Ayaz Amir articles
 

[SIZE="4"][B]Indian cheek and Pakistani helplessness[/B][/SIZE]

By Ayaz Amir

“THE Government of India has been watching with concern the spiralling violence in Balochistan and the heavy military action, including the use of helicopter gunships and jet fighters by the Government of Pakistan to quell it. We hope that the Government of Pakistan will exercise restraint and take recourse to peaceful discussions to address the grievances of the people of Balochistan.” —Indian statement

For sheer audacity, this takes the prize. The smugness it reveals is extraordinary: that India can get away with anything, which, given the situation in Pakistan today, may not be all that farfetched an assumption.

This transparent attempt at mischief, however, goes far beyond the mere display of cheek. It is also a sharp slap in the face of those efforts the government has been making, indeed the agile somersaults it has been executing, to placate India these past two years, beginning with that amazing joint statement signed by President Musharraf and Prime Minister Vajpayee in Islamabad on January 6, 2004.

In this statement, which must be one of a kind in diplomatic practice, Musharraf gave his personal assurance that territory under Pakistani control would not be used for “terrorism”. The fruit of ‘back-channel’ contacts between the two countries, a greater triumph India could not have wished for because it lent credence to Indian charges that Pakistani territory was indeed used for “terrorism”. Such slips nations alive to their interests usually don’t make but we did, and for no quid pro quo.

Nor was this all. Pakistan kept up a sustained effort to address Indian concerns, climaxing with Musharraf’s April 2005 unsolicited visit to India during which he waved the peace flag as never before. The hope implicit in all this mumbo-jumbo was that India, somehow, would reciprocate and that there would be some movement on Kashmir.

Anyone with half an eye on subcontinental weather could have told the Kissingers from the Pakistani side involved in these efforts that unilateral concessionism would lead nowhere, and that Pakistan was entertaining false expectations. But the Kissingers remained un-persuaded. The results are there for all to see.

Despite heroic efforts to clap with one hand, Pakistan has got nothing in return, with India not conceding an inch on Baglihar, Sir Creek, Siachen, what to talk of Kashmir. Now, to crown everything, this statement. Pakistan has responded with a verbal rebuke. But the question is whether it is in a position to reinforce verbal dismay with anything more meaningful.

Another round of the ‘composite’ dialogue between the two countries is set to begin on January 17. Judging from the record of the last two years, this one too promises to be an elaborate exercise in futility.

So what should be Pakistan’s response? A more robust response to India would be an acknowledgement of foreign policy failure, a luxury the military government can ill-afford at this juncture when it is tied up on so many other fronts. We can be sure the season of one-sided concessions has come to an end. At least this cup is full and there is not much more that can be poured into it. But at the same time, we can bet on it, there won’t be an admission of having been wrong vis-a-vis India. The mess we are making for ourselves. Decry Indian fishing-in-muddy-waters as much as we like, it is hard to escape the fact that our internal mess — starting from Waziristan and not ending in Balochistan — is what has permitted India to issue such an incendiary statement.

Let us not forget that the opposition parties — the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy, as fearsome a paper tiger as we are likely to get — called upon the international community a few days ago to stop the Pakistan government from carrying out military operations in Balochistan. If we must hand the audacity prize to India, the stupidity prize comes to us. The ARD is incapable of doing anything on its own but it calls for international interference in our internal affairs. And then we talk about national sovereignty. If nothing else, India can cite the ARD move as justification for its own statement.

The ARD should be taking out million-man marches against the confusion being let loose by the military government. It should be showing leadership and forging unity in its ranks. It should be thinking hard about its participation in the present sham of a system. (Imran Khan has a point, and a powerful one at that, when he says it is time to quit the assemblies and pull out of this system.) But the ARD has no business calling upon the international community to concern itself with Pakistan’s domestic affairs.

Whether fires rage in Waziristan and now in the Kohlu agency of Balochistan, and whether the entire country is in turmoil because of the mistimed controversy over the Kalabagh dam, we have to get it into our skulls that these are our internal matters, to be sorted out by us and no one else.

Pity the Pakistani people, capable of so much (their response to the earthquake a proof of that) but thwarted at every turn by their circumstances. With an inept government and a bankrupt opposition — indeed looking at the farce going by the name of Pakistani politics it is hard to decide who is worse, Musharraf or his opponents — where are they to turn?

Even so, this conclusion must be inscribed in granite: the task of rescuing Pakistan from the consequences of the folly of its leaders must, at all times, remain a Pakistani undertaking. It was the people of Pakistan, first and foremost, who in their undirected, unguided tens of thousands responded to the earthquake. It must be and, God willing, it will be the people of Pakistan who sort out the political confusion besetting their homeland.

Although, it must be said, they will arrive at this goal sooner if they can somehow get a new cast of characters on the national stage. Even a cursory look at the Musharraf order and one has no hesitation in becoming an instant champion of democracy. But a hard look at the PPP, PML-N and the country’s blessed maulanas and the temptation to become an instant convert to Stalinism is irresistible.

I can’t say for sure but maybe Musharraf has done the country an unwitting favour by raising the dam controversy. Before he put his hand in this hornet’s nest, the entire country and the entire political class seemed to be on a diet of sleeping pills. The discontent against the Musharraf order was of a general, unspecific character with no storms breaking on the national horizon. All at once the country has been plunged into a fever of alarm and anxiety.

Remember the Chinese line during the Cultural Revolution: “There is great disorder under the heavens and the situation is excellent.” Disorder and tumult have their creative sides and maybe in this sense the present sense of disquiet and anxiety in the country has its creative uses. What seemed immobile and fixed before is now in a state of flux. Two months ago the present order seemed safe and secure. Now it looks precarious, perched on a volcano.

Maybe all this is exaggeration: romantic daydreaming, armchair revolution stoked by the warmth of a winter fire. One thing, however, is for sure. The state of the nation is not good — there being near-unanimity on this score by now — and the present system of governance, dedicated to nothing higher than the perpetuation of one-man rule, is only making it worse. If anything calls for a change it is this situation.

But whence the relief, whence the balm on the nation’s wracked nerves? Whence a surer hand on the tiller? Whence the future that Pakistan deserves and its more concerned citizens crave? Urgent questions but very few answers.

