IN the early days of the Iranian revolution there were a bunch of Shia zealots who called themselves Hojjatiyeh. They believed their faith would take them straight to Paradise and they prayed and worked hard for the arrival of the Mehdi to take them there. Now contrary to his much-maligned image Ayatollah Khomeini was quite wary of the Hojjatiyeh. One day he heard of a plot that was apparently hatched by the leaders of this secretive lot, to chuck incendiary bombs into the Soviet Union, or carry out some terrorist acts across the northern border with the specific aim of inviting immediate communist retribution.

Their idea was that as soon as the Russians came charging at them, the Americans would come to defend the aggrieved Iran from the other side, and so there would be a Third World War. The pious Shias would go to Heaven and everyone else, including the Baathist Saddam Hussein, would go to their well-deserved Hell. Khomeini, I am told, ordered a prompt crackdown on the lethal juveniles and put all of them in the cooler from where they were never released in his lifetime.

This story was told to me by a former Indian ambassador to Tehran who had excellent contacts in the ruling elite, chiefly with the charismatic Ayatollah Beheshti, the probable source of this particular insight.

The death wish of Osama bin Laden too is rooted in his belief that he knows by heart the route to Heaven. The concept of Islamic Qayamat, Judeo-Christian Armageddon, and the Hindu Pralay hangs over our heads like the sword of Damocles. But religion is not the only thing that drives people towards a contemplation of death by mass conflagration as a divine virtue.

A very dear Indian diplomat, a woman diplomat to be sure, was ready recently to die for her country rather than accept the terrorism, which she said was being foisted on India by Pakistan. She was contemplating a nuclear war and was quite ready to sacrifice her two lovely school-going children in the process. I am quite certain that a similar sentiment prevails among sections of the patriotic establishment in Pakistan and in all the countries that do not think like the Swiss.

When I asked some Swiss folks recently though to explain how they expected to live as a nation when they were not producing enough Swiss babies to grow into a future Swiss nation, they said in unison: “Who cares?” But that is obviously not the attribute of the rest of the world, or at least of much of the rest of the world.

Sometimes, the logic of ultra patriotism is as baffling as the nicely veiled secret wish of say an interlocutor who leaves the table abruptly from a fairly agreeable conversation only to jump off the nearby ledge. When Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh carried four or five alleged criminals to Kandahar a year or two ago, the idea was to save the lives of the hostages of the hijacked Indian plane. Tres bien. But to get back Masood Azhar whom New Delhi itself had released, ostensibly to save a hundred odd Indian citizens from certain death, the Indian government was till very recently willing and may even today be ready to wage a nuclear war that according to Indian estimates would leave Pakistan annihilated, and cost India a mere 40 or 50 million lives of her own citizens, if citizen is an appropriate word in such a nightmarish context!

Ask any senior minister about the chances of a nuclear war and they would say: Ye Chinta Ka Vishay Nahi Hai (There’s nothing in it for you to worry about). Be that as it may, let’s look at Pakistan. Did the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto ever taste even a blade of grass that he was getting the nation prepared to eat if that is what it took to build a bomb? I asked Benazir Bhutto during her recent visit to Delhi: Now that you have the bomb, has the quality of cuisine improved in your country? She said comparison with her father’s policies was always very embarrassing since he and she represent two different periods in time. Fair enough. There’s some hope.

We have discussed the minds of Khomeini, Osama bin Laden, of manic nationalists. But how come no serious attempt is ever made to find out if the man who sees himself as the un-elected chief executive of the world, the world’s most powerful man is — well — all there. President George W. Bush has the demeanour of a cowboy. Now he didn’t even know the names of the leaders of India and Pakistan before he became president. So who are his friends whose names he will not forget? I know Ariel Sharon is one. We know he has a lot of oil interests and he can, therefore, wage wars to secure those interests. But what kind of a person is he otherwise? Is he a religious person? He should be. Does he believe in Doomsday and if so does he believe he could bring it about? What if the world is dealing with an American version of the Hojjatiyeh without quite knowing it.

Some facts that are readily available are not very encouraging. For example we all know that Iran and Iraq are evil since any trouble in their backyard would send the price of oil through the roof. That would suit the Bush administration’s key plank of digging more oil from America’s domestic reserves. Higher oil prices would also be helpful for American companies to get involved in the pipeline business to tap oil and gas reserves of Central Asia. But what wrong had poor North Korea done for the Bush administration to first stall talks with Pyongyang and then to name it as the third leg of the evil troika. My hunch is that this stance is not completely bereft of inputs from the maverick South Korean Reverend Sun Myung Moon of the Korea-based American Unification Church, who is also linked closely with the proprietorship of the Washington Times. Every other day there is a Moonie prophecy that the world is coming to an end. Is it shared by the American presidents who believe in him?

But there is something more to it. I’m sure you’ve all heard this conservative myth. “We won the cold war because we invested in Star Wars and it broke the Soviet economy trying to keep up, and they collapsed.” That idea is a Moonie idea and it’s a rewrite of history. The credit for the reforms in the Soviet Union go to Gorbachev who realized through his own vision that they were better off with personal freedom. Reagan’s hard line and “Evil Empire” statements made Gorbachev’s work much harder and Reagan’s work, backed by the Moonies through the Washington Times could have triggered World War III.

