THE fact that now doctors are being targeted and killed in this society, cannot but be a very serious affair, symptomatic of deeper maladies that we as a people suffer from. Having said that it is natural to wonder why it is happening, and strangely and ironically, no plausible theory on the causes is still available.

Just pause once again, while we say that doctors in this developing society are being shot dead at work or home, or wherever they appear as sitting ducks. Are we unhappy with the way doctors work or live? What is lacking? I dare say that we need doctors, and need them desperately is something no one can deny, not even those who are behind the killing of doctors.

But who is behind the killing of doctors. In fact, repeat who is behind the killing in cold blood of a lot of other people who are regarded as opinion makers, and leaders of society at different levels? Why can’t we find the answers, the culprits? Must we only mourn in helplessness all the time? Official answer doesn’t even console, marginally.

As one expresses anger and even disgust at what surely must be a form of this society’s perversion by expressing itself in this brutal manner, it is apt to mention a simple experience that I had when I met Dr Ali Jaffer Naqvi, on a quiet evening in one of the city’s better known hospitals. Asked what he was doing there during working hours, he replied that he had shifted to it because of some sort of threats that he was receiving. In retrospect, I must state that he was absolutely nonchalant about what he was saying, and his courage and capacity to dream are well-known to us. We both commented on the state of society, as always and that was all. He remained cool.

Then came the news late on Monday night (March 12) that he had been attacked when he was going to his residence with Dr Bilal and Shahnaz Ahad, two of his colleagues. There was some perspective in what he had said a week before this terrible incident. The good news is that he is safe, unhurt.

But there is generally awfully bad news on this score of doctors being targeted. The details of what the Pakistan Medical Association is doing is known and disturbing, particularly with reference to what patients are going through, as they suffer. Keep in mind the fact that the day the newspapers reported that the PMA had called for this strike (which continues and grows gradually in terms of time as one writes this on a (Friday evening), there was also the depressing story that “six men shot dead in separate incidents.” Just the opening paragraph which said: “A member of a religious party and his associate were shot dead at the party’s office in Shah Faisal Colony on Monday night, police said.” Once again the details are well-known. Keep in mind the underlying context that the doctors are possibly being killed on a sectarian basis. A matter of deep shame for all of us where are we heading?

With the result of these doctors’ killings and Shah Faisal Colony incident, the cumulative impact of it was that on Monday afternoon, until late in the evening the main artery of the Sindh capital, was closed, as hundreds of protesters mourned on the main road. And when the law enforcing agencies tried to disperse them, they turned violent. More loss to society took place as an “irate crowd” torched vehicles, banks, a cinema-house and a hospital, before and after the funeral procession,” said one news report in an English daily, and what happened with the closure of Sharea Faisal is a long story, as hundreds and hundreds of people found themselves trapped, and their assorted schedules for the day delayed, even ruined. Strange.

Take the case of passengers going to the Jinnah International airport during these several hours of a deplorable closure. There were no options and only agonising alternatives like going through Gulistan-i-Jauhar and Old area of Drigh Road, or Malir Cantonment via Model Colony. And to think that the Sharea Faisal was a road that was always open. One by one all preconceived notions and certainties are being dismantled.

Let me return to the theme of doctors. Their status. We thought we needed doctors in this society and the young wanted to be doctors (still do as we all know). Why have they been focused upon is something that makes one contemplate. Where do they figure in the desperately-sought social change here? Is it because they symbolise material success in Pakistani society? Not they alone do this. Others too. But they are in a profession that is regarded as noble. Still regarded as noble, adds a cynical colleague. And perhaps the hurt that comes from doctors disappointing patients in a variety of ways is a reason why there is apparently little or no sympathy on the subject of a NWFP ban on private practice by doctors who are employed by the government (federal or provincial). Evidently it is a touchy issue, and there are arguments on both sides, and the issue is alive in the North West Frontier Province. From the look of things the ban is going to move in the direction of other provinces too, and on this count, too, doctors are perturbed, agitated and some even feel helpless. For the way employment opportunities now go, and the way the image of the green passport holder has declined, is something that should bring home the message to doctors that it may not be that easy to go overseas. Not any more.

Doctors and private practice. That is one issue that has surfaced once again. For years, I have been there in varying degrees of urgency. Doctors being killed, this is, of recent origin, but it has been going on for some time, enough to warrant urgent serious measures on a grim theme. What worries those who live in the city is whether it will turn worse, with yet another category of professionals being targeted next. Scary city, really.

In all this, there is something else that one should be concerned about, something that reflects on Karachi and its image. I am not one of those who will concede that crime in Karachi is akin to that of crime in other urban cities, the world over. The rot in the apple here is growing. Officialdom helpless, and the affluent don’t care as they gradually switch to private armed guards in their elusive search for security at home and in the office.