[I]Assalam Alaikum,[/I]

[I]Brother Nhpaki, I appreciate you sharing this article with us all.[/I]

[I]Coming back to the issue, I have two very conflicting opinions on this article.[/I]

[I]**Historically, we created Pakistan to live in peace and harmony, and never wanted to do anything with India, except maybe a good neighbor relations. So much for those neighborly relations, when the very aim of India from August 15, 1947 to create chaos in pakistan, be it directly through wars or otherwise.[/I]

[I]** That is one explanation, the second one comes back to the roots of a problem of having a viable democracy and consensus among our people, so we can be seen united on the world forum. We as pakistanis are still sticking with our tradition of JALAAO & GHIRAAO, among ourselves and are always on the opposite side of the rings in national and international issues.[/I]

[I]Whereas, India that claims to be the worlds biggest democracy have their ups and downs, but politicians there have a consensus on how to deal with matters that are utmost important to their nation, be it BJP, Congress or anyone, the foreign policy of theirs never changed. It was actually us, who always bent backwards to BANIYA SAAB to be disappointed time and again, so why do we balme them? we should blame ourselves for these shortcomings.[/I]

[I]Beisdes Kashmir, Inidia on its part have a lot of other big and small separatist groups operating in its other states, yet Pakistan cannot pass any such statement as they did, because we know that whatever their internal differences maybe, Indians will definitely shut us down for interfering in their internal affairs. Whereas, Pakistani's are so divided that they will take their enemy's support to materialize their internal rivalries; take Bengal for example...and very many contemporary examples where our politicians go on the world stage to complaint about their own governments when they are in opposition.[/I]

[I]One of the reason is inconsistency in our policies, with every new face there are new policies and very many U-Turns and a lot of deceiving to the general public, that everything is fine n' dandy. [/I]

[I]Thanks.[/I]

The roles of India and Pakistan have changed over the course of 58 1/2 years. Pragmatism demands that negotiation is the best option available for Pakistan. Ayaz Amir bitterly criticises Pakistanis for appeasing the Indians and acquiescing to them without any reciprocation, which I think is very sarcastic. India has agreed to actually "talk" about Kashmir, which, according to their traditional stance is simply a non-issue and nothing else! I think Pakistani gambit is certainly working and it is a victory for Pakistani diplomacy. Thumbs up to General Musharraf for paving the way for such an enviroment!

As far as the recent Indian statement is concerned, it is very unfortunate for us that soon after the exit of Taliban from Afghanistan and establishment of pro-Indian Karzai government, various kinds of problems have sprung up in western region of Pakistan. Why would India, then, miss any opportunity to increase the troubles through diplomatic medium too? I dont think it is mere interference; it is something much more serious.

[B]Denmark: wrong target[/B]
DOUBLE standards? Of course. Whatever western countries may say about freedom of speech, such a thing as unlimited freedom of speech exists nowhere in the world.

You won’t find much of it in the American media when it comes to Israel. Try pointing out Israeli atrocities in the occupied Palestinian territories and you’ll attract strange glances and be hounded or ostracized if you are in the media or the exalted world of academe.

The American media didn’t distinguish itself for any conspicuous freedom of alternate opinion when the Bush administration was priming its guns for the invasion of Iraq. All we heard were outrageous lies, even from that paragon of uprightness, Colin Powell, who has the rest of his life to live down his performance before the Security Council when he said Saddam Hussein possessed dangerous weapons.

There are plenty of voices now raising the banner of dissent but precious few then, the mainstream American media, partly out of fear and partly out of conviction, putting on a tight mask of self-censorship.

It is a penal offence in some European countries to glorify Nazism and deny the Holocaust. The historian David Irving is in an Austrian prison for this ‘offence’. Why? He says the ‘six million holocaust’ story is a vast exaggeration. Jews were killed as were others but little in the archives supports the theory that the Nazis discussed any ‘final solution’. We are entitled to our opinions but making this a penal offence? Not much freedom of speech here.

One of Irving’s greatest sins: his assertion (backed by proof) that the gas chamber tourists get to see at Auschwitz was constructed after the Second World War by the communist authorities in Poland, a replica to represent the original. Imagine the outrage this caused.

This whole thing is a bit funny. Anti-Semitism, historically, was a European vice, existing long before Hitler. In contrast, there is no demonizing of Jews in Islam which in fact honours them as ‘people of the Book’. Whether six million Jews or even more were killed by the Germans, this was a European problem for which there ought to have been a European solution. Yet it is the people of Palestine paying the price of Europe’s sins.

In Doha, Qatar, two years ago, at something billed as a US-Islamic world dialogue the American organizers (the Saban Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution) went on and on about the dangers of extremism. I hesitantly pointed out that we were suffering from two kinds of extremisms. We had our bin Ladens and there was no shortage of bin Ladens — otherwise known as neo-cons, I helpfully added — in Washington. There was a round of applause from the non-American members of the audience but the American professors and think-tankers, a whole galaxy of them, looked stunned as if I had uttered something profane.

And there was former American ambassador to the UN, Richard Holbrooke, declaring we would be better off if we avoided two subjects: Israel and Iraq. Asked what we might talk of instead, he suggested education and health-care in the Islamic world.

Of course we have our problems. Our countries languish under one form of authoritarianism or the other, democracy being something the lands of Islam have yet to discover. All the same, no harm in pointing out double standards amongst the free and the brave.

So, please, let us not invoke freedom of speech to condone the Danish cartoons depicting the Holy Prophet (PBUH). Any Muslim seeing them will be provoked. The outrage we are seeing is perfectly understandable.

However, the kind of reaction we have seen across the Muslim world gives the Danish cartoons more importance than they deserve. Some things are best ignored or treated with contempt. As such, while protests and rallies are in order, resorting to violence is to go over the top.

And let’s not forget the other things equally deserving of our anger. The world of Islam should have raised a collective voice against the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. But if memory serves, that glorious organization called the Organization of Islamic Conference has been unable to come up with even a mild resolution condemning America. The world of Islam should have a collective response to America’s attempts to bully Iran. So far such a response has not been forthcoming.

Why is there such a gulf between rulers and ruled in the Muslim world? Because both exist on different planes, rulers for the most part acting as US stooges, the masses yearning for some form of redemption. No wonder, when given the chance, the masses strike a blow against the status quo, voting for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or for Hamas in the Palestinian occupied territories.

Nothing is more fragile or more rotten in the world of Islam than the status quo. The Americans should never press their luck with democracy in the Muslim world because if democracy arrives — something on which I am not betting — American influence will go out of the door. The necessary condition for American hegemony over Muslim oil is Muslim autocracy. One serves the other.

One fallacy about Osama bin Laden needs to be put to rest. Terror or the use of it is not his aim. Terror is a means to fulfil the aim of driving the US from the lands of Islam.

We may not agree with this aim or with the methods employed to achieve it, but for the sake of clarity, if nothing else, we should understand it. Only then can we understand the attraction of bin Ladenism for a broad spectrum of opinion in the world of Islam.

Bin Laden’s attraction lies not in his particular vision or interpretation of Islam which, unless I am grossly mistaken, does not accord with mainstream Muslim thought. It lies in his willingness to defy and challenge American power. At a time when Islamic countries look no better than American pawns, here’s an individual fighting America. This is the source of his growing mystique.

The US has tried to fight bin Ladenism with counter-terror. It hasn’t worked. In fact, the CIA (read Steve Coll’s book ‘Ghost Wars’) was trying to get bin Laden well before the September 11 attacks. But he proved elusive then and is proving elusive now.

Through satellite and electronic surveillance, Afghanistan must be the most intensely watched country in the world. But to no avail. Bin Laden hasn’t been spotted much less caught despite the fact that he has three wives, a retinue of children and a large number of bodyguards.

