Highlights of the November 2009 issue
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Security: A Series of Unfortunate Events
By Massoud Ansari
The Herald shares an eyewitness account of what happened at the army general headquarters in Rawalpindi on October 10
Terror returned to the streets of Pakistan in the days leading up to the
latest army operation in South Waziristan. Within a span of 11 days from
October 5 to 15, nine deadly attacks in Punjab and the North West Frontier
Province (NWFP) killed about 150 people. This wave started from Islamabad,
when a suicide bomber disguised in army fatigues targeted the office of the
World Food Programme (WFP) in the capital’s highly-guarded F-8/3 sector on
October 5 and killed five staff members. The attack came soon after the new
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan chief, Hakimullah Mehsud, had appeared in a video
clip to dispel rumours of his death and promised “severe” attacks. On
October 9, a car stolen from Larkana and laden with 100 kilogrammes of
explosives was rammed into a public transport bus in Peshawar’s Khyber
Bazaar killing at least 50 people and injuring about 150. Just a few days
later, on October 12, at least 41 people were killed in an apparent suicide
attack on a military convoy in Shangla district in NWFP. Five attacks
followed in a single day on October 15 in Peshawar, Kohat and Lahore; the
most dramatic of these took place in the last city, where terrorists
unleashed raids on the Manawan Police Academy, the Elite Force Training
Centre and a building that houses the Federal Investigation Agency offices.
By Maqbool Ahmed
Sarfaraz Aalam, a 25-year-old Swati, now lives in an impoverished Pakhtun katchi
abadi in Karachi. He moved to the urban centre when Operation Rah-e-Rast was
launched, seeking shelter with relatives in the city, but decided to stay on
even after the government announced that peace had returned to his valley. He
does not want to go back because he fears for his life. “Look what happened to
my uncle Mohammad Aalam,” he tells the Herald.
Mohammad Aalam, a blacksmith in Agurtai village near Barikot in Swat, was taken
away by soldiers and held at a nearby army detention centre for 15 days. “The
police claimed to have recovered an unlicensed pistol from my uncle after he
returned to Agurtai from a displaced persons’ camp in Mardan,” Sarfaraz Aalam
says. According to the nephew, Mohammad Aalam was released from the detention
centre on August 16 but was shot dead while returning home to his family. “The
entire village knows what the soldiers did to my old and helpless uncle but
nobody dares to speak out,” says Sarfaraz Aalam in a voice laced with grief.
Interview: “Neither THE HRCP NOR THE media has given PROOF of extrajudicial killings”
— Qamar Zaman Kaira, federal minister for information and broadcasting
By Massoud Ansari
Q. What is the security situation in Malakand, particularly in Swat,
like?
A. Security has improved beyond doubt and normal civil life in Swat
has resumed. We have started training law-enforcement personnel. Equipment
for their training has been procured but it will obviously take some time to
train people. Overall, I would say that the situation is satisfactory.
Insight: The Pragmatist
By Ayesha Siddiqa
People cannot be pigeonholed as being liberal or conservative in a society as
complex as Pakistan
As Pakistan battles with militancy, part of the war is also being fought in
the arena of ideas. In order to fight militancy, some argue, Pakistani
society has to win hearts and minds back from extremists. It is the
‘fundamentalist’ thinking in our midst that prevents us from confronting
militants wholeheartedly. On the other side of the talking divide stand
those who feel that ‘liberals’ are forcing the state to declare a war on its
own people under the guise of fighting militancy.
There is, however, at least one way in which both camps are completely
similar. Regardless of who is right or wrong, the two sides view each other
as being incompatible binaries with nothing in common. This is a flawed
approach. No society, and especially not one as complex as Pakistan, can be
divided so cleanly into two groups that do not overlap.
Interview: “The West is
romancing us right now, and like all romances this will also come to an end”
By Shahana Rajani
It’s been a decade for
Sameera Raja at Karachi’s Canvas Gallery, Pakistan’s first space devoted solely
to contemporary and emerging artists. Over the years she has helped nurture the
local art scene, encouraging both young artists and collectors. She can boast of
having held the first exhibitions of the works of today’s name-brand artists
such as Rashid Rana, Khadim Ali, Nusra Latif Qureshi and Mohammad Zeeshan as
well as discovering many others. Collaborating with the prestigious Aicon
Gallery in New York and London, Raja is a rarity, for she is not in the art
business to make a quick buck but to bring artists the exposure they richly
deserve.
Q. How did you get into the gallery business?
A. I opened my gallery 10 years ago now. Much as I would love to say
that I had always planned to run a gallery, I’m actually an architect by
trade, trained at Lahore’s National College of Arts. Once I started a
family, the rigid job timings became impractical and I started considering
starting a business of my own. A frequent visitor to the few existing
Karachi galleries, I was strongly aware of the lack of contemporary
exhibitions. Although VM Gallery had always promoted emerging talent, back
then it was very Karachi-based. There were so many artists from Lahore,
interior Sindh and Quetta who had never been shown here. I therefore decided
to open an art gallery to amend this situation and because I knew many
artists already, I got a lot of support from the art community.
By Faiza S. Khan
Back in the mists of time, when at college, I wrote my dissertation on Hanif
Kureishi, the only author of Pakistani origin who was in those days
well-known to the English-speaking world. A few months ago I met a student
working towards her literature dissertation, also from a college in London,
also writing about authors of Pakistani origin. Her project included the
work of Mohsin Hamid, Mohammed Hanif, Daniyal Mueenuddin, Ali Sethi, Nadeem
Aslam and Kamila Shamsie, among others. The point I’m lumbering towards with
all the subtlety of a sledgehammer is, of course, that Pakistani literature
in English has, in the last few years, exploded like Hanif’s eponymous case
of mangoes.
The literature itself has been of varying quality, with some writers unable
to resist the temptation of presenting their selling point, Pakistan, in all
its complicated chaos, as a simplified reduction for the benefit of the
Western reader, since this appears to loosen up the wallet of the Western
publisher. I am thrilled to find that H.M. Naqvi is not one of those
writers. The strongest feature of his debut novel Home Boy is that it
resists cliché and dumbing down throughout, and the result is an often
hilarious romp through young adulthood in New York.