THE week gone by was too hectic as Pakistan made a spectacle of itself on the international scene. Right in the glare of international media, Gen Musharraf was seen trying to woo those very two political leaders whom he had branded as corrupt to the core and called their 10-year rule a disastrous decade. The president did not do much good to Pakistan’s image abroad by conducting his grubby politics in London. It appeared as if he was deliberately playing a sad joke on the people of Pakistan.

Musharraf had one more high-level but officially un-acknowledged contact with Benazir Bhutto in London. He had sent the chief of ISI, the secretary of the NSC and his Chief of Staff to sort out the loose ends of the deal he had sealed with Benazir in Abu Dhabi on July 26 and which had been earlier agreed to at the same place on January 24.

And for Nawaz, he sent his close friend, Brig (retd) Niaz. For those who do not know this gentleman, let me recall the notorious incident when some military officers purportedly refused to open fire on the PNA protesters trying to defy the limited martial law imposed by the then prime minister Z.A. Bhutto in Lahore in early 1977 to quell an agitation against the alleged rigging of elections by the PPP government.

The then COAS General Ziaul Haq had to remove the officers as per the army’s disciplinary rules. But immediately after he took over the reins of the country on July 4, 1977, Zia obliged these officers with lucrative offers, among them was Brig Niaz who was given the highly profitable business of supplying arms and weapons to the defence forces. He is a tycoon now and has cultivated almost the entire ruling elite with his generous and expensive gifts.

Can one imagine the winks that must have been exchanged within the MI5 and MI6, the eyebrows that must have gone up and down in the British Foreign Office and the jokes that must have circulated in the media here at the arrivals and departures of such high-powered people from a poor country on perpetual dole of the UK. The Home Office must have kept a close watch on some of the members of these entourages which included one top spy man and an arms dealer. This was happening in one of the world’s most high-profile capitals. And they had come all they way from Pakistan to talk…. to whom? Pakistan’s own leaders. One of these leaders was exiled by Musharraf himself and the other was hounded all these eight years with all sorts of cases without a shred of evidence.

What was more pathetic was that both Benazir and Musharraf kept refusing to publicly acknowledge the meetings in what appeared to be the most amateurish way. But both continued to talk of making substantive progress on the deal in the offing. At one stage Benazir even went to the extent of disclosing that the issue of uniform had already been resolved as Musharraf had agreed to retire from his army post before the election or would do so simultaneously along with the filing of his nomination papers. It is still not clear what Musharraf and Benazir were trying to achieve by staging this too transparent and a ham-handed flop of a drama.

Musharraf did not fool anybody by remaining so secretive about these meetings. Every one and his aunt knew that the man was desperate. And he had become even more desperate after the Supreme Court judgment of July 20. He was down and out. And he was clutching at the straws.

The man who had blamed the politicians for all the four military takeovers in the country claiming that it was they who in order to get rid of their rivals from the government had invited the army to take over was now being seen running from political pillar to civilian post in his full military regalia begging support for continuing in power. The irony was not lost either on the Pakistanis who live here or those who in any case do not have a very good opinion about our country.

I do not blame some of them for wondering why Musharraf could not have invited these leaders to Pakistan and discussed with them the future of his country and that of his own and theirs inside the confines of his Presidency in Islamabad or in the Camp Office in Rawalpindi. It is amazing that one could be so presumptuous as to expect those very people whom one had maligned for eight long years and refused to let them return to the country would come running with their support for him as soon as he whistled. I never thought Musharraf was so naïve. But then desperation does make a man do desperate things.

Musharraf wants these two leaders to continue to remain out of the country but wants them to direct their parties in the country to give him their full support and get him elected for another five years with or without uniform so that he could spread enlightened moderation and expel extremism.

Nawaz has refused to listen to Musharraf’s threats and his beseeches. He is going back vowing to use the street power to oust him. Benazir is all but fed up with the talks and may soon decide to go the Nawaz way.

It is indeed amazing that in the final analysis Musharraf is offering Benazir nothing more than what he had offered her when her party had won the largest number of National Assembly seats in the 2002 election. At that time he had offered to appoint a Benazir nominee as the prime minister but in return he had asked her to remain out of the country for the next five years. He was not even prepared to allow her to contest the election or be a candidate for the PM’s post for the third time. Benazir refused the deal.

It is beyond me to understand what makes Musharraf believe that she would now do the same deal which she had rejected in 2002? He has kept even the offer to doff the uniform rather too ambiguous, raising the suspicion in the PPP camp that he would do an MMA (when he refused to retire from the army after having promised to do so if the MMA voted the 17th amendment) on the PPP.

The textile industry, the mainstay of the country’s economy, is in a fix these days as the city district government has asked industrialists to shift their units from residential areas.

The CDG is of the view that textile units in populated areas have been creating a lot of problems for residents. The industrialists, however, are reluctant to shift their decades-old units without any financial assistance or long term soft loans.

According to them, when these units had been set up in the early 50s, these areas were unpopulated. They blame the government for its failure to check the mushrooming of housing colonies and settlements.

At present, 25,000 powerlooms, 40 spinning mills, 100,000 silk power and

Shutless looms, 1,000 dying factories, 500 printing mills, 130 textile processing, printing and finishing mills, and approximately 1,500 hosiery and knitwear units are functioning in the district.

More than 300 factories of textile processing, dying and printing, and thousands of powerlooms units are operating in residential areas. The textile sector provides employment to more than one million labourers.

According to the CDG plan, Maqbool Road, Raja Ghulam Rasool Nagar, Sargodha Road, Sattina Road, Nishatabad are the areas from where textile units would be shifted. However, the industrialists are severely criticizing the CDG decision.

Regional chairman of the Pakistan Textile Processing Mills Association Mian Aftab Ahmed said “the government has been pressing the industrialists operating their units in the residential areas to shift their businesses without considering the problems/constraints (of industrialists).”

According to him, it was impossible for them to shift industry from here, as most of the machinery was outdated and its shifting was a very difficult task. “All areas were deserted when the industry was set up here and it was our industry which had earned a name of Textile Capital for Faisalabad.”

He said that without soft loans, it would be impossible for them to shift industry by any means. It was the failure of the government departments which could not evolve a strategy to cater to the needs of industrialists and dwellers as well.

The textile industry earns more than two billion dollars of foreign exchange and industrialists associated with this field pay approximately Rs30 billion per annum in taxes to the government.

Although the textile industry’s share in the national economy is gigantic, the units in residential areas are a serious health hazards for the local population. Residents of Maqbool Road, Nishatabad, Raja Ghulam Rasool Nagar and others have been facing numerous problems. The effluent being discharged by these units is causing skin and eye diseases. Moreover, the sewerage system also collapses under heavy pressure of effluents, inundating houses in adjoining localities.

Despite resistance from industrialists, the city district government is determined to shift all textile units outside the residential areas.

City district nazim Rana Zahid Touseef says that it’s the need of the hour to shift industry outside residential areas.

He says the government has devised a comprehensive strategy for industrialization. A Value Addition City has been established in Sahianwala, while M-3 Industrial City over 4,000 acres is also being established in the same vicinity. Mr Touseef says that government will offer industrialists plots in both the cities on easy installments besides extending them help in getting soft loans.