THE foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, put things in perspective when he told parliament that a country’s foreign policy follows its strategic interests and cannot change with every change in government.

Strategic interests and policy can change, of course, as happened when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto shifted the country’s foreign policy away from exclusive alignment with the US towards a close relationship with China.

It is early yet and emotions are still raw for an objective evaluation of Musharraf’s eventful eight years. Certainly, he did not, or could not, do all the things that at the beginning of his rule he announced he had come to do. But the one thing that indisputably he did accomplish was to review and revise the country’s foreign policy.

The turnaround with regard to Afghanistan was brought about by the American stick and carrot but it was abrupt and thorough. The Taliban clients were ditched overnight, and support, political and material, was given in full measure to the US operation to clear them out of Afghanistan. That matters have not turned out as planned, either for America or for Pakistan, is another story.

The American operation is bogged down, due partly to America’s quick-fix approach in co-opting the non-Pakhtun Northern Alliance against the Pakhtun Taliban. Soon enough the Pakhtuns, Taliban or otherwise, came to see the Americans as enemies, and turned also against their local allies, Musharraf and the army. This too may have been a factor in the surprising electoral success of the largely Pakhtun MMA in the previous elections.

Pakistan has benefited quite evidently from American and other economic and financial aid in return. Even so, the policy lacks public support and notwithstanding suicide attacks on Pakistani targets, in the popular view Pakistan is fighting a war that is America’s war. Americans for their part keep grumbling that Pakistan is not doing enough; as for Afghanistan, Karzai’s government remains suspicious of Pakistan’s intentions and has tended to lean towards India. And the Taliban are back in business, this time within Pakistan.

Our India policy, always the pivotal element of foreign policy, too changed in the Musharraf years and in fact changed in a more substantive way. But the change has appeared less abrupt and was less controversial, perhaps because the process had in fact started earlier. Benazir Bhutto reached a settlement over Siachen with Rajiv Gandhi that was aborted by Indian hard-liners. Rajiv agreed with her that the two countries should try to reach an understanding over the nuclear issue in quiet talks held out of the limelight. This did not find acceptance among our hard-liners.

Nawaz Sharif brought Vajpayee to Lahore’s Minar-i-Pakistan in a symbolic reaffirmation of India’s acceptance of Partition though the Kargil adventure blocked any follow-up to this gesture. Going back even earlier, it was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who put forward the idea of a soft cease-fire line that would ease the day-to-day life of the Kashmiri people pending a definitive settlement of the Kashmir dispute. The inter-Kashmir bus service is a late fruition of this idea.

On the Kashmir issue, Musharraf went further than previous rulers in offering explicitly to give up on the UN’s Kashmir resolutions. He also put forward various specific ideas for a solution, for example, joint administration of the valley. But India has reacted very coolly, when it has reacted at all, to all of this. The fact is that today India is under no pressure, political or military or moral to move from its position on Kashmir, if ever it had any such intention.

Pakistan has found itself gradually moving towards the Indian side of the chicken or egg argument: resolve the core issue of Kashmir in order to establish friendly relations or become friends in order to open the way to a settlement. Talking to a delegation of leaders from both sides of Kashmir, Foreign Minister Qureshi said, “Pakistan wants good ties with India as better relations between the two will help resolve all outstanding issues, including the core issue of Kashmir.”

Echoing Musharraf, who in turn was repeating a phrase coined by Prime Minister Vajpayee, the minister added, “We want to promote relations between Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control and make the LoC irrelevant to resolve the issue.”

What an irrelevant LoC might mean in practice is not clear — presumably freer movement of people and goods across the line and some sort of direct interaction between the two Kashmiri governments.

It could end up by turning the LoC into a recognised, if loose, sort of border — a position that India has desired from the start. However, even the moderate All Parties Hurriyat Conference is unwilling to accept a solution under the Indian constitution. As for Pakistan, it is difficult to see what Pakistan would gain from ratifying a dressed-up status quo.

The fact is that four years of ‘composite dialogue’ have not had much effect on the ground situation in Indian-held Kashmir where disaffection and dissent continue in the shape of demonstrations and strikes and arrests and, though somewhat less frequently, shootouts between Indian security forces and Kashmiri militants. India has just augmented its large forces in the valley by another 6,000 men after an exchange of fire along the Line of Control.