No wonder Americans are frustrated and taking out their frustration on that handiest of targets, Pakistan. If Osama is not to be found, he must be hiding somewhere in Pakistan, and if he is doing that it means that the Pakistan army and Gen Musharraf are not doing enough to get him.

This is the feeling finding expression in the recent angry editorials in the Washington Post and the New York Times against Musharraf, his once-unchallenged status as America’s darling under serious threat. He was expected to deliver Osama bin Laden and since he hasn’t, questions are bound to be asked about his continuing utility for the Americans.

There’s no running away from it, the world of Islam is in a fix. It has a fair idea of what ails it. But it doesn’t know what to do. Al Qaeda and the resistance in Iraq are about the most dynamic things — by which I mean things on the move — -in the world of Islam today. But does Al Qaeda represent the aspirations of the world of Islam? No, it doesn’t. A regime ordained by Al Qaeda would be suffocating to live under.

But as long as Muslim kings and autocrats remain in thrall to America, and Muslim masses are not masters of their fate, there will be no shortage of recruits — young men burning with zeal and a sense of mission — drawn to the ranks of such movements as Al Qaeda.

[B][SIZE="5"]Moderate’ vs. radical Islam[/SIZE][/B]
By Ayaz Amir

FEW words today carry a more negative meaning than the term Taliban. It is supposed to stand for everything backward, reactionary and benighted: harsh punishments, the seclusion of women and a mindset conducive to the promotion of ‘terrorism’.

Opposed to Talibanism is something called ‘moderate’ Islam which is supposed to stand for progress and enlightenment. Since September 11 the United States has been spending huge sums of money (ask US-Aid) in this battle of ideas, denouncing ‘extremism’ and promoting a fuzzy picture of ‘moderate’ Islam.

Whether it is meeting with any success in this battle is hard to say because the US has never been more unpopular in the Islamic world. Most rulers of Muslim countries may be America’s friends, if not its satellites, but at the level of popular opinion it doesn’t take much to realize that anti-Americanism is on the rise.

Much of this has to do with American double standards. American atrocities in Afghanistan and Iraq, of which there has been no shortage since the invasion of both countries, is all for the good, part of a grand design to promote democracy. Resisting American aggression and occupation is ‘terrorism’.

Dishonesty up to a point is perhaps bearable but when it crosses all limits and becomes a daily occurrence don’t be surprised if the reaction is outrage.

Every time President Bush appears on television and speaks on Iraq it is possible to visualize some more Arabs or Muslims going over to the anti-American camp. Al-Qaeda doesn’t have to stoke anti-American feelings. The Bush administration does that job better than anyone else.

Regarding the Taliban, however, it is easy to be critical about them, less easy to say a word in their praise. But some things stand out and are difficult to ignore.

For instance, for all their narrow-minded interpretation of Islam, the Taliban at least have the courage of their convictions. Many of us supporters may not agree with the austerity and rigour of their doctrine. But it is hard not to admire their courage and tenacity. Against all the odds they are still fighting the Americans and, hard though it may have been to imagine this four years ago, getting stronger by the day.

The best that so-called Islamic ‘moderates’ seem capable of is to curry favour with the US. The long-bearded narrow-mindedness of the Taliban may be frightening but the fawning attitude of the ‘moderates’ is sickening. The Taliban may be too rigid but so-called moderates are too spineless and seem to lack all conviction.

Post-September 11 the US asked the Taliban leadership of Afghanistan to hand over Sheikh Osama bin Laden. Mullah Omar, the Taliban Emir, refused, saying that any charges against bin Laden could be examined by an ‘independent tribunal’. Call the Taliban foolhardy but at least they did not deliver a guest, and an honoured one at that, to his enemies.

Contrast this with our attitude. Mullah Zareef was the Taliban’s accredited ambassador to Pakistan and as such under our protection. But when the Americans asked for him our military government handed him over without a moment’s hesitation. Come to think of it, hardly something to be proud of.

Would the Americans have been impressed? More likely, they would have caught the impression that the Pakistani leadership could be pushed around. No wonder, they have been pushing it ever since.

Avoiding stupidity or rashness, we should have stayed neutral in the impending conflict over Afghanistan. We had no choice but to cut our links with the Taliban. But our military whiz kids went beyond the dictates of prudence and caution. Far from staying neutral, they offered forward bases and other facilities to the Americans. This was uncalled for and went against the sentiments of most Pakistanis.

The argument given was that Pakistan was being saved. In fact, the military government was saving its own skin, ending its international isolation and getting a new lease of life.

No one is saying, and certainly not I, that we should have followed the path of the Taliban. But it would have done us no harm if we could have borrowed some of their resolve. The Taliban are fighting a difficult war from the mountains but they are still their own masters. They have lost power and much else besides but not their self-respect. Mullah Omar, hiding God knows where, remains as defiant as ever.

We have a huge military, nuke capability and all sorts of missiles named after our vaunted heroes: Ghauri, Abdali and, most recently, Babur. (Although Abdali, incidentally, is a poor choice. Despite being the victor of the third battle of Panipat, his repeated invasions of Punjab caused much devastation and suffering.) But of what use all this military muscle when it does nothing to strengthen self-confidence?

Clinton as president comes here for a few hours and ends up insulting us. Bush comes here and there is more humiliation flung our way despite all the services Pakistan’s military rulers are rendering in the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Nukes and missiles are not of much help in such a situation.

We don’t have to seek US hostility. But we can also avoid unnecessary toadying. And we must learn to think for ourselves, which we won’t do unless we get out of the American orbit in which we have revolved for too long.

The demonizing of Islam after September 11 has gone far enough. We don’t have to be apologetic about Islam or fall for the American-inspired dialectic of ‘moderate’ and ‘radical’ Islam. As far as the Americans are concerned, any Muslim country toeing the American line is moderate. Any Muslim country standing up for itself is radical.

There is nothing wishy-washy about Islam. The essence of the faith as propagated by Muhammad, (Peace be upon him), is radical and revolutionary. Stripped off the time-serving interpretations of theologians (theologians being the bane of Islam) it stands for the empowerment of the weak, the humbling of the mighty, the liberation of women, government by consent and consultation, and bread, security, learning and hospitals for every citizen, high or low, of the Islamic commonwealth.

The Islam of the Prophet is a fusion (never attempted before or since) of two great principles, socialism and democracy. The spirit of this fusion was best expressed by Hazrat Omar when he said that even if a dog went hungry by the banks of the Euphrates (some distance from Makkah, the Islamic capital) Omar would have to answer for this on the Day of Judgment. And by Hazrat Ali when he said that a tyranny, even if covered in the mantle of Islam can never endure. There’s nothing ‘moderate’ about these thoughts. They are radical to the core.

Lest anyone be in a hurry to revive that tired chestnut of Islam being opposed to reason and learning, let me quote a few lines from William Dalrymple’s excellent essay, Inside the Madrasas (New York Review, December1, 2005):

“In The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West, George Makdisi has demonstrated how terms such as having ‘fellows’ holding a ‘chair’, or students ‘reading’ a subject and obtaining ‘degrees’, as well as practices such as inaugural lectures, the oral defence, even mortar boards, tassels, and academic robes, can all be traced back to the practices of the madrasas.” (There is more on the same lines in the rest of the essay.)

