Surely, he couldn’t be begging America to spare Syria? But, that’s what comes through, watching Ambassador Rostom Al-Zoubi — a bundle of angst — plead Syria’s case before Larry King. He swears Syria is not hiding the “evil Saddam” and his caboodle wanted by the US: “We were and still are the only country in the world that has no diplomatic relations with Iraq,” he repeats like a man deranged.
Syria innocent? “Poppycock!” parrots Secretary of State Colin Powell, reduced to beating the prince of Pentagon, Rumsfeld’s war drums banging on Damascus. The new kid on the chopping block is President Bashar Assad. He must die if Israel has to survive.
That we live in a dangerous neighbourhood is an understatement. The day may not be far when we see our ambassador here break down and beseech American networks that Musharraf is not in bed with Osama bin Laden, should Pakistan’s production line of Al Qaeda “terrorists” run dry and as a consequence Islamabad is handed its heavenly shower of 2,500 pounders each.
Not surprisingly then, fear of such a self-fulfilling prophesy corals our community into spending their weekend at Columbia University in New York, hearing fusty academics from Pakistan, Europe and the US drone on “New perspectives on Pakistan: Contexts, Realities and Visions for the Future” by Columbia’s South Asian Institute and the American Institute of Pakistan Studies.
But here’s the caveat: South Asian Institutes in America are “literally in the hands of Indians and indirectly under the influence of Hindutva and Sangh Parivar,” warns Prof Aslam Syed of the University of Pennsylvania. And sure enough, the Director and Associate Director at Columbia’s South Asian Institute happen to be Indians. And you know what mischief that can be.
“At U-Penn, there are more Indian teachers than American,” dryly observes Syed, who finds himself in a minority. “Now that US forbids its funds being spent on scholars in Pakistan (did we know that and has anyone protested?) students who want to learn Urdu go to India instead of Lahore!” This symbiotic relationship between US and India should be troubling for us.
Aslam Syed lays naked the truth that our diplomats here and officials back home continue to dodge. “No scholar from here can now avail American government fellowships in Pakistan since 9/11,” says Syed, a Ph.D. from Columbia and also a former holder of its Quaid-i-Azam Chair. “I have seen similar trends at Princeton, Berkley, UCLA, Chicago, Duke and other major schools where South Asian Studies are taught.”
Affiliated with Quaid-i-Azam University for decades, Syed has lived and worked long enough in America to declare that Pakistanis, in particular, and Muslims, in general, will be the targets of undisguised ideological agenda for years to come. “There are agencies in this country which can be approached for legal purposes. We can learn a lot from the Jewish organizations who document each and every instance — no matter how trivial — whenever they feel that their community is the victim of anti-Semitism.”
But Muslims are either silent or apologetic and strangely inarticulate when they are victimized: “Discrimination takes many shapes: from street harassment to undeclared bias in jobs, and almost everywhere else you see public dealings. Students, researchers and teachers are terrorized, watched and systematically eased out.”
Manhattan has missed the ‘norwester’ narrowly, so instead of a wet drenching, we get a sunny one with the radiant blue skyline seen from the glass-walled 15th floor of Columbia’s Kellogg Centre. Added to the comfort level are familiar faces of fellow-Pakistanis mooting on the future of our homeland. Besides Aslam Syed, we have no prophets of doom to scare us.
However, scholars in love with their own voices get lost in the odyssey of their dry research, thinking they journey with us, but my caffeine level is running low. The person sitting next to me whispers, “I need a brisk walk around Columbia to make all this graspable.”
“Our primary objective is to publish a rigorous scholarly book on Pakistan,” is the altruist hope of the Conference Coordinator, Saeed Shafquat, currently the Quaid-i-Azam Distinguished Professor at Columbia.
So, we will have yet one more book on Pakistan gathering dust?
“I don’t think so,” says Sadi Mirza, who has driven from beyond Washington DC to attend the Pakistan Conference. “We need more of the same — one cello player can’t carry the whole orchestra, so this is but a microcosmic attempt.” A Pakistani-American, who has lived in the US for the last 14 years and is a telecommunication engineer, Mirza, like many, has seen the writing on the wall.
“I am a realist. The soul-searching that I conducted after 9/11 led me to conclude that the discrimination against Muslims was temporary, and would subside with time. But I was wrong. Actually, it’s the beginning and my fear is that the peak has yet to come. This is severely testing my ideals that America is just.”
It’s lunch break and we’re sitting inside a crowded pizzeria nearby (we’re not the lucky ones to have been invited by The News correspondent, the affable Azim Mian, holding a luncheon for special guests).
“My profession teaches me to look for real-world solutions,” continues Mirza, a trifle too profound for pizza, “we’re also trained to cut our losses and run when matters can’t be salvaged — all signs point to something worse two years down the road...what for me is unthinkable today will become a fact of life two years from now, I don’t know where to run.
“The shift in history is tectonic. It has occurred. The flag-whipping belligerence of the American leaders, media and people belies rationalism.”
Back at the seminar, I spot a young, perky Pakistani woman, happy with life. Soon, I find out why. Razia Sultana, who teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, is here as a Fulbright scholar. “I would suggest to my government to hold such conferences more frequently to plug the gaps that get larger between East and the West. Invest more in these dialogues, not only to balance perceptions, but to counter Indian propaganda. This conference, however, is general in content, issues like Kashmir, nuclearization, foreign policy should have been included.”
Aslam Syed couldn’t agree more: “This is an academic exercise, essentially to know what people in America are writing on Pakistan. But conspicuously absent is religion, politics, democracy, human rights — topics that will concern the State Department once Pakistan is dumped as a front-line state. Have you noticed that the core issues like Pakistan-US relations have been deliberately frozen out?”
Karachi-born Mayraj Fahim, who came here as a child, has been advising America on local and national governments. She’s not impressed by the lectures from Pakistani speakers, nor the content of the conference. Modesty may not be her prime virtue, but she’s polite when she tells me, “I know stuff these speakers are not knowledgeable about, but it’s only appropriate for me to keep silent.”
Conferences are held for two reasons: to stir up a storm or to calm it down. The message I get from listening to the American scholars is that Pakistan’s problems are its own and it should learn to deal with them without looking to the US for succour.
But before we dive into the pit of doom and gloom, our knight in shining armour, I mean Shaukat Aziz, streaked across to DC to kowtow to Rumsfeld and his deputy hawk, Wolfowitz. Did the Finance Minister sell Pakistan down the river in return for a non-preemptive strike by Pentagon?
Second-guessing doesn’t involve rocket science, or does it?
Surely, he couldn’t be begging America to spare Syria? But, that’s what comes through, watching Ambassador Rostom Al-Zoubi — a bundle of angst — plead Syria’s case before Larry King. He swears Syria is not hiding the “evil Saddam” and his caboodle wanted by the US: “We were and still are the only country in the world that has no diplomatic relations with Iraq,” he repeats like a man deranged.