In the circumstances, Asif Zardari seems to have got it right in suggesting that it should be left to future generations to find a solution to the Kashmir problem. Better to leave things in limbo for

the present, rather than settling for an arrangement that is politically and morally untenable and has to be forced on the Kashmiris.

However, equally untenable would it be to go on with the flawed — and failed — policy of tying up with Kashmir other aspects of the relationship with India. Cooperation in industry, education, health, energy, transport, enhanced trade and commerce will greatly benefit both countries. The composite dialogue is to be re-launched after the visit of India’s foreign minister, which may be followed by a visit by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

But given that the eight-point agenda announced for Mr Mukherjee’s visit includes all the major problems that the two countries have been negotiating for years — Siachen, Sir Creek, Wullar Barrage — it is necessary to find ways, in the words of the Foreign Office spokesman, to make the dialogue ‘more meaningful’. If, as Manmohan Singh asserts, the Jaipur blasts were designed to derail the peace process, there is all the more reason to do so.

The writer is a career diplomat who also served in a ministerial post.

LAST week, with much excitement, the new London Maggie’s Centre for cancer care opened on a sliver of land between the Fulham Palace Road and Charing Cross Hospital in Hammersmith, in the west of the city.

Already there are five centres in Scotland, designed by Page and Park, Richard Murphy, Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid, but the London centre, designed by Richard Rogers’s practice, is the first of six planned for England and Wales. A total of 13 centres are planned to be open by 2012.

They are the vision of Maggie Keswick Jencks who, while being treated for cancer, identified the need for patients to access emotional and psychological support and practical information in an uplifting environment, since, in her words, ‘Above all, what matters is not to lose the joy of living in the fear of dying.’ The buildings are closely linked to the Charing Cross Hospital’s oncology departments, but they don’t have corridors or hospital paraphernalia. Visitors feel they are entering an ‘open house’ where the informality of conversation around a kitchen table helps to create an atmosphere of ease and sanctuary.

I was particularly excited to be offered the opportunity to create a series of gardens for the new centre, as I am a believer in the healing power of gardens and gardening. The calming effect of green and the fact that a beautiful, sensual environment can transport you can affect anyone. For those of us who choose to garden, there is nothing quite like the feeling of freedom that comes when you combine the cerebral with the physical. Building in the ‘feel-good’ is something that is now second nature in the way that I approach garden-making, but this was an opportunity to do it in the knowledge that all the energy was going to those who need it most.

The centre is based on the embrace of an arm that gradually envelops visitors as they move towards the kitchen at the heart of the building. A tall tomato-orange wall wraps around the building, providing protection from the busy road and the hubbub of the hospital. My brief from Laura Lee and Marcia Blakenham, chief executive and vice chairman respectively of Maggie’s, was that the building should be protected and cushioned by the green of a garden. The centre has been designed with three internal winter gardens and sun-filled roof terraces so that you are never more than a step away from the healing power of vegetation.

When I visited the site more than two years ago it was a delight to find that there was already a group of established London Planes there. They have textured trunks that lean at angles and immediately suggested a leafy woodland approach meandering between them. The entrance to the centre was key, as we knew that the biggest obstacle for many people scared by their situation was going to be getting over the threshold. The woodland walk has been planted with winter box (Sarcococca) for perfume and a soft undercurrent of leafy evergreen perennials, which will form a foil for a series of sensual ceramic sculptures by Hannah Bennett.

Hannah matched the glaze colours to the bark on the plane trees, and they lead your eye to the arrival courtyard, which is surrounded by a group of white Magnolia x loebneri ‘Merrill’. There is a long bench here which connects the arrival courtyard through an opening in the front wall to the safety of the main inner courtyard. The last of the seven sculptures sits at the end of a leafy corridor by the front door, and is dished to hold a small pool of water to reflect the sky.

We surrounded the building with more than 100 Betula albosinensis var septentrionalis to filter noise and pollution. They are already showing the dark pink and mahogany patterning on the bark which, in time, will complement the warmth of the coloured walls.

Visitors are encouraged to find their own space inside the building, so there is a choice of courtyards to sit in. The north-facing courtyard is filled with the lush greenery of Tetrapanax, scented Nicotiana and the exotically perfumed climber Holboellia. The east courtyard has an outdoor fireplace, Sparrmannia and Iris japonica ‘Ledger’s Variety’. The focal point of the southern courtyard is a huge table under the shade of a feathery Albizia julibrissin, the Chinese Tree of Happiness, the bark and flowers of which are used as a calming sedative in Chinese medicine.

