| 26 January 2004 | Monday | 03 Zilhaj 1424 |
On the brink of a nuclear black hole
They died with their boots on
Looking for peace parallels
Vanishing lore
The past two weeks saw at least three different groups of people trying to make their voice heard by staging protest demonstrations in front of Parliament House.
The latest protest was staged last Wednesday by the family members of the detained scientists and staff of KRL. Also protesting in front of Parliament House the whole of the last week, braving the cold drizzling weather in the capital, were the students and staff of the National Textile University.
The week before, the students of the Islamabad Medical and Dental College had also staged a hunger strike in front of Parliament House. These protests are a reflection of the frustration and helplessness of the various groups of people - frustration at what has been happening to them, and helplessness because the system does not provide them succour.
The strike by the family members of the detained KRL employees represent the voice of all those families who have had one of their members similarly taken away mysteriously and detained for "debriefing" in unknown destinations during the past two years.
First it was several scientists and medical doctors with purported connections to the Taliban in Afghanistan who were detained and debriefed. Now it is the turn of scientists and staff of the country's premier nuclear facility who are being detained and debriefed about possible nuclear proliferation.
Another person whose family is also at a loss about his whereabouts is a local journalist who was arrested last month along with the two French journalists who had planned to do a story about alleged Taliban guerillas along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. The French journalists were quickly released and sent home, but the Pakistani journalist is still under detention somewhere.
Summary detentions of local citizens without charge or access to lawyers or families only help to create mistrust in the government and disillusionment with its policies.
Similar detention of individuals in Guantanamo Bay without charge or recourse to a civil court trial has been condemned recently by British MPs as a "complete negation of the rule of law". The only difference is that those being detained in Pakistan are local citizens, whereas those being detained by the American administration in Guantanamo Bay are not American citizens.
Also protesting the whole of last week in front of Parliament House were the students and staff of the National Textile University (NTU), the premier institution for textile education in Pakistan. They have been on strike since the beginning of December but to no avail, and hence, they decided to knock on parliament's doors.
The NTU's case is an example of how well, or rather unwell, a once public institution is functioning in private/corporate hands. Students' fees have sky-rocketed since administration of the university was handed over to the All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA), reportedly in 1992, and development of the institution is said to have been at a standstill since. If it was intended to convert NTU into a LUMS, the appropriate infrastructure and facilities should at least have been installed first.
The major demands of the protesting NTU students and staff include a reconstitution of the university's board of governors according to the rules and regulations of the Higher Education Commission, as well as a break from the clutches of the private sector by putting the working of the BoG under the ministry of industries. It is another thing that these demands appear to run counter to the current policies of privatization.
To a question in the Senate on Friday about the striking students of NTU, the federal education minister's reply was that the charter for the university was given by the Punjab government and it was not under the administrative control of the federal education ministry. But an official APTMA website, on January 20, 2004, inviting applications for dean and senior faculty positions at NTU, clearly describes the university as a "federal government chartered university".
The hunger strike by students of the Islamabad Medical and Dental College (IMDC) in front of Parliament House the week before was prompted by the non-recognition of their college by the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC), and the recent announcement by the federal health minister in the Senate that the government would be introducing a legislation to close down medical colleges not recognized by the PMDC.
Why in the first place was IMDC allowed to enrol students and start functioning if it was not recognized by PMDC? IMDC students are not the only ones in this predicament. Six other private medical colleges are not being recognized, while 24 other private medical/dental colleges all over the country are only "provisionally recognized".
There is clearly something wrong with the manner in which the authorities deal with private medical colleges. No permission is apparently required for establishing a private medical/dental college, but subsequently their courses, facilities and examinations have to be recognized by PMDC. Yet a law providing for the closure of private medical colleges not recognized by PMDC has been lacking.
Thus, the IMDC had been enrolling students and holding classes and examinations for several years without being recognized at all by PMDC. Now the principal of the college is said to have absconded with all the funds, leaving students in the lurch halfway through their medical degree courses.
The proper procedure should be that private colleges like IMDC should be inspected and get recognition from PMDC first before it is given permission to start functioning by enrolling students. Any college subsequently found wanting in any respect through regular checks by PMDC should be closed down instantly by law.
