E-mails show UK made frantic efforts to justify Iraq invasion

LONDON: Two radically different versions of what happened inside Tony Blair’s office in Downing Street, London, in September last year in the run-up to the war with Iraq emerged this week from Lord Hutton’s inquiry into the death of the British weapons inspector Dr David Kelly.

The version that Downing Street presented to the British public at the time was of a prime minister struggling to avoid war, intent on working within international law by going through the United Nations, and hinting that Britain was acting as a check on the wilder and more belligerent elements within Washington.

But the e-mails from various staff members at Downing Street produced in evidence to the Hutton inquiry this week suggest an alternative narrative. These e-mails, covering the period between September 5 and the publication on September 24 of the UK government’s dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, are not full of concerns and proposals about how the dossier will impact on efforts to get the UN weapons inspectors back into Iraq and ensure that Saddam Hussein cooperated with them.

Instead, the thoughts expressed in the e-mails convey a frantic attempt to produce a dossier that will justify aggressive action against Saddam Hussein. Within the space of a fortnight and with almost no new evidence — other than the now infamous “45 minute warning” — Mr Blair’s aides turned British policy towards Iraq upside down.

For more than ten years, British policy was to contain Saddam by keeping him weak through sanctions, imposition of no-fly zones and diplomatic isolation. He was regarded as a potential threat but not a pressing one.

He dealt with his own people brutally but, with regard to the threat posed to his neighbours and the west, he was in his box and, as long as the US and British planes remained in the region, he could be kept there.

By the time the dossier was published, Saddam had become someone that had to be dealt with as a matter of urgency, one intent on aggression towards his neighbours and the west. Downing Street had produced a new narrative.

In an e-mail released this week Daniel Pruce, a UK Foreign Office diplomat seconded to the Downing Street press department, offers a glimpse into how Downing Street worked to achieve this transformation. “Can we insert a few quotes from speeches he [Saddam] has made which, even if they are not specific, demonstrate that he is a bad man with a general hostility towards his neighbours and the west?” Mr Pruce wrote in the e-mail on September 10 to another diplomat, Mark Matthews, who at the time was in the Foreign Office press department.

He set out a sneaky course of action for bringing public opinion round: “Much of the evidence we have is largely circumstantial so we need to convey to our readers that the cumulation of these facts demonstrates an intent on Saddam’s part — the more they can be led to this conclusion themselves rather than have to accept judgments from us, the better.”

In a separate e-mail, Mr Pruce said: “Our aim should be to convey the impression that things have not been static in Iraq but that over the past decade he has been aggressively and relentlessly pursuing WMD while brutally repressing his own people.”

He added that any reference to weapons should describe their destructive capacity, for example that UN weapons inspectors between 1991 and 1998 “found enough chemical warfare agent to kill X thousand people or contaminate an area the size of Wales.”

Other Downing Street aides were also throwing in suggestions that would contribute towards an alarming picture of the Iraqi threat. Tom Kelly, a Downing Street press officer, in an e-mail to Alastair Campbell, the UK prime minister’s director of communications, on Sept 11, wrote that there was a need to demonstrate that Saddam had not only the capability to mount an attack but the intent: “We know that [Saddam] is a bad man and has done bad things in the past. We know he is trying to get WMD — and this shows those attempts are intensifying. But can we show why we think he intends to use them aggressively, rather than in self-defence? We need that to counter the argument that Saddam is bad, but not mad.”

Mr Kelly also wrote to another Downing Street press officer, Godric Smith, expressing regret that the dossier could not talk up the nuclear threat. The British Intelligence (MI6) assessment was that while Saddam wanted a nuclear capability, he did not possess one and was unlikely to do so for years to come. Mr Kelly reluctantly acknowledged this: “The weakness, obviously, is our inability to say he could pull the nuclear trigger any time soon.”

Mr Campbell, when asked at the inquiry on Tuesday about Mr Pruce’s e-mails, played down his importance, saying that decisions about what should be in the dossier were taken by staff above his pay grade.

But such e-mails cannot be dismissed that easily. These e-mails were in response to a remit set out by someone senior at Downing Street.

The tone of the exchanges suggest that the remit was not to draw up a dossier presenting a realistic appraisal of the threat posed by Saddam but to exaggerate it.

