| October 30, 2002 | Wednesday | Sha’aban 23,1423 |
Residential scheme fails to take off
A glittering event
Election: geopolitical fallout
Pakistan should do well against Zimbabwe
POST-ELECTION Pakistan, once again, finds itself face-to- face with a complex political and geostrategic setting portending an uncertain future. Its political challenge emerges from the badly-fractured electoral verdict, and geostrategic complexities from the presence of foreign military forces; a not- too-friendly irreconcilably anti-Taliban Afghanistan to the west, and an inimical India to the east.
IT looks like Pakistan is stuck with the image of a country with a terrorist problem, no matter how hard it tries to shake off that image through cooperation with the US in the fight against terrorism.
Last week the Indian prime minister called Pakistan a terrorist state, and vowed to destroy this demon of terrorism. During the past fortnight, at least two articles have appeared in the American press beating the drum on Pakistan’s terrorist “credentials”.
The first was published on Oct 17 accusing Pakistan of helping to fuel North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme with equipment. Another appeared on Oct 23 reiterating the accusation that Pakistan was providing technology and possibly even uranium to North Korea’s nuclear programme, and calling Pakistan a “base from which nuclear technology, fundamentalist terrorism and life-destroying heroin are spread around the globe”.
Is it mere coincidence that this renewed propaganda against Pakistan as a terrorist state has come after the recent elections?
Pakistan has repeatedly sought to assure the world, in words and in action, that it is against terrorism and is a committed ally in the war against international terrorism. Islamabad was quick to condemn the Moscow theatre hostage crisis when it erupted last Wednesday. The week before, the joint US-Pakistan military exercises held on Pakistan soil was the latest show of Pakistan’s commitment to counter-terrorism.
Ongoing/earlier cooperation by Pakistan in the anti- terrorism war include allowing American security agencies like the FBI to conduct investigations in Pakistan on suspected Al Qaeda men and their supporters, and offering logistics and communications support to American troops hunting for al Qaeda remnants in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Besides, Pakistan leaders have consciously avoided criticizing the US or its policies in public, unlike the Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad who is known for occasional bouts of biting anti-US rhetoric although his country remains a committed ally against terrorism.
Yet early this month Pakistan was blacklisted by the US justice department and lumped in a group of 15 “terrorist-risk” countries, including Malaysia. Apart from Pakistan and Malaysia, the other countries cited were North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Egypt, Somalia and Indonesia.
It is an eye-opener that the Philippines, which has had a high frequency of bomb blasts, is not on the list while Pakistan is. With the exception of North Korea and Cuba, who are on the list because of the anti-American regimes there, the rest are Muslim countries.
The US may be entitled to enact its own immigration laws for its own security concerns. But Pakistanis cannot help but feel that it is Pakistan’s status as a Muslim country that is behind the US administration’s decision to put Pakistan on the list. The decision authorizes US immigration inspectors to fingerprint, photograph and track “visiting aliens” who have travelled to the 15 “terrorist-risk” countries, including Pakistan, and cannot credibly explain their trips.
Although the new US ruling does not automatically apply to the Pakistanis visiting the US, it will reinforce American perceptions that Pakistan is a “terrorist state”. Already the Pakistanis abroad are facing great difficulties simply because of their nationality.
At airports and seaports, the Pakistanis are generally and automatically assumed to have terrorist inclinations unless they can prove otherwise. They are constantly at risk of being unjustly detained on technicalities or on the slightest suspicions by customs and immigration authorities.
Such social stigmatization plus accusations off and on that Pakistan is a terrorist state, notwithstanding its commitment in the fight against terrorism, naturally prompts the question whether Pakistan is getting the short end of the stick after cooperating with the US on the war against terror.
Pakistan’s commitment to the war against terror, in particular its allowing American security agencies to conduct investigations in Pakistan on people suspected to have links with Al Qaeda, has made the Pakistanis wonder if their civil rights in their own country are being unjustly trampled upon by foreign security agencies with the cooperation of their own government.
The disappearance of a noted doctor in Lahore last week, allegedly taken in for questioning by the FBI — although the government has denied it — has raised questions among Pakistani professionals in particular about their faith and confidence in the Pakistan’s judicial system in the face of US pressure on the Islamabad administration.
There is no doubt that the advantages of Pakistan being on the side of the US in the war against terrorism outweighs the disadvantages. The Pakistan government, even the new government that will be sworn in soon, cannot afford to back down in the war against terror.
