IN last Friday’s presidential run-off election, Iranian voters faced an unenviable choice: take one step backwards, or two steps in the same direction. Contrary to most predictions, the majority of them appear to have chosen the latter option. This popular verdict can be construed as a preference for the status quo ante over the unproductive status quo — although that isn’t by any means the only possible interpretation.

When Tehran’s mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad succeeds Mohammed Khatami in August, he will become the first non-ayatollah to be president of the Islamic Republic. Unfortunately, his unexpected elevation will not presage a loosening of the clergy’s stranglehold: if anything, it is likely to be reinforced. Ahmadinejad has a reputation as a hardliner who is considerably more conservative than Khatami and his predecessor, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

The latter is generally described as a pragmatist; during the two terms of his presidency, Rafsanjani was credited with exercising a moderating influence on the more radical elements in Iran’s clerical hierarchy. He was an early front-runner in this year’s presidential race, emerging at the top of the heap (but only just) in the first round on June 17.

Although Ahmadinejad, to almost everyone’s surprise, was hot on his heels, it was widely believed that Rafsanjani would comfortably romp home last week, not least because the other candidates of any prominence — notably the reputedly moderate Mehdi Karroubi and the reform faction’s Mostafa Moin — extended him their support.

The scenario was beginning to resemble the last French presidential poll, when Jacques Chirac was forced into a run-off against the National Front’s Jean-Marie Le Pen, and managed to trounce him convincingly. That didn’t happen in Rafsanjani’s case. He wasn’t simply defeated, he was thoroughly humiliated. Ahmadinejad, hardly a national figure, managed to triple his support in the second round, winning twice as many votes as his rival.

On a turnout only marginally lower than in the first round, this is indeed a remarkable result, and it is hardly surprising that the widespread allegations of electoral fraud that emerged during and after the first round of voting have been repeated by the Rafsanjani camp in the wake of the second round. There have been reports of ballot stuffing, as well as intimidation and violence against the supporters of moderate candidates.

After a handful of token recounts, the allegations have been rejected by the Guardian Council — the powerful unelected body that is instrumental in limiting the scope of Iranian democracy. The council gets to decide which candidates are eligible to run for election. In the run-up to last year’s parliamentary polls, it disqualified the vast majority of reformists, provoking a rebellion in the Majlis. This strategy succeeded in producing an overwhelmingly conservative Majlis, which rendered Khatami’s supposedly reformist agenda even more ineffective than before. The practice was repeated in preparation for the presidential election.

If electoral fraud was deemed necessary (and it is more than likely that some sort of manipulation has occurred) despite all the restrictive powers at the disposal of the Guardian Council and the remainder of the clerical group in control of Iran’s fortunes, it suggests a rising degree of insecurity among the country’s leading mullahs.

Ahmadinejad is said to have been personally chosen by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as the mayor of Tehran two years ago, and the fact that his presidential campaign was facilitated by state organs suggests the elevation got the nod from on high. That in turn strips away much of the mystery surrounding Ahmadinejad’s triumph: if Khamenai wanted him to win, he was bound to succeed.

Moin’s Islamic Iran Participation Front accused the Guardian Council of raiding the national exchequer to mobilize 300,000 militiamen as campaigners and enforcers for Ahmadinejad’s campaign, and Moin warned his compatriots against “the danger of fascism” and the onset of “militarism, authoritarianism as well as social and political suffocation in the country”. It could be argued, of course, that some of these conditions already exist in Iran.

Karroubi, in a letter to Khamenei, accused the latter’s son Mojtaba of a role in hijacking the election, adding that such things were never allowed under Ayatollah Khomeini. In his response, Khamenai accused Karroubi of trying to provoke a national crisis. “Do you understand what you are doing?” he wrote. “Do you realize that creating a crisis and encouraging pessimism in people sets us on a path desired by our enemies, who are ready to create a calamity for the revolution and the system of the Islamic Republic?”

He doth protest too much, and it will be interesting to see the direction the Islamic Republic takes now that all of the organs of power are in conservative hands. Ahmadinejad, whose close relationship with the Basij — volunteers who enforce rules on dress codes, the separation of the sexes, and so on — has occasioned much comment, has lately sought to combat the perception of him as an ultra-Islamist by suggesting that his regime will not go out of its way to interfere in people’s private lives. That is a welcome assurance, for it would be a tragedy if the minor and gradual relaxation that has taken place under Rafsanjani and Khatami were to be reversed.