Nothing is funnier than the frequently heard assertion that people associated with al Qaeda are madmen who hate the western worlds wealth and freedoms. To quote Dalrymple again: “As (bin Laden) laconically remarked in his broadcast timed to coincide with the last US election, if it was freedom they were against, al Qaeda would have attacked Sweden.”

Agree or disagree with Osama bin Laden’s tactics, his aims are intensely political: an end to American hegemony over the world of Islam, justice for the Palestinian people, the toppling of ‘apostate’ regimes subservient to America. Al Qaeda may be inspired by Islam but it is not a religious organization in the strict sense of that term. What it stands for and what it strives to achieve is a response, primarily, to the excesses and double standards of American foreign policy in relation to the world of Islam. Ignoring this sequence of cause-and-effect is both misleading and dishonest

Even by Punjab’s high standards, unbelievable
 

By Ayaz Amir

Parha-likha (educated) Punjab is one of the favourite catchwords of Chaudry Pervaiz Elahi’s government. A fortune must have been spent on advertising extolling the chief minister’s services in the field of education. From the hype you would think he was a latter-day Confucius.

Amazing, therefore, that in martial Chakwal, home to some of the best jawans and most useless generals Pakistan has produced, the district and tehsil administrations are planning a brazen assault on the Chakwal Post-Graduate College for Men — which is to Chakwal what Government College Lahore is to Lahore, Edwards College to Peshawar or Gordon College to Rawalpindi.

Don’t ask me how — because no one with his eyes open would approve of such a silly idea — but the district administration managed to get a directive out of the chief minister allowing the construction of 180 shops, to be rented out, on the college grounds.

Says directive number DS (Coord)/CMS/06 etc (my photocopy not very legible at this point) dated January 19, 2006: “Construction of 180 shops around the Govt Post-Graduate College for Men, Chakwal... Please find enclosed a copy of recommendatory letter received from... Zila Nazim Chakwal regarding the subject cited above.... Chief Minister has been pleased to desire that the Project may be executed as planned. He has further desired that Education Department may facilitate the District Government Chakwal in this regard.” Signed: G. M. Sikander, Principal Secretary to Chief Minister.

The word ‘around’ is a clever piece of camouflage implying that the shops will be ‘around’ and not inside the college. There are no rolling steppes around the college. It is bounded on all sides by roads and buildings. The district administration’s plans call for the shops to be built on the college estate along its eastern, southern and western walls. The college will be squeezed within this girdle. Precisely because college property is involved, the Education Department has been ‘desired’ to ‘facilitate’ the district government.

No sooner was the directive issued than the tehsil administration swung into action, demolishing a nearly 200-300 feet stretch of the college boundary wall on the western side of the college, preparatory to seizing the land and starting construction on it.

The college lecturers’ association deserves praise for its sense of responsibility. It passed a resolution condemning the contemplated assault on college property. That’s when I came to know what was happening.

At a press conference I and some friends expressed concern about this absurd move. For added measure I called the Punjab chief secretary, Salman Siddique, who sounded surprised by the directive.

On an impulse I also called Mowahid Hussain (Mushahid’s brother and an adviser to the Punjab CM). He said he was already scheduled to meet the CM and would speak to him about the proposed scheme. He was as good as his word because an hour or so later I got a call from the CM himself.

To his credit, he sounded pretty embarrassed when I told him about the directive, mumbling something about nazims and what they were capable of (not that he will admit to it now). Promising to look into the matter he said the demolished wall would be rebuilt. More than a month has passed and of course it remains un-built, wheels of government in our part of the world moving slowly if they move at all.

Even so, after the approach to Lahore, there has been no further work on the project. But the directive still stands and as long as it does and is not consigned to the rubbish bin where it belongs, the scope for mischief will remain.

Given the political pressures involved, educationists these days are a harassed lot. But going against this trend, the Chakwal principal has resisted the designs of the district administration, informing his department and even lodging a complaint with the local police station about the demolition of the boundary wall, a criminal offence. Of course the police, as always averse to doing anything politically incorrect, have done nothing. The Education Department in Lahore, however, has moved a summary against the proposed move. Let’s see what comes of it.

We’ve made a mess of education as it is, educational standards plummeting and colleges and universities once famous throughout undivided India for academic achievement a pale shadow of their former glory. But even amidst this rot, this project — a line of shops stretching for over a mile on three sides of the government college — is in a class of its own.

And to think that this college — take this in — was the first government college established anywhere in Pakistan after 1947. There were other government colleges of course, like one in Attock, but all established by the British. This was the first ‘native’ government college after independence, at a time when even ‘Pindi and Gujrat although having private colleges, had no government college. In Jhelum too there was no government degree college.

I have it from poet and writer Jamil Yousaf (alumnus of the college) that when the noted Muslim League leader Raja Ghazanfar Ali Khan visited Chakwal in 1959 to address the college’s annual convocation, he threw light on how the college had come to be established.

The British government had set aside a sum of Rs 200,000 for the welfare of World War II veterans of Chakwal tehsil. Sometime in 1948 (when Jinnah Sahib was still alive) this matter came up before the federal cabinet. It was felt that if the money was distributed each recipient would get only a paltry sum. Raja Ghazanfar, a member of the cabinet and from the district, said Chakwal was a backward area and stood badly in need of a degree college. So it was decided that the money was best spent on that. How many other colleges owe their origin to a decision of Pakistan’s first cabinet?

The Government High School was told to vacate its premises and move to what had been the Khalsa High School on Talagang Road (where it still is). Where the high school had been the college was established. A short distance to the west was the old Arya High School. This became the college hostel. (The part of the wall demolished by the tehsil administration is next to the old Arya school.)

In the centre of this estate was a Hindu temple overlooking a pond lined on all four sides by stone steps and surrounded by stately shisham trees. It was a beautiful place and as a boy I remember sitting on the steps, letting my imagination roam.

The temple has long gone. Near it has sprung up a makeshift cafeteria. The pond is covered with weeds and although most of the shishams are still there, in between them branches of the paper mulberry, a noxious weed, have sprouted up, making walking difficult. The stone steps are hidden. No lonely boy sits on them casting pebbles into the water. Strange that something so beautiful has turned into a dirty wilderness.

Hard though it is to believe this today, boys and girls studied together in the college. Smartly turned out girls clad in figure-hugging burqas occupied the front rows. Boys also smartly turned out, in trousers and red blazers and not shalwars, sat at the back.

Standards were high, discipline strict, debates both English and Urdu a regular affair, the annual sports meet a thing to look forward to, the principal a figure of dread, and the question simply not arising of boys misbehaving with the girls.

Boys being boys and girls being girls I am sure love or something close to it must have been in the air but there was no loutishness and none of the self-righteousness which has come with born-again Islam. (Girls have since moved to a separate college which I suppose is how we measure progress in our country.)

