Relative peace & development

JUSTICE Amirul Mulk Mengal was completing his two years as governor of Balochistan as he laid the foundationstone of the new building of the Press Club here the other day. Speaking on the occasion, he urged newsmen to keep uppermost the national interests as the country was passing through a critical situation. Barring a few violent incidents during his office until now, the law and order situation in the province remained stable and the people enjoyed relative peace.

During the early period of his office, the province was in the grip of drought. As the governor is from the Chaghai desert, he was able to make high officials see the reality that the drought would have a devastating effect if steps were not taken to combat it. Thus the army was employed to carry out relief operations, such as establishing camps on the sources of water. Generally, the impact of the drought was lessened but the governor was criticized for not appealing for international assistance, presumably for political reasons. Foreigners are generally not welcome in Balochistan since the days of the Raj, with the bureaucracy retaining the British legacy.

That is why foreign correspondents based in Quetta hotels are rarely allowed to make visits to Chaman or other townships close to the Afghan border for reporting to their organizations. The drought is still prevailing in almost half of the province where no rain was reported during the monsoon. However, the government has pumped in over Rs2 billion, providing relief to the drought-affected people in general.

The second challenge the governor faced was rampant corruption, which was patronized by almost all the previous governments. A two-pronged strategy was adopted. Efforts were first made to clean up the administration and check corruption so that public money was utilized for development. The government generally succeeded in containing corruption by arresting many people. As a matter of policy, high-profile corruption cases were taken up, investigated, tried. The accountability courts found guilty all the people involved in the cases.

The second aspect was the forged bills and illegal withdrawal of public funds from the public exchequer through fraudulent means by the officials. It was also plugged and a score of officials were arrested and punished in the courts of law. It was the biggest source of leakage of public funds in Balochistan.

The third challenge related to the ghost employees. The provincial government paid salaries to tens of thousands of such employees. There were reports that some tribal chiefs also shared the salaries of ghost employees. Still there are thousands more who are drawing salaries for no work. Government departments of health, education, agriculture and communications and works are the organizations where the overwhelming majority of ghost employees are given shelter.

As regards the cleaning up of the administration, many senior officials were retired prematurely, though some political leaders termed it victimization. However, a number of ex-officials are contesting their premature retirement.

The government has scored a number of successes as regards the economic development. First, there was no disruption in the flow of funds from the Centre. There was no slashing of the gas development surcharge for the province during the office of the present government. The past governments had diverted this money to their political constituents providing them gas connections in remote corners of Pakistan, mainly in other province. So far the present government is yet to create its political constituency, the money supply to Balochistan on this head is uninterrupted.

Secondly, the government made significant savings by unearthing and firing the ghost employees and plugging the forged bills. The commission mafia has been contained during the past two years. Thus more funds were made available for financing uplift schemes under the governor’s packages, the Khushal Pakistan and the Public Sector Development Programmes of both the federal and provincial governments.

A major achievement was the launching of several mega projects in the province. The development projects are financed by the federal government. They are: Gwadar deep-water port, coastal highway, Mirani dam, Greater Quetta Water Supply Scheme, the Kachhi Canal in the Naseerabad division, and the rural electrification schemes. In brief, the government will be spending Rs70 billion in next five years.

The governor took personal interest in seeking early revival of the Saindak project. Talks were held with the Chinese diplomats and officials without any publicity. The Chinese were convinced to take the Saindak copper and gold mines on lease and resume production. An agreement between the ministry of petroleum and natural resources and the MCC of China was signed and they are expected to reach Saindak and start their work.

Is Shabana Azmi a good Muslim? Will you prefer the Shahi Imam?

LET’S stop waffling for a minute. Do you believe or not that you are children of apes, as Charles Darwin discovered for us or do you prefer to think that our forebears had evolved from Adam and Eve as good Jews, good Christians and good Muslims would have us believe? Or would you go along with something more esoteric, like the good Brahminical belief that it was the cosmic, ethereal, humanly unpronounceable sound of “Om” that heralded our arrival on planet Earth? Or are you one of those who couldn’t care less?

In the great search for liberal Muslims, liberal Christians and liberal Jews or liberal Hindus, unleashed no doubt by the tragic events of Sept 11, we are being forced to forget that a truly liberal person is by definition a rational person who keeps all his cerebral windows open every minute for any arriving correction. A religious person begins with do’s and don’ts. A kink. He can be tolerant, even moderate, but not liberal. Let’s see how this rigid, if accurate, definition is playing in the current political flux.

