| December 17, 2001 | Monday | Shawwal 1, 1422 |
Drug mafia warming up as Taliban exit
New police system in doldrums
A George Speight, not Guy Fawkes, threatens Indian parliament
Happiness grows by sharing: KARACHI FILE
The festive season
Looking for a Nobel Peace Prize in Kashmir?
Merchants of quality education
Capital becomes a ghost town on Eid
Malik gets cracking and the man who was a legend
IN pre-Taliban Afghanistan, Afghan-Uzbek Commander Gen Abdul Rashid Dostum had been the strongest factor for the forces he had under his direct command. He never identified himself with any of the Mujahideen groups. He concentrated his power entirely in northern Afghanistan to lord it over practically to the exclusion of Kabul.
When I first met him on Sept 28, 1992, at the Qila-i-Jangi, his military headquarters at Shabarghan, north-west of Mazar-i-Sharif, he would use much the same centrifugal idiom as he did while announcing his boycott of the Bonn conference and subsequent rejection of the interim government in Kabul.
The “power-sharing deal”, he said, “did not work out (at Bonn) as I would have liked. But in any event the dividing out (division) of power will not now go on by means of force.” That was more or less what he and his senior generals told me during my day-long stay at Shabarghan.
After the fall of Najibullah in April 1992, and the formation of the Mujahideen government in Kabul under the Peshawar Agreement, there was nothing to stop Dostum’s Gilamijam militia from marching into Kabul. That was deliberately avoided, however, for fear of unnecessary bloodshed. Dostum was then, and claimed to be, in command of ‘one-third’ of Afghanistan — from Badakhshan to Herat. Short of complete independence, he enjoyed full autonomy in his northern and western strongholds.
As for the Kabul government under President Burhanuddin Rabbani, Dostum would let himself to stay “well within the constitutional framework of one united Afghanistan ...” What constitution? For there was hardly anything even remotely approaching a national constitution except for the ISI-brokered Peshawar Agreement (April 24, 1992), the principal source of Rabbani’s legitimacy and interim regime in Kabul.
Dostum’s authority, on the other hand, stemmed from his control and command of the bulk of Afghanistan’s rump (regular) armed forces and his political hold via his Jumbish-i-Milli Islami Afghanistan. He ran his own foreign and information outfits to the exclusion of the central government.
He was visibly touchy, even resentful about his force being described as Gilamijam militia. “We are an army with corps, divisions and brigades. We have an air force. You may go and see it for yourself, if you wish.” He quietly skipped the question about the chain of command and whether he took his orders from the chief of the armed forces, Gen Abdul Rahim Wardak.
Of his working (nominal) relationship with Kabul, he said: “I work for the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. I keep in touch with the ministry of defence (under Ahmad Shah Masud)....”
He added: “I wish there were a chain of command. (As it is) everyone has his own force, own militia — be that Sayyaf (Abdul Rasool Sayyaf — of Islamic Unity of Afghan Mujahideen) or Rabbani (President Burhanuddin) or Hekmatyar and so on.
“I do wish there were one command. I represent the northern part of Afghanistan. I obey the orders of the president of the country.”
Gen Dostum and his high command had been bitterly critical of the rival Mujahideen, specially Hekmatyar, due to continued in-feuding. “He (Hekmatyar), for not wanting peace, must always have someone to wage his personal war against; first against the communists, then against Najibullah and now against us.” They claimed that the bulk of Hekmatyar’s men in the north had joined their ranks. Those sitting in Kabul had no power without their support.
As it were, Dostum would rather be the duke of Venice with full powers than the king of England with no power. He chose to stay out of Kabul to be left alone to wield absolute authority in the north rather than partake of an adulterated and fragile power-sharing arrangement in Kabul.
Recognized as the industrial north of Afghanistan, Dostum’s ‘fiefdom’, besides the bulk of sugar and textile industries, cradles the country’s security printing press. Moreover, it enjoys the only rail-road route to the outside world via Uzbekistan. Until the pre-Taliban mid ‘90s, northern Afghanistan, by and large, had been almost a haven for peace compared to Kabul constantly under the barrage of Hekmatyar’s artillery deployed in the east and the southeast.
Starting as a gasfield worker, Dostum climbed up the greasy pole of success with a rare combination of his native shrewdness, and uncanny ability to see which way the wind might be blowing and sail with it. He is nobody’s man when it comes to seizing and protecting his own authority.