The alternative narrative is that after Mr Blair saw George Bush at Camp David on Sept 8, the prime minister was readying British and international opinion for war. The flurry of e-mails came immediately after that Camp David meeting.

Peter Stothard, the former Times editor who had access to Downing Street at the time, describes in his book 30 Days how Mr Blair in September based his policy on six points, one of which was that “Gulf war 2 — president George W. Bush vs Saddam Hussein — would happen whatever anyone else said or did”.

This sense that the decision had been made is also echoed by the former UK cabinet minister, Clare Short, who opposed the war and who told the British House of Commons foreign affairs committee she had been informed by three senior people — believed to be another cabinet minister, an MI6 chief and a top civil servant - that war was inevitable. One of them told her to stop fretting because it could not be stopped.

Seen against that background, the frenzied tone of the Downing Street e-mails makes sense.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.

New irritant in ties with India

A NEW point of contention appeared in the troubled relationship between Dhaka and New Delhi, thanks to the latter’s unilateral decision to implement its massive river-linking project that has already earned the reputation of being a “weapon of mass destruction” against Bangladesh.

Bangladesh-India relations have long suffered from at least half a dozen unresolved disputes that include demarcation of 6.5kms of land border, demarcation of the maritime boundary, exchange of enclaves, a huge trade imbalance in favour of India and sharing of water management of 54 common rivers.

And now India has officially announced that it will go ahead with a project linking 37 rivers through which it will transfer water from the Brahmaputra and other peninsular rivers in the north and the northeast of India to Cauvery in the south.

Experts in Bangladesh have expressed great concern over the “river linking”, arguing that diverting the rivers upstream will inflict colossal social, economic and ecological damage on deltaic Bangladesh. The blocking of flows will also cause depletion of fish stocks and loss of navigability, endangering the jobs of millions of people including boatmen, fishermen and subsistence farmers.

Dr Ainun Nishat, environmentalist and country director of IUCN Bangladesh, says if India implements the project, “Bangladesh will have to face a severe and endless natural disaster”. Akhtar Hossain, an expert on water resources, believes that “river linking” will be a “weapon of mass destruction”.

Another Indian project, the Tipaimukh hydro-electric power plant on the River Borak, near the Sylhet region of Bangladesh, will reportedly be inaugurated in October this year. If India constructs a dam on the river for irrigation and hydro- electricity, the natural flow into the rice terraces of Bangladesh’s fertile Sylhet region will be drastically reduced, say experts.

The dispute between Bangladesh and India over management of common river waters is nothing new. The two countries have been at loggerheads over water sharing since 1974, when India completed the Farakka barrage over the Ganges close to the border, diverting crucial dry-season flows into Indian irrigation canals. Bangladesh blames the barrage for dried-up fields, diseases and salinization of the vast Sundarban mangrove swamps in the Ganges delta.

The Joint River Commission (JRC) of the two countries, which is mandated to meet at least thrice a year over the sharing of waters of the common rivers, has not held any meeting for over two years now — thanks to reluctance on India’s part.

However, experts in Dhaka assert that international law bars the building of any structure that blocks the natural flow of waters at any point, and disregard of any grievance of a co- riparian country is also considered gross violation of international conventions.

But Delhi seems heartlessly oblivious of both Dhaka’s “concern” and legal obligations that spring from international conventions. Dhaka officially conveyed its “protest” against Delhi’s planned river-linking project on Aug 13. But the day after, Delhi declared that it “must” go ahead with the river- linking project. “The first mission on the networking of rivers is under the active consideration of my government. We must move on to a mission mode programme and ecological enhancement plan for executing the project,” President A.P.J. Abul Kalam announced on India’s independence day on Aug 15.

Dhaka’s reaction was expected. “Bangladesh will make every effort to settle the issue bilaterally. If these efforts fail, we will consider international measures,” said Water Resources Minister Hafizuddin Ahmed on Aug 16.

Civil society in Dhaka has also reacted sharply to India’s attitude. A group of eminent citizens formed the Padma-Jamuna-Meghna Bachao Andolan (movement to save Padma-Jamuna-Meghna) last week. The group, which has urged all citizens to start an “all out movement on a war footing” against the Indian river-linking project, includes reputed academics, journalists, lawyers, physicians, engineers, economists, rights activists and environmental experts.