IN his homecoming after close to three decades of exile, deposed king Mohammad Zahir Shah faces an agonizing dilemma. He returns to a country which has been overwhelmingly devastated, depopulated and is under effective control of foreign military forces. Hard ground realities tend to make a cruel mockery of his royal status and delivers a blow to his quintessential national / tribal Pakhtoon pride.

Deeply conscious of his personal dilemma as a long dethroned king, Zahir Shah roundly denounces the on-going war imposed on the Afghan land and the people by the US-led coalition forces. In an interview to the Italian daily La Stampa he said: “It is a stupid and useless war and it would be better to stop it immediately. My people have always fought for freedom and democracy.”

Coming as it does from a man of few words not given to media publicity and that too on the eve of his return to Kabul — less than a fortnight away (should all go well) — Zahir Shah’s statement makes his royal requiem for his land and the people. In the first place, it sets a limit to the Afghan gratitude to America for saving it from the Taliban tyranny. In the second, it warns America not to overly exploit its standing as the putative saviour of the Afghan people from the horrors of an overextended civil war.

Now, therefore, is the time more than ever, for America to quit and stop its military operations. The ongoing land-air operation’s code-named Anaconda, after a deadly reptile like the boa-constrictor, which encircle and crushes its prey until it is dead.

By far the fiercest area operation yet concentrating on the eastern flank of the ‘Afghan theatre’ — Paktia-Gardez — Anaconda has accounted for the largest number of casualties. Well over 500 are reported dead and an unknown number wounded through day and night strikes. Straddling Khost, the second major border crossing-point after Khyber, Paktia is also a predominantly Pathan area.

Apart from foreign ‘dead-enders’ mainly Arabs, still supposedly engaged in their battle for survival, the worst to suffer inescapably remain the Afghan — Pathans.

A circumstance like this, besides — heavy damage to lives and property, is bound to widen the divide between Pathans and non-Pathans to compound the task of setting up a broadbased government in Kabul.

After Tora Bora, yet another predominantly Pathan area, Paktia- Gardez has been the worst hit. While Tora Bora was targeted as the principal hideout of Osama bin Laden and Mulla Omar, Paktia- Gardez remains under attack as the last remaining outpost of the Al Qaeda stragglers fighting for survival.

In a demographic matrix, overwhelmingly Pathan, it would not be much of a problem to haul up any stray individual, brand him as an Al Qaeda man and hang him. Aerial and long-range artillery bombardments, in any case, make no discrimination between the ordinary civilian and an Al Qaeda guerilla fighter.

Operation Anaconda would appear to have a tactical / operational open-endedness and could go on for as long as it might take. Gen Tommy Franks, C-in-C of US Central Command and the overall military commander in Afghanistan, would go ahead with his campaign until the main objective — complete elimination of the Al Qaeda fighters — is achieved.

In a recent statement he defined his strategy as follows:

“What happens in any time we conduct a military operation, what we will do is we’ll first off take into account his enemy and how an (an) enemy may be disposed.... Tora Bora was considered as we decided what we are going to do for Anaconda.’

Just the same, Gen Franks might well put it to himself if Anaconda is not going to end as inconclusively as Tora Bora in terms of achieving the ultimate objective. At Tora Bora, it had been the capture of Osama and Mulla Omar, dead or alive. It failed as both managed to escape. Anaconda seemed to be headed for much the same fate, only at a horrendous cost of precious Afghan land and the people.

The big question now is: Whether Anaconda, or its follow-up phase, would still be in operation when Zahir Shah returns. In all likelihood it would be, even, if with reduced intensity and in a lowered profile. In either case, it would hardly make a setting fit for the royal homecoming. The king would return to a land under invasion by foreign forces to the east and the south and in the grip of an internecine conflict to the north, centre and elsewhere.

Hamid Karzai, the interim head of the state and the government, would want the US-led and the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to stay until the last of Al Qaeda ‘terrorists’ is wiped out. He would say nothing about its phased withdrawal. The question for him to consider seriously is, what sort of welcome has he in store for the deposed Shah in a country which has been vastly devastated and brutally overrun by foreign forces and its own warring overlords?

Zahir Shah’s own ‘royal’ dilemma would be whether or not to return at all to a country in the shadow of foreign power, and their military forces. Above all, while the ‘useless and stupid war’ is still on.

The writer is a retired brigadier of the army.

BEFORE the internal combustion engine overtook our lives, existence in the Walled City of Lahore had two basic paces ... human and equestrian. Today, a variety of speeds, smells and sounds exist ... pleasant, neutral and some downright obnoxious.

