of trying to ‘save her marriage from the home-wreckers’. The reason for the horrific attack was purportedly that one or both girls were sleeping with Riaz’s niece’s husband. The viral videos of two daughters of Malik Riaz – a property kingpin of Pakistan – storming the house of local model Uzma Khan and her sister, accompanied by a dozen or so male guards, assaulting the girls, vandalising their home, and inciting the guards to sexually molest the girls, and trying to get in touch on the phone with some man named Bilal to get the girls abducted by the ISI – had caused an outrage that refused to die. What almost everyone seems to have forgotten is the raging scandal dominating Pakistan’s news and social media, JUST before the Cynthia scandal spiralled into a raging fire. It would never encourage an asset to develop a highly public profile, or publicly attack local political parties, or journalists and human rights activists, as she is wont to do.Ī simple rule is to Follow The Money, in this case Malik Riaz. And the CIA theory is a non-starter for several reasons, but most obviously because nothing about Cynthia’s trajectory, or her public spats, has the CIA’s footprints on it.
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