A return to the rigidities of the early years of the revolution is the last thing Iran needs; unfortunately, Ahmadinejad based an important part of his campaign on precisely that proposition. That was the period when the more conservative elements more or less wiped out all vestiges of opposition, from communists to uncooperative clerics. Ominously, Ahmadinejad has also been quoted in the past as saying that Iran “did not have a revolution in order to have a democracy”.

It is unlikely these aspects of the mayor’s platform contributed substantially to his appeal, but what did prove popular in a land with pronounced economic disparities were his promises to tackle corruption and, even more important, oversee the redistribution of Iran’s oil wealth. Although all the other candidates also made sympathetic noises about dealing with unemployment and poverty — with Karroubi offering every family (including the rich) an extra $50 a month — Ahmadinejad is likely to have come across as less dishonest than his competitors, not least because of his humble origins and Spartan lifestyle.

However honest his intentions, his ability to make good on such promises will depend on the circumstances in which he is forced to operate. An elite that has developed vested interests through easy access to riches may prove hard to dislodge. Corruption, too, cannot be wished away. And, given that quite a few of those who have enriched themselves since the revolution were spotted in Ahmadinejad’s camp, whether his own entourage will allow him to proceed with that aspect of his agenda is open to question.

On the foreign relations front, most notably the negotiations with the European Union on Iran’s nuclear programme, there have been efforts to convince the world that the new presidency will make no difference — which is fairly plausible, given that real power resides in unelected institutions. Much of the world has sensibly adopted a wait-and-see approach — barring the US, of course. In advance of the presidential election, George W. Bush wrote off Iran as a country that “is ruled by men who suppress liberty at home and spread terror across the world”. Whatever its value in the Iranian context, that’s a fairly accurate description of the US.

Profoundly misgoverned Iran may be, but it is by no means the monstrous monolith envisaged by most Americans, whose clouded vision is compounded by a historical memory that stretches only as far as the hostage crisis of 1979. They are unaware that it is a vibrant society that has in recent years produced far better cinema than anything coming out of Hollywood. And, for all their flaws, its elections are lively, garrulous affairs — a far cry from comparative processes in, say, Egypt. Nor is there much knowledge of the CIA’s crucial role in aborting Iranian democracy and restoring a dictatorship in 1953. In a book marking the 50th anniversary of that event two years ago, Stephen Rinzer wrote: “It is not far-fetched to draw a line from Operation Ajax [the CIA’s code name for the plot to topple Mohammed Mossadegh] through the Shah’s oppressive regime and the Islamic Revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the World Trade Centre in New York.”

That isn’t a ridiculous point to make, and the obvious lesson to be drawn is that US-sponsored regime change has been a spectacular failure for half a century. With Iraq, the US has come full circle. And it must be hoped that the experience will prove sobering. Iran deserves a far better democracy and an equitable distribution of resources. Neither goal is likely to be achieved within the context of the Islamic Republic; just as the Shah was eventually overthrown, this phase too shall be transcended one day. It’ll require a persistent demonstration of the popular will, not alien missiles and bombs.

What Iran desperately needs at this juncture is a great leap forward (albeit not in the Maoist sense). What it may get, instead, is some sort of a cultural revolution. It is not impossible, however, that the one may lead to the other. And sooner than anyone expects.

Email: mahirali1@gmail.com

BY the time this article appears President Bush would have made his speech at Fort Bragg defending America’s Iraq policy and emphasizing that there was no question of withdrawing US troops from Iraq until the Iraqi security forces had been built up sufficiently to allow them to ensure security.

Even without hearing his speech one can anticipate that in addition to reiterating his determination to keep American troops in Iraq, the president would have termed the battle against the insurgency in Iraq as part of the struggle to bring democracy and moderation to the Middle East.

The president would have asserted that wiping out the terrorist network which now existed in Iraq (never mind how it came into being) was part of the battle to prevent further terrorist attacks on the United States, and hailed the success of the Iraqi elections and the subsequent apparently successful effort to include Iraqi Sunnis in the Constitution writing process. He would have expressed the hope that this process would be completed as scheduled by August 15.

It appears unlikely that this will cut much ice with the American public which in the last few days has seen gory TV coverage of suicide bomb attacks in Mosul and Fallujah and has read press reports about the body count of Americans killed in Iraq rising to well over 1,700. In my view, the speech will not stem the erosion of Bush’s popular standing and do little to quell the demand for “declaring victory” and bringing the boys home.