I can’t help quoting from a letter to the education department by some of the Muslim landowners (among them Ch. Tora Baz Khan, Col Abbas Khan, Col Ghulam Haider, etc) whose land was being acquired for the college:

“Whereas we are very grateful for the opening of a degree college in this backward area of the martial people, we take the opportunity to point out that....some vested interests are demanding the curtailment of the area round the college. They consider the existing land to be surplus for the college; whereas we the public consider that...(it) is only just sufficient to meet the requirements of playgrounds, athletics, botanical gardens and hostel accommodation...that is why out of patriotic sense we have sold our land on nominal price after making a sacrifice of Rs 400 per marla.”

That was then and this is now.

Ch Pervaiz Elahi has a political head on his shoulders. I am sure good sense will prevail and this directive no doubt inveigled out of him will be cancelled. It has no legal basis whatsoever, no chief minister having the prerogative to gift educational land for commercial purposes.

At the same time, if anything is worthy of the notice of my lord the Chief Justice who, in exercise of his suo motu powers, has already taken a number of important decisions in the public interest, it is this misconceived proposal, an offence to good sense and a mockery of the law

Ayaz Amir (DAWN)...Friday
 

[B][CENTER][SIZE="4"][COLOR="Blue"]Summer of discontent, season of hope[/COLOR][/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]



[I][LEFT]By Ayaz Amir[/LEFT][RIGHT]Friday,June 08, 2007[/RIGHT][/I]


PITY the Q League, the latest target of Gen Pervez Musharraf’s wrath. When did it ever pretend to be a real political party? Now Musharraf wants it to behave like one. It’s like expecting a plant in a hothouse to grow overnight into a mighty oak.

“I bluntly say,” said the enraged Commander-in-Chief at a meeting of Q League legislators on Wednesday, “you always leave me alone in time of trial and tribulation…you never came to my support.”

Strange that he should talk in this mode. For eight years he has been a law unto himself, taking everything for granted, deciding everything himself, with little or no consultation least of all with his political stooges. Now he expects the same stooges, many of them political orphans who wouldn’t be in the assemblies without ISI help, to step forward as his fearless defenders.

“You are not delivering,” he went on to say. “You have lost the war of nerves. You all are silent upon what the media is doing. If I myself have to do everything then what is your purpose?” A newspaper editorial would be hard put to give a better description of the general’s plight.

This is all the more strange considering that not long ago he was derisive about the current agitation. It would soon pass, he told his Q League loyalists. They should concentrate on electing him president later this year, and everything would be all right. Now suddenly a different tune altogether. The same newspaper report from which I have quoted said that Musharraf looked “visibly shaken”. As well he might. When was twisting in the wind good for anyone’s composure?

A few days ago it was the corps commanders’ affirming support for their Chief, the first time this has happened in the history of Pakistan. A press release said they “…took serious note of the malicious campaign against institutions of the state, launched by vested interests and opportunists who are acting as obstructionist forces to serve their personal interests and agenda even at the cost of flouting the rule of law.”

Malicious…vested interests…opportunists…obstructionists: all in one sentence, verbal overkill reflecting the draftsman’s skill or the confusion in the minds of the corps commanders? Then the touching reference to the rule of law: amazing.

Even in the edited footage shown on television you could sense some of the unease on the faces of the formation commanders. One fair-faced general was caught grinning in an ingratiating manner (we may assume his promotion or preferred posting is assured) but one or two others looked pretty glum.

Assailed on all sides by an opposition on the warpath, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the summer of 1977 extracted a statement of support from the then service chiefs. Exactly 30 years later Musharraf is playing the same card. As good an example as any of history repeating itself, but with a difference: Bhutto was an embattled civilian, Musharraf an army chief.

Army commanders are happiest when a civilian government is in trouble. Then they can look serious, as if worried about the country’s future, and contemplate drastic action. Bailing out an army chief in trouble is a staff exercise they have yet to conduct. What will they do? Nothing seems to be working, neither the heavy guns of the corps commanders nor the water pistols of the Q League.

As if there weren’t enough fronts already, the presidential camp has opened another one, against the media, especially private TV channels, now demonized in its overheated imagination as the source of all its troubles. The amendments in the law relating to the electronic media are another exercise in overkill. Far from being cowed down, the media is up in arms.

It is a sign of the times that even on this issue the government has been forced on to the back foot, the prime minister (looking more confident nowadays, I wonder why) has set up a committee to review the amendments. Meanwhile, no action will be taken under them. A victory for the media, another setback for the government: just goes to show the disarray in the official camp.

Until now freedom of the media was Musharraf’s one great alibi, the excuse which served to soften the outlines of his one-man rule. Now even this fig-leaf has been discarded.

Remember, please, that back in Oct ’99 his coup was hailed by the English-speaking liberati and many upright pillars of English journalism. Liking what he saw, Musharraf cast himself in the role of free media sponsor, the honeymoon only souring when his troubles mounted. Now with the first real political threat to his rule emerging, the mask has finally slipped, revealing the true face of dictatorship underneath.

But repression is tricky business. It can work when a government’s authority is intact. But at journey’s end, with the shadows of evening closing in, its use is counter-productive, more an admission of defeat and failure.

This is turning out to be a strange summer for Pakistan: a summer of discontent for Musharraf and his increasingly disheartened acolytes, the Q League just a step or two short of going into actual mourning; but for much of the nation a season of hope.Eight years of militarized democracy is long enough. The yearning for change, now almost palpable, has taken hold of the political class and the intelligentsia, and even ordinary citizens, who have gained little from the economic bonanza of the last eight years.

Crisis of the state? This is more like a crisis of mediocrity. Remember that the vision in command for the last eight years is the same vision which gave us Kargil. Sept 11 was lucky for it, easing the country’s finances and bringing Musharraf international recognition. But luck doesn’t hold out forever. Even Napoleon’s ran out in the end. And mediocrity is, well, mediocrity, not divine grace.

Musharraf’s present troubles stem from one all-consuming flaw: an inability to understand that 2007 is not 2002. Back then he was able to fix not just his own referendum and the subsequent general elections but the entire political landscape. His power to fix things is not what it used to be.

Whatever the Supreme Court decides, whether Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry is restored or not, drastic climate change has already occurred. Musharraf’s heart is still set on a phony presidential election, but he is now in no position to enforce one from these assemblies (whose own term will soon be expiring). The time for such shenanigans is past. Even his own corps commanders, whatever they may say to him to his face, will have a hard time swallowing such an imposition.

Justice Chaudhry’s role in this crisis is pivotal and enormous. But for his courage and steadfastness the torch we see burning on the horizon would not have been lit. This movement which has already altered the political landscape would not have started. Lawyers, the heroes of this movement, would not have been galvanized into action. Political parties would not have stirred from their sleep. Excitement allied to a sense of expectation would not have filled the air.