A minion of president Najibullah, he ditched him the moment he realized the president was losing his grip on power. He went on admitting that “I wasn’t his real support. I only obeyed his orders to make myself stronger.”
The year of 2001 is not the same as the early or the pre-Taliban mid ‘90s. Dostum may not be as strong as before. He stays on, nevertheless; and that’s what matters.
No matter how one might look at the Dostum factor in Afghanistan’s prevailing situation, it exits and can be ignored much at the cost of one’s sober judgment. How strong or how weak this factor is could be a matter of perception which future alone would either contradict or confirm.
THE overthrow of the Taliban government by a coalition of warlords and others have created a very delicate situation on the Pakistan-Afghan border, making it unstable. It is highly volatile not in the sense of security but in view of the law and order situation.
For the last two decades, since the Saur Revolution in 1978, Balochistan is faced with the constant influx of Afghan people, increased drug trafficking and gun-running. The Americans and their allies gave weapons to the Afghans to fight the Red army contingents. But, overwhelming, the majority of the Mujahideen defected from the ranks of the comrades-in-arms, deserted the fight and sold their Kalashnikovs back to the attractive Pakistani market for a better price.
No government in the whole world made an allocation of funds from their national budget for fighting the Red army contingents in Afghanistan. Necessary resources were generated through covert operation. Poppy cultivation, as well as the flourishing heroin labs, in the border regions of Balochistan was the main source generating revenue to finance the anti-Soviet war. The drug mafia was also provided sophisticated weapons, including machine-guns and mortars, to fight the regular troops of the regional countries, if there was a resistance or obstruction to the illicit trade.
The whole drug business was organized on the borders and the same was smuggled out to Iran and, finally, to southern Europe for a better price. Iran fiercely resisted the drug trade and thus lost more than 2,000 soldiers fighting the mercenaries of drug mafia.
Now again, some of the warlords in the present campaign are from the old drug mafia. They want to take control of poppy-growing regions in western and southern parts of Afghanistan by commanding armed tribal lashkar.
The Americans reportedly provided them with satellite telephones that they misused and directed the US warplanes to hit the residences of their opponents, claiming that Arab or Al Qaeda fighters are hiding there. Thus they have settled their scores. Travellers and Afghan refugees confirmed these information while talking to newsmen at Chaman during the recent influx of displaced persons.
Commanders are asked to raise tribal lashkar to fight the Taliban with a motive to dislodge them from power in Kandahar, the last bastion of the Taliban power in Afghanistan. A score of criminals, some of them hardcore criminals based in Balochistan, also joined the ranks of Pakhtoon commanders in their fight against the Taliban. Now they are possessing weapons, having a friendly border with a greater charm to resume the gun-running, hostage-taking and drug trafficking with a relative impunity.
During the Mujahideen rule, Spin Boldak was the place where the victims of kidnapping for ransom would be kept by the criminals. They would be kidnapped in Quetta and other adjacent population centres, taken to Spin Boldak and kept hostage till the ransom money was paid.
The second gang was involved in robbing and hijacking vehicles in places like Karachi and Lahore and later would sell them in Balochistan or would take them to Afghanistan. In central Balochistan, some of the local warlords owned showrooms of stolen or hijacked cars. However, most of the lifted vehicles were taken to Afghanistan, a safer place.
The third category of criminals was involved in robbery, house breaking and motorcycle-lifting in and around Quetta. The residents of Quetta witnessed a number of incidents of murder with robbery, killing inmates of house for resisting house burglary or robbery.
It gave a disturbing signal to the local authorities responsible for maintenance of law and order in Balochistan. The federal government has been approached for additional funds for strengthening the law-enforcement agencies, mainly the police and the Balochistan levies. Presumably, the provincial government has demanded Rs2 billion for consolidating the first defence line against the criminals so that lives, honour and property of the civilians are protected.
The government planners and administrators were found shaky following the recent developments in Afghanistan as the coalition of warlords has recruited most of the criminals and gangsters in their fight against the Taliban. It was a political decision of the federal government to give a free hand to the warlords recruiting people. If the warlords lose control on the gangsters, naturally the criminals will disappear in the major population centres in Balochistan. The police and levies will have to fight them out sooner or later. Hardly any other law-enforcement agency will come to their help.
ALL is set to implement the new police system as a model in Faisalabad district amid shortage of police personnel, vehicles and ancillaries requiring huge funds.
The Punjab government after marathon meetings and several studies for satisfying public complaints against police cruelty, delay in investigation, implication of innocent people in false cases and use of third degree methods during interrogation, has decided to change the police system in vogue since 1861 by constituting two separate independent wings — investigation and watch and ward.