The lesson from the IMDC and NTU protests: a firm regulatory hand by the government is necessary to keep private and public- turned-private educational institutions in check so that the interests of the public are protected.
It can be expected that people similarly frustrated by injustice and the lack of authoritative action will continue to knock on parliament's doors in the desperate attempt to seek redress of their grievances. And sooner or later, parliamentarians, unlike non-elected leaders, will be obliged to respond to the demands of the public.
On the brink of a nuclear black hole
The recent internment of seven or more scientists attached to Pakistan's nuclear facility at Kahuta has sharpened global focus on Islamabad as a possible exporter of nuclear technology.
The gist of recent proliferation accusations are well known. North Korea, Iran and Libya are reportedly involved in an arc of stealthy acquisitions on a privatized international programme. Saif Qadhafi's recent statement about Pakistan's proliferation describe a 'full bomb dossier' sold to Tripoli, while The New York Times carried what purported to be a sales brochure of nuclear components from Pakistan's A.Q. Khan laboratories. Equally controversial have been the indictments from Iran, where IAEA inspectors thought that Iran's reactor capability matched Pakistan's technological templates.
Although the president of the US has issued mitigating statements about the safety of Pakistan's nuclear programme, the issue is clearly too fissile to be pushed under the carpet. From the way information is adroitly being leaked as well as handled, the story will obviously not stop here.
US law enforcement officials said on Jan 16 that they were looking into a possible Pakistani connection in the export of trigger devices for nuclear weapons by a South African businessman of Israeli origin, Asher Karni. The New York Times reports these investigations as leading a paper trail to Pakistan via the UAE.
At the same time, six Democratic candidates for the White House, including Howard Dean, Senator Kerry and John Lieberman, have gone on National Public Radio (January 6) to say that "Pakistan has misled the United States with respect to its proliferation responsibilities." Although Ambassador Carol Moseley Braun went so far as to identify the problem as one that was linked directly to the overthrow of democratic regimes, a fear was voiced by Senator Kerry who said that Pakistan was "the most dangerous country in the world."
Pakistan's contention that these leaks completely bypassed state controls is still not fully accepted by other American objectors that have been running stories about Pakistan's 'runaway' programme over the last two years, launched dramatically in a fussilade by Seymour Hersh in the influential New Yorker magazine (Jan 27, 2003).
Whichever way one looks at it, this is an explosive situation, with far-reaching consequences for Pakistan. The real worry is that there may be few or no takers for the contention that individuals would or could act without knowledge or sanction of the state to push clandestine nuclear exports in a highly controlled military context. Yet the argument is worth a glance, even for elegant theorizing. Let's first consider North Korea.
According to most accounts, North Korea's programme is a plutonium-based programme, while Pakistan's is a uranium-based one. The problem with this idea is that Pyongyang reportedly conducted its cold test in 2001, when its scientists began to enrich uranium from the technology allegedly sold to it in 1997. Plausible deniability can be found in the Iran connection though, where Islamabad is accused of selling gas centrifuges identical to those used in its laboratories. It would indeed be difficult to imagine a nuclear technology-sharing agreement in the context of a Pakistan-Iran relationship that has not been without its low points.
The Libyan connection, at least on a state level, would also not sustain potential scrutiny once examined through the prism of deteriorating Pakistani relations with Libya once the euphoric high point of Qadhafi-ZAB relations was over after the latter's trumped-up trial and murder. The so-called $40 million purportedly paid by Tripoli for its nuclear wish list must obviously have come from an unregulated nexus of individuals with access to nuclear components.
Pakistan's nuclear programme remained under civilian control when it was initiated by ZA Bhutto in 1972. Both Libyan and Saudi support for the project was based almost entirely on Bhutto's strong personal links with both countries.
The US showed its displeasure at the development of this capability when Henry Kissinger threatened to 'make a horrible example' of Pakistan. Many people attribute Mr Bhutto's murder at the hands of Ziaul Haq, while the world looked on in horror, to Bhutto's continued nationalist stance when he declared that his countrymen would eat grass rather than give up the programme.
Yet if Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was the man who gave Pakistan its nuclear capability, it was his daughter, Benazir Bhutto, who in her first government, took the programme to its logical next step by coining a proper nuclear doctrine for Pakistan. In 1989, under this doctrine Islamabad guaranteed not to undertake the assembly of its nuclear components except under direct threat, as well as not to transfer its nuclear technology to a third country.