Even so, Musharraf can’t blame Justice Chaudhry for all his troubles. The time was ripe for change. More and more people were getting fed up with the half-truths and clichés of the present hybrid system. Justice Chaudhry did not create these conditions of unrest. They were already there, waiting to be kindled. The true author of his misfortunes is, thus, Musharraf himself, who refused to grow with the times or curb his irrational ambition.

Even at the Q League meeting I have referred to he could not help making another of his usual pitches about his indispensability. He said he was needed because if he went Talibanisation would follow. As figments of the imagination go, this is audacious. The present lawyers’ movement is all about secular principles, the supremacy of the Constitution and the independence of the judiciary, not the mysteries of religious doctrine.

For Musharraf to raise the spectre of Talibanisation is like a gambler’s last throw of the dice. In this summer of unrest and hope, Pakistan is threatened not by Talibanisation but a genuine return to democracy. Musharraf’s last and ultimate failure is his inability to come to terms with this possibility.


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[CENTER][B][COLOR="Blue"][SIZE="5"]The great betrayal[/SIZE][/COLOR][/B][/CENTER]



[I][LEFT]By Ayaz Amir[/LEFT][/I][RIGHT][I]Friday, JUNE 15,2007[/I][/RIGHT]

FRUSTRATED and now clearly deprived of the power of clear thinking, dictatorship is on the retreat in Pakistan. As it steps back, it is having to perform a slow striptease, its authority and credibility stripped away layer by layer to reveal the startling hollowness inside.

Field Marshal (self-appointed) Ayub Khan’s diaries display nothing so much as his essential shallowness. In them is revealed a very limited man, incapable of a single arresting or original thought. And he ruled Pakistan, as a one-man endeavour, for eleven years. How could Pakistan suffer such a person, who never won much distinction in his military career – the battles he fought and won being largely against his own people – for so long?

A similar question could be asked of Gen Yayha Khan and his given-to-merriment cronies. What was it in Pakistan’s genetic make-up that allowed such clowns not only to preside over Pakistan’s destiny but also ensure the country’s break-up at the hands of India, and the unstoppable force of Bangladeshi nationalism?

If merit and military proficiency had anything to do with it, Zia would never have made it past the rank of brigadier. But he not only was promoted but found himself army chief, on the strength of which he ruled Pakistan for another eleven years. Crafty, devious but again of shallow outlook, he too prompts the question: how could such a person come into the legacy of Iqbal and Jinnah? Was it for the likes of him that Pakistan was founded?

When Gen Pervez Musharraf’s time is up and he steps into the sunset, as all mortals must, about him too it will be asked: how come another limited edition could rule Pakistan for so long? Ayub’s diaries and Musharraf’s ghost-written biography, ‘In the Line of Fire’, may talk about different events but the thinking they reveal is about the same, both books plumbing the same depths of profundity.

Shouldn’t the General Staff admit defeat? If Ayub and his three successors are the best it has been capable of producing, shouldn’t it give up the idea of ‘saving’ this unfortunate country? Saved many times, and to what effect we know too well, it can do with some unsaving.

Will Musharraf step aside or march into the sunset willingly? Don’t count on it for a second. Realising when enough is enough is an exercise General Headquarters is yet to conduct. The ‘golden mean’, the path of moderation between two extremes, thereby avoiding excess of any kind, is a notion lost on our military command. Every military ruler has clung to power until pushed out, kicking and screaming.

Power corrupts? In Pakistan’s case it more likely enfeebles the mind. Ayub towards the end, Yahya when he had presided over the loss of East Pakistan, Zia towards the close of his era after the Junejo assembly and government had been dismissed, and Musharraf after the judicial crisis: testimonials, all of them, to the loss of the power to think clearly.

Will this comic opera survive? Nothing is going right for it, every move running into a roadblock or creating further problems, the hole the regime finds itself in getting bigger. To get an idea of this hole, a glance at the knights defending Musharraf in the Supreme Court is instructive.

Sharifuddin Pirzada has been legal guru to more than one military regime. So his expertise should not be doubted although it should be said of him that he is at his best in cases where the judgment is already pre-determined. He looks uncertain in the present case precisely because the judgment is far from pre-determined. Oh for a bench of one’s choice, the forte at which Pirzada has always excelled.

But to be reduced to Malik Qayyum, once-upon-a-time virtual family judge to the Sharifs (all cases relating to their private concerns and business affairs somehow finding their way to his court…this was when he was judge of the Lahore High Court before, alas, having to step down unceremoniously when caught taking instructions from a Sharif henchman); and Sahibzada Ahmed Raza Khan Kasuri, one of the deadliest loose cannons to have been produced in Pakistan.

Not exactly an embarrassment of legal riches. And for Musharraf not to realise this suggests that he is in more trouble than he thinks.

But consider the miracle occurring. Despite being in such dire straits, his own allies disheartened and not knowing where to turn, Musharraf is receiving covert support from two powerful quarters: Daughter of the East, Benazir Bhutto, and Pakistan’s leading political comedian, Maulana Fazlur Rahman.

PPP spokespersons go blue in the face denying a prospective ‘deal’ with the government but are hard put to explain why the PPP can’t bring itself to say that if Musharraf seeks another five-year term from the present soon-to-be-dead assemblies, its legislators will resign. All they can bring themselves to say is that the PPP will not vote for Musharraf, which is as good as saying that they will stay in the assemblies to lend his ‘election’ credibility.

Maulana Fazlur Rahman too cannot bring himself to say that to thwart Musharraf, the holy fathers of the MMA will quit the assemblies. Goes to show where their heart is and how committed they are to the present movement for the rule of law and the supremacy of the Constitution. Also goes to show how much opposed to Musharraf they truly are. Bhutto won’t admit to anything, being too smart for that, nor would the Maulana. But their studied ambiguity amounts to a betrayal of the present movement.

Look at what the lawyers have done, what they have already achieved: plunged Musharraf into the most serious crisis of his stewardship and shaken his confidence. Look at the issue before the Supreme Court, arguably the most important legal and constitutional case in the nation’s history. Yet Benazir Bhutto and the Maulana (Diesel to his fans), oblivious of the importance of what is at stake, are playing for petty advantage.

They shouldn’t fool themselves, nor should the other political parties. For seven and a half years all that their leaders could do was blab and appear on TV talk shows. If the climate has changed bringing with it the possibility, however remote, of a strengthened judiciary and a slightly chastened military, it is only because of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry’s defiance and the lawyers’ movement spontaneously arising from his defiance.

Our lawyers have done us proud. No one expected that they would hold out so long. No one thought they would be so steadfast and full of courage. If Benazir Bhutto’s or Maulana Fazlur Rahman’s bargaining position has improved, it is not because of anything smart or brave on their part but again because of the lawyers’ movement.

What the lawyers are doing needs to be strengthened, not sabotaged. This is no time to be cutting deals with a military dispensation in retreat, no time to be coming to its assistance. Sure, Bhutto and the Maulana might have some crumbs thrown their way. But would this be enough compensation for seeing their credibility and standing irretrievably harmed if not destroyed in the eyes of the Pakistani people?

