By Idrees Bakhtiar

Despite contentious tenets and the hasty appointment of qazis, the peace agreement signed between the Taliban and the ANP in Swat appears to have settled the political storm — if only temporarily and superficially

 Normalcy is slowly returning to Mingora: shops and bazaars remain open for longer than they did until recently and no gun-slinging Taliban are to be found on the roads and the streets.
 

Is the revolution already over?


The march is over. Long live the march. People asserted their power, recalcitrant rulers bowed their heads, the judiciary became independent. The lion is back in his den in Lahore and the arrow continues to quiver on the target it landed on last February. Everyone has rediscovered the meaning of reconciliation and respect. Indeed, all is now well in the state of Pakistan. Or is it?
 

Conflicts continue to simmer beneath the surface and boundaries between different political players are still being contested. Be it the military and the government, the judiciary and the executive or the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PMLN), the country’s current political crisis is certainly not over. Nothing has been settled and the point scoring continues.
 

March for Victory
 

It was the summer of 2008 but the pleasant sea breeze and cloudy sky ensured that the weather in Karachi provided a welcome respite from the scorching temperatures. This turn for the better in weather, however, failed to induce many lawyers to gather and plan the future of their movement. “Barely a few lawyers showed up when a meeting was called in July in Karachi by the leaders of the Lawyers’ Movement to plan protest rallies for November 3 (the day Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry was sacked second time),” recalls a senior lawyer. Along with the rest of the lawyers’ leadership, he well knew the reason for the small turnout. “The movement’s popularity had nosedived ever since Aitzaz Ahsan had opted out of a sit-in call in June 2008 after thousands of people had thronged Islamabad and were ready to lay siege to the parliament’s building,” he adds. Civil society members, among others, accused the movement’s leadership of letting down everyone.
 

Q. The Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz seems to be getting what it wants. What do you think they may ask for and get next? Do you see your position weakened under this situation?

 A. They keep on adding to their demands. First they said they would not ask for anything if Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry was restored. Now that he has been restored, they have come up with more demands. In my opinion the chief justice was just a ploy. And at every demand they threaten to go into the streets. Now if their politics is the politics of the streets, then the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) too can take to the streets.  
 

Sheema Kermani is Tehrik-e-Niswan’s backbone. Her contribution to the organisation has come in myriad ways – as an actor, dancer, director and facilitator for mobile theatre outings into low income communities – whatever was required to keep the momentum of the tehrik she founded going. Here, she tells the Herald how Tlism came to be...
 

Q. Why did you chose to stage a theatre festival?

 A. We have been working for so long that we thought it was time to expose the work we do to a broader audience. For a long time, because of the sensitive nature of our work, we tried to keep a low profile. But now that the theatre has seen a revival in Karachi, we think it is the right time to project ourselves and show what we have been doing all these decades. People keep complaining that certain kinds of theatre don’t happen in Pakistan — well, we want to show them that it was done 20 or 25 years ago. We want to show them how innovative and experimental our work has been.