But while Pakistan should be helping to defend the world and itself against terrorism, it should not be getting a raw deal in the process. Instead of its image abroad as a terrorist state being reduced by the government’s anti-terrorism efforts during the past year, it has come back full circle.
All efforts to create a favourable image for the country that is a vital ally in America’s war on terror has practically been reduced to nought by renewed international propaganda about Pakistan being a terrorist state. And so long as the image of it being a terrorist state stays, Pakistanis everywhere will always be unfairly treated with suspicion and discrimination.
Something definitely needs to be done about the terrorism image that Pakistan appears to be stuck with. Past experience has shown that it is not enough simply to engage a public relations consultancy company to try and sell a positive image of the country abroad. It has not worked so far for Pakistan’s image in the West. Neither has it worked for America’s image in the Muslim world.
THE Model Town residential scheme of the Sargodha Improvement Trust (SIT) was planned to provide facilities of safari park, mini stadium-cum-park, commercial plaza, mosques, club, hospital, post office, restaurant and spacious roads, besides 3,000 plots of various measurements, about 13 years ago.
The SIT miserably failed to deliver the goods due to appointment of trustees on political grounds. They allegedly joined hands with corrupt employees of the institution for personal gain. Since then, millions of rupees had been spent on development works and almost the entire allotments made. However, not even a single house or shop had been built so far, and the work which was allegedly completed with the substandard material is deteriorating. When the people would set up their houses here, neither sewerage nor the water supply would be in functioning condition and even the roads would have broken.
The SIT administration demanded Rs1,500 per marla from the allottees for the supply of gas and forcibly received the entire amount from them. The management has awarded a contract for the provision of gas and deposited about Rs42 million with the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited. The pipeline-laying work was suspended by the contractor and 24 kilometre pipeline is yet to be laid though a year has passed. The work, it is reported, will remain suspended until the entire development of Model Town is completed.
The allottees have demanded an impartial enquiry from the process of procurement of land to allotment of plots and the role of the trustees.
They have further demanded that this case be referred to NAB which can recover the damages.
NARCOTICS are being sold here in different areas under the patronage of the police, it is learnt.
An addict told Dawn on condition of anonymity that some people had been involved in drug trafficking since long in Fatima Jinnah Colony. He alleged a police officer was helping drug traffickers in return of heavy amounts. He further said one Qurban Butt was killed by the police a couple of years ago when he refused to pay a share to them.
THE Sargodha Tehsil Municipal Administration is facing criticism from the various contractors about the distribution of development works.
The TMA was provided funds worth Rs10 million but it initiated work of Rs65 million and accepted tenders for 207 schemes and allowed upgrading of 52 contractors to B category, although they were not qualified for it.
It was alleged that a team comprising five Naib Nazimeen headed by Imran Ghuman struck an underhand deal with some contractors and municipal employees.
There was already an uproar about the alleged corruption in the award of contracts to favourites. Iqrar Khan told this correspondent that the former Sargodha tehsil Nazim, now MNA-elect, had awarded contract for collection of toll to his favourite team. Allowed to collect Rs15 per vehicle, they charged Rs17 per vehicle. An inquiry was in progress and the TMO served a notice on the contractor to return the extra amount. But he instead started collecting Rs20 per vehicle.
Three stalwarts of Urdu literature — Shaukat Siddiqui, Dr. Gopi Chand Narang and Prof Dr. Russell — were honoured in Doha, Qatar, in a glittering function organized by Majlis Firogh-i-Adab, Doha; an event comparable with any international event of this kind.
As a Karachiite I was really happy to see the 79-year-old veteran writer, Shaukat Siddiqui, walking up to the podium and receiving the award for his
life-time service to Urdu literature.
I have seen Shaukat Siddiqui working at the news-desks of the Times of Karachi and the Morning News. He finally rose to be the editor of the Daily ‘Anajam’, the Weekly “Al-Fatah” and the Daily “Musawat” Karachi, before saying goodbye to journalism in 1984.
Needless to say that he kept on writing short stories and novels throughout his journalistic career. Some of his works appeared in the post-journalistic phase of his career.
Shaukat Siddiqui was born in Lucknow in 1923 to a Barelli (U.P.) family, but he has the rare distinction of having portrayed the life of a section of Karachi’s underworld with great success. No other Karachi writer has studied the ‘wretched of the earth’ so candidly.