In line with this decision, Faisalabad district has been chosen as one of the models of the new system. However, it appears that the required homework for it has not been done. The infrastructure required for achieving results has not been provided due to which the experiment may bounce back and create frustration among well-wishers of the new system.
A grim picture of the infrastructure of the police has emerged in Faisalabad district which is in deficit in all respects. Implementation of the new system will further expose the police efficiency instead of rendering appreciable services to the public and achieving target envisaged.
As the third largest district of Pakistan with a population of about 2,100,000 in the city and 3,240,000 in rural areas, demographic pressures, unemployment, poverty, pollution and lack of civic amenities are contributing to the high crime rate in Faisalabad.
On the basis of population of the district, i.e. 5,340,000, the police strength is 6,503 men, meaning one policeman against 821 persons. In case of urban police, one policeman is supposed to provide security and prevent crimes and carry out investigation for 999 persons, as the strength of police in urban areas is 2,101 against a population of 2,100,000. Likewise in rural areas (Saddar division), against a population of 3,240,000, the police strength is 1,126 indicating that one policeman is supposed to provide protection to 2,877.
The Faisalabad police initially decided to constitute five special squads each comprising four inspectors, as many sub-inspectors, two ASIs, 10 HCs and 10 constables to investigate various cases. However, for achieving the targets, at least 20 inspectors and sub-inspectors each, 10 ASIs and 50 HCs and constables each were required to be inducted on a priority basis. On a similar pattern, investigation staff comprising one inspector and sub-inspector each, two head-constables and four constables are required to be attached with each sub-divisional police officer of the rural division.
To monitor investigation of rural circles, four inspectors and sub-inspectors each, eight head-constables and 60 constables have to be recruited. Under the restructuring of police in the new plan, the crime registration organization is also to be set up for which one inspector and SI, two head-constables and six constables are required.
There are 28 police stations in Faisalabad district out of which 13 are in urban areas, including one women’s police station which is spread over 72 beats. For each beat, under the new watch and ward system, one SI, two ASIs, four HC and 20 constables are required. It was noticed that 72 SIs, 144 ASIs, 288 HCs and 1,728 constables are without any shift, while 216 SIs, 432 ASIs, 864 HCs and 5,184 constables are posted in shifts in city areas.
In rural areas (Saddar division), there are 15 police stations with total Zails of 60. For each Zail, one SI, two ASIs and three constables have been posted as investigation staff. Similarly, for each beat of the watch and ward in the Saddar division, one SI, two ASIs, four HCs and 24 constables have been posted. There are 60 SIs, 120 ASIs, 240 HCs, and 1,440 constables without shifts, while 180 SIs, 360 ASIs, 720 HCs and 4,320 constables are posted shift-wise.
According to the criteria laid down under the new system, five special squads will investigate 2,000 cases annually. In this way, the district police will require 20 special squads for investigation of five categories of crimes in urban areas and will require 80 inspectors, SIs each, 40 ASIs, 200 head-constables and constables.
Police sources revealed that the urban areas required 25 inspectors, 345 SIs, 645 ASIs, 1,470 head-constables and 6,978 constables for investigation/watch and ward and other duties. It may be noted that in urban areas, 25 squads had been constituted with 100 inspectors and SIs each, 50 ASIs, 250 HCs and constables each.
The district police have also been facing acute shortage of vehicles. They have only 15 jeeps, 50 pick-ups and 149 motorcycles in working condition. Most of these vehicles have completed their technical life and are incurring huge expenses on repair and maintenance. Another 22 jeeps, 115 pick-ups and 1,558 motorcycles are required in consonance with the yard-stick set under the new police system.
The communication wing of the district police is also not up to the mark and requires to be upgraded according to the new system and needs seven base sets, 112 mobile wireless sets and 1,399 walky-talky sets.
It was said that under the new system police stations would be put under the command of ASPs, but no measures have been taken for its implementation.
Similarly, out of 28 police stations in the district, buildings of only eight police stations are according to the laid down standard. The rest are either in a shambles or housed in rented buildings without any infrastructure worth the name. None of the police stations in the district has a provision of residential quarters as provided in police rules. Two police stations and 60 per cent of the police posts are still without telephone. Up to 20 posts and 11 checkposts are housed in privately constructed buildings looking like pigeon holes.