Because this policy was evolved after discussions with Washington, many quarters who now routinely factor US input any security calibration, found it expedient to dub her a security threat. The fact that this doctrine was finalized during her first state visit to Washington as prime minister has perhaps some bearing on the reality that right after her government was dismissed for being too soft on India in 1990, Washington cancelled an assistance package as well as the sale of 60 F-16s it had committed to Bhutto.
Despite attempts to regulate Pakistan's nuclear weapons by civilian governments which favoured nuclear CBMs with India, no civilian government was ever allowed to remain in office long enough to institutionalize their policies. After Ziaul Haq's consolidation of state power with military corporate interests, Pakistan has never quite returned its defence or nuclear programme to civilian control. The defence budget continues to defy public scrutiny and parliamentary review by appearing only as a two-line item in the annual budget with the tight opacity of an air-sealed item.
Needless to say, the nuclear programme, its command and control system, and the enunciation of a mature nuclear doctrine has never been given consistent priority on the official agenda, except in short periods of civilian rule. In sharp contrast, despite the testing and production of bombs, as well as their aggressive display of delivery-systems and missiles, the Indian government has always managed to present itself as a stable status quo power, with a no-first strike stipulation defining the public contours of its nuclear doctrine.
The initial need to keep the nuclear programme cloaked in secrecy can be justified by international hostility to Pakistan's nuclear programme. By 1986 when Dr A.Q. Khan was attached openly to the Kahuta laboratories and Pakistan became nuclear-capable, Khan's record with the Dutch company was in the public domain, but such implicit technological piracy at that point lent him the status of a national hero. Since then, until very recently, Dr Khan has been protected by the military as the father of the bomb, operating with no checks, accountability or transparency on his operations.
Few can deny that in his capacity as chief of the operation, he had unlimited funds at his disposal, jut as long as his centrifuges yielded the uranium required to acquire atomic power status. But hauling him and his cohorts up for debriefing will be seen by the international community as too little too late, while domestic public opinion will tilt towards the cause of the once lionized scientists.
Corrupt or not, they will be seen as the potential 'fall guys' in a mess created by the intelligence community's making. Since most of the sales were allegedly made in the late 1990s, it can be said that Dr. Khan's laboratory was probably not controlled entirely by him, but by security agencies that have become a law unto themselves.
Clearly, the nuclear blood-hounds unleashed by the Tripoli, Teheran, Pyongyang dragnet are not going to be stilled with a few statements from Pakistan, Iran or even George Bush. The latter has committed himself to an open-ended operation on terrorist organizations in Afghanistan by using Pakistan's intelligence and other resources. What Bush won't do is take the media or congressional heat off Pakistan when the voices raised and the issues exposed become too controversial.
Now that the nuclear compliance of Libya and Iran, and perhaps soon even North Korea, is assured, the full glare of western attention will turn to Pakistan, which will stand accused of the most outrageous breach of security to let slip its nuclear scientists into a rogue pool of international black-marketeers.
Under this intense international microscope, Islamabad needs to understand two things. One, nuclear deterrence has been tolerated in Pakistan on the fundamental assurance that it will mange its programme responsibly and safely. Therefore, any investigation of this mess needs to be conducted in tandem with a bipartisan parliamentary commission. The entire chain of intelligence, scientist and merchant connections that made these sales possible has to be traced until the leaks are plugged credibly.
Verifiable procedures and a chain of command that reports regularly to the defence committee of parliament have to be installed so that there is no confusion about where this particular buck stops. Two, although General Musharraf may not understand this, with his high personal stakes in political survival, certainly his high-command will: Pakistan needs to be united, not divided by further manipulation of the electoral and democratic system.
The kind of questions many of us have in mind would best be addressed in an in-camera session of the parliament, which needs to be summoned with this agenda immediately. Ensuring the safety of our nuclear assets is not something we can afford to compromise on, since we have paid dearly in diverted resources. Surely the people of Pakistan deserve an answer before an international media trial gets fully under way. The writer is a member of the National Assembly.