He did not do so to alienate us from the seamy side of Karachi’s poor. Employing the technique of socialist realism, he induces his readers to lend a helping hand to stem the rot. He does not leave his characters allocating in the quagmire of apathy and inaction, but tries to suggest through an organization, the Skylarks, to exert themselves and change their destiny.
Shaukat Siddiqui’s first collection of short stories, “Teesra Admi” (1952), was a great success, and it was said that he was a top notcher in the “Beech Ki Peerhi” generation comprising Quratul Ain Haider and Joginder Paul. Subsequently, other collections of short stories “Andhere Dur Andhere” (1955), “Raton Ka Shahar” (1956) and “Keemya Gar” (1984), followed. His magnum opus is “Khuda Ki Basti”.
“Khuda Ki Basti” has gone through 46 editions and enjoys the distinction of having been translated into 26 languages. Its English translation by Prof David Mathews of London University was equally a success.
Other novels of Shaukat Siddiqui are “Kamin Gah” (1956), “Janglos” (1988) and “Char Deewari” (1990). Interestingly enough, “Char Deewari” depicts Shaukat Siddiqui’s nostalgia for his childhood days in Lucknow. When asked whether he had been to Lucknow since his migration from that city, he emphatically answered in the negative, saying he couldn’t have written “Chahar Deewari” had he visited the present-day Lucknow:
“I do not want to say goodbye to the Lucknow of my childhood days, and hence the novel. Lucknow, I know, has changed its peculiarities over the years, and it is not the same Lucknow which I knew and which still dominates my memories,” he said. Quite an interesting point.
The way Malik Museebur Rehman, the main person behind the Doha Award, manages possibly the biggest Urdu award ceremony overseas is praiseworthy. Every year two life-time achievement awards are given to one Indian and one Pakistani writer, and a third goes to overseas Urdu writers.
At the outset, Museebur Rehman explained what the awards aimed to achieve. Renowned Indian critic, Dr Goopi Chand Narang, was this year’s award winner. Prof Ralph Russell of London University was given the Salim Jafri Award for 2002. This award has previously gone to Najmul Hasan Rizvi, Ashfaq Hussain, Intikhab Alam and Bakhsh Lyalpuri. Bakhsh Lyalpuri died last year.
Dr Goopi Chand Narang needs no introduction. Author and editor of 52 publications of diverse nature on classical and modern poetry, fiction and criticism, he has shown a remarkable flexibility to accommodate various viewpoints. Perhaps he is the only post-modernist who has not relegated the fundamental issues to the periphery. For him the core issues cannot not be put on the backburner. Russell is known for his brilliant books— “Three Mughal Poets” and “Ghalib: Life & Letters”, and his monographs—”the Pursuit of Urdu Ghazal”, “the Development of Urdu Novel” and “On Translating Ghalib”. He has translated Musaddas-i-Hali and Aziz Ahmed’s “Aisi Bulandi Aisi Pasti”. He has also written some Urdu textbooks for U.K. schools.
Russell is 85 and he is, perhaps, the only British scholar of our times who has tried to look into the psyche of the modern-day Subcontinent through Iqbal, Prem Chand, Krishan Chandar, Qasmi, Ismat Chughtai, Aziz Ahmed and Rajinder Singh Bedi. Dr David Mathews received the award on behalf of Dr Russell. Museeb-ur-Rehman, chairman of Majlis Farogh-i-Urdu Adab, has succeeded in bringing writers, critics and poets from all over the world to Doha every year. The first event of the two-day function is the award ceremony and the second day is devoted to the the international Mushaira. The Pakistani contingent this year was led by veteran poets and writers Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi and Himayat Ali Shair. The Indian contingent was led by Malikzada Manzoor Ahmed and Waseem Barelvi.
I wish Pakistan could play host to such an event on the Doha scale. The venues of the awards ceremony are Doha Club and a five-star hotel which serves dinners in the Oslo’s Nobel Prize function style.
I believe that events like the Doha Urdu festival have helped to project Pakistan in a much better way than our embassies can. Our ambassador in Doha, Mr Arif Kamal, remained visibly active during the two-day event. This was a commendable way to show that our diplomats were alive to the importance of the occasion.
Historically, election in Pakistan tended to compound internal politics and external factors to create a setting conducive to outside (military) involvement — chosen or imposed — and domestic polarization.
In the 1964-65 the general election under Ayub’s Basic Democracy system, his brazenly manipulated ‘victory’ against the Quaid’s sister, Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah, acted as one of the principal causes of the 1965 war.