The group has demanded that the Bangladesh government take both long- and short-term “scientific” measures to avert possible catastrophes to be caused by the Indian project. The civil society group has also expressed concern over possible donor assistance to the Indian project and urged all quarters inside the country to launch a campaign against such a possibility.

The Indian government doesn’t seem bothered. The New Delhi correspondent of a Dhaka-based English language daily, The Daily Star, reported on Aug 20 that the Indian external affairs ministry believes that “Bangladesh’s criticism of inter-linking of the country’s (India’s) major rivers only complicates matters” and Bangladesh “should address these ‘complex issues’ in a mature manner”. The Indian authorities, reportedly, also believe that Delhi showed a “great deal of generosity” to Dhaka by signing the Ganges water treaty in 1996!

Karachi: a bottomless pit of gloom

There is so much of everyday challenge, frustration and unhappiness in the Sindh capital, in a sense, that to talk of this “rough, tough” city is to be repetitive. That it is time to pay a tribute, to the Karachiite for braving one tiring season after another, one exasperating setback after another, one strike after another, one bloody killing after another, one accident after another, one hidden hand after another.

As the seasons change, and this August, the month of our Independence, moves towards its end, it occurs to some of us that it has been a particularly sad week that we have lived through. Of course one also counts one’s blessings as one says this. But the fact that the Clifton beach is closed (and I don’t reside anywhere near it — fortunately) is grim enough reason to mourn. One wonders what parents are telling their children about all this marine pollution, all this negligence? Sabotage? No one is likely to know for some time at least — the true story.

Before proceeding any further there is relevance in referring to a conspicuous banner that is flying cheerfully near the roundabout at one end of the Aiwan-i-Sadr Road, near where there once was a “musical fountain”. There was also a Rex cinema there, which later became Rex centre. One is tempted to talk of the lovely cinemas that Karachi once had aplenty; and now we have cable. TV and its operators have threatened a strike from 24th August (today). Strikes, that is another frustrating tiring facet of this city.

Now this banner suggests, motivates, (attempts to) or reminds, citizens that we all need to keep Karachi free of pollution, and that there is a need to plant trees to keep the environment pollution free. Good. Such banners however make one cynical about the effort, and one can even read sadness into the whole exercise. No one is really serious about the lasting value of protecting the environment, argues one citizen and keeps on referring to the ‘Tasman Spirit’ oil spill to illustrate the extent to which we have failed to tackle the issue. To have prevented it, and then to have stood up to the challenge of containing the destructive impact of the oil, which reports say is still flowing into the sea. Forget the calculated denials from officialdom.

But let me return to the “musical fountain” that we had near the Rex cinema. Both have gone. Yes, Karachi was that kind of a city, once, not very long ago, when its planners thought we needed a musical fountain. And we got one. It worked as well, and citizens in cars or on foot went past that fountain, in what was a recreational pursuit. There may not have ever been music in the air in Karachi, but there was never a time like now, when there was oil in the air.

There is such terrible pollution, following the oil spill that its hazards and damages are going to show their negative bearing for a decade, it is being argued. Official claims are being viewed with the usual amusement. But there is also quiet anger. Who is responsible? Will there be any accountability? Will there be another report, filed away eventually...?

Somehow life in the city, of late, has moved with a sort of misery and monotony, at the same time, in recent weeks, to say the least. Without trying to create any alarm, or despondency there is reason to put some experiences, and events together and then ask: is there a morning when the citizen can wake up to good news in the morning paper? In fact Karachiites besides being tuned into TV channels for any ‘bad news’ that may have hit them, are subconsciously also keeping their eyes on the headlines of the morning and the afternoon dailies.

What has happened in the city in the last few hours? That is the sort of tension or uncertainty that the average citizen grapples with, besides the humiliation and harassment of surviving a traffic jam. Everybody seems to have taken these for granted? Like the bursting of yet another water pipeline (72 inch dia rising main) on Tuesday at 3am. Surprisingly the media didn’t pay much attention to it, and a spokesman of the oft-troubled Karachi Water and Sewerage Board explained it all by saying that the pipeline was laid in 1957, (even before Ayub Khan came) and was commissioned in 1963. It has outlived its design age of 25-30 years, and is it not amazing and disappointing that no one in the official corridors of power or private sector, or non governmental organisations, ever thought of raising this issue effectively to ensure that Karachi gets a dependable water supply network.