Strange, is it not, that while the two previous movements in our history – 1968-69 and 1977 – were hijacked by ambitious army chiefs, this time the threat of hijacking comes from two political leaders?

They may say they are up to no such thing. But then it is up to them to dispel the doubts raised by their questionable conduct. Why is there so much suspicion about a Benazir Bhutto deal with Musharraf? Why are people disinclined to believe PPP leaders when they try to refute such an impression? Why is there such an inclination to think that Maulana Fazlur Rahman speaks with a forked tongue, saying one thing, meaning another?

And it’s not as if Bhutto and the Maulana can rescue Musharraf. His circumstances now hinge upon just one item of (irrational) ambition: another five-year term as president. But if Musharraf is reduced to Malik Qayyum and Raza Kasuri in the Supreme Court, he should know that the stars are no longer aligned in his favour.

No one, not even I suspect, the dispirited cadres of the Q League, are in a mood to oblige him, professional politicos instinctively aware when the sun is setting or a ship sinking. To get what he wants Musharraf will have to roll out the tanks. But the time for that too may have passed. How to unseat civilian authority is a lesson the army knows by heart. It is very good at it. What it has yet to do is bail out, or prop up, an increasingly obvious liability.

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[B][SIZE="4"][COLOR="Blue"][CENTER]Options before Musharraf and the nation[/CENTER][/COLOR][/SIZE][/B]




[I]By Ayaz Amir[/I][I][RIGHT]Friday,June 22, 2007[/RIGHT][/I]

FIRST option, the preferred choice of Army House, Gen Musharraf goes before the present assemblies for a presidential vote and then, his own position secured, holds general elections.

Possible in good times, it is no longer possible in the present charged climate. No one will stand for it, not the lawyers’ community spearheading the struggle for democracy, not the people of Pakistan, not even perhaps, when it comes to the crunch, many legislators from within the Q League.

A dead option therefore. If Musharraf still insists on it, however, all the political weather indicators suggest unrest and turmoil, possibly even a civil disobedience movement. Don’t we have enough on our hands already?

Second option: setting his fears aside, and rising above self-interest, Musharraf goes for general elections first and then seeks a presidential term from the new assemblies.

Such a step would require courage and vision, not exactly surplus commodities in Army House or its environs. But for the sake of argument, if we assume that this step is taken, what will be the likely outcome?

To begin with, the national scene will stand utterly transformed, the air clearing and political tensions easing, and the major political parties turning away their attention from Musharraf and at each other’s throats at once. From a partisan figure identified with the Q League Musharraf would become an umpire above the political fray.

So why isn’t this option being considered seriously? Because of the downside. The Q League would be the first casualty of early elections. The moment they are announced its sand castle would disintegrate and there would be a stampede amongst its members as they seek refuge in other parties, especially PML-N and the PPP.

The MQM, which has benefited hugely under the Musharraf regime, would also feel lost. It cannot afford to get down from the tiger’s back it is riding. Karachi has become a dangerous place, as dangerous as Waziristan, the cult of violence the dominating principle of its politics. Groups like the Haqiqis, now lying low, have accounts to settle. The MQM won’t relish the prospect of uncertainty that would come with the announcement of elections.

The other casualty of early general elections would be Musharraf’s presidential ambitions. For where would be the guarantee that anyone will elect him president later? He is president not because of his approval ratings – you have to be out in the streets to get an idea of that – but because he is army chief, a position which has allowed him to bend the present system to his convenience. The only way he can remain president is through a contrived election from the present soon-to-expire assemblies. He knows this and so do his angels.

This precisely is the dilemma he is caught in. What he wants is no longer possible. What is possible doesn’t suit him.

But is it right and proper that the interests of 160 million people, if not more, should be subordinated to the interests of one man? Is any individual greater than Pakistan? This is what makes the lawyers’ movement and Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry’s petition before the Supreme Court so important. For on their outcome we will get an answer to the question whether in Pakistan, in Fakhruddin Ebrahim’s words, the rule of law will prevail or the rule of the gun?

If Pakistan is to move forward and democracy is to triumph, it is imperative that the lawyers’ movement, sparked by the defiance of Chief Justice Chaudhry, should succeed. What will be the tangible measure of its success? General elections first, obviously under a neutral caretaker set-up, and everything else, including who is to be president, afterwards. But this must happen soon, in the next fortnight at the latest, if the constitutional calendar is to be met. Otherwise, time will run out and we will have another crisis on our hands.

Strange that those who have mangled the Constitution beyond recognition should now become its most ardent defenders, saying that it is the Constitution itself that mandates a presidential election before general elections. Thus speaks mischief always, in the sweetest of tones.

The third option of course is to sweep everything from the table and impose martial law, a move fraught with so much risk that it is not even worth mentioning. For one, things will spin out of control and the glue holding things together (I trust the meaning here is clear) will be diluted. For another, someone else will be doing the imposing, not the incumbent, this being the way with the dynamics of martial law.

No, given the nation-threatening dangers involved, this is no option at all. There are only two options before the country: a presidential election igniting civil unrest, and therefore amounting to a victory for shortsightedness, or general elections first which will mean a victory for the rule of law and the Constitution.

What is it going to be? As already stated, if Musharraf could have his way, he would choose the first option. Sadly for him his power has weakened. His government is in disarray. It is no longer up to him to do as he pleases. The time for that is past. Pakistan’s lawyers have seen to this, as has Chief Justice Chaudhry. The writing on the wall is clear: general elections or chaos.

What will it be? This is a test of the nation’s collective wisdom. From this turmoil can something good be fashioned or is orderly, civilized governance too subtle and complicated an art for us to master? It is not only the Supreme Court on trial, whose decision in this case will have a profound bearing on the future direction of national politics. So too is the army high command. So are the political parties.

At crucial junctures in our history – the anti-Ayub movement, events leading to the break-up of Pakistan, the anti-Bhutto movement – both the army command and the political leadership were guilty of lapses of judgment, even of folly. Have we learned anything from the past or will the same mistakes be repeated?

American deputy secretary of state, John Negroponte’s specialty has been the destabilising of popular governments in Latin America. Is our political class looking up to him to bring about democracy in Pakistan? Nothing more underscores the bankruptcy of our political elite than the placing of false hopes in American mediation or influence. The US can give us a reborn or a reinvented Musharraf, not the military-free democracy which the people of Pakistan yearn for.

Lawyers are the heroes of the moment, their achievement all the more remarkable when set against the irresponsible role being played by some political parties. Engaging with a sinking dictatorship, as these parties are doing, is to hold out a lifeline to it, which amounts to stabbing the movement for democracy in the back.

Let alone this stabbing, doesn’t Benazir Bhutto (Mohtarma to her followers) realise what harm she is doing to herself and her own party? It’s no secret what her overriding compulsion is: relief in the Swiss corruption cases. If only someone could tell her that a civilian government will do her more good than a deal with Musharraf. But word from those who have had the chance to meet her recently is that (1) she seems to have taken a flight from reality and (2) the fight seems to have gone out of her. A pity that the PPP’s great legacy should be reduced to this.

