PEOPLE in Pakistan are great but you have horrible leaders, whereas we have lousy people and great leaders, said a frequent visitor from South Africa. He found the people here to be courteous, friendly, caring and accommodating.

If one can briefly shut out the constant reminders of the wrongs with which this land bristles, the culture of helping others and the philanthropy that flows to soften the brute shocks of life can be seen more clearly.

These attributes cut across the various ethnic and religious groups that constitute Pakistan. It is the subtext that prevails in sharp contrast to the mindset of the minority that rules the country. This distinction must be remembered so that the ills of the few are not used to discredit the vast majority that is Pakistan. Nor should the ills of the few, even as they have hurt the country since its creation, be used to question the very existence of Pakistan as a nation.

Pakistan represents a plurality. It is not one nation but a bouquet of nations. All the nations of Pakistan are caught in various processes of change and in struggles of competing identities. Rights are claimed on the basis of one or the other identity. But besides claims of entitlement on the basis of identity, common themes can be found across ethnic lines.

A woman from anywhere in Pakistan could say, I am discriminated against not only by our customs but also by law. A landless peasant anywhere in Pakistan could say, I toil on the land but my family does not have enough food, nor do my children get quality healthcare or education. I walk or get packed into crowded buses, while those who share my language and religion ride big cars and are well fed. Ask any poor woman and the meaning of justice becomes unequivocal. She knows her deprivations. This sense of what is right and wrong is innate, as some religious scholars also emphasise. It has been said that even the worst criminal knows deep down that what he has done is wrong, as he would never want that inflicted on himself. What then is the problem that grips Pakistan?

Today, all those who live within the geographical boundaries of Pakistan watch the injustices emanating from a powerful centre with mixed feelings of anger, frustration, helplessness and/or indifference. The centre appears blind to the importance of the role nations must have in directing their own future, and their right to negotiate a better future for themselves. Nations are ready to seek a better future through democratic means, but when this is denied violence erupts. When rights are demanded not on the basis of democratic principles but through the barrel of the gun or from behind a rocket launcher, chaos is bound to follow and render any state dysfunctional.

Psychologists differentiate between functional and dysfunctional families. Dysfunctionality, however, does not indicate absence of family but a family where its members, especially the children, could start becoming dysfunctional. Not all such families disintegrate, for many lift themselves up with the help of therapists or some members from within play the critical role of positive change. Pakistan today needs a therapist and its emerging civil society could play this role, for the political leadership remains suspect.

Pakistan’s response to the recent horrific incident of women killed brutally in Balochistan’s Nasirabad district, and the continuing menace of karo-kari killings in Sindh, presents two distinct realities: the people who have the strength to say NO and cry out in the name of humanity and justice, and a leadership that can at best voice its condemnation but cannot act for substantive change and therefore remains suspect. Our horror stories belie the deep goodness of people, and the two (the good and the bad) must be kept separate.

Maulana Rumi says that after the rains you see muddy water streaming down the ground, but within it is the pure water of the rains. The purity of our people, among the urban and rural poor, among the ordinary rural and urban literate and educated, is to be respected. Despite the lousy job done by the leaders, despite the leadership’s inability to introduce a single measure that would make a difference in the lives of the poor, people by and large continue to be civilised, erupting only now and then in acts of desperation like the burning alive this year of suspected dacoits in a middle-class area of Karachi.

There are millions and millions of people all over Pakistan who are straightforward, honest people struggling to lead an honest life as hardships mount and the fissures of inequality deepen. What does this do to the inner simplicity and goodness of people? Needless to say it is challenged, and it comes under tremendous stress.

The leaders appear oblivious whereas for the poor the solution is simple. If the government cannot give us healthcare and education then why is it there! exclaimed a poor woman in Sindh. We are forced to go the feudal lords in our area for justice because the courts are difficult to access, said another woman. An angry young man at a civil society meeting in Karachi demanded, if it is to be our Pakistan then it has to be shaped according to our vision.

The struggles of nations can be destructive or constructive as demands are resisted and the cost of change takes on staggering proportions. The path through the mess created by deprivation, violence and the indifference of the political leadership can be cut not by the rhetoric of democracy but the practise of democracy at every level — micro, meso and macro — and in every domain of life. This path must be predicated on the dreams of the majority of Pakistanis. After all, as Paolo Freire said in Pedagogy of Hope, “there is no change without dream, as there is no dream without hope.”