We all tend to forget the immense contribution of the horse to life as we know it today. It would be interesting to see how the horse contributed to life in the Walled City over the last 1,000 years. Let us begin, as Lewis Carroll suggested, from the beginning. For me the beginning is how my father made me see the world and, more importantly, the ancient city in which our ancestors have lived over the centuries. He once took us to the Wazir Khan mosque. There he made us two brothers stand and close our eyes. “Imagine yourself in the times of the Mughal emperors, caravans from Samarkand stand before you in the courtyard outside this mosque, and beautiful horses stand all over. Merchants are selling all kinds of exotic ware. It is truly a bazaar of the East. Imagine. Imagine and then slowly open your eyes”. The effect was magical. I can still feel that thrill of the courtyard today.

If you stand in the open space outside the Wazir Khan mosque, you can well imagine how life was then. Certainly a few major changes have taken places like plastic water-piping and plastic goods can be seen, as well as bicycles and motorcycles all over the place. But if you look hard enough, you can actually see where the horses stood and there is a beautiful water trough for the animals even today. Here stand tongas as they have stood for hundreds of years, and the lanes and ‘mohallahs’ are still named after the horse.

The area just outside is known as the ‘nakkaskhana’, or the horse house, for here once stood a huge horse stable where horses were rested. A small portion of that ‘nakkaskhana’ still exists, only claimants in the 1947 deluge of refugees overtook it. The entire area to the east of the mosque is known as Mohallah Nakkas, or the Horse Mohallah. This is still a wide road on both sides of which people brought their horses to be sold. However, just outside Akbari Gate, which is where the road leads, was a very large ground, and this was known, and is still known, as ‘Nakkas Mandi.’ No horses are sold there today, but this is where the largest horse market of the Punjab once existed.

Just opposite it is the Landa Bazaar, which came up just as the Sikh period was drawing to a close, and here the huge havelis or palaces of the horse traders existed. With time these havelis were demolished to make way for commercialization. Eventually, with British imperialism creaming away our national wealth, the condition of the poor grew from bad to worse, and a huge secondhand clothes and shoes market sprang up. This is not only still thriving, but growing as actual poverty grows.

The condition of the horses was of paramount importance to the rulers. Be it the Mughals, the Sikhs or even the British, it seems that the welfare of the horse was a very important aspect of governance. The Sikhs appointed ‘nakkas santris’ who went round all over the city inspecting the physical condition of horses. One account, as quoted in the delightful book published by the Fakir family on “The Real Ranjit Singh,” tells of how a man, who ruthlessly beat up his horse, was whipped publicly in the ‘nakkaskhana’ for one hour and made to sit with a blackened face backwards on the same horse, a lesson to others on how important the horse was to the Maharajah. An old saying in the Walled City even today describes being striped for striping a horse.

The British added to such punishment with even stricter checking, and adding a 15-day jail sentence as part of the law. Today it is common to see old wounded animals being beaten mercilessly and overloaded till they actually are left dangling in the air. The sad part is that today people actually laugh at such a situation, a sad reflection of the society we have become. It is hard to imagine that the horse, that favourite animal of our Holy Prophet (peace be upon him), is degraded and mistreated by a people whose ancestors prided in producing the speediest breed of horses in the Punjab.

The entire track from Akbari Gate curving round near Mochi Gate and going on towards Bhati Gate was one long race track, where soldiers and kings raced and played polo and other games on horseback. The famous “Slave Emperor” of India, Qutabuddin Aibak, died from a horsefall just outside Lahori Gate and is buried there. It was Mr ZA Bhutto who ordered that a tomb befitting the emperor be built on his modest and ignored grave in a small room in an insignificant and hidden house. But everywhere you look inside the Walled City, you will find traces of the contribution of the horse to our lives.

What is important today is for us to get together and honour the horse and his contribution to life in Lahore as we know it today. The old water troughs must not be knocked down in the name of development, or to make way for yet another ugly concrete structure. The old ‘nakkaskhana’ stables, now occupied by dozens of claimants, must be renovated and converted into a museum honouring the horse. The outer gardens of the Walled City, or the few that remain, must have their horse tracks restored and, perhaps, used as jogging tracks.

But as Lahore is a living museum with a history over not centuries, but thousands of years, there is a need to control what has replaced the horse. Today exceptionally noisy rickshaws ply inside the silent lanes, making life miserable. Secluded as it might seem, the passing of a rickshaw means that people in the same room cannot hear one another talk. Such is the misery of those living inside the Walled City. Just because they are very poor people, our system does not cater to their needs.

In another piece we talked of the famous horses of Maharajah Ranjit Singh, and how he waged a war with Afghanistan just to secure a horse, and how the dust was settled in the city so that the nostrils of the magnificent animal were not polluted. But then times have changed, only we are going towards disaster with both our eyes open, unlike the one-eyed Maharajah of the past.