In the meanwhile, Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, contradicting earlier claims by Vice-President Dick Cheney that the insurgency was in its last throes, said insurgencies tend to go on for “five, six, eight, 10, 12 years” and that in Iraq the insurgency would be defeated not by foreign troops but by the Iraqis themselves.

The Americans are no longer talking of bringing stability to Iraq before they withdraw their troops. Instead, the more modest aim now is the training of sufficient Iraqis to enable them to tackle the insurgency on their own. I mentioned in last week’s article how far behind expectations this training programme is. It would perhaps be right to say that, if the training programme remains on its present course and if insurgent suicide bombers continue to target recruitment centres, it is unlikely that a sufficient Iraqi capability will be created in less than five years. This brings me back to the question of the private militias now operating in Iraq. In the north, the peshmerga, the 100,000 strong Kurdish militia, operates with full authority. Its legitimization was one of the conditions for the Kurdish acceptance of the federal structure planned for Iraq in the Transitional Administrative Law promulgated by the Americans. It was largely meant to guarantee the continuance of the measure of self-government on which the Kurds had insisted. It has a record of fighting on its own and alongside the Americans against the forces of Saddam and more recently against the insurgents.

The peshmerga were also being used to facilitate the return of the Kurds to Kirkuk and to secure the expulsion of the Arabs settled in Kirkuk by Saddam. In the process, even the Arabs and Turkomans, who had been in Kirkuk earlier, are being evicted. In short, the peshmerga sees its principal task as being the furthering of the Kurdish agenda the maintenance of full autonomy in the Kurdish north and converting Kirkuk, with its oil wealth, into a wholly Kurdish city.

In the south, the Badr brigade, the fighting arm of the SCIRI (Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) has been almost legitimized by the new government in Baghdad which is dominated by the SCIRI component of the Shia coalition that has the plurality in the new parliament and the cabinet. The power it exercises in the Shia-dominated areas is illustrated in Basra where the Shia militia — largely Al-Badr or its affiliates — have dominated the city and the police chief is powerless to remove their adherents from the force or to take action against the excesses they commit within the city.

More recent reports talk of the militia insisting on the implementation of an extreme form of Shia Islamic law, reminiscent of the early days of the Iranian revolution, arousing fears that an extremist order would be imposed on one of the most liberal cities in Iraq.

The Badr Brigade has also given birth to commando militia units — most noteworthy among them the Wolf brigade which is said to be in the forefront of the battle against the insurgents and is said to use the most brutal methods.

In addition, there is the non-government sanctioned but still powerful militia of Muqtada Al Sadr, drawn largely from Sadr city, the Shia dominated slum area of Baghdad. Muqtada is at odds with the present government; he has at times been a proponent of Shia-Sunni unity and of a joint struggle against the American forces, but under the present circumstances, the Sunnis rightly fear that his militia has an anti Sunni agenda.

A Sunni militia has also been created, as I mentioned last week, to fight the insurgents. It is not clear whether this militia has focused its attention purely on foreign insurgents or whether it is also finding its enemies within the ranks of the Iraqi Sunnis. If it is the latter, the impetus it will give to Sunni resentment of the present government may sound the death knell for reconciliation efforts.

The militia had initially been regarded by the Americans as a hindrance to national reconciliation and they had insisted on disbanding it. But as the insurgency gathered force and the Iraqi security forces remained ineffective the Americans quietly acquiesced in the government’s arming and financing of these groups as the weapon of choice against the insurgency.

The US state department spokesman said earlier this month when asked about the increasing use of the militia in the fight against the insurgents that this “is an Iraqi issue that they will decide and that they will deal with.” There are reliable reports that the Americans are not merely going along but are actively encouraging this by providing arms to the militia and conducting joint operations with them.

The dangers inherent in using ethnically composed private militia are apparent. The short term gain of having a force that can be as brutal in its methods as the insurgents and which is more battle hardened than the security forces now being put together is clearly outweighed by the long term loss of the accentuation of the ethnic divide and the entrenchment in the body politic of the vested interests of such militia and their commanders.

The Americans are well aware of this from their experience in other parts of the world but, at this time, it appears that a conscious decision has been made to put such forebodings aside. The ends justify the means if the end is defined not as a stable Iraq but an Iraq from which the Americans can withdraw forces after claiming that the back of the insurgency has been broken.