Everything that relates to basics is somehow not on priority, and a reason for this is that we are far too trapped in the present. No one bothers about the future, and the past is only to be erased from memory. The only nostalgia that Karachiites relish it seems are the coffee houses that it once had?

Once summer time also meant the city enjoyed the sunny side of the weather, and the rains brought relief. Now the advent of summer (once again this year) brought out the sheer failure of water and power supplies, and when it rained in July the whole city underwent a trauma whose effects still remain, almost all over the city. Of course relief, repair, and rehabilitation efforts are on, but grossly inadequate, and there are no two opinions about this, argue citizens pointing to roads and standing water on open plots and streets in so many places. But civic amenities is one side of the shabby story.

Now take the story about the disruption in Railway traffic, when a doctor was killed in Malir and violence erupted in that part of the city. Then, on Sunday last mourners set many vehicles afire, clashed with the police and resorted to other forms of violence after the funeral of was over in North Nazimabad. Another area of the city was affected therefore. On that very day (18th August) was reported a shameful ordeal that a couple narrated to Dawn about the gangrape that a girl was subjected to. All this when they went to an amusement park on Rashid Minhas Road, and reportedly not the first one of its kind either here or elsewhere in the city, where innocent couples are targeted, exploited. The officials/authorities have taken notice of this and one hopes that action taken will be made public, in public interest.

Then the city had hardly recovered from the shock of the doctor’s killing in Malir, when there came another doctor’s killing near Stadium Road. This time the doctor was from the Liaquat National Hospital. Obviously the city’s doctors are protesting. In fact there is more protest in the city, and more gloom, and anxiety than what we can fathom from PTV. There is also protest coming up from the cable TV operators, and there is protest by the city’s college principals and teachers at the fact that the principal of the Commerce College was shot at and wounded in a shoot-out between two student groups. The oil tankers are on strike; as a matter of caution people are staying away from seafood; yes, we have returned to the Tasman Spirit oil slick again. Whither Creek City!

Of course in all these breakdowns of sorts there are always and constant dreamy assurances and clarifications from official quarters and sources. These are generally disregarded and brushed aside as bogus.

The poor citizen lives with his doubt, anxiety, and fear. And with his favourite beach closed, perhaps until the end of the next month, he is sad. TV images of destruction at the Clifton beach make one mourn. How close this city can be to a breakdown of sorts is a thought to contemplate my dear citizens, and not to run away from.

One of our banks is missing!

ONE clever way the devil has to making Lahoris do his work is to make little things, like keys and important papers, disappear at critical moments. So as you are all set to leave for an important meeting or all ready with your documents for the stupid new ID cards, you find or rather do not find your car keys or that little chit of paper attested by a grade 17 officer. Needless to say, within a few minutes rhythmic curses are flowing from your lips and the devil chuckles in success. Sadly for the devil, Lahoris have a charming little custom, which confounds these devilish scenarios. This is the mannat, whereby the local saint intercedes so that you find what you have lot. I was reminded of this because last week a major bank lost one of its branches.

It all started when I decided to try and send money to Hunza. Knowing the relevant address, account number etc., I thought it would be a simple task. I had, however, forgotten that institutions run by government specialize in a game the English call ‘playing silly buggers’. As per the rules of this game as played by the bureaucracy, I was first given a run around through several branches which offered lots of services except the precise one I wanted. Three branches to the precise. Tiring of this phase of game, I headed for the main branch where they were cornered and admitted that the main branch of the bank, being a bank could in fact wire money. After a short phase of joining this line, no sorry the other line, and sorry the man in charge of this service is off praying, I thought I was on the verge of success with all my forms nicely filled out and money in hand. Then came the knockout blow. I was informed that the branch I wanted to wire the money to, did not exist. I tried to argue that the branch did exist as I had seen it a few weeks ago, and in fact several people of good character I had spoken to on the phone to Hunza that very morning all swore that it was still in existence, but all to no avail. As far as the main branch was concerned, the Hunza branch was not in their register and so was lost in limbo.