Fantasizing a sure win against a then relatively poorly-trained and armed India, Ayub launched a series of disjointed operations — Rann of Kutch to Gibraltar and Grand Slam (May through August 1965) — to invite India’s naked invasion of our international borders, on Sept 6, 1965.
The first general election, on the basis of universal adult franchise under Yahya Khan in December 1970, led to the military crackdown; civil war; the Indian invasion of East Pakistan and the birth of Bangladesh in the aftermath of a humiliating military defeat.
Seven years later in 1977, the general election, under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, would toll the death knell of democracy for the next 11 years, under the longest unbroken spell of martial law of Gen Ziaul Haq.
Bhutto, an undisputed winner in 1977 polls under his and his party’s own steam, had his minions resort to massive electoral malpractices to destroy the credibility of his unquestioned victory. Thus what might well have promised him another term as prime minister led to his incarceration and execution under the country’s third martial law.
That was the domestic, geopolitical dimension of the ill- fated ‘77 polls. Externally, through an uncanny combination of military rule in Pakistan and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan was unstoppably sucked into a geostrategic setting to change its political and ideological mores beyond repair.
Zia’s deep involvement in the Afghan jihad led Pakistan off its chosen course of national revival and reconstruction after the loss of East Pakistan. Rather than be master of the game at its own home turf, Pakistan turned into a pawn on the US-dominated international chess-board at the height of the cold war.
Zia’s 1985 non-party-based election saw three years of promising democratic revival under prime minister Mohammad Khan Junejo, until halted abruptly by yet another military faux pas in the shape of the Ojheri camp disaster — easily the largest ordnance depot of the US-supplied military hardware through the Afghan jihad.
Junejo’s insistence on making public the findings of the inquiry commission, blaming the military for negligence, impelled an enraged and frustrated Zia to dismiss his own hand-picked prime minister at a wink.
That was in May 1988. Barely three months later in August 1988, Zia died in an air crash, with a planeload (a C-130) of others, including the US ambassador and the military adviser.
Come the second party-based general election after 1970, in November 1988 to bring Benazir Bhutto as the chief executive. Her naive handling of the military top brass and sensitive affairs (including the nuclear programme) would lead to her ignominious dismissal some 20 months later on Aug 6, 1990.
General elections again and yet again in 1991, 1993, 1997, to bring, alternately, Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto in and out of power — until Pakistan’s fourth military takeover — less martial law — on Oct 12, 1999. Army Chief Gen Pervez Musharraf elbows Nawaz Sharif out without a whimper from the public. Gen Musharraf’s bloodless coup d’etat reaffirmed the military (geopolitical / geostrategic) dynamics of political change in Pakistan.
At the end of the initial three-year phase of his rule under a Supreme Court mandate, Musharraf holds a party-based general election on a relatively restricted franchise, open to BAs only. In the political vacuum resulting from the disqualification of the chiefs of the two major parties, the PPP and the Muslim League (N), emerged a medley of political groups and coalitions still untested and largely uninitiated into the complexities of statecraft.
While the political background and activism of the Muttahida Majlis-i- Amal (MMA) remains beyond question, their familiarity with the actual conduct of civil-military affairs at national / international levels lacks the practical touch born only after years of actual experience.
In the complex geopolitical and geostrategic environment Pakistan finds itself at present, the smallest error of judgment and misstep could at once land us in a big mess.
The MMA’s commitment to Islamic ideology is one thing — for that is a shared national commitment — but their zeal to enforce it anytime too soon is quite another. Internally, that would be specially relevant in terms of enforcement of the Shariat code (legal, penal and social) and externally in the context of Pakistan’s role as a ‘key’ ally in the US global war against terrorism.
Even if the Musharraf regime might have gone too far in its almost unqualified support of America by way of lending it crucial logistics support, there is no immediate turning one’s back on that. Such a rollback or about-turn would be conceivable only at the cost of America’s friendship, no matter how expedient, opportunistic and overwhelmingly in its own national interest.
Infinitely more damaging than the erosion of America’s goodwill would be the Indian gains resulting from our alienation from America. Unfortunate but true.
Balochistan and the NWFP, closest to Afghanistan territorially, ethnically and culturally, have emerged as the two political strongholds of the MMA. That is regardless of their ability and opportunity to form part of (or even head) a federal coalition.
