ISLAMABAD: There is almost a set pattern to all high-profile official visits from Washington to Islamabad. They create hype, lead to speculation and end up in some controversy. The controversy is invariably triggered by elections or democracy-related remarks by the American guests. It instantly captures headlines and there is a bigger news splash when Pakistan hits back with a terse message the moment the American guests leave. The crux of the message is: “Democracy and elections in Pakistan are none of your business.” The standard official line is that no advice or lessons on democracy are required from outside. Within the press and also within part of the officialdom, alarm bells start ringing. The popular refrain becomes “all is not well on the Pakistan-US front”.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’ ‘urprise’visit here last week was no exception. However, the only difference this time around was that it was not just her comments that led to a controversy but also the declaration by our easily provoked foreign minister that Pakistan would be deploying 10,000 more troops in the border areas with Afghanistan.

It was evident from the clarification issued by the Foreign Office the following day that Mr Kasuri had mistakenly put the past in the future tense in his tirade! Contrary to the impression being given that the foreign minister was quoted out of context, the fact is that he was not. He said it loud and clear and the transcript of the press conference released by the US State Department testifies that.

Coming back to Secretary Rice’ comments on free and fair elections in Pakistan that drew a sharp and swift response from the foreign office which categorically stated that the topic did not even figure in her meeting with the President. At the June 27 joint press conference with Mr Kasuri, Secretary Rice had talked about democracy and elections at two specific points. Once in her opening statement and then in response to a question. Rice’s exact comments were: “Pakistan is a country that is going through a tremendous transition. It is a country that, as President Musharraf has said, has adopted a course of enlightened moderation. It is a course that not only the United States supports but that is supported worldwide. And we have had a discussion of the role that the further democratisation of Pakistan will play on that road to enlightened moderation, including the importance of the upcoming elections in 2007, and we look forward to further discussions of those matters.”

Evidently such public pronouncements coming from both ends are not really directed at each other and are meant for their respective constituencies. And then there are perceived political compulsions —or the Americans to distance themselves from their role in the creation of Taliban.

Washington’ strategy to keep all its options open within the domestic political scene in its ally countries notwithstanding, the American system excels in cultivating inter-personal relations with the serving heads of the government or state. Hence behind the scenes, the top-level political interaction is marked by warmth, cordiality and a high comfort level. For instance even though former US President Bill Clinton’s four-hour visit to Pakistan in March 2000 was perceived as extremely tense, those privy to his meeting with President Musharraf had a different story to tell. According to insiders, minutes before the TV cameras rolled in to capture images of the Musharraf-Clinton meeting, the two leaders were at complete ease with each other. They discussed golf and even cracked jokes.

In March this year when President Bush came to Pakistan, the general impression after his joint press conference with President Musharraf was that they had had a tense exchange on elections and the uniform issue. However, it was learnt later that President Musharraf and his key aides were almost ecstatic about Bush’s visit and could not stop congratulating each other for it being such a success. Apparently at the state banquet at the Aiwan-i-Sadr, President Bush was pleasantly surprised and delighted when his favourite song ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’ was played. This was supposedly the song that he had danced to when he first met his wife Laura. On hearing the song, President Bush got so excited that he even asked his host if he could dance!

For the United States pursuing its own strategic interests in the region are more important than the issue of democracy in Pakistan. And the people of Pakistan should be under no illusions about the US role in their battle for democracy. For Washington, the current priority remains the war on terror. For that the official America believes support of a uniformed president in Pakistan is crucial.

SRINAGAR: They are the men who care for Kashmir’s dead, but the work is slowly killing them. Since an uprising against Indian rule began in occupied Kashmir in 1989, Mohammad Maqbool Bhat, now in his late 40s, says he has helped perform autopsies on at least 30,000 corpses.

Each time a civilian, militant, soldier or policemen dies, Maqbool is called into action, to cut open their bodies while doctors prepare reports on exactly what killed them: a bullet through the heart or kidney; an explosion ripping through the intestines; or something else?

It takes just 20 to 30 minutes to cut open a corpse “from head to the navel”, he said.

“When I am at the post-mortem table, all I want to know is the cause of death,” he said. “The only time I get flustered is when a child’s body comes. Then I get very angry. No one should talk to me at that time.”

The stocky, bespectacled man, who is not a qualified doctor but is widely known as Dr Maqbool, admits having nightmares.

It’s hardly surprising. In the past five or six years he has had to contend with a wave of suicide bombings and attacks which has left him to piece together scattered body parts of victims and attackers alike.

“Once, I got the body parts of four people,” he said, speaking from his hospital bed in Srinagar, where he was recovering from a gradual weakness, the cause of which doctors were still trying to determine.

“I had to match legs with pelvises, hands with shoulders and necks with chests to find out whose body was whose.”

Maqbool says he can usually recognise a suicide bomber, who often seem to come from outside the troubled state.

“They normally have different hair,” he said. “They don’t look Kashmiri and sometimes, they have a smile on their face.”

At his tin-shed home in a squalid area on a hill with a labyrinth of narrow lanes, his daughter Babli says she leaves her father alone for at least an hour after work each day.

Then, after he has cleaned up and eaten he relaxes — by watching the news.

In the past six months, Maqbool has fallen ill, and has to spend increasingly long periods in bed or in hospital.

Babli says she knows why.

“It’s very clear: the dead bodies, their smell and the tension is killing him,” she said. “But no one is helping us. He has served for so many years but today he is spending from his own pocket for the treatment.”

When the corpses leave Maqbool’s operating table, they often end up with 65-year-old Abdul Kabir Sheikh.

Known as Kabir “Chacha” or Uncle Kabir, he is responsible for burying the unclaimed bodies of violence — mostly the militants themselves.

This is Kabir’s family job — his father, and his father’s father also earlier buried the dead of Srinagar.

In 1992, he had to bury the corpse of his own son, killed by Indian security forces while trying to cross the Jhelum river in a canoe, or shikara.

“With these hands, I buried my boy,” Kabir says with tears in his eyes. “On the same day, I buried eight other people — all killed in the militancy.”

Kabir has lost four family members to the violence and is bitter about India’s rule.

“The leaders make promises but nothing changes,” he says. “Four corpses have gone from my house — all at the altar of militancy,” he adds, showing a pretty picture of his young niece, killed in a crossfire between Muslim militants and security forces.

“Hamid’s brother is young and jobless. I can’t guarantee he will not pick up the gun.” His face turns suddenly ashen.

He recalls the time when 29 people were killed and 60 wounded when militants attacked Kashmir’s parliament building in 2001.

“It takes courage to do this job,” he says. “The bodies are mutilated and rotting by the time they are given to me. When they attacked the state assembly, I had to collect the flesh of six bodies from the road. Nothing was left.

“Even when I have buried a single hand or a leg, I have read the last rites.”—Reuters