E-mail: srehman@sat.net.pk
They died with their boots on
Last week, I reproduced Syed Abid Ali Shah's very last column he had written for another newspaper. This drew immediate criticism from a few friends in Karachi whose opinion I value. The thing is that Syed Abid Ali died on the night of Jan 10 and his article appeared the next morning.
He would never write again and the paper for which he had written is not too well known in Karachi. But somehow I recalled a similar instance, on Sept 15, 1984, my beloved editor, teacher and friend, the late Mr A T Chaudri, wrote what was to be his last piece for Dawn.
On page I that day the news of his death appeared under the headline, "A.T Chaudri dies of heart failure". And on the editorial page, the same day there was this article, "Raising a national army". I will give you only a few passages from Chaudri Sahib's last words. I do not want to have more critics than I can afford.
Chaudri Sahib had begun thus: "Pakistan faces a new world today, a world in turmoil, in which the security problem, notably regional security, has become more complex than ever before. This calls for new national strategy to mobilise human resources and integrate defence with society through a civil-military coordination".
In his last four paragraphs, Mr Chaudri had concluded: "An essential pre-requisite for welding the soldiers and civilians into a seamless whole would be to involve the people in defence affairs rather than treating national defence as a sacred cow. So, as a first step, a national defence council should be set up. It should comprise not only army leaders but also leaders of public opinion, politicians, economists and academicians.
"Then, to make national defence a national affair, the defence budget should be discussed in the open. That should help lay a peace time basis for defence programming and fill the gap between defence investments and strategic targets. Again, an effort should be launched to make national defence productive, as in China, and in the process raise GNP.
"Above all, a national government enjoying a popular mandate will have to be set up to give a concrete shape to the concept of a national army. Now that the geopolitical scene of this region has undergone a dramatic transformation, in the wake of the Soviet thrust into Afghanistan, the geostrategic map of this area has been altered, the potential aggressors cannot be deterred by old military doctrines. In fact, as things are, defence policy has become too serious, a business to be left to generals alone.
"It is now imperative for the high commands of the services and elected representatives of the people to join hands for restructuring a new security framework and facing up to the avalanche of new events. Michael Howard has rightly stressed that modern wars are conflicts of societies and cannot be fought unless armies and societies understand each other."
I love both A.T Chaudri and Syed Abid Ali but for entirely different reasons. A.T tended to be pedantic. Like his father he was a teacher who opted for journalism later in life. His was the age of reason or what he thought was reason. Syed Abid Ali, on the other hand, was gregarious. He was equally at ease in the company of poets, artists and writers. He took Sadequain to his bosom and his wife, Nazi Apa, made him a member of the family. Abid Ali was where laughter was, where life was. He was the jewel in the crown of the information bureaucracy. As Director-General Public Relations, Punjab, he raised his office to a level never achieved before or since. He was an old Ravian when it meant something to be an old Ravian.
To know A.T was to respect him. To know Abid Ali was to love him. And nobody knows it better than Nazi Apa, his wife. He belongs to the age of romance. If marriages are in heaven made, God could not possibly have made a better choice. I know she will miss him but I also know she will love him all the more for that. There is one thing common between A.T and Syed Abid Ali. Both died with their boots on.
MY young fried, Sheikh Abid Rasheed, has sent me the following information on the retirement of Steve Waugh, one of the most successful Australian cricket captains of all time.
Waugh made his debut in 1985-86. He played in 168 test matches out of which he led his side in 57 games with 41 victories, nine draws and just seven defeats.
He batted 260 times for Australia, was not out on 46 occasions and scored 10,927 runs at an average of 51.06 per innings. He hit 32 centuries and exactly 50 fifties. The highest of his career was 200 against the West Indies in 1995. Of the 10,927 runs that he made, 3,200 were against England, 2,192 against the West Indies, 1,147 against South Africa, 1,117 against New Zealand, 1,090 against India, 934 against Pakistan, 701 against Sri Lanka, 290 against Zimbabwe and 256 against Bangladesh.
In all test matches Waugh took 92 wickets and held 112 catches. There you have Steve Waugh in a nut-shell but these figures do not tell you how great he was as a captain. He was a born leader of men and together with his twin brother, Mark, has left an indelible stamp on Australian Cricket.
Twice within days have two sides lost a one-day international in spite of the fact that two of their batsmen have scored centuries. First India, with hundreds from Yuvraj Singh and VVS Laxman lost to Australia by just two wickets in the VB Series currently being played Down Under. Then poor Zimbabwe with centuries from Carlisle and Ervine lost to India by only three runs. How unlucky can you get? Do you remember any instance in which two players scored hundreds for Pakistan and yet we lost?
Former Indian test cricketer Col. K.R (Hemu) Adhikari died late last year. We in Pakistan have reason to remember him. In the inaugural test match between the two countries on October 16,17,18, 1952, Adhikari, batting at No 8 in partnership with the great Indian off spinner Ghulam Ahmed he put on 109 for the last wicket to take the home side from 263 to 372 all out. Adhikari made 81 not out and Ghulam Ahmed hit an even 50.
India eventually won a won-sided match by an innings and 70 runs. Adhikari did not play in the second test at Lucknow but was recalled for the third game at Bombay where he made another unbeaten 31 in India's 10-wicket victory. The game was dominated by Vijay Hazare (146 not out) and P.R. Umrigar (102). Adhikari played only in two games of a five-match series.
Looking for peace parallels
An American columnist who seemed pretty terrified by the prospect of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan until last year is now campaigning for Prime Minister Vajpayee and President Musharraf to be given the Nobel Peace Prize.
"Shrewdness on the Indian side and desperation in Pakistan have come together to produce a potential Nobel Peace Prize for two uncommon leaders," wrote Jim Hoagland in the Washington Post last week.
"Vajpayee the poet and Hindu nationalist who has been the tortoise to Musharraf's excitable and exposed hare for the past three years acts as if that moment (to stop the conflict) may finally have come in Kashmir. The Indian leader has inched his way steadily toward an accommodation with Pakistan by alternating threatening military moves and visions of mutual economic benefits built on peace."
Do Prime Minister Vajpayee and Gen Musharraf qualify for the Nobel Peace Prize? It could be argued that if Egyptian President Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Begin could be given the prize in 1978, then there is nothing wrong in Mr Hoagland's suggesting that the prize should go to our South Asian leaders.
In fact there may be some resemblance between the two situations. President Sadat was a military officer who was instrumental in the Nasserite coup against King Farook in 1952. Menachim Begin was a rightwing leader whose political plank was his ceaseless targeting of Arabs before he became prime minister. Anwar Sadat annoyed the Muslim extremists in the army by his peace treaty with Israel and they assassinated him. Gen Musharraf has survived attempts from Muslim extremists in his country for very nearly the same reasons.
Having said that we have to consider the other side of the picture as well. Giving the prize to Sadat and Begin did little if anything to bring peace to the Middle East, much less to solve the Palestinian question.
This is perhaps the reason why barely 16 years later another set of Middle Eastern dramatis personae had to be awarded the Nobel - namely, Palestine's Yasser Arafat and Israel's Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, in the belief, no doubt, that they would clinch the argument that was left unresolved in the tense political situation left behind by Begin and Sadat.
Nothing of the sort happened. If anything, religious extremists on both sides have steadily become stronger in the wake of the failed, half-baked peace efforts. Is this similar to the situation that exists in India and Pakistan -- a consolidation of the Hindu right in India and the Muslim right in Pakistan? No harm assuming a similarity even if arguments exist also to suggest the opposite under the Vajpayee-Musharraf leadership.
There are two other similarities between the Middle East and South Asia that we cannot afford to ignore. The Palestinian issue has proved to be an intractable problem both from the liberal point of view and by the prism of religious extremism. Despite all the hype and hoopla in Camp David, Madrid, Oslo and goodness knows where else, the problem has refused to ease, much less to be resolved.
Similarly, Tashkent, Shimla, Lahore and Agra have raised and dashed countless hopes in the India-Pakistan equation. Could the recent Vajpayee-Musharraf meeting in Islamabad deliver a different outcome? Hoagland evidently believes there could be a happier ending this time round.
There is "a lot to get right in a region where things have gone badly wrong for years," Mr Hoagland cautions, adding that "the path leading to Oslo and Nobel laureate status for Vajpayee and Musharraf is strewn with pitfalls and land mines. But by taking the first baby steps toward peace in Kashmir, these two leaders have begun a journey that can change the world."
I find this an extremely naove reading of a problem as complex as Kashmir. But let us assume that by some miracle, including a helping hand from Washington, some resolution is indeed arrived at to end the bloody dispute in the Himalayan region. Does that end risk of an India-Pakistan conflict?
Where was Kashmir in 1971 when India and Pakistan fought their most bitter war? Yes, it was put on the table in 1972 in Shimla as part of the conditions that aimed to formally end the standoff, but Kashmir was not the trigger for that war.
We don't know really how the cookie will eventually crumble. Will Mr Vajpayee and Gen Musharraf be able to bring peace to the region with the help of some bold steps as envisaged by the world community, including Hoagland? Can the two nuclear foes make peace without dismantling their lethal arsenal?
In the opinion of a large number of peace activists gathered in Mumbai last week for the World Social Forum, the idea of a durable peace in South Asia would be preposterous if nuclear weapons remain. Moreover, it would send the wrong signal to North Korea or any other country aspiring to acquire nuclear weapons if two recent gatecrashers into the nuclear club were declared eligible for any peace prize.
If anybody deserves a peace prize it should be from the global community of peace activists who had gathered in Mumbai last week. And one serious candidate could be Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli scientist-turned-peace-activist who is in prison for blowing the whistle on the nefarious nuclear designs of his country.
India and Pakistan may not agree to a joint surveillance of their borders, but the two countries are poised to jointly monitor and fight a scourge that threatens both and because of them the rest of the world. That scourge is polio.
Teams from both the countries met in Geneva on January 15 at a polio eradication conference and firmed up the plan. Now this gives an opening to a gala event about to be inaugurated in Pakistan, namely the resumption of cricketing ties between the two countries.
In India, virtually the entire national cricket squad has been helping promote awareness of the crippling disease that afflicts an unacceptable number of children here. The other countries lagging behind in the global eradication drive of polio are Pakistan, Niger, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Egypt.
Anti-polio activists are now planning to approach the cricketing fraternity of both countries to put their campaign on top of the agenda during the cricket festival, whereby players would wear labels and send media messages to the vast but unapproachable areas in their countries with a simple message: take all your new borns for polio drops and overcome the superstitions that come in the way.
Vanishing lore
Karachi has a large population with roots in northern India. Those who came to Pakistan at partition brought their idiom along with them. Their conversation used to be laced with proverbs, sayings and traditional witticisms. Their first generation is now fading away, and the generations that have followed are sadly losing touch with their heritage.
This is not entirely a bad thing: a new country, a new polyglot society has its own demands, and the sooner these begin to be faced, the better for assimilation and integration. But many still regret the disappearance of phrases and idiomatic expressions that had lent flavour to daily conversation. Someone was ruminating over this the other day, and recalled some phrases that were often used to illustrate a point. She picked out a few for the Notebook's benefit (the English translations are only meant to convey the gist: the actual turn of phrase largely defies translation):
Naach na janey, aangan tehra, Marney ko chaley, kafan ka tota and Na sau man tael hoga, na Radha naachey gi (all three implying making an excuse for not doing something), Haldi lagey na phitkari, rang aaey chhoka (completing a good work with least effort), Biwi naik bakht, damri ki daal teen waqt (a good housewife makes a little go a long way), Baap par poot, pita par ghora, buhut nahin, thora, thora (the son may not entirely go after the father, but there will be some inherited traits), Mara haathi bhi, sawa lakh ka (even a dead elephant is worth a lakh and a quarter).
Two particularly interesting, although not very familiar, ones recounted were: Chhachhoondar key sar, chameli ka tael (a rat priming itself with hair oil) and Chimgadron key ghar aeey mehmaan, Ham bhi latkein, tum bhi latko (you have come to our house, you will have to live like we do).
Then, lastly, there's one that is rather poignant and may indeed fit many of the pre-1947 generation who lost so much when they made the move to Pakistan: Bhool gaye naach rang, bhool gaye chhakri, teen cheezein yaad, loon, tael, lakri (we forgot the good times and remember only salt, cooking oil and firewood).
Perhaps someone should collect the rich lore available in the form of vernacular proverbs and have them published, both as a matter of record and for the information of younger generations.
Good performance
A colleague approached the Nadra Swift Centre in Nazimabad some time back with some trepidation. He had heard quite a few stories of long queues, interminable delays and awful mix-ups at the offices of Nadra. He joined the queue outside the Nadra centre at around 8.30am. After a little while he received a token in a hall where young and active staffers punched the particulars of applicants into more than a dozen computers.
His application form was ready within an hour, containing his photograph taken at the Nadra centre, his thumb impression and signature. A couple of days later the colleague submitted the form, attested by a government official, to the Nadra office. He was given in writing that a computerized national identity card would be delivered to his place within 15 days.
Much to his astonishment, the colleague received the Nadra ID card, properly enveloped and appropriately marked, in less than 10 days. The card had been delivered by a courier company. The colleague, while waxing lyrical about the excellent performance of Nadra, pointed out one hitch. Instead of delivering the card to his flat on the third floor of his apartment building, the courier had handed it over to one of his neighbours sitting outside the apartment building on the ground floor.
Those were the days
Lovely weather last week induced an alumnus of the University of Karachi to take a trip down memory lane. He paid a visit to his alma mater from where he had taken a master's degree in the mid-1960s. Memories came flooding back as he approached the campus. Noticing that the sky had gone very dark that particular day, he recalled that the virgin soil of the university used to became lush green whenever it rained for a week or so.
Our friend was excited to see that the banyan trees that were planted in front of the girls' hostel (which wasn't there in his days) had become tall and dense. In fact the road in front of the hostel was dark with overhanging trees. The campus had only one full-grown tree when it started to operate in the early 1960s. Much to his dismay, our friend couldn't find it. The tree was quite shady (pun is intended) because boys and girls were often seen either discussing literature or whispering sweet nothings into one another's ears. It was close to the English and Urdu departments.
In those days the arts faculty had only one wing. The administrative block was among the first few structures to be built in those days. Before the canteen got a building for itself, it was housed in the administrative block. Some departments were not there. The microbiology department, headed by Dr A.A. Anwar, was housed in barracks. It soon moved into a separate building. One of the main attractions in the zoology department was the skeleton of a whale. One wonders if it is still there.
The staff town, too, has expanded. The students of English literature used to see Ms Maya Jamil, now aged and suffering from amnesia, walk all the way from the arts faculty to the bungalow allotted to her in the afternoon.
KRTC buses used to ply from Tin Hatti to the campus, via Guru Mandir, in the 1960s, and for some time there were double-decker buses also. The lower deck was meant for girls, but some boys insisted on standing on the footboard, even if there were vacant seats on the upper deck.
Once a student hijacked a bus and the driver was left behind. He called the provost and the student was penalized. He had to pay Rs10. Needless to say, his friends pooled the amount.
Sindh saga
Is the Sindh chief ministerial saga over? For weeks, we had been treated to an almost daily dose of items in the vernacular dailies and eveningers of a chief minister beleaguered by a host of contenders. The immediate replacement of Sardar Ali Mohammad Mahar was forecast day in and day out.
And now, suddenly, one meeting in Islamabad between the prime minister, the Pakistan Muslim League chief and the Sindh 'dissidents' has led to an apparent resolution of differences. Two follow-up committees - a 'core' committee and a political committee - have been formed.
Mr Mahar, who it must be said to his credit remained unflappable throughout, must have heaved a sigh of relief. But is the danger finally over? There were many challengers. First there was Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim, who for long coveted the top slot in the province, but then it was made clear that he was no longer interested.
Then came certain ministers, reportedly backed by the Establishment, who had no qualms about openly seeking to unseat their own chief minister. The population welfare minister, Imtiaz Ahmad Shaikh, who held important bureaucratic posts before he turned to politics, and the minister for forest and livestock, Manzoor Ahmad Panwhar, were said to be among the contenders.
The campaign against Mr Mahar was so strong that whenever he went to the capital, even on an official visit, rumours about his imminent stepdown started doing the rounds. Apparently his adversaries took advantage of the low profile kept by the chief minister, who has failed to strike up a rapport with the press. The kingmakers in the province, such as the Muttahida Quami Movement and the spiritual leader of the Hur tribe, Pir Pagara, also did little to lay the rumours at rest.
The bargain on the basis of which the present truce has been called is not known, and how long-lasting it will be. So, as the ad man always says, watch this space.
email: karachi_notebook@hotmail.com