A retired senior police officer told Dawn that the new system was expected to bring some relief to the police and litigants and expedite the judicial process. Investigation of 50 cases annually by each investigation officer would help in curbing the practice of keeping cases pending for personal gains, especially after receiving bribes from parties involved in litigation. He claimed the new system would provide a relief to the complainants because they would not have to visit the police station every day in search of the investigation officer who was now bound to remain in the police station for the purpose.
Under the existing system, the transfer of cases from one investigator to the other has become the order of the day. In some cases, parties manoeuvre assignments of investigation to officers of their choice resulting in complicated problems for police high-ups and hatred among aggrieved parties. In the new set-up, a case will be transferred from one officer to another, but not from one section to another. In other words, it will remain with the investigation department.
Another retired police officer stressed the need for training of investigators on modern scientific lines. The new system could not yield the desired results without imparting professional training to the investigation staff, he said.
The most important step in the new police system is that station house officers and other police personnel will perform duties only to deal with administrative working, local government laws and prevention of crime. Crime against property, women and children as well as narcotics-related and white collar crimes, guard and escort duties, handling mobs and processions, law and order and prosecution, crimes against individuals especially homicide, suicide and other heinous incidents, terrorism, sectarian violence have been excluded from the ambit of working of police stations.
One wonders if wizards of the new police system had given any thought to the ground realities and new emerging trends viz-a-viz sectarian contradictions and hatred which have severely hit the very fibre of society. This menace has created a sense of insecurity in all spheres of life especially mosques, Imambargahs and other places of worship, educational institutions, commercial and trading markets, which require round-the-clock surveillance, vigilance and protection. Not only this, the police are also supposed to provide protection to worshippers in mosques and Imambargahs. Such protection is also needed for places of worship of other religions. There are 1,732 mosques, 155 Imambargahs, 195 Churches and 287 other sensitive points in the district. For all these 2,369 points, full time presence of police personnel is required.
Police managers of district Faisalabad emphasize recruitment of police personnel and other infrastructure according to new restructuring plan of the police, but it is doubtful that the constraint-ridden government will be able to meet the financial requirements of the district and the fate of the new system is also likely to be according to the famous saying: “Na ho ga no mun tail na radha nachay gi.”
INDIAN Home Minister Lal Krishan Advani and Defence Minister George Fernandes have slammed Pakistan for suggesting that Indian intelligence agencies had deviously staged the Dec 13 attack on the parliament house to rake up trouble for Islamabad.
If Pakistan indeed believes what its spokesmen have been quoted as saying, then it would be reasonable to surmise that Islamabad authoritatively knows that Lashkar-i-Taiba and Jaish-i-Mohammad, the two groups named by New Delhi, are not involved.
The next logical question would then be: how does Islamabad get to know what these groups are doing or not doing unless it wields the right measure of influence with their leaders even though it claims it does not directly control them? This will remain a point to ponder until clear answers are available.
But then would it not be equally preposterous to accept the words of Messrs Advani and Fernandes when they claim how no country would ever think of carrying out such a charade against its own parliamentarians, indeed its own people. This is factually incorrect.
It has happened in the past and could happen again, even in India. After all, it was in India that the hero of the current administration, Jaiprakash Narayan, had given a call to the armed forces to mutiny against the Indian state in 1974, a year after the paramilitary forces in Uttar Pradesh did in fact stage a major rebellion, which was crushed with brute force.
It was treason to some Indians and a required revolutionary act to others. Moreover, it was Fernandes himself who was an accused in the famous or notorious Baroda dynamite case. He was thrown into prison under Indira Gandhi’s draconian anti-terror MISA law.
If he was indeed involved in the dynamite conspiracy, then he was rightly punished under the prototype of the very law which he now supports but which he had opposed under Mrs Gandhi.
If on the other hand he was not involved, then he is guilty of usurping a gladiatorial and misleading halo, which he should come clean with.
Of course, parliament houses have been blown up in the past by governments to get even with the opposition, although not every parliament house that has been blown up was considered the symbol of democratic rule. For example, the chief arbiter of global democracy, the United States itself, was silent when the Iranian Majlis was bombed, killing dozens of deputies.
I believe the explosives were gradually and surreptitiously placed there and exploded at an opportune time in 1981, although I cannot remember if president Rajavi and prime minister Bahonar were killed in the same attack, blamed on Maoist guerillas.
But the most outrageous hypocrisy perpetrated anywhere in the name of democracy was the military attack on the Russian duma and against its own democratically-elected representatives by an authoritarian president who was roundly applauded and supported to the hilt by the voyeuristic Western media.