Needless to say, this was very upsetting. We in Pakistan are used to government obstruction in all things and have found ways around it, when TV turns to crap we get cable, when that turns to crap too, we will take up reading. If all else fails, I could tie the money to a pigeon and send it off, but I was thinking of the bank people, it must be very upsetting for them to have lost one of their branches. So on their behalf, I have vowed a mannat, if they happen to find their missing branch, I will feed the needy. In fact, since we use the mannat for more than one kind of request, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and what I have asked is that not only should they find their branch but that it should turn out to be a ‘boy branch’ and not a ‘girl branch’ so that it can marry, beget new branches, and carry on the name of the bank to the next generation. Because lets face it, the only way a bank that loses it’s own branches will carry on into the next generation is by biological reproduction.

Speaking of which, the Lahore administration seems inordinately fond of date palm trees these days. I say inordinate, because the date palms is a fairly sad excuse for a tree. It looks like a botanical toilet brush, and we have much better looking trees in the Punjab. In any case, the administration is planting them all over the place, my worry is that date palms come in male and female versions. I am reminded of the incident when the government planted thousands of olive trees near Murree, all male and came away from the exercise without any olives for their troubles. I just hope someone is checking under the fronds and making sure we won’t end up with a lot of frustrated trees again. — Yasser Hashmi

Anarkali in Norway

WHILE undertaking a short course in ‘Media and democratization’ in Norway this summer, I came across a lot of Pakistani immigrants settled in Gronland, a shoddy town in eastern Oslo. Pakistanis are the biggest immigrant group in the Norwegian capital after the Scandinavians, who moved in from various parts of Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, mostly prior to Norway’s independence in 1905. The Gronland district of Oslo is home to many settlers from South Asia, mainly from Pakistan, and exotic shops, grocery stores, and a full array of ethnic restaurants, make Gronland a great place to escape the homogeneity that sometimes seems to pervade other parts of this rather small city with the social and cultural perks of a world capital.

In a country that boasts one of premium welfare system in the world, and consequently claims to be the best place on the globe for women and marginalized groups to survive, the state of the greater part of the Pakistani Diaspora, particularly women, is not close to being enviable. Coming mostly from Gujrat and peripheral towns of eastern Punjab, the semi-skilled, predominantly uneducated Pakistani immigrants might be living off greener pastures, making ends meet in this city of fjords and sculptures, but on the whole their conditions are quite disagreeable.

For most female immigrants, featuring negligible literacy rates and undermined by the decisions of men and families, this movement from Gujrat to Gronland has been strenuous and a long one. Mostly brought to Oslo by the tug of the nuptial knot, surviving in an underpopulated city with abnormal climatic conditions and the highest suicide rate in the world, makes quite a few demands on the not-so-enlightened and not-so-urbane women faring from rural and urban Punjab. And unfortunately, that’s about the only type of Pakistani women you come across in Oslo, though the second generation of women bred and brought up in Oslo has been lucky enough to have attended school and become a little more oriented. One barely comes across qualified Pakistani professional men in Oslo, as unskilled and semi-skilled workers, taking advantage of the flexible Norwegian immigration laws, chose to seek asylum there to escape impoverishment or discrimination back home. All this has, however, trickled down to portraying a restricted image of Pakistan and its people, and for most Norwegians it is only a country of illiteracy, privation, and battered wives.

Norway has one of the highest suicide rates in the world and a major percentage of the population is known to suffer from depression and related psychological ailments, the weather being branded as one of the culprits responsible for this state of affairs. Norway witnesses long, dark, and extremely cold winters, with very little or no sun, and summers when the sun is down for four hours only, hence winning it the title of the ‘Land of the Midnight Sun’, and this combined with other factors such as acute loneliness, becomes a cause of depression of many. For the Punjabi women, used to the sun and a more moderate weather sustaining in a different environment, the changed climatic and overall circumstances in Oslo are usually too much to bear, resulting in perpetual misery, lonesomeness, frequent divorces, or, in extreme cases, suicides. Most women also complain about the ‘estranged behaviour’ of their spouses that was formerly unknown, and say that they can adapt themselves to survive in, what they call “the forsaken city”, provided they share a better family life.