For many long, bitter, brutal years, the forces of President Bush and Osama bin Laden were locked in a mighty embrace as only true believers would, together fighting the evil empire represented by the godless Soviets. They were both Ahl-I-Kitab (People of the Book), joined in a common cause to cleanse society of a nefarious, Satanic, intellectual challenge. (That was way before Samuel Huntington cried foul and took us back to civilizational atavism as the building blocks of our dominant identities.)

According to Selig Harrison, the renowned expert on Afghanistan, the CIA alone spent over $3 billion to help foist a government based on Islamic tenets to supplant communism in Kabul. That it would trigger a decidedly prolonged and debilitating side-effect in neighbouring Pakistan may or may not have been part of the script. Whatever be the case, it took only 10 or 12 years for the inevitable religious devaluation to hit rock bottom. That is clear. Hence the $50 million charity as opposed to the billions, thrown in recently before the government of Pakistan to dislodge the faithfuls, yes the very people it once helped produce and so caringly reared too, literally, in American-funded hatcheries.

So let’s zero in on someone like Imran Khan, a passionate Muslim, a cosmopolitan socialite, to find out if he believes in Adam and Eve or in Charles Darwin. Imran has been very vocal against the American attack on Islam. So, is he teaching his children the tenets of Creation from the Quran or the history of evolution of Darwin? If he says both are fine, he is missing the point, perhaps deliberately. So let’s drop the quest before it gets embarrassing. Let’s turn to our hero of the moment, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider. I can clearly recall what he told us, a bunch of Indian journalists and parliamentarians in Islamabad last year, or perhaps the year before. “This Qazi fellow is sending his son to America to study information technology. And he is sending other people’s poor children to his madressahs. We’ll soon sort him out.” No marks for guessing which Qazi Mr Haider was fuming at.

In a crucial way the war in Afghanistan will decide also the victor and the vanquished in the ongoing duel between Mr Haider and his quarry, the ubiquitous Qazi. For many of us in India and in Pakistan too that is the real battle to watch, although at the wider, more obviously global level, the war in Afghanistan is being fought between two jilted lovers. To many of us Osama and Bush look rabid in their own ways. Pure undiluted rightwing stuff. One gets funds from anachronistic bigots, the other gets votes from people who bomb abortion clinics back home. Why is it so difficult for the hyped-up Western media to understand that people at large need a choice, a quaint word patronized by Americans themselves, a choice other than the coerced endorsement of either the self-righteous George Bush or the mediaeval cohorts of Osama bin Laden. And that we can still be reasonable people.

That was the point both Shabana Azmi and Sharmila Tagore were trying to make when they joined an anti-war demonstration in New Delhi recently. Unfortunately for them there is no Moinuddin Haider in India to lock up the mullahs, both the Muslim and the Hindu variety, hence an unseemly standoff developed with the so-called Shahi Imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid which needs to be reported and understood properly because it could find a wider echo elsewhere.

Shabana Azmi is a gifted film actress. She is also a social worker, fighting for the civic rights of Bombay’s slum-dwellers. Her father Kaifi Azmi was once an active communist and a popular poet of the masses. Shabana says she is a Muslim, I am not sure if Sharmila Tagore became one too after marrying the Nawab of Pataudi. Sharmila inaugurated her brilliant career with Satyajit Ray, Shabana’s long and impressive innings was launched by a great filmmaker of more recent fame, Shyam Benegal. They are both highly accomplished women, persons. But there’s a problem, or two problems may be. They are both being hailed as the liberal face of Indian Muslims. At a function organized by leftist intellectuals last week Shabana sang Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Sharmila too recited something appropriate for the occasion, something in opposition to the war in Afghanistan.

As it turned out, the orthodox and rabid face of Indian Muslims has also been opposing the war in Afghanistan, but for a diametrically opposite reason. The Shahi Imam, not an ordinary plebeian imam mind you, has been shouting from the pulpit for a Jihad against America. There are few takers for his bile except the rightwing Hindu fanatics who watch the proceedings at Jama Masjid on Fridays more religiously than many Muslims would. Shabana, appearing in a TV programme last week, scoffed at the Imam’s credentials to represent Indian Muslims. She snidely told her audience to send the bearded man packing to Kandahar if he really wanted to launch a Jihad against America. Then the Imam something which riled everyone but amused me no end. “I don’t talk to nachaniyas and gawaiyas,” the Imam barked crudely. I thought it was a foul unacceptable reply. But in some ways it was factual too. And this was not the first time that the Muslim rightwing had used foul words against their moderates.