No prizes for guessing that it was president Yeltsin’s war against his own parliament that we are talking about. That was one occasion when the West unitedly applauded the bombing of a country’s parliament which, to make matter even more ironical, was in session at that time.
Did India protest or have anything to say on that occasion? I can’t remember.
However, two classic and widely cited attacks on parliament by their own governments are the Reichstag Fire of 1933 in which the newly-inaugurated chancellor Adolf Hitler’s Nazis were said to be involved in setting their parliament ablaze only to blame it on the communist opposition and the English gunpowder conspiracy case.
Interestingly, Hitler was inaugurated on Jan 30 (Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on the same date 15 years later). On Feb 27 the Reichstag was set on fire. On Feb 28 emergency was declared throughout Germany, under which civil liberties were suspended and communists and social democrats arrested.
One of them, a deranged Dutch communist, was executed after being found guilty of the arson by a tribunal. On March 5, elections were held whose results were used to dissolve the parliament, leaving Hitler with dictatorial powers.
What I consider to be an even more dubiously popularized legend on anti-parliament arson belongs to Guy Fawkes, regarded in much of England as a traitor but who may actually have been set up as part of a state intrigue against Catholic dissidents.
Let’s take a quick look and see if the legend bears resemblance to something we can recall in our own backyard.
In 1605, the year Emperor Akbar died in India, Guy Fawkes, also known as Guido, and a group of conspirators attempted to blow up the houses of parliament. After Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603, English Catholics who had had a rough time under her reign had hoped that her successor, James I, would be more tolerant of their religion.
Alas, he was not, and this angered a number of young men who decided that violent action was the answer. One young man in particular, Robert Catesby, suggested to some close friends that the thing to do was to blow up the houses of parliament.
In doing so, they would kill the king, maybe even the prince of Wales, and the members of parliament who were making life difficult for the Catholics. To carry out their plan, the conspirators got hold of 36 barrels of gunpowder — and stored it in a cellar, just under the House of Lords.
But as the group worked on the plot, it became clear that some innocent people would be hurt or killed in the attack. Some of the plotters started having second thoughts. One of the group members even sent an anonymous letter warning his friend, Lord Monteagle, to stay away from the parliament on Nov 5.
But was there really a Gunpowder Plot, or were the “conspirators” framed by the king? There was no doubt about an attempt to blow up the parliament. But Guy Fawkes and his associates may have been caught in a Jacobean sting operation.
The letter warning one of the members of government to stay away from the parliament is believed today to have been fabricated by the king’s officials. Historians suggest that the letter was simply a tool for the king’s officials who already knew about the plot from the very mouth of one of the plotters.
As a tool for the king’s men, the letter was ideal. It made it easy to explain how the king found out about the plot and stopped it just in time before his untimely death. At the same time, the letter was vague enough to give the officials all the latitude they wanted in falsifying confessions and to pursue their own anti-Catholic ends.
There are two fundamental problems with the letter. First, the letter was unsigned. Any and all of the conspirators, once apprehended, might have saved themselves from torture and perhaps even death if they had claimed to have written it. None did.
In fact, none of the conspirators who were caught appears to have known about the letter. Secondly, the letter was very vague in its content. It said nothing about the details of the planned attack. Still, the king and his men knew exactly the where and when to catch the conspirators and stop the plot.
It is interesting that the attack on the Indian parliament happened when the government was on the mat on a corruption charge levelled by its own auditors. Any Guy Fawkes who might have wanted to harm the parliament has ended up, with last week’s terrorist attack, saving the government without, mercifully, really attaining its first and main stated objective.
I have been talking to opposition deputies and government officials. What I have learnt from them in a nutshell is this: India has shown resilience in the past to withstand worse assaults on its democracy and civil society. What it hasn’t experienced yet and may well have to contend with, in a growing atmosphere of ethnic and religious mistrust being deliberately generated by official policies, is the rise of our own version of George Speight.
The Fijian businessman took his country’s predominantly ethnic Indian parliamentarians hostage last year on a sons-of-the-soil slogan. Worse he became a hero and a popular cult figure among ethnic Fijians.
The Indian opposition today looks like the coalition of the ousted Fijian prime minister Mahendra Choudhary, an ethnic Indian, accused of being a foreigner. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s government, which plays the them-and-us game with impunity with its minorities and completely falsely accuses the opposition of pampering India’s Muslims and Christians, is rewriting spurious history in such a way that ends up endorsing, without saying it, the primacy and superiority of an Indian version of Gen Sitiveni Rabuka or later Speight, in a game of parochial nationalism.