Of the Pakistani women hence divorced, most return to their homeland, but usually, due to high rates of illiteracy among these women, they are not in a position to either decide what is best for them or to go about the transactions of divorce and their departure efficiently. Therefore, they are left at the mercy of men who brought them here or to the vagaries of circumstances. And since the Norwegian law protects divorced women, whatever their identity, status, or nationality, providing them with shelter and subsistence, those who opt to stay back and avail of the benefits, usually end up leading more independent lives. Once divorced, most are though eager to return home, and spurring their enthusiasm are families and elders back home, who insist that the women should not stay alone in Norway to benefit from a “foreign welfare system”. One divorced woman from Lahore recalls how her family back home at the time of her divorce, insisted upon her return so that they could get her re-married immediately to wash away the stigma. “Having been through so much physical and emotional turmoil, I just wanted to be on my own for sometime, so I took the blasphemous step of defying their wishes and staying back. This decision helped me because I got a place to live in and some money from the state to start work. I was uneducated and could not get a proper job, but now I run a small grocery store in Oslo and hold a Norwegian passport”.

Whatever the stance of Pakistanis in Oslo in general and of Pakistani women in particular, it has, together with the Norwegian media and NGOs back home been projecting miserable images of the country to seek clemency from Scandinavian sources, and created a bigoted and single-dimensional picture of us and our land. Most to all, in a country with extremely women-friendly laws, the impression that there exists a country where women are ‘tortured’, ‘battered’, and ‘cooped up in the house’, spells shame and disgust.

In Gronland, as in any other such neighbourhood anywhere in the world, you can walk into shops that sell and rent dvd’s, cd’s and video tapes of the latest Pakistani and Indian films and music. The material arrayed for sale displays a healthy range of various shades of legality, and in support of an international drive for a global crackdown on software and music piracy, which, it is claimed, helps finance al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and other networks through its illicit proceeds, one comes across anti-Muslim sentiment in the area that further reinforces negativity towards our country. — Faryal Shahzad

Lost people of our land

WHEN Larry Niblett left Lahore for “greener pastures” in the US, his celebrated father, the “angreez” DIG (Traffic) of Lahore, Mr. Niblett, headed the other way to Australia. The loss of both these “pucca” Lahori characters was immense. But then father and son never did see eye to eye. In the end, they headed in opposite directions.

The senior Niblett we had seen since we started going to school. He was a smart police officer who brooked no nonsense.

I have three enduring images in my mind’s eye of DIG Niblett. The first was when as a school-going student I violated the one-way traffic rule on Lawrence Road. He rode up on his motor bicycle and stopped me. “You must be bloody well Larry’s friend riding your bike up a one-way road, having no lights. I will confiscate your bicycle and send you to jail”.

I trembled in fear at such an outcome. Imagine me, a school student, in jail, my father would kill me. “He bloody well should,” roared the police officer Niblett. “Who is your father?” he asked. I told him so. “Oh, in that case I will give you a bloody good hiding”, he said and got off his motorcycle. One clip round the head was enough to make me walk with my bicycle to school with the tyres having been deflated. I was ashamed of myself. In those days students used to be ashamed if Niblett stopped them. In the evening I told my mother about what had happened and got another good hiding. But she was kind enough not to tell my father, because Mr. Niblett had already phoned him and asked him to “educate the brat”. Oh, I shall not narrate what followed. But then Lahore was like that, one big family where everyone cared.

My next image is as a student in Government College, Lahore. The anti-Ayub troubles had seen a massive crowd surround the Governor’s House. The mad mob was baying for blood and the cry went out to storm the gates and take over the premises. The angry mob attacked. The gate chains were broken and the crowd began to surge in. This had never happened before in the history of the Governor’s House. The police guards had fled. In the middle of the road, behind the gate, stood one man alone ... Mr. Niblett, then a DSP. Pistol in hand he shouted over the megaphone Wapas chalay jao varna goli maar doon ga (Leave or I will shoot you). The crowd surged. A shot rang out. The crowd stopped. Then three rapid shots whizzed over the head of the crowd hitting the walls. Panic. The crowd rushed back. More shots followed. Total panic as everyone rushed out. DSP Niblett had saved the Governor’s House alone. What he did with his panic-stricken staff later is also history, like almost making them eat hay out of horse bags. Many years later he told me: “I never shoot to kill. The kids were doing the right thing, but in a wrong way”. He remained a sensitive father to all the students of Lahore, and they feared and yet loved and respected him.

