Child prodigy

A seven-year-old boy recently took the city by storm when he displayed remarkable memory skills while reciting and explaining the Holy Quran. The child, Hafiz Hussain Mehdi, learnt the Quran by heart in just one year under the guidance of Qom-based religious scholar Syed Mohammad Hussain Tabatabai.

Mehdi, who hails from Gilgit, can tell the exact horizontal and vertical position of a Quranic verse on a page of the Holy Book. He can recite the Quran in six different ways. He can also answer complicated theological questions by quoting relevant Quranic verses.

The child, who currently studies at an Islamabad-based seminary, drew huge crowds at the Federal Urdu University of Science and Technology in Gulshan, Mehfil-i-Raza in PECHS, Imambargah Babul Ilm in North Nazimabad and Bhojani Hall on Britto Road.

Do we deserve decent roads?

Decent roads are a rare blessing in this burgeoning city of ours. Yet we all know that a blessing taken for granted can often become a curse. Khayaban-i-Ittehad, which leads to many of the city's elite schools, should fall in that category.

For many parents who take this wide, smooth Khayaban everyday, collisions are becoming a sight that they encounter with alarming frequency. New traffic lights with timers have recently been put up through the length of the road, but they are treated as hindrances by the drivers, to be observed or flouted depending on how late they are for school or wherever it is they want to go. Anyone who has driven in Karachi for any length of time knows that bad drivers are an all-encompassing breed that includes parents of young children, professional drivers, and adolescents out on joyrides.

This particular problem is also true for the intersecting Khayaban-i-Hafiz, which has recently been lighted with poles from Italy and lights from France (or is it the other way round?) and fitted out with timed traffic lights, but continues to be the scene of many an accident. More often than not cars whiz past red lights, leaving the law-abiding few feeling like fools who have yet to catch up.

The same problem plagued the Main Seaview Road till last Ramazan a reckless accident by an armyman's son - in which two girls and their mother were killed - brought things to a head. Within a week speed breakers sprang up, like mushrooms during the rainy season. They have slowed down traffic, but spoilt a drive for those who drove sensibly.

And till we prove to be responsible citizens who can be allowed the freedom of driving without speeding on our few good roads, can someone please start thinking about moving the traffic lights on Khayaban-i-Ittehad elsewhere? They are really not helping and off-hand one can think of at least five locations in Karachi where they are desperately needed. And much as one despises the eyesores that speed breakers are, please go ahead and mar Khayaban-i-Ittehad with them. You'll be answering the prayers of many careful drivers who take that route everyday and regularly encounter the horror of accidents.

Unsuccessful drives

Quite a few highly publicized campaigns have failed to take off in the city lately. The government's drive against smoke-emitting vehicles was abandoned following the onset of showers some time back. Another drive that received only tepid support from the public was started by the city government earlier this month and was aimed at cleaning the city by getting area nazims to team up with public-spirited residents.

Analysts maintain that the city government needs to make the public, especially shopkeepers and households, responsible for the garbage seen at their doorsteps. If it succeeds in enforcing some sort of system whereby everyone is made responsible for his front yard, things may get better. So far, however, the ability of the city government to mobilize people for a worthy cause has been limited.

In the meantime, the administrator of a school in Clifton has an interesting tale to tell. He says that he decided to have the street in which his school is located cleaned as a gesture of goodwill to his neighbours who constantly complain of the rush caused by the school in a residential area. However, within an hour of work being started at cleaning the street, officials and workers of the city government appeared and asked that it be abandoned. They argued that such cleaning work is only done through the award of contracts, and this would be done soon. Until then, no one should interfere in the work of the city's municipality.

Forced to violate the law

When a friend pulled up at a red light on Sharae Faisal the other day, his curious five-year-old asked him why he had stopped. The friend explained to the child that automatic signals on road controlled traffic by means of red, orange and green lights. He added that a law-abiding driver must never go through a red light.

A few days later the friend had to eat his words when on the same road he was forced to speed past a red signal. He had seen in his rear-view mirror a fast-moving truck, its horns blaring, rush towards the car. Ten minutes before iftar, the truck driver appeared to be in no mood to follow traffic rules.

Puzzled, the child kept on asking the friend why he had not stopped at the red light this time. He had a hard time convincing his son that he had done so to avoid a near certain collision with the truck.

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Birnam wood did come to Dunsinane

According to the prophecy of the witches, Macbeth could not be harmed until by some miracle Birnam wood moved to Dunsinane Castle. And when that seemingly impossible precondition for his doom was about to be fulfilled, how does a shell-shocked Macbeth react? "I pull in resolution, and begin to doubt the equivocation of the fiend that lies like truth."

There were quite a few people who appeared to be "lying like truth" recently. And since their apparent equivocation concerns possible mass annihilation with nuclear weapons and not the mere demise of a turncoat general, what those few people said as opposed to what they might have meant requires to be put on the record.