That is the real threat to the parliament house and the ideals it enshrines, not from incendiary fanatics. As we all know, Mrs Gandhi’s assassination, painful as it was to all of us, was not a fraction more threatening to the country’s survival than the anti-Sikh pogroms that followed it. This is the key lesson the rulers of India seem to forget when it comes to the crunch as it did last week.
A. B. S. Jafri
FIRST of all, wish you a very Happy Eid celebration and a lot of happiness to follow in the days till once again we are lavishing Eid greetings and good wishes upon one another. It is an occasion to feel good and also to make others around feel good, if not better. True joy is the best gift life has to offer. It grows and multiplies in the proportion it is shared. It never diminishes for giving away;, only enlarges, deepens, stays with us longer.
How much of sharing we generally do, beyond our closest kith and kin? In some cases, not all of us are inclined to stir a step out of our circle to share this joy with others. Little piques sometimes become more pinching in moments of accelerated sentiment. Eid brings such uneasy moments also.
Sharing of happiness is something that would merit a moment of introspection. When the ‘haves’ believe they are sharing happiness, they may be doing only a kind of exchange — a gift for a gift, a smile for a smile. On both sides there is plenty of these expensive tidbits and the expansive smiles. This may be mere custom or just habit, not perhaps sharing.
True sharing is when what is shared is not normally available to the one it is being shared with. For instance, sharing a moment of release and relief from care with one who is careworn. True gift is to take some joy to the distressed, some succour to the stricken; some cheer to the desolate, some consolation to the distressed; some sustenance to the destitute, some company to the forlorn, and some balm to the bereaved.
Shall, we for a moment, take leave of the joyous ambiance in which we believe we are at the moment? This momentary furlough is sought for a thought for the guy less favoured than we in our respective places might this day be. There is so much we hear and read that makes us feel good. Also a lot that throws into relief that is not so heart-warming.
The other day we were reminded that the number of juvenile inmates in our prisons in and around Karachi runs into hundreds, possibly thousands. One moment bereft of freedom and dignity is a dark eternity. Many of these mere boys and girls have spent years in prison. Think of the teenage prisoner, just a girl or a boy, who should be in school or in the playing field — today in prison.
Shall we for a moment today tune in with Poet Bedil whom Mirza Ghalib pays such respectful tribute. Bedil begs the breeze, the saba...
Paish-e-ma qissa-e-dil hai giriftar bey go...
(Tell me tales of hearts in captivity...)
In a society where Karo-Kari, and customs even more cruel, are still the ‘done’ thing, you are left only to worry and wonder. Who can tell for certain how many women in Karachi’s prisons have been denied even the crumbs of a trial, or told why they have been thrown into prison without due process. Many of them are breast-feeding their little innocent — in prison. A passing Eid thought for them — the mother and the child in prison, please.
In Edhi’s homes across the country, lost children live agonised days of uncertainty and apprehension. At the other end, may be the distraught parents are groping in the dark, not knowing how and where their lost little one may be — if it be alive at all. Thought may also fly this morning to the terminally sick in the city hospitals and the hospice. Next door in Afghanistan all one can imagine is misery, distress and destitution — a situation so supremely heart-rending that one might simply pity the living, envy the dead.
In five weeks or so from this Eid we should expect to be celebrating what in common parlance is the ‘Bari Eid,’ the big or the grand Eid. That is (or was originally?) meant to be a festival, celebrating the noble sentiment and deed we call sacrifice. In this Islamic republic of ours millions of animals would be slaughtered. That would be replicating a gesture of sacrifice, not sacrifice per se, or sacrifice in itself.
Offering one’s innocent son is one thing, offering the offspring of animals is, a ritual — precious little else. To equate it, or mistake it for that selfless, noble act of sacrifice is being either naive or just indifferent to the world of difference between the word and its content.
The father needed the son, as all father ever will. He offered his son. That was sacrifice — giving away what you need most for yourself. Thousands in Pakistan will sacrifice, come Eidul Adha, not just one lamb but many. Mostly to impress the Joneses next door. That would be a lot of show, little of sacrifice. In Karachi we have more people with more money than they know what to do with, least of all what it is to make a sacrifice.
How to celebrate Eidul Fitr and be happy by giving away, and then, how to enrich yourself by sacrifice on Eidul Azha, are the two lessons these festivals should help us learn. It would be easier to do so if we keep ourselves reminded in every happy moment of ours that...