The other great temporiser, indeed the leading practitioner of double-talk, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, is playing his own game. Self-interest has been his guiding principle throughout the Musharraf years. As the democracy movement enters a critical phase there is nothing to suggest he is about to change.

But I suppose it doesn’t matter because the popular movement started by the lawyers is now too strong to be sidetracked or sabotaged by conniving and favour-seeking politicians. The choice before the regime is only one and when the bugle for general elections is sounded, many things will fall into place. And the Q League will enter the halls of oblivion, perhaps always meant to be its last resting place.


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[B][SIZE="4"][CENTER][COLOR="Blue"]Storming the redoubts of autocracy[/COLOR][/CENTER][/SIZE][/B]



[I][LEFT]By Ayaz Amir[/LEFT][/I][RIGHT][I]Friday,June 29,2007[/I][/RIGHT]

A GATHERING of opposition braves in London should cause the rafters and ceilings of Islamabad to shake. But it hasn’t happened so far.

Why not? Because political capital and credibility lost by our opposition parties — by their fecklessness more than anything else — has yet to be retrieved, lost honour yet to be redeemed.

I too will be going to London because, like a long list of others, I have been invited as an observer. Half my heart will be in the journey, half of it, sad to say, perhaps not.

Who doesn’t want these parties to get their act together? Who doesn’t want them to agree on one or two points of such blinding clarity that all confusion is swept away and the nation galvanised to storm the redoubts of Pakistani autocracy? This is an apt hope in or near the month of July when the Bastille was stormed and the French Revolution broke out. Who doesn’t want this to be a ‘defining moment’?

Fond hopes resting on a bed of sand. What will an All Parties Conference be worth if Benazir Bhutto won’t attend? What will such a gathering be worth if that prince of political comedians, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, does attend?

Benazir’s appendages, a posse of whom will be at the conference, are not the same thing as the mistress of the Swiss diamonds (actually bought in London) herself. Musharraf’s acolytes can sometimes think for themselves. Take the case of friend Mushahid who every now and then is driven to sound like a Bolshevik. Benazir acolytes dare not stray even a centimeter from the party line. Even the army allows some difference of opinion, the PPP none at all.

This is one thing (the only thing I must hasten to add) it has in common with that other bastion of democracy, the MQM. Dissidence of any kind in the PPP invites expulsion into the cold. But that’s about it. In the MQM dissidence fetches a higher price. As the slogan painted on many a Karachi high-rise (there’s one as soon as you leave the airport and get on to Sharea Faisal) puts it succinctly, “Quaid ka jo ghaddar hai, maut ka haqdar hai”. (He who betrays the leader is worthy of death.) The Mafia could not have put it better.

But the question of inner-party democracy in the PPP apart, an APC without the shifting Benazir Bhutto (who nowadays shifts quicker than the wind) loses half its meaning. After all, the PPP is the PPP, one of the two biggest parties in the country, the other of course being the PML-N. How do you draw up a grand strategy with the quintessential Daughter of the East absent?

And how do you draw up a grand strategy with that king of political comedy, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, present? Benazir’s absence will make a difference. The Maulana’s presence is almost guaranteed to wreck the APC. Unwitting disciple of Clausewitz, the Maulana never makes a frontal assault. A master of the indirect approach (which is the essence of strategy), he goes with the flow before wreaking what devastation he can from that position of vantage.

One can only sympathise with the PML-N leadership. They want to forge a united front – the need of the hour. But they are contending with two of the slipperiest eels in the political waters of Pakistan. Is this too much scepticism? I hope it is and I hope that from the entrails of the APC something solid and meaningful emerges. But with the Maulana on board and the Empress of the East playing her own games with the quasi-military regime which has been Pakistan’s lot these past nearly eight years, the APC has an uphill job on its hands.

Incidentally, Benazir’s stand that the holy fathers of the MMA should at least withdraw from the Balochistan government (where they are acting as Musharraf allies) if their democratic pretensions are to be taken seriously, has merit. How can the holy fathers be all things to all people – running with the government, hunting with the opposition? Hasn’t their hypocrisy lasted long enough? But getting the Maulanas out of the Balochistan government would be a miracle worthy of biblical times. We are unlikely to see it.

Our political class can test the patience of a saint. Some good men and women are to be found in its ranks, capable of great sacrifice and commitment, adhering to the path of principle in good times and bad. If the worst thing about Pakistan is the cult of authoritarianism, the best thing about it is the tradition of resistance.

The Chile of Pinochet (of horrid memory) had its Pablo Neruda, Nigeria of the generals, of Gen Sani Abacha in particular, its Sole Woyinka (his memoirs, You Must Set Forth At Dawn, is worth several readings). But not many countries can come close to the nostalgia and wistfulness with which our poets have written of freedom and national redemption.

If we have had our dictators – a more sorry and incompetent lot would be hard to find – we have also had dissenting politicians who have not bent before the wind. And we have had our poets – Faiz, the great Faiz, Jalib, Faraz and the rest – who in their verse have celebrated liberty and denounced authoritarianism. This has been one of the good things about our history. It has been the seedbed of brilliant poetry.

But however much we eulogise this culture of resistance, the fact remains that it is outweighed and outdistanced by the culture of conformity, of sucking up to authority. Every dictator finds his willing political collaborators, every dictator finds his Q League. Names change. In Ayub Khan’s time it was the Convention League. Nowadays it is the Q League, the common thread between these different incarnations being the spirit of blind loyalty and subservience.

But Q League stalwarts can at least claim to be honest. They are with the regime, their interests tied to its survival. The regime sinks, they sink or they look for new havens and new godfathers. But opposition parties can often be downright dishonest. Listening to their rhetoric you could mistake it for Leninism. Seeing them in action, or seeing them make a religion of falsehood, you would despair of politics altogether.

What a pity that where the lawyers’ movement has done so much – where it has caused the edifice of power to shake and its denizens to look foolish – it is largely alone, bolstered only by the sympathy and fellow-democratic yearning of the media and of people at large.

The judicial crisis has shaken the political parties out of their torpor, but they still have to straighten out many things. If the APC is to make a difference and chart a new course of action, it will have to forge a united stand on the most important question of all: the charade of a presidential election from the present assemblies. There should be no prevarication on this score. If the generalissimo goes to these assemblies, what will the political parties do? This is the foremost question before them, all other issues being secondary.

The people of Pakistan are not fools. Why wherever he goes is My Lord the Chief Justice showered with rose petals? Why do people, including women and children, wait for hours on end to have a glimpse of him? He addresses no public meetings. The legal and constitutional subjects he chooses to speak on when he addresses bar associations can’t be of much interest to men and women in the street. He has stirred the nation’s sensibility by standing up to a military figure and saying no to his face. By doing so he has written a new history (which is a fact, not hyperbole).

If the APC is to evoke a similar response, if it is not to be a damp squib, if it is to stir the masses to action, if it is to confound the plans for a phoney presidential election, the challenge before it is to show similar courage and honesty. Only then will the promise of this ‘defining moment’ be fulfilled.


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