It is clear that the military situation is bad. The methods that the Iraqi government and the Americans have now had to adopt to cope with the insurgency may lay the foundation for further instability. The only redeeming feature in an otherwise grim situation appears to be the possibility, no matter how slim, of the political situation evolving in a more positive direction.

Apparently an agreement has been reached on how the Sunnis will be represented on the body that is to draw up Iraq’s new constitution. The salient features of the agreement are that 15 Sunnis will join the 55-member panel as full voting members (this would be in addition to the two already on the panel) and that another 10 Sunnis will be non-voting advisers with the right to make their views known.

The second important facet of the agreement was that decisions of the committee would be made by consensus and not by majority vote. In my view, this representation is probably less than the Sunnis should get on the basis of their voting strength — they are not 25 per ent of the population as generally propagated but closer to 35 per cent — but they have to accept that there would be a penalty for their failure to participate in the elections. In any case, if the Sunnis get their act together the consensus condition will give them the right to block any provisions that militate against their interests.

The problem is the selection of the Sunni members. It is said that they will be from the established Sunni parties but no one knows how representative these parties are and how far their nominees will be regarded as acceptable.

Another problem is of course the insistence that the committee complete its work by the deadline of August 15 set in the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL). The fact that decisions will now have to be taken by consensus, and given the deep differences on how the federal structure of Iraq will be framed without conceding too much to the regions and the difficult question of oil revenues distribution, it seems well nigh impossible that the task will be completed in the six weeks that remain. The TAL provides for an extension of six months for constitution-writing but, at least for the moment, the Americans are strongly opposed to any such move.

This insistence on the deadline may be positive. If under pressure more concessions are made to the Sunni point of view and less are demanded by the Kurds, an equitable constitution may emerge. This could put an end to the present ethnic and sectarian divides, dilute if not eliminate the support the insurgency enjoys and allow a united Iraq to move towards stability. The Americans have let it be known that their principal purpose in organizing the International Conference on Iraq in Brussels on June 20, was to impress upon the current Iraqi government that the international community (some 80 countries attended the conference) wanted the constitution to be more inclusive of the concerns of the minorities — specifically the Sunnis.

The Iraqis appear to be responsive as evidenced by the fact that the agreement with the Sunnis was reached on the eve of the conference. It is in this context that one should view also the confirmation of reports that the Americans have been talking to Sunni Iraqi insurgents to lay down arms and to isolate the foreign insurgents.

While it goes against the grain to agree with any facet of American policy towards Iraq there is no gainsaying the fact that at this time the best thing for the Iraqis, for the region and for the world would be a just equitable constitution to preserve Iraq’s unity and safeguard the interests of the Sunni and other minorities. This should also and persuade the Iraqi Sunnis, now a part of the insurgency, that political arrangements could get them what they are struggling for militarily — a fair share of political power in a democratic dispensation. They would not have much of a problem ensuring that such a constitution also called for the abolition of all militias with the exception, of course of the Kurdish peshmerga.

The region will have to live with the fact that over the past two years Iraq has become the testing zone in which non-Iraqi terrorists have honed their destructive skills and if Iraq stabilizes, these terrorists will be deployed in neighbouring countries — an inevitable fallout. A prolongation of Iraq’s agony will only make the fallout worse.

IF I were asked to name one quality that governments and their administrators in Pakistan lack, and have always lacked, I would say humanity. The word does not cover just one attitude of mind.

It includes numerous decent and noble attributes like sympathy, consideration, understanding, sensitivity to people’s pain and problems, and most of all, the ability to place oneself in the shoes of the man on the other side of the dark, deep line that divides the rulers and the ruled.

Almost every day newspapers are full of stories of human suffering and mental torture that under-privileged Pakistanis go through at the hands of public servants — officers and subordinates alike. One would think that these officials were demons who derive pleasure from other people’s helplessness. And yet, if you look into their personality you may not find them much different in their intimate hopes and aspirations from those whom they unwittingly victimize. There is something in the air of this country that makes those with power, authority and clout insensitive to the feelings of others.