Several years later, his son Larry indulged in an illegality. The DIG was like a man gone mad. He personally arrested his own son, sent him on a three-day remand, ordered that he be given the terrible “channa and one roti” diet as stipulated by law, then appeared before the judge and testified against his son and sent him to jail. Even the judge requested him to soften up. “No way my lord, the son of DIG Niblett would not have the easy way out”. This glorious police officer saw to it that his name was not soiled. “If I had my way, I would lock him up and throw the keys away”, he would say when reminded of the incident. But Larry was his father’s son. He more than made amends, spent his time and apologized to his father. Ask any old police constable or officer in Lahore about DIG Niblett, and you will notice that they still pride themselves in the fact that he was one of them.

Just 30 years ago Lahore had such a healthy mix of religions and people. The Christians of Lahore made up a very lively portion of Lahore. The few remaining Anglo-Indians, or Eurasians as they were originally called, still contribute much more than their numbers. But then thousands have fled the rages of intolerance. But their hearts remain in Lahore. A friend recently informed me that in Melbourne, Australia, on January 5 to 11, 2004, a world gathering of Anglo-Indians is taking place. There they will remember the old Lahore, of fun and joy. I went on the web page that lists people coming, and I was amazed at the names I recollected.

A year senior to us in the St. Anthony’s High School, Lahore, was a pretty girl called Perry Young. She will be there. Then Gomes the boxer of Beadon Road will be there. Peter Snell, of Temple Road, a close friend of my younger brother Karim will be there, too. Imagine all these names of the years gone by. And then Noney Anderson of Garhi Shahu will be there. From Lawrence College will be Duckworth and John D’Souza. From Karachi Grammar will be Rita D’Souza, Dennis Rebeira and John Stringer. From Quetta will be Monte Clements. The list reads on and on. This is going to be the largest collection of Pakistani and Indians of Anglo-Indian origin to collect to remember the land of their birth and origin. It makes one sad to see that the sons and daughters of our soil should have to be chased away by a set of beliefs that have been distorted beyond measure. Yet they remember their homeland with such fondness.

The people of the city of Lahore, both old and new, till very recently considered the inhabitants as a bunch of beautiful flowers, each person, each religion, each sect, complementing the other. Most of the original inhabitants had been lost to the Partition. Yet the city still had a healthy mix of religions and people with immense toleration. My old man called the new arrivals the “47” variety, and with time he scorned their ‘claim mentality’, a purely materialistic approach to life. He often cursed them for not understanding the ethos of Lahore, one of the seven great cities of the old world. There were Christians, Parsis, and even a few Hindus, with a few Sikhs living inside the walled city. The festivals of Eid, Christmas, Nauroze, Basikhi belonged to everyone. The world was love, not hate and suspicion. We have come a long way up a one-way street. Probably against the one-way .... And no DIG Niblett now serves to give us “a clip to bring us to our senses”.— Majid Sheikh

Peace with India — the artists’ viewpoint

THE fledgling non-commercial gallery, Neher Ghar, is fast emerging as a socially purposeful space for creative activities. A couple of months ago, an exhibition of art works commenting on the Iraq war crisis was held here and this paved the way for another exhibition in which artists were invited to express their opinions and ideas through their creative work on ‘peace with India’, a socio-political issue which has been in the forefront in recent days. A number of well-known and established artists, as well as young and upcoming ones, from Pakistan as well as India, participated in this exhibition, bringing forth a variety of viewpoints, techniques and media. Quddus Mirza who teaches at the NCA and is an art critic, has helped Neher Ghar to give shape to the idea of bringing together artists on the topic of peace between India and Pakistan and the exhibition which opened on August 18 will continue till September 2.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for artists participating in a ‘theme’ show, especially pertaining to sensitive and even volatile socio-political issues is to convey a pertinent message, and yet maintain the technical and aesthetic requirements of what is deemed a work of art. Often, the tendency is to neglect the latter, and concentrate on the former, and for most artists it is the symbolic approach that appears to work best in such a challenge. How obvious, subtle or complicated the symbolism is, depends on the mind set and style of the artist and it is interesting to observe how one issue can be addressed in a variety of ways.