The Afghan reaction to the likely formation of governments by dominant religious groups (mainly MMA) in the two provinces has not been too good. The Taliban fear stays as the most dominant psychological fear or aberration of the Afghan mindset. And anything rubbing it up the wrong way could be fraught with far-reaching consequences.
After Islamabad vis-a-vis India, therefore, much of the weight of the geostrategic fallout of the election would have to be borne by Peshawar and Quetta vis-a-vis Afghanistan.
The writer is a retired brigadier.
A CAMEL is a horse designed by a committee. There is something of a ‘camel’ in the teams selected for Pakistan’s tour of Zimbabwe. Happily, Zimbabwe is not Australia, weakened further by the absence of Heath Streak.
Pakistan should have no difficulty in improving on its performance admittedly not hard to do since Pakistan hit rock-bottom in the Test series against Australia. The danger lies that we will get all gung-ho and once again there will be a spate of statements though, mercifully there will be no Waugh brothers to kick around.
If Saeed Anwar had to be dropped, I would have preferred if we had gone forward, perhaps Shadab Kabir. Saleem Elahi has been weighed in the balance and was found wanting. This does not mean that he will not make a packet of runs against Zimbabwe but after Zimbabwe, Pakistan will tour South Africa and that’s an altogether different ball game.
There are some unanswered questions and chief of these relate to the fitness of Inzamam-ul-Haq. Is he fully fit or has been patched-up? Yousuf Youhana played in the trial match and presumably has been given a clean bill of health. Though we still do not know why he was sent back on the most trivial of ‘disciplinary grounds’. Has the hatchet been buried between him and the team management though two members of that team management have been changed but not because they colluded in that now admitted hasty decision.
We are none the wiser why Shahid Afridi was not played, after being specially flown to replace the injured Abdul Razzaq. I read a statement that he had been found to be overweight by 4kg. I did not know that the weight of the players was so meticulously monitored. Was he made to stand on a weighing scale?
In more general terms, we are told that he had injured his shoulder during fielding practice. Yet he came out and fielded as a substitute.
I hope that the PCB Chairman has had a nice, friendly talk with the team management and stressed on it that its primary job is to create conditions that will allow a team to perform to its full potential.
It was not the results against Australia that hurt, it was the perception that all was not well with the team. The adoration that the cricket public has for the team must not be taken for granted. It is not a healthy sign when one begins to live off one’s capital. That way leads to poverty.
Wasim Akram’s name figures in the one-day squad but not in the Test squad. One hopes that this means that he is being wrapped in cotton-wool and is a way of using him sparingly. Pakistan may not need him for the Tests against Zimbabwe but will do so against South Africa.
I was surprised to see Hasan Raza kept out of the one-day squad and Danish Kaneria kept out altogether. I don’t think Kaneria bowled all that badly, more so since Pakistan played only four bowlers and he had to
carry a heavy load in conditions
that can only be considered
‘hostile’, the searing heat would have taxed the best of bowlers. A leg-spinner has to be given time to mature, he has got to go through a period of fermentation.
Hasan has the advantage that he plays proper cricket shots. It is far easier for a Test batsman to adjust to the one-day game than the other way round. In both his innings at Sharjah, he showed, apart from exemplary discipline, that he had ability to improvise. A batsman will prosper in any version of the game, if he’s got the basics right.
To turn from cricket, I was delighted that Jahangir Khan has been elected as president of the World Squash Federation (WSF). His election brings honour to the WSF.
Jahangir has been the greatest squash player ever. There are many who contributed to his success, his father Roshan Khan and his coach Rehmat Khan. But more than others, the credit must go to Nur Khan, Jahangir was barely in his teens when Nur Khan spotted him and took him under his wing.
My earliest memory of Jahangir is that of a small boy knocking the ball about in one of the courts of the PIA Squash Complex, which is now named after him. Jonah Barrington, a former world champion had come to the PIA Squash Complex and was looking for someone to practice with.
Jahangir volunteered to play with him. Jonah agreed, mainly to humour the young lad. Jahangir ran rings round a greatly surprised Jonah who told me that he had just played with the future world champion. No empty prophesy this. Johan meant it Jahangir has often thanked me for having had a hand in the development of his career. He is being kind.
Jahangir was born to be world champion and he was a worthy one. He wore the crown with great dignity. I have been his fan and have cheered him on from the gallery.
I hope his election to this high office will help the dwindling fortunes of Pakistan squash. There are no Pakistanis in the top rankings in squash. Once, there used to be nothing but Pakistanis, almost.