Rather late in my government service, I was made to do a four-month course in the Pakistan Administrative Staff College at Lahore. It was a fine institution, and we were taught some very fine theories and management ways. But what I learned most of all, actually an endorsement of my old beliefs, was that the majority of government officers, decent fellows all of them, behave as if the existence of the public was a nuisance. In fact one of them used to say jokingly, “What a beautiful thing this government job would be if there were no public dealing!”

And of course it would be stating the obvious to tell you that none of the qualities that I have mentioned above under the heading of humanity formed part of the syllabus in the Staff College. Though all the instructors and eminent visiting lecturers did repeat, parrot-like, “Try to think of yourselves as servants of the people.” None of the participants bothered about this homily, for they did not want to be known as anybody’s servants.

The complete lack of consideration shown towards the people who come to an office with their problems is a cause of constant amazement for observers and newspapermen. For instance, courtesy and good manners apart, how much does it cost, or what pains has an officer to take, to, say, instal a shamiana for those standing in a queue in the blazing sun before a public-dealing window? To tell you the truth, this is not what I set out to write. In recent weeks I have come across a number of reports in the press about the terrible plight of prisoners, both convicted and accused, who (so far as I know) are still waiting for the government to implement recommendations of a report submitted in 1993 by the jail reforms committee headed by Justice Z.A. Channa. What is there in the report, so earth-shaking or so vital from the angle of the country’s security and well-being, that it should have taken the government so many years to decide whether its recommendations should be accepted or not? Nothing. The only reason for the unconscionable delay is heartlessness. Nobody is bothered.

Readers might remember my piece about the three persons in Karachi who were got released from prison after serving ten years, fifteen years and eighteen years respectively, without being charged for their alleged crimes by the police. A private social welfare body got them freed. No one in the police or the jail department or anywhere else was punished for the torture inflicted on the poor souls. Nobody bothered to ask how their families had fared in their absence. No amends of any kind were made. Government leaders went on merrily spouting cliches about what they were doing for the good of the people. They should have been sent to jail for at least three months for this crime and, for every prison meal, made to eat their cliches.

Dawn had once editorially welcomed the directive of the Punjab home department that no prisoner should be put in fetters, a most degrading and pointless practice, without obtaining court orders to that effect. But the credit for this humane directive did not go to the bureaucracy which is not moved by such matters. In fact the bureaucracy had done its worst. It had appealed against a Sindh High Court order against the use of fetters, but its appeal was not only turned down by the Supreme Court but the latter made its decision applicable to all the provinces. This is a typical instance of government officers’ indifference to human suffering.

Thank God for the Human Rights Commission, Amnesty International and the Edhi Agency which keep reminding successive governments in Pakistan that nobility of mind and kindness of heart are not the sole attributes of the prophets of God; that all those who are blessed by the Almighty to rule over their fellow beings are also expected to possess them. What is a government but a collection of the supposedly ablest and best educated among men and women of a country? Why should otherwise good individuals lose that moral quality when they band together to become the ruling entity? If it is a natural human trait then how have western nations been able to overcome it?

The three great organizations mentioned above (and others too) do their best to point out miscarriage of justice, instances of intense human suffering in jails and examples where a little thoughtfulness on the part of government officials would have saved people from cruel treatment. These cases may be tragic, but the greater tragedy is that normal, enlightened men in supervisory positions just do not stop to look and think, they don’t pay attention and it never occurs to them that they are the perpetrators of barbarity and uncivilized behaviour.

If this were not so there would be no stories of little children rotting in jails, which, in our country, are nothing but dens of iniquity — little children awaiting trial for petty theft. Newspapers would not carry reports of hundreds of women in prison for Hudood cases, some of them made pregnant by jail officials. We would never hear of men dying in police stations after being “interrogated” for minor crimes.

Have our masters (the true word for public servants) lost their inherent sense of decency through faulty education and wrong administrative training, or did they never have it at all?

AT a time when image building is the buzzword in Pakistan it would be interesting to note how others are faring in this exercise. In this age when capitalism, the brand name and consumerism have emerged as the salient features of a market economy and the so-called free society, image is the key factor that determines the worth of an item and also of a person or an institution.

If a brand has a good image in public perception, it will sell, even though it may not actually have the qualities it is supposed to have. Sometimes the image makes a product/institution/personality a status symbol which one must be seen with.