Among the more conventional works, Prof Ijazul Hasan’s large eye-catching and appealing oil painting titled Blizzard shows a few delicate bright yellow leaves emerging in a snowy blue landscape of rocks and bare trees. Salima Hashmi’s mixed media work is in her characteristic style wherein the entire surface is delicately strewn with small broken lines and brush marks in neutral hues and in which emerge flowers and stems — symbolism is then attempted through the addition of blood-red blocks and a red dividing line in the central portion, and the work is titled ‘No man’s Land’. A more obvious but also evocative and touching symbolism is seen in the work is pastels by Rahat Naveed, which shows lighted diyas in front of a black but starry night.

Rukhe-Neelofar’s Legitimate Relationship, an eye-catching and attractive painting in acrylics is an aerial view of two brightly clad beautiful young women, one in a green sari and the other in an orange shalwar-kameez, hand in hand, with one’s head on the other’s lap albeit facing opposite directions as they lie on a richly patterned rug. The work shows painterly skills and is a rather festive looking piece which shows hope. Risham Syed’s untitled work has a heavily textured background which is built up to create the subtle imagery of roses and leaves and this frames a painted oval which appears as a kind of theatrical stage because of the image of pulled curtains on the sides and stages a symbolic ‘drama’ containing a stately columned building on a green field besot by parachutes and guns. Quddus Mirza’s Dialogue is an arrangement of two opposite rows of seven small wooden blocks covered with floral patterned cloth, each with the image of a gun stamped on it so that one gun faces another one in the opposite position. This creates a lively and somewhat amusing piece that points out to the duality of political relationships.

Flowers seem to be a favoured though somewhat cliched symbol to represent hope and peace, and another work by Ayesha Khalid titled, Infinite Justice has a big red embroidered rose in the middle of a large frame covered with material that has the pattern of the camouflaged uniform worn by soldiers during wartime.

There are a number of other works that employ a more unconventional approach to socio-political comment and in which the symbolism gains precedence over the display of conventional artistic skills. For example, Sania Samad’s Installation consists of an entire room draped in silver plastic sheets and has two similarly framed large mirrors placed on opposite walls. Two stately chairs, placed side by side, but in opposite directions, face the mirrors and this entire arrangement into which the viewer can enter and experience, is titled Narcissism. This installation and other efforts like a video presentation by Bani Abidi, and a lighted lamp with rotating, colliding, fish carrying the colours and symbols of India and Pakistan’s flags, by David Alesworth, are attempted to catch the audience’s attention in an unusual way and such creations have their own special niche in the contemporary art world.

Most of the Indian artist which include Shilpa Gupta, Kausik Mukhapadhy, NS Harsha, Jaitish Kalat, Sharmila Samant, Jaishri Abhichandni and Riyas Konu, as well as Pakistani artists like Naiza Khan, Aasma Mundrawala, Huma Mulji and a few others, have expressed themselves through small poster-like printed works which were actually part of an international project called Aaar Paar and was held simultaneously in Mumbai and Karachi in 2002.

Ten artists each from India and Pakistan developed a single coloured work which was then exchanged between the two countries via e-mail. These were then printed locally and inserted into public spaces, such as walls, or distributed as leaflets between newspapers in an attempt to get a public reaction. Most of these works are simple, economical but often pithy, more of printed statements than typical works of art, but nonetheless thought-provoking. For example, one work by a group of artists shows a small map of Karachi and highlights all those places which carry an Indian name, like Bombay Paan Shop, ‘Dehli ke Dahi Barey’ Bombay Biryani and so on.

Riya Komu’s piece emphasises the caption Don’t’ Let Your Friends Decide who Your Enemies Should be and Jitish Kallat’s work is like a page on the internet which indicates that there is no way in which the user can download any information on peace.

Thus the issue of peace with India is addressed from a variety of angles and the exhibition has brought together a number of socially conscious artists who can perhaps elucidate some significant reaction from an audience who chooses to contemplate on the various symbols and messages.—SAIRA DAR