There is perfume here, too, with Trachelospermum, honey spurge and scented pelargoniums. There will be grapes to eat from the vines that will cover the pergola, and at Cath Knox’s suggestion we have planted some giant pots with peppermint and lemon verbena so that visitors will be able to pick their own herbs for a cup of tea and a chat.

Cath has been living with cancer for 12 years, and getting to know her has made the project very real for me. ‘When you are told you have cancer, every moment counts,’ she told me. ‘To have those moments captured in the blossom of a magnolia that you may not see the following year, to stumble across perfume caught on the breeze or the scent of mint crushed between your fingers becomes incredibly meaningful.’

I have always intuitively known that intimacy, sensuality and sanctuary in a garden are key to creating a sense of wellbeing, but it has been made so much more vivid seeing it through the eyes of someone who is seizing life with a new intensity. That intense connection with nature is something from which we can all benefit, and I feel privileged to have been able to create an environment which will offer that experience to those who may need it most.

—The Observer, London

“One thing goes and everything else collapses,” is how Fernando Meirelles, the Brazilian director explained the premise of his film ‘Blindness’ which opened the 61st Cannes Film Festival.

The film, he added, shows humans reverting ‘to their basest instincts when they are backed into a corner’.

How deeply ironic then that the same day as this film was being showcased, life played out to its basest at Ranchore Line in Karachi as a frenzied mob caught hold of three robbers, beat them up, doused them with petrol and then stood and watched as all three were set ablaze and withered into pieces of human charcoal.

There may be conflicting reports about what exactly happened but the photographs tell their own story and these showed a group of grim-faced men watching the grotesquery before them, some even capturing that moment on their mobile phone cameras. There are reports that police and Edhi volunteers were stopped from going near the three men as they burnt to death.

This extreme act of violence did not take place in a faraway corner of some sparsely populated area but in the heart of Karachi, in broad daylight. An old Karachi locality, Ranchore Line is made up of clusters of ‘mohallas’ each literally a congested warren of narrow streets lined by buildings on both sides. The population is a mix of generations and includes old Katchi-and Marwari-speaking communities, as well as Urdu-speaking migrants settled here since 1947.

Ranchor Line represents what Karachi is today — a mixed bowl of ethnicities, languages and religions. The fact that this terrible incident took place here is an eerie reminder that it could happen anywhere in the city. (In fact, the very next day two more robbers met the same fate, this time near Sakhi Hasan in Karachi, while another was lucky to be saved by the police from the mob’s wrath in Lahore.)

That the three men were robbers does not diminish the scale of the violence they were subjected to. Equally disturbing is the reaction that followed. The day after the incident, I heard a few young men in their twenties saying that the robbers deserved the punishment they got and that the police would have set them free.

So did the robbers deserve it because people are so fed up with being robbed, shot at, and picked up for ransom or is it because there is so little faith in justice being done? ‘They will get away with it’, ‘the police are themselves involved’, ‘what’s the point of reporting?’ are routine remarks. There is also the sentiment that perhaps now those who commit these robberies will be careful, ‘They know that they won’t be able to get away’.

This trend is also reminiscent of the extra-judicial killings of the eighties and nineties, but the difference now is that instead of the state it is those without the means to protect themselves taking the law into their own hands. And while the rich have private security agencies and armed guards to protect them, to whom do the poor turn?

But there is much more to it than justice not being seen to be done. It is about how violent we have become as a society. It is about the feeling of helplessness that people with no recourse to influence or authority have. Mostly, it is about the growing chasm between those who have seemingly limitless wealth and those who spend their entire day looking for work, coming back to cramped homes and finding there is no electricity or water.

There is, of course, no justification at all for this kind of pathological violence but we all know that this state of affairs is not an overnight phenomenon. It has taken years of militarisation and disruption of the democratic process for us to be at a place where people feel that they have no voice, or if they do, no one to listen to them.

So have we as a society reverted to our basest instincts? Have we been so pushed into a corner that we can stand by and watch, and worse, act out this collective retribution? If people continue to live with this spiralling sense of vulnerability then perhaps the answer is a terrifying affirmative. But we are also a tenacious people, and that is possibly where our hope lies. This is borne out by the fact that we believe in change and that we showed this by participating in a democratic process to bring it about. Perhaps this time we can begin to live that change.

The writer is a documentary film-maker.