To begin with, it was a brand new avatar for India's former foreign minister Jaswant Singh last week. To see him laying into US Secretary of State Colin Powell, no less, became a treat for those getting weary of their leaders' inability to stand up to the sole superpower.

Singh's remarks were welcome, but they were puzzling too. For here was the very man who had beckoned American troops to wage their war on Afghanistan from Indian soil. He was now singing an opposite tune. He was mocking his former American counterpart, and effectively calling him a liar.

At issue was Powell's equivocation on Iraq with the help of an elaborate power-point demo he presented to the world community, as he pointed to all the make-believe sites where Saddam Hussein was supposed to have stockpiled WMDs. Singh was right in referring to that duplicitous performance to show up Powell as untrustworthy.

But Jaswant Singh was risking his own credibility too by suggesting as he did on this occasion that Powell's fears of a nuclear standoff during India's military mobilization against Pakistan were misplaced. The entire world community had vacated New Delhi in May 2002, including a large number of American diplomats, because they feared a nuclear war. Unless anyone is sure of how their equally armed rival would respond, double-guessing the enemy's motive is perilous.

Remember what President Clinton had told the Indian parliament amid unceasing applause in March 2000? "In a nuclear standoff, there is nothing more dangerous than believing there is no danger." We can ignore the dictum only if Singh is implying that the Indian military was not mobilized for action beyond its own borders; that there was no move ever to take out the perceived militant camps across the LoC by a surgical aerial strike. Else the Pakistanis were ready to respond in kind.

Denying what everyone believes to be true - that the Americans, British, French, Chinese, Russians - had all swung into action, and had contributed a great deal to easing the standoff with Pakistan lacks conviction. Jaswant's Singh's story is too awkward to buy.

The other worrying equivocation came with New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clarke. She was apparently misquoted in an interview to the Hindustan Times. Now journalists do often enough cite inaccurately from interviews they conduct. In this case among the points in dispute was a non-issue, i.e., whether Ms Clarke had told her interviewer that she would "tell" the Indian government during her visit here that Kashmir was a nuclear flashpoint. The world knows that to be the case, including New Zealand. So why won't Ms Clarke tell India what she believes to be true? Everyone else does. President Clinton did.

A partial transcript released by Ms Clarke shows her using more diplomatic language. She says: "As a matter of principle, New Zealand likes countries to sign the limited test ban treaty and we are known for strong advocacy of nuclear disarmament. So, India will always find New Zealand a voice for moving closer to nuclear disarmament, not further away from it."

Even as Ms Clarke disowned the Indian version of the interview as "low value beat-up", her government was negotiating a move to reinforce the NPT which comes up for serious discussion in May next year.

In fact New Zealand's participation in the New Agenda Coalition (NAC), which also comprises the governments of Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, South Africa and Sweden, needs to be lauded, not hidden away from scrutiny for fear of a diplomatic incident.

The NAC submitted a draft resolution to the United Nations General Assembly just before Ms Clarke's India visit, calling on all members to implement the practical steps to achieve nuclear disarmament agreed at the 2000 NPT Review Conference. Therefore, Ms Clarke's message to New Delhi was confusing.

The last straw in this litany of equivocations came from western diplomats in Delhi. In response to a direct question, they all assert that it would not be mandatory for India to sign the NPT to become eligible for permanent membership of the UNSC. That's a surprise. So would India become the first nuclear-armed permanent member of the UNSC that has not signed the NPT? No answer.

And yet, just as you are lulled into believing that all is well for our two nuclear gatecrashers, there comes a stark reminder that though the issue may not be a live one, it is still too early to write its obit.

It was in a May 4 speech in New York before the preparatory committee for the 2005 NPT Review Conference that US Assistant Secretary of State for Nonproliferation John Wolf said the United States was committed to the goal of universal adherence to the NPT and expressed hope that India, Israel, and Pakistan will eventually join the treaty as non-nuclear weapon states. Israel? Yes Israel, too. That is the American policy, bereft of frills. The direct language might get obscured here and there for momentary or even long-term exigencies, but, much like the mumbo-jumbo of the witches, you will decipher the message at your own peril.

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Mufti Jamiluddin Ahmad handled the Indian and foreign media at Pakistan's high commission in New Delhi for an unusually long period of about seven years before he returned to Islamabad. Popular among journalists, often on the phone he would recite a risque verse and say: "This is for the listeners. With you, I have something serious to discuss."

Last week, during a short visit as a senior editor of a Pakistani newspaper group, he was asked if Pakistani diplomats serving in India went back with bitter memories just as many an Indian diplomat who returned from Islamabad was full of complaints. "Perhaps they didn't get to eat a delicious meal like this," he declared, merrily tucking into a generous helping of chicken biryani at an iftar at a friend's house.

A busy month for terrorists

The month of October has been a particularly active one for terrorists. In the first two weeks of the month, they caused considerable bloodshed with their bomb attacks on religious targets in Sialkot, Multan and Lahore, and they also kidnapped two Chinese engineers working on a Gomal zam Dam project in the Waziristan tribal region, one of whom died during the rescue operation.

The recent explosion at the entrance of Marriot Hotel in Islamabad last Thursday, in which seven persons, including foreigners were injured, had occurred at a time when the federal capital was already awashed with reports of terrorist threats, both real and verbal. Since a report appeared in the press on October 13 that two carloads of explosives had entered the capital, several terrorist threats had been received by various quarters in the twin cities.

The Saudi deputy head of mission in Islamabad had received a parcel bomb last Monday containing four hand grenades and a threatening letter asking him to leave the city. On the same day, panic gripped students in a Rawalpindi government college when a broken window grill was discovered and the message "beware of the bomb" was inscribed on the door. A day earlier on Sunday, a live hand grenade was found on the premises of a church in Rawalpindi during a service but was defused before it caused any harm.

Meanwhile, it was also reported that the lives of some senior government officials, including some federal ministers, were at risk because Al-Qaeda was apparently planning to kidnap them, and that the capital and provincial police had been directed to step up security for them. While security measures for diplomats in general were being enhanced, it was reported that security had been stepped up particularly for the Japanese embassy as well as for Japanese nationals working on various projects in the country.

Given the above scenario, it was difficult to believe the official version of the Marriot explosion that it was due to short-circuiting and not a bomb. The Marriot in Islamabad is a perfect target for terrorists since it is a favourite haunt of diplomats and senior government officials. Incidentally on the day of the Marriot explosion, in the US an American television network had reported that a videotape had been obtained "from a source in Pakistan" which showed an English-speaking man threatening a major attack on the US.

Diplomats and other foreigners working on various projects in the country as well as senior government officials are not the only ones whose security is at risk. Ordinary worshippers, whether Muslims or Christians, are equally vulnerable, particularly since the deadly attacks on religious places in Sialkot, Lahore and Multan, and the abortive attack on the Rawalpindi church.

On October 11, the day after the third deadly attack on a religious target in the Punjab province, the Islamabad Chief Commissioner had held a meeting with the ulema at which the latter were directed to form special security committees for every worship place, hire private security guards and install metal detectors. After the Marriot explosion, security experts have strongly recommended the installation of explosive detectors in key buildings and at all the entrances to the capital.

Preventing terrorism through beefing up security is no doubt necessary but a more permanent and effective measure would be in tackling the people and groups that engage in terrorism, and in restricting the manufacture and supply of explosives and weapons. Whether all the above terrorist attacks and threats are related and were carried out on the instructions of a single organization or mastermind, or whether these terrorist acts emanate from different terrorist groups with different masterminds, is perhaps better known to the security agencies.

Do these terrorist acts have anything to do with the ongoing security operations in the tribal areas, the war in Iraq, or Islamabad's close partnership with the US? Or do the terrorist acts have something to do with the government's new Kashmir initiative, its effort to reform the madressahs and the ulema' interpretations of Jihad, or even the issue of the president's uniform?

Whatever the motive(s) behind the violence be, it is not comforting at all that terrorism acts seem to persist, in fact they seem to have increased, despite months of security operations in the tribal areas. The fact that outlawed groups are still very much active in the country is another disconcerting thought.

For instance, a day after the Marriot explosion, members of a banned group which advocates the liberation of Iraq from US forces managed to stage simultaneous demonstrations in Rawalpindi, Lahore, Karachi and Peshawar before they were either arrested or dispersed by the security authorities. Earlier on October 18, several members of the group had been arrested in Islamabad and Karachi simultaneously for distributing pamphlets denouncing the US war in Iraq and the government's pro-US policies. The group's activities seem to reflect a relatively well-coordinated and widespread organization despite being outlawed.

At the same time, while the government has censured and threatened journalists and newspapers with action for "glorifying" terrorists, it does not seem to have been able to convince those who preach hatred and martyrdom to tone down their rhetoric and to differentiate Jihad from violence and lawlessness in their preachings. In fact, even after the attacks on religious targets in the three cities in Punjab, ulema and religious scholars were reluctant to outrightly condemn such suicide terrorist attacks by passing an edict, despite an announcement by the minister of state for religious affairs that such an edict was forthcoming.

So long as terrorism continues to raise its head ever so often, it will be difficult for the government to focus on any meaningful economic uplift programme that would enable it to achieve the kind of economic miracle that countries in East and Southeast Asia have been able to. Moreover, attacks in which foreigners are the target, like the kidnapping of the Chinese engineers, are a direct discouragement to whatever little foreign investment that is trickling in. And as the experience of many East and Southeast Asian countries have shown, it is massive foreign investment rather than foreign loans which fuel economic success.