I once accompanied playwright Habib Tanvir and filmmaker Saeed Mirza, and perhaps Shabana was there too, to meet Rajiv Gandhi over the Shahbano issue. We wanted the divorced Muslim woman to be given all the rights that other Indian women enjoyed from their former husbands. Rajiv Gandhi made polite noises. It was nice to meet liberal Muslims (uf uf) and would we be able to convince the mullahs of the Muslim personal Law Board to consider our beautiful point of view. That was the end of the conversation. We were livid. The state of India was up to communal mischief. It didn’t want liberal opinion to gain any voice in the affairs of the state. The issue became the launching-pad for a major rightwing Hindu thrust on India’s political centre-stage. The next day all the conservative Urdu papers were calling us names. nachaniyas and gawaiyas was one of them. But that’s what we are basically. Without a liberal political cover, which has been shrinking steadily, not gaining ground, we are nachaniyas and gawaiyas.

That’s the lot of liberals. This is true of India, of Pakistan and quite evidently now of America too. Shabana’s father wrote brilliant poetry as did Faiz Ahmad Faiz. Where are the people on the streets to recite them? Find out from the Qazi.

PATHAN MOVIE-GOERS: If President Bush was really serious about catching Osama, he could have gone about the business more purposefully not with this raging bull approach. For example, he could have asked some of the old Soviet hands who went about nabbing the same Afghan rebels with tremendous facility in their time. One ploy, which I witnessed in Kabul in 1981-82, was to screen popular Hindi films in major cinema halls in Kabul and other cities. Whatever else you might know of the Pathans, they love movies, preferably ones with Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammad Rafi songs. The film being shown in Kabul those days was a Sanjeev Kumar starrer called Jaani Dushman, a raging hit with the Afghans. A Vietnamese diplomat in Kabul estimated that each show would yield eight to 10 Mujahideen per raid. Now that the Taliban have banned movies, the Americans could have looked for other chinks in the moral armour. But then do the Americans have the sense of humour to try out the more outlandish methods to trap rogues? I doubt it.

Hold these Huns now on rampage

MOST of the more than 13 million people that live here have been asking with increasing unease and trepidation what is in store for this city. The elderly ones recall with deeply-felt anguish that this very city was a haven of peace and hospitality when this country was born. There was indeed an awful lot of bloodshed in the wake of independence. While many parts of the sub-continent were in a state of profound unrest, Karachi had remained at peace with itself and with the rest of the restless world around.

Within almost no time this city was the then contemporary world’s largest refugee camp. It was the refuge of millions of people who moved in from the remotest nooks and corners of the vast South Asian region. They spoke different languages, came from varying cultural backgrounds. This city not only welcomed one and all, it opened its heart to all who came. They were mostly broken men and women and dazed children. Within not days, but hours, they were at home.

That was Karachi, the wonderful. Today, the same city is Karachi, the woeful. Essentially, it is the same cosmopolitan city, home to an incredible variety of people. The number of new- comers is ever on the increase. They come in search of work, wage, education, advancement and affluence. Barring some incurably clumsy, Karachi enables all to realize their dreams of a better tomorrow.

One need not be apologetic in pointing our that millions of rupees are transferred from Karachi to the upcountry centres by the hour. This is the wealth people from other parts of the country are making in Karachi and sending home. Let this grow from more to more. Deep down, the spirit of Karachi is — the more the merrier. Jolly good. We shall never have too many in this family. Karachi is home to an extraordinary family, and its doors remain wide open.

With all it throbbing and infinite variety, why does this city give the impression of being doomed to be in the whirl of unrest, crisis, crime — and cruelty to human beings more than to animals? That is the question that has made bemoaning Prince Hamlets of us all. We remain princes, but robbed of peace. From almost nowhere, descend upon us thousands and thousands of people in a state that is simply demented. Within the twinkling of the eye, there is immense to-do all over. Wild noises preface wilder deeds. Buses and cars are set on fire, tyres are burned at road intersections, public transport is thrown out of gear, all life brought to a standstill — that is, where it is not disrupted altogether.

Granted, there is a great deal that should call for uncompromising rejection, even protest. But is there no way for the agitating people to agitate as human beings and not as a pack of ruffians and vandals, scoundrels and louts. As it happens, most of the agitation these days is the business of those who claim to be on the side of the Almighty. Most of the causes agitated are claimed to be in aid of the divine will and purpose.

Very well. Why not give this commitment to otherworldly values at least a touch of decency? Our holy men are very quick to quote the scriptures. No quarrel with that. In what chapter and verse do they find permission, let alone inspiration and support, for riotous conduct? How is torching vehicles, burning tyres, disrupting normal traffic on the roads, causing street jams, to be reconciled with the disciplines laid down in the scriptures?

What invests these troubled questions with extraordinary urgency and force is the sad fact that in all riotous incident the majority among the agitating crowds is made up of youth who are unmistakably the products of the deni madaris. One should expect that the graduates of these hallowed sanctums of religious instructions would be models of rectitude, tolerance, kindness and forgiveness. Take any acceptable norm of civilized human behaviour, the conduct of these crowds is utterly unworthy of even the most primitive vandals.

One cannot overstate the point that Karachi is by far the country’s more literate (if not exactly enlightened) and urbane habitation. But what one is obliged to suffer in the form of riotous rallies, processions, and lawlessness must be seen to be wholly un-Karachi-like. This kind of stuff of life is certainly not Karachi’s, whatever else it might be. Reasonably watchful observers will not fail to see that the actors in this new kind of perverse drama are, at least in their public behaviour, glaringly alien to Karachi’s own style of thought and responses.

Things could well be slipping out of control, if something drastic is not done without any further loss of time. There should be no hesitation in asserting that what is not strictly lawful should be outlawed and emphatically declared to be so. No further concession to what is by all reckoning sheer vandalism, even if indulged in as compliance to some religious commandments. What is patently contrary to proper manners cannot in any way be permissible or deemed sanctioned by any high principles. Street rumpus is not permissible and as such it is definitely punishable. It is about time, misconduct is meted out punishment fit and proper.

To sum up the lament of a city that once was the city of lights and now in deep distress...

Aye roushni-e-taba tu ber mun bala shudi...!

When fire causes destruction

KARACHI: If light generates heat, it is heaven, and if it burns, it is like hell. A match stick is struck to lit the family hearth to prepare food to keep life going. But if a spark is left to fly off unguarded and falls on something that immediately catches fire it spreads quickly and creates havoc with life and all that supports life, consuming everything that comes in its way, killing and injuring human beings and animals and reducing other things to ashes.

Recently a fire broke out in a shanty town. It began with a simple spark and in no time turned into leaping flames, spreading destruction, panic and terror. Everyone of those then present in the shanty town was panicked. They ran here and there to save their near and dear ones and their scanty belongings. Children, who were caught in the fire, cried and called to their parents to save them. Some children, away from the fire, huddled into the laps of their wailing mothers, cried endlessly. Within minutes the fire left several people dead and injured, several houses destroyed and turned most of the belongings of the poor people into ashes.

The injured were rushed to a hospital. The hospital staff, on their toes, in a hectic way, began attending to the patients. Some of the injured were saved. Some of them died one after another over a period of several days.

Two children, caught in leaping flames, died when a fire swept through their house in Preedy area. It was a heart-rending scene, one could hardly believe it, witnesses said. What was more shocking that the tragedy occurred in front of their parents who looked helpless while crying for help.

The residents of Karachi can hardly forget the horrible fire in Bohri Bazaar. The fire wreaked havoc. Shops were gutted. An elderly couple who were living in an apartment building were trapped in the fire. They died in their flat. After the fire was put out, their charred bodies, with their hands and arms locked together, were brought out. They bid farewell to the world clasping each other’s hands and arms.

Desperate situations, it is said, promote voluntary cooperation among all living beings. One prays for voluntary cooperation among human beings in all situations.

Debating non-issues

THE Karachi city council recently passed a resolution in its second session which recommended that the electronic media be asked to end “vulgar” broadcasting and show programmes in which women were “properly dressed”. Another demand that came out of this sitting also related to the contentious issue of obscenity and censorship and it said that the print media refrain from publishing ‘obscene’ photos.

One is however not sure whether the National Reconstruction Bureau had this in mind when they decided to establish the current model of local government. The idea behind devolution of power is probably a good one: give locally elected representatives the power and the financial authority (on both, more will be said in later columns) and governance should improve. So why is Karachi’s local government busying itself over such issues when it has so many other major problems to deal with.

First, the criterion of what is considered ‘vulgar’ or ‘obscene’ not only varies from society to society, it varies widely even within societies. But that is not even the point in this case. Even if, as is normally the case, a society places — for the sake of decency and not offending public sensibilities — certain limits on the display of obscenity on national television, it would normally be the job of the official censor to ensure that the boundaries are not crossed. As for newspapers, again, one might ask what is the role of the Karachi city council, or any city council for that matter, in asking them not to print certain kinds of photographs. Surely, the minions of the information ministry and the press information department, and more importantly editors themselves, would see to it that the photographs which offend social mores are not be printed. And if certain people in the Karachi city council do not like the photographs printed in some newspapers then they simply should switch papers.

Karachi has so many problems that solving even a small proportion of them would keep any elected local government busy for much of its operational life. Traffic congestion, a chronic water and power shortage, a crumbling sewage system, pot-holed roads, non-existent waste collection, wholly inadequate street lighting, decrepit parks, encroached public spaces; the list really is endless. It would really be such a waste of taxpayers’ money if our locally elected leaders spent their time debating non-issues like whether women should wear sleeveless kurtas.

A colleague, or should one say an ex-colleague, who recently shifted from the journalism and plunged into the jargon-infested world of non-governmental organizations had her first taste of training workshops. The two-day event, on gender and development issues, turned out to be quite interesting. As luck would have it, the first day turned to be a day when a strike had been called. However, Karachiites are now so well-tuned to the strike culture that all the participants, most of whom were women, managed to make it.

Perhaps, it would have been more useful had men also been invited because the issue of empowerment of women is closely tied to their relationship with the opposite gender. But then, the choice of the participants was entirely that of their parent organizations. This whole aspect of sending only women to such a workshop brings to mind what the late Dr Mahbubul Haq once on the effects gender-based exclusion may have on the cause of development. It went something like this, that if development is not engendered, it is endangered.

Dr Tahira S. Khan, associate professor at the Institute for Educational Development at the Aga Khan University, and one of the facilitators of the workshop, admitted to the uneven gender balance by saying that such workshops usually ended up being women-focused or women workshops since women are in the majority. More and more problems relating to women end up being discussed with the result that men felt left out.

Apart from discussing things like the various theories on gender, the difference between gender and sex and the perception of gender roles in our cultural context, the participants were also given some interesting exercises.

A couple dealt with role reversals. There was one titled: If I were a man/woman. Among the 13 female participants, four didn’t want to change their roles. Nine wanted to change their gender as it would them “more mobility, freedom, decision-making power, a dominating role in the family and physical strength”. Out of the seven male respondents two were happy with their gender. The rest said they would not mind changing their gender roles (become women) only if to treat men equally, to feel more protected, to get respect or to be able to have children.

BUYING sweetmeats for a cousin who had just passed her MBBS finals, a colleague happened to ask the shop-owner how business was doing. The man, who usually has a smile on his face, said with a grim look that it had gone down 30 per cent since the September 11 attacks. One wonders how other businesses must be faring. Presumably not too good with the way things are going. The picture was not anyway too rosy for an already beleaguered economy, and now that the Americans have started their bombardment on Afghanistan the sweetmeat shop might just as well close down.

Other than not buying mithai, many people have started stocking up on food. But the question is, how long can you stock up and what do you stock up: rice, lentils, dry milk, cooking oil? Perishables are out of the question and how many people can afford tinned food? Very few, probably. But let’s not get into the nitty gritty of things and start panicking before the danger has arrived. In fact, as this colleague believes, it probably might be a much better idea if we all became a bit more optimistic and started believing in ourselves.

IN the past month or so at least 12 ambulances operation by the Edhi Foundation have come under attack. In some cases drivers have been roughed up also. All this is particularly senseless because emergency medical care is virtually non-existent in Karachi, and in fact in most other cities.

These recurring attacks have obviously made some people quite angry. Among them, of course, is Abdus Sattar