EXACTLY a year ago, Emirates flight EK 606 landed at Karachi’s Jinnah Terminal after delays caused by the constant in-flight turbulence generated by giddy supporters celebrating the return of Benazir Bhutto after eight years in exile. Pleas by Bhutto’s comrades at the request of the pilot failed to placate the party spirit of her supporters aboard the plane.

Sobriety returned though as the former prime minister descended the stairs, reduced to tears of joy by the emotions surging within as she set foot on home soil as well as the heart-warming spectacle of the waiting crowd, including aviation authority personnel, chanting “Jeay Bhutto”. Actually my memory of this moment is based on the historic images I saw later because, wanting the crowd to thin out, I had chosen to stay back in the cabin as Bhutto exited the plane. The view from high up in the aircraft was a political classic — Bhutto’s trademark dupatta, her supporters behind her, the press corps next to her and another throng of supporters in front.

It was an extraordinary spectacle of immense symbolic value. It seemed that people’s power had returned to the fore determined to take on the forces of dictatorship, restore democracy to the country and its people, and crush the warped ideology of the likes of Baitullah Mehsud.

Making our way through the mayhem we soon found ourselves inside the immigration hall, wondering whether it was worth trekking up to the Mehran Lounge, where Benazir Bhutto had been ferried.

Conflicting reports of her whereabouts trickled back to us. To find out whether she had commenced her onward journey, we decided to reach the scene of action.

Unusually deserted streets leading out of Jinnah Terminal belied the tumult that lay ahead at Star Gate Avenue, and also suggested that the procession hadn’t started yet. October’s unbearable humidity did not dissuade tens of thousands of people — a total of three million according to the PPP — from paying homage to their beloved leader. Clearly, she was the embodiment of hope for the thousands present at the scene, and possibly also for millions across the land watching the television coverage of a truly momentous moment.

The composition of the crowd was varied and eclectic, with probably every ethnic group in Pakistan represented. Flag-bearing delegations representing minority communities were a reminder of the oft-forgotten reason for the white in our flag.

In short, men and women of all shades and stripes gathered to accord a rousing welcome to a leader they clearly respected and in whom they saw, realistically or otherwise, the ability to fix their socio-economic problems and, on a broader scale, their country’s.

It was not a day to engage in evaluations of her two terms in office or her real or imagined misdeeds; nothing could shift the focus away from the sense of wonder only this sort of mass rally could inspire. How often does the nation with its varied population, religions and subcultures coalesce around a political figure and a moderate, nation-building ideology? Rarely. Hence the events of the day occasioned joy for resident Pakistanis as well as the diaspora as they counterbalanced the ethnic divisions and bigotry eating away at the soul of the nation. Our collective unity in its finest diversity was there for the world to see.

Had the procession safely reached its destination, and the night its climax, perhaps things would have looked that way longer, the euphoria of the moment morphing into a larger campaign to rid the country of the depraved mindset of hate-mongers, suicide bombers and their brutal patrons.

All communities, serving as stakeholders, progressive street power at its zenith and an articulate, unwavering leadership forming the nucleus of a new Pakistan — that was the dream on display for the better part of that day.

The dancing and merriment, really a collective effervescence of sorts, proved to be short-lived as the killers sprang into action targeting an innocent and patriotic crowd, leaving close to 150 dead and scores others injured and maimed. Carnival was turned into carnage, as this paper put it the next day. It was the worst suicide attack in terms of death toll in the country’s short but horrifically bloody history of suicide missions. According to one estimate, nearly 120 suicide attacks have taken place since 2002.

One year down the road, despite the transition from dictatorship to democracy, little or nothing has changed; indeed the frequency of suicide bombings has increased and the hold of the obscurantists and merchants of death seems to have strengthened. No one seems to be able to come up with a sustainable formula for coexisting with or eliminating the Tehrik-i-Taliban. Worse, few mullahs and religious parties in our cities, towns and villages have condemned these reprehensible, unholy attacks that have left families in mourning and a nation in terror of the unknown.

Military operations against the militants have, at best, achieved only marginal success. Negotiations haven’t worked and deals reneged on have naturally collapsed. The politicians, meanwhile, continue to squabble instead of putting up a united front in the battle against militancy and terrorism. It is time for everyone to come together. And it is time for the silent majority to stir as it did on Oct 18, 2007, albeit ceremoniously, to make its position known.