Here are Reverend Moon’s own words in 1997: “In 1975, around the time when America was retreating from Vietnam, American morale was incredibly low.” Was there any politician talking about anti-communism at that time? Only Reverend Moon. He was talking not only about anti-communism but about victory over communism. Certain things that Father has said seemed crazy at that time but look what has happened — every prediction Father made became reality. This is the reason that American politicians and the American president all respect Father.

That’s why, during that Reagan era the restoration of the economy occurred, which they called ‘Reaganomics’. It’s true; it’s the reality of history. Many of you don’t know that during the election of 1980 nobody thought that Reagan would win. Even the Republican party thought he could not win certain states no matter how much money they could spend. Therefore, they closed up the Reagan Republican campaign HQ in certain cities. For example in New York City there was no Republican campaign. It was the Same for New York state, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Connecticut. In those six states there was nothing. But Father knew they would win, and said so what happened? At the end of the day when the election was completed, all six states were victorious and a great victory came nationwide. Father predicted it the night before in the News World”.

Armageddon, Antichrist, nuclear holocaust, polar shifts. Be it a new millennium, planetary alignment or a comet, doomsday prophets have a field day with their end of the world predictions. But is there really any rational basis for such an apocalyptic outlook?

First the bad news. By prophetic consent, this millennium portends doom for the world. Now the good news. Forget about paying off debts, postpone confessing to your latest sin, break your New Year promises. Why give a hoot to a world that’s going to end anyway? As the bedraggled D-day monger at the street corner puts it: “Rejoice, for the end of the world is nigh!” But is it? Can you really visualize good old earth coming to an ominous full stop? Perhaps Dubya knows better.

SINCE bureaucracy ruled supreme in this province for a longer period than in the other provinces, Quetta had never been owned by anyone on the top. The officials, who came for brief postings, were here only to complete their tenure. They completed their tenure merely to claim that they have served the whole of Pakistan, enriched their experience and thus fit to rule the rest of Pakistan. All such officials consequently got better posting at the federal level.

The better half of the Quetta city is controlled by the Cantonment Board and the remaining half is a shambles as civilians, mainly administrators, did not do justice to environment and civic problems of this provincial capital. After 50 years, some of its roads were recarpeted, repaired and renovated by the defunct QMC earlier last year or before the city government.

Successive governments, both bureaucratic and political, did not leave open spaces for breathing, nor they constructed parks or built playgrounds for healthy sports activities. Buildings of concrete were constructed within the four walls of the city government premises in Quetta itself.

One can find over a dozen such buildings on the site that should have been used as an open space or a big park in the main city centre. It wears the look of a jungle of concrete. At least the public money should not have been used in this crime of building a jungle of concrete.

Facing these challenges, the Quetta Development Authority is determined to combat rampant pollution, insanitation and dumps of filth by reducing congestion all around. It is undertaking projects to improve and widen the congested roads, including Khojak Road and Jinnah Road in the main city centre. The Chaman Road will be linked with Hockey Ground, diverting the heavy flow of traffic from the congested city centre. Basically, it is the Chaman Road being diverted to link up with the Hockey Stadium, Pishin bus terminal. The road is being improved and widened to accommodate the greater flow of traffic from the north to the city.

The second project is to link up the Hazar Ganji complex through a road running parallel to Sariab Road and Double Road catering to the needs of trucks carrying fruits, vegetables and other goods and also of passenger buses. The main idea is to reduce the density of traffic sharing the load on the parallel road.

The Old Mastung Road will be linked with Sibi Road through Mian Gundi, reducing the distance considerably and giving direct access to the traffic coming from Chaghai and also from the Iranian Balochistan towards Karachi. The overland and legal trade with Iran is being done using this route only. The first phase will complete by June.

Another black spot is Chaman Pattak where people face difficulties because of unwarranted congestion. The QDA is planning to build an underpass for smooth flow of traffic. To divert the load of traffic from the congested roads, a flyover is being built connecting Joint Road and White Road.

The main Habib Nullah, basically a stormwater drain built by Britons, is being covered at two spots — one on the main Jinnah Road and the other near the Grammar School premises — providing a huge parking lot for the increasing number of vehicles. The idea is to discourage parking on the main Jinnah Road and increase the flow of traffic. A number of roads, including Brewery Road, are also being improved and widened to cater the needs for greater flow of traffic.

With the shifting of the bus terminal and the truck stand, the widening and improving of various roads and the construction of the fly-over and the underpass at Chaman Pattak, all these would help to reduce the level of pollution in Quetta, known to be on top in Pakistan. However, the chief engineer, Amir Bakhsh Mengal, took exception to the move by private bus operators to have their private bus terminals on the pattern of other cities of the world, including Zahedan. The big bus companies are planning to build their own bus terminals within the city limits. They have bought huge plots and are busy building the bus terminal. “It is illegal and unauthorized. It should be discouraged by all concerned,” the chief engineer said.

The QDA has undertaken the job to build a big park in Jinnah Town, a new settlement within the Quetta city limits. The QDA has acquired 14 acres for the park. At the same time, a medium-sized stadium is also being built to facilitate sports activities in Quetta. Another park is being built on a plot to be vacated after the shifting of the bus and truck terminals.