I HAVE no wish to inflict the joys or sorrows of a provincial backwater like Chakwal on the readers of a metropolitan newspaper. But my excuse for doing so this week is that it might shed a dim if lurid light on what our new reformers, in the shape of the enthusiasts in the army monitoring teams, may or may not be up to in the rest of the country.

Chakwal, the reader must remember, is at the very heart of the so-called martial belt from where the army gets most of its soldiers. This tradition of military service - the product of economic necessity in a region where agriculture is not self-supporting - goes back more than a hundred years. Because of it discipline and obedience to authority are qualities deeply ingrained in the minds of the natives of this area. Indeed so pronounced are these traits that an uncle of mine, himself a retired naval officer, applies a pejorative description to Chakwal: he calls it a 'lance naik' district.

I mention all this only to emphasize the point that if anywhere in Pakistan there is to be found a natural reservoir of goodwill for the armed forces it will be in Chakwal. Consider then the grim irony at work when I say that four months after greeting General Pervez Musharraf's takeover with unabashed joy, the people of Chakwal are in a sullen mood as they look around and see what military rule has actually meant for them. If elections were held tomorrow (a foolish thought, I confess), the advantage in Chakwal would rest, as it has done so since 1985, with the bewildered and scared battalions of the Muslim League.

Of course there are larger reasons for this mood swing. Where people expected miracles from the new regime they have seen only a confused and lack-lustre performance. But in Chakwal there are more immediate reasons for this feeling of disenchantment, all having to do with the battle for hearts and minds waged by 1st Self-Propelled Artillery Regiment (1st SP) which has been on 'monitoring duty' in the district since the military takeover. As things stand today, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that if this crack unit had been given the mission to disrupt normal life in Chakwal, it could not have done any better.

1st SP's first successful assault was on the rehri and thelawallahs of the town's historic Chappar Bazar which to Chakwal is what Anarkali and Shah Alam Market, rolled into one, are to Lahore. These petty cart-vendors who had been in this bazar for the past 50 years, and a sizable number of whom had been issued chits of temporary tenancy by the municipal committee, were asked to vacate the place. With nowhere else to go this order amounted to signing their economic death warrants. But with the district administration, backed by 1st SP determined to have its way, it was useless to resist.

Two considerations arise out of this action. Firstly, why are we so keen to apply the law in this country to the lowly and the wretched when we are so ready to apply double standards to weightier and more serious transgressions? A fortune built on criminal foundations is no bar to respectability. Breaking or subverting the highest laws of the land (ask me not to quote examples) invites no penalties. But against the rehriwallah trying to make both ends meet on a pittance the law rears its head in all its severity.

Secondly, Chappar Bazar because of its vendors was certainly a crowded place but then with its noise and bustle it was also the soul of Chakwal, the very embodiment of its cultural spirit. Every day in Chappar Bazar was a market day, where people - including women and children from far-flung villages - used to come as much to buy or sell as to partake, albeit without realizing it, of a cultural experience.

Market-places all over the world are crowded and bustling affairs. That is part of their charm, ingredients of what makes them tick. Thanks to 1st SP's efforts at reform, much of Chappar Bazar's joy and colour has disappeared. Business too has suffered and, according to some estimates, is down by as much as 30 or 40 per cent. This from a regime which had vowed to turn the economy around.

1st SP's second coordinated assault was on the two bus addas in the town's centre on Talagang Road. These addas brought great profit to their owners - one an ex-MPA, the second a group of businessmen, including a son of Gen Majeed Malik, ex-MNA and ex-federal minister. But they also were convenient for the general public.

From these bus stands Chappar Bazar is only five minutes' walking distance. Which means that commuters, including women and children, could easily come to the Chappar Bazar, do their shopping, have their fresh juice or hot kebabs at Pehlwan Juice (a cultural icon in Chakwal) and then in celebratory mood walk back to the bus addas and depart for their homes.

All that has radically changed. The bus addas have been removed to the municipal bus stand, a dirty and joyless place some distance from the town centre. The army monitoring team says that in time the new bus stand will earn substantial revenue for the city. That may be so but for the moment it is proving a headache for all concerned.Alighting from their buses or wagons villagers have to take a rickshaw to come to the main bazars. After their work or shopping is done they have to catch another rickshaw to return to the bus stand. The standard fare for anyone going from or coming to Chakwal has thus almost doubled. Not surprisingly, many villagers prefer not to come to the Chappar Bazar at all which is one reason (the other being the removal of the rehris) why business in the bazar has plummeted.

Now since Gen Majeed Malik, ex-MNA, was a puffed-up soul when in power, the misfortune to have befallen his son's adda has made his many detractors happy. But against the comeuppance that he may or may not have deserved must be set the great inconvenience to which the public has been put.

Anywhere in the world what holds a city together, and gives meaning and expression to it, is its centre or, as the Americans say, its downtown area. That is where the arts have a home and where culture, or some attempt at culture, leaves a stain on the pavements. Chakwal has no opera house or repertory theatre but it had something akin to a city centre which, no doubt for reasons attractive to the military mind, has come under sustained attack at the hands of a regiment which must be thinking it has done one hell of a great job.

Traffic on the main Talagang Road certainly moves around more freely but few people are thanking 1st SP for that because straight lines and a clear field of vision are a poor substitute for happy and contented citizens.

If only the two big bus addas had been disturbed the inconvenience to the public would still have been limited. But in the zeal to turn everything upside down the monitoring team has come down hard even on small wagon and suzuki stands straddled around the town which used to serve villages lying in different directions. Which means that anyone wishing to go to Saigolabad (ancestral village of the Saigols) and Khanpur which are to the east of Chakwal, has first to make a long detour west where the municipal bus stand is located in order to catch a bus for home.

1st SP's third and perhaps deadliest assault has been carried out at the behest of the sanitary staff of the municipal committee. When the monitoring team, eager for battle but unsure of what to do, first arrived in town it took the sanitary staff to task for not keeping the city clean. The sanitary staff responded with a classic diversionary tactic: they said no satisfactory cleaning could be carried out unless the whole of Chakwal was cleared of the small ramps covering the open drains running in front of shops and houses.

Apart from anything else, these ramps served the useful and aesthetic purpose of obscuring the ugliness of the open drains running like eyesores throughout the city. But the army monitoring team, little realizing that they were being asked to take on the entire town, ordered, under pain of the stiffest penalties, the immediate destruction of these myriad toy bridges. Cowed into submission, the hapless citizens of Chakwal went about demolishing what they had themselves constructed, all the while cursing the perpetrators of their misery.

Corruption in the great departments of state which deal with the public - police, revenue and the smaller courts - has not been affected in the least, 1st SP not having had the slightest impact on the working of any aspect of the administration. But an object lesson in municipal reorganization or disruption - take your pick - has been given to the shell-shocked citizens of Chakwal. Once upon a time mothers in these parts used to take the name of the Sikh general, Hari Singh Nalwa, when they wanted to frighten their children. Long after 1st SP leaves Chakwal, mothers will take its name when they want to put their children to sleep.