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WHILE the eyes of the western world have been fixed on the global financial crisis, the military campaign that launched the war on terror has been spinning out of control. Seven years after the US and Britain began their onslaught to oust the Taliban and capture Osama bin Laden, the Taliban surround the capital, Al Qaeda is flourishing in Pakistan and the war’s sponsors have publicly fallen out about whether it has already been lost.

As the US joint chiefs of staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen concedes that the country is locked into a “downward spiral” of corruption, lawlessness and insurgency, Britain’s ambassador in Kabul, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, is quoted in a leaked briefing as declaring that “American strategy is destined to fail”. The same diplomat who told us last year that British forces would be in Afghanistan for decades now believes foreign troops are “part of the problem, not the solution”.

The British commander Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith was last week even blunter. “We’re not going to win this war,” he said, adding that if the Taliban were prepared to “talk about a political settlement”, that was “precisely the sort of progress that concludes insurgencies like this”. The double-barrelled duo were duly slapped down by US defence secretary Robert Gates for defeatism. But even Gates now publicly backs talks with the Taliban.

This is the conflict western politicians and media continue to urge their reluctant populations to support as a war for civilisation. In reality, it is a war of barbarity, whose contempt for the value of Afghan life has fuelled the very resistance that western military and political leaders are now unable to contain.

In this year alone, for every occupation soldier killed, at least three Afghan civilians have died at the hands of occupation forces. They include the 95 people, 60 of them children, killed by a US air assault in Azizabad in August; the 47 wedding guests dismembered by US bombardment in Nangarhar in July — US forces have a particular habit of attacking weddings; and the four women and children killed in a British rocket barrage six weeks ago in Sangin.

By far the most comprehensive research into Afghan casualties over the past seven years has been carried out by Marc Herold, a US professor at the University of New Hampshire. In his latest findings, Herold estimates that the number of civilians directly killed by the US and other Nato forces since 2006, up to 3,273, is already higher than the toll exacted by the devastating three-month bombardment that ousted the Taliban regime in 2001.

But most telling is the political and military calculation that underlies the Afghan civilian bloodletting. “Close air support” bomb attacks called in by ground forces — which rose from 176 in 2005 to 2,926 in 2007 and are now the US tactic of choice — are between four and 10 times as deadly for Afghan civilians as ground attacks, the figures show, and air strikes now account for 80 per cent of those killed by the occupation forces.

But while 242 US and Nato ground troops have died in the war with the Taliban this year, not a single pilot has been killed in action. The trade-off could not be clearer. With troops thin on the ground and the US military up to their necks in Iraq and elsewhere, US and Nato reliance on air attacks minimises their own casualties.

It is that equation that makes a nonsense of US and British claims that their civilian victims are accidental “collateral damage”. In real life, the escalating civilian death toll is not a mistake, but the result of a clear decision to put the lives of occupation troops before civilians; westerners before Afghans.

Dependence on air power is also a reflection of US imperial overstretch and the reluctance of Nato states to put more boots on the ground. But however much the nominal Afghan president Hamid Karzai rails against Nato’s recklessness with Afghan blood, the indiscriminate air war carries on regardless. Given that the US government spent 10 times more on every sea otter affected by the Exxon Valdez oil spill than it does in “condolence payments” to Afghans for the killing of a family member, perhaps that shouldn’t come as a surprise.

But nor should it be that the occupation’s cruelty is a recruiting sergeant for the Taliban. As Aga Lalai, who lost both grandparents, his wife, father, three brothers and four sisters in a US bombing in Helmand last summer, put it: “So long as there is just one 40-day-old boy remaining alive, Afghans will fight against the people who do this to us.”

That doesn’t just go for Afghanistan. Gordon Brown recently told British troops in Helmand: “What you are doing here prevents terrorism coming to the streets of Britain.” The opposite is the case. The occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq — and the atrocities carried out against their people — are a crucial motivation for those planning terror attacks in Britain. Now the US is launching attacks inside Pakistan, the risks of further terror and destabilisation can only grow.

Senior Pakistani officials are convinced Nato is preparing to throw in the towel in Afghanistan. Both Bush and the two US presidential candidates are committed to an Iraq-style surge. But the strategic importance of Afghanistan doesn’t suggest any early US withdrawal.

The US and its allies cannot pacify Afghanistan nor seal the border with the Taliban’s Pakistani sanctuary. Eventually there is bound to be some sort of negotiated withdrawal as part of a wider regional and domestic settlement. But many thousands of Afghans — as well as occupying troops - look certain to be sacrificed in the meantime.

— The Guardian, London