Ghum
ek cheeze hai duniya mein jo kamyab nahien. Not an irrelevant thought for the happy day of Eid-i-Saeed.
The end of Ramazan for some years seems to coincide with the arrival of winter in Karachi. Winter in Karachi is a very relative thing, and those who live in Lahore or Islamabad will, with some justification, feel that we (Karachiites, that is) really have no such season. The weather has become a bit chilly — usually mornings, and evening onward — only during this past week.
The end of Ramazan and the celebration of Eid will now be followed by several weeks of parties and charity balls. It’s quite a social time of the month, especially for the begums and begums-in-the-making. The latter are your twenty-somethings, all working, most of them foreign educated, most not married (looking around) who wait every year for the winter season to show off their gym-trained bodies, wearing figure-hugging dresses (made or copied usually from Sonya Batla, Nadya Shah, Maria B, Deepak Perwani, or perhaps the odd import) or slinky pants and very fitted tops. Winter has always been a good time to party in Karachi, with hordes of young people from Lahore and Islamabad coming down for the many balls and soirees that happen.
This time, festivities begin from this coming weekend. There is a ball at the Yacht Club, followed by the annual Winter Ball at the Sindh Club (apparently for which tables ran out in less than a couple of hours), the Lady Dufferin event, and this big do — at Rs 5,000 per person — on New Year’s Eve organized by the Marie Adelaide Leprosy Foundation. The first weekend of January has the ball organized by the Old Grammarians’ Society — much anticipated because last year’s at the French Beach was a massive success.
Some of my older friends and colleagues are quite fed up with balls and parties. “Thank you, but we rather have a few people, who we know well, over and have a nice quiet evening. Why would we want to spend five thousand rupees to go have fun on New Year’s Eve,” they say. And then there are others, usually the twenty-somethings, who live by this time of the year. “You tell me, what else is there to do in this city? Why does it bother people if some of us want to have a good time? So, what if the tickets cost a lot? No one is forcing anyone to go anywhere.”
Like they say, to each his/her own.
Sharks at the beach
There is no shortage of sharks in this world. However, there is a variety — of sharks, that is — which can be found even on land. Until now sharks were known only to live in the sea but these days a new variety of sharks can also be encountered on the shores of the Arabian Sea, Seaview to be precise. The beach around Seaview holds almost divine attraction for many people. The pollution-free fresh ocean air is good for your health and with all those restaurants and eating places it really is the perfect place to spend a leisurely evening with your family or friends.
That is exactly what a newly-married couple decided to do a few days back when they went on a long drive and stopped over at Beach Avenue for a snack. But it wasn’t exactly the aroma of their chicken tikka that attracted three armed ‘sharks’ (of the land variety) to them. Three gunmen (our land sharks) approached them and asked the, quite literally, for a lift. The couple had no choice but to comply. The groom offered the man his car keys and told them that they could take off on their own. The men said no, and ordered both husband and wife to get in the car, before driving off. The armed men drove the car around a bit while forcing the couple to keep their heads down between their knees, below the level of the car’s windows.
After some time, the ‘sharks’ told the couple that they were going to demand ransom worth a million rupees and that the wife would have to stay while the husband goes and arranges the money. However, since the banks were closed nothing could be done till the morning. The woman had to stay overnight, until the father-in-law came and delivered the ransom.
This story, however, has a slightly happy ending. The wife was set free as soon as the ransom was paid and the men did nothing to her, although everyone was warned not to report this to the police. Surely, this kidnapping does not even enter the CPLC’s statistics.
Dying young
The other day I noticed a billboard in the Clifton Boat Basin area with the message: “Don’t sell cigarettes to children below eighteen”. Unfortunately, this law is hardly ever practised by any cigarette or pan shop.
Incidentally, that same day a friend came over and talked how difficult she was finding forcing her teenaged son to give up his recently acquired smoking habit. Being quite the open sort, she said she didn’t bring up the issue of morality or anything like that, telling her son that he shouldn’t smoke simply because it was pretty bad for his health.
She told him of an uncle who smoked and how he coughed all the time and had teeth that were more black than white. The son replied: “But he’s old and has lived a great life for so many years.” My friend also has a daughter who is nine who, thankfully, hates smoking. According to this girl’s piano teacher, my friend told me, most teenagers, especially those at some of the leading schools in the city, smoke.
My friend then quoted her friend, a mother of a sixteen-year-old, saying: “They think it’s cool. The other day at my daughter’s party, most of her friends were smoking openly in our lawn and were not even embarrassed. And I was around.”
So, who is to blame for this? The media, because it has cigarette ads where smoking is equated with being cool, with being in charge of things, being a man? Should are cricketers or musicians be blamed since they readily endorsing tobacco products in the quest for more and more money? Or, maybe the parents who seem to be so caught up with their own busy lives that they have no idea what their kids do?
Why talk like that?
In the mood for self-flagellation? For an assault on your sensory perceptions, tune into FM 101 in the evenings and listen to some of their advertisements. There is one promoting a well-known clothing store in Karachi (it’s main store is at The Point) which stalks the air waves for any unwary listener.
It will be a miracle if anyone can manage to make out anything beyond the nasal twang and squeals of the person doing the voice-over in the ad. Or of cliches like ‘the latest in fashion’ or ‘the new you and clothes with a mystical appeal’ (how clothes can have a mystical appeal is beyond me).
Now the question I would like to ask these FM DJs is that why do they all — well most of them — have this fake accent? I mean why pretend as if you’ve lived in America or somewhere when you haven’t? Why not speak in a plain desi/Pakistani accent since you do happen to live in Pakistan? After all, many of us have lived several years in America or the UK but our accents never changed. Something that the producers of these shows might want to look into, that is if they themselves don’t suffer from this ‘accent-itis’.
— By Karachian
There are indications that Washington would soon turn its attention towards the Kashmir issue. According to diplomatic circles here, the US is expected soon to issue a policy statement on the matter. These diplomatic circles believe that militancy in Kashmir, and particularly the Indian allegations that many non- Kashmiris were taking part in the militant activities inside Indian held Kashmir, was likely to be on top of the US agenda. An impression, therefore,is gaining ground here that Pakistan may soon come under pressure from the US to close the Pakistani based militant networks. This, it is believed, would serve as a major test for Musharraf government that had claimed that its post- September 11 Afghan policy had saved Pakistan’s crucial strategic interests like the nuclear assets and the Kashmir issue.
It is naive to believe that in the aftermath of September 11 tragedy the Kashmir issue would remain unaffected. But, before we are faced with a situation like the one which confronted us on the night between September 11 and 12, why can’t we take a fresh look at our Kashmir policy on our own and reshape it on the basis of new ground realities? And what are these new realities? First, a predominantly anti-Pakistan government has been put in the saddle in Kabul. Second, a good number of Pakistani troops as well as air force have been mobilized to seal the Afghan border to stop those very Taliban, whom we had supported all these five years, and the Al Qaeda warriors from crossing over to Pakistani territory. This deployment is likely to remain in place for many years to come. Third, the US has three air-bases in Pakistan with the Jacobabad air base designated to assume a permanency of sorts. Fourth, the US troops and the proposed UN-sponsored UK-led multinational peace force are expected to remain in the neighbouring Afghanistan for at least the next 5-10 years. Fifth, the reconstruction and rehabilitation work in Afghanistan, which is expected to be taken in hand within the next six months, is likely to last for over the next 20 years with Pakistan playing a very important role because of its 2,500km long porous border with Afghanistan and also because Pakistan is the only sea-outlet available formally to this land-locked country under the Afghan Transit Trade Agreement (ATTA). Sixth, we would ourselves need peace and stability in the country for the next 50 years in order to make the most of the new economic bonanza now being offered to us by the rich world. Seventh, India is not America, nor is it Israel and Pakistan on the other hand is neither Afghanistan nor is it Palestine Authority. And both the South Asian neighbours are nuclear powers of sorts. These seven elements would make it impossible for domestic Jihadi forces to enjoy the political pre- eminence that they had done prior to September 11. And these very elements will also hold the hand of India from embarking on any ill-advised misadventure against Pakistan. In fact the emerging realities springing out of these elements would not allow India and Pakistan to continue to keep the Kashmir pot on the boil as that would surely pose a threat to the peace in the region, an essential requirement for restoring economic stability in South and West Asia.
Both Mr. Bush and Mr. Sharon are trying to get rid of their perceived enemies by following the dictum: Give the dog a bad name and hang him. The US and Israel call those of their victims, who try to pay them back in their own coins, as terrorists and bomb them. India has been spoiling to follow suit since day one. After having failed to keep Pakistan out of the US-led coalition against international terrorism, New Delhi tried to implicate Pakistani-based Jihadi groups first in a sham plane hi