Similarly, a person who manages to project a certain image of himself will find himself to be acceptable irrespective of his true values. Conversely, if a country or a product or a personality has a negative image, it loses out on the advantages its forte should offer. But doesn’t all this presume that one can fool everyone all the time? This, we know, is not possible even if the government in Islamabad tries to sweep all the dismal aspects of our national life under the carpet. Be it Mukhtaran Mai, the low literacy rate or the prevailing poverty, each of these is bound to surface at one time or another and bring a bad name to Pakistan.

Just look at the United States, the only superpower in the world. It has all the resources to spend on polishing its image. And what does it achieve? A recent survey by the Pew Research Centre in Washington DC gives results which would dishearten Mr Bush and his associates. In the last five years — from 2000 to 2005 — America’s ‘favourability’ rating has shown a drastic slide in many countries of the world. In Tony Blair’s Britain, those viewing American foreign policy favourably have gone down from 83 per cent to 58 per cent in this period.

This fall has been worse in other countries. In Germany it went down from 78 per cent to 38 per cent, while in France it slid down from 62 per cent to 37 per cent. Even in Pakistan, where President Musharraf, the so-called close ally of George Bush, rules the roost, American popularity went down from 23 to 21 per cent.

The most disconcerting aspect of this scenario for the American image makers is that the American people generally realize their unpopularity in foreign countries. According to the Pew Research Centre, only 26 per cent of the Americans surveyed said they believed their country to be well liked abroad. It was this knowledge that had prompted them to ask in the wake of 9/11 the famous question, “Why do they hate us?” But one cannot be certain if they have the correct answer.

Pakistan has something to learn from this ugly American phenomenon. Howsoever much we may try to build up our image, it is not possible to sell it abroad if it is not based on reality. Every society has its good qualities as well as its negative points. If the two are balanced — or nearly so — the image factor becomes very important. By emphasizing the former and downplaying the latter, it is possible to project a positive image of the country. But in this age of communication and technology it is not so easy to conceal the facts, at least not on a long-term basis.

A few decades ago image-building was relatively easier, especially when the media technology was controlled by a few centres of power. They manipulated information and dished out disinformation. Not so today. Even the mighty Americans are having difficulty in controlling information, even in their own country.

Earlier this week, the Associated Press reported how an American journalist, George Weller, who entered Nagasaki in September 1945, soon after the atomic bomb had been dropped there, found a “wasteland of war” with hospitals full of victims moaning from radiation burns. Weller described graphically the agony of the Japanese exposed to the bomb. But his dispatches were censored by General Douglas MacArthur, who was commanding the US occupation troops in Japan. George Weller died in 2002 and his son discovered these dispatches in his apartment in Rome. Some of these dispatches have now appeared in Japanese in the newspaper Mainichi and in English on the paper’s website.

What MacArthur could do 60 years ago — imposing a total censorship on news — would be impossible to do today as is now more than apparent in George W. Bush’s America. That is why the American government decided to embed journalists with its forces when the US invaded Iraq. Thus it hoped to restrict the information available to the media. Yet negative news reports leaked out of Iraq. This is one of the prices of globalization America, or for that matter any country big or small, has to pay.

The Pew Research Centre observes, “Anti-Americanism is deeper and broader now than at any time in modern history. It is most acute in the Muslim world, but it spans the globe — from Europe to Asia, from South America to Africa... the rest of the world both fears and resents the unrivalled power that the United States has amassed since the Cold War ended. In the eyes of others, the US is a worrisome colossus: It is too quick to act unilaterally, it doesn’t do a good job of addressing the world’s problems, and it widens the global gulf between rich and poor.

“On matters of international security, the rest of the world has become deeply suspicious of US motives and openly sceptical of its word. People abroad are more likely to believe that the US-led war on terror has been about controlling Mideast oil and dominating the world than they are to take at face value America’s stated objectives of self-defence and global democratization.”

After this, the Pakistan government would do better to renounce its soft image strategy and focus its efforts and resources on improving the living conditions of the people, upgrading the social sector, uplifting the status of women, and, above all, moderating the extremist stance on Islam adopted by a number of religious parties and groups. Without addressing these fundamental issues, the results of the government’s policy of creating a positive image of the country would be futile.

Communication technology — satellite and cable television, radio, internet — is too powerful today to allow any government to tell a lie and get away with it. Mukhtaran Mai was placed on the exit control list because it was feared that she would go abroad and bring a bad name to the country by telling her story. Let any government functionary do a search on Google for Mukhtaran Mai and he will find 29,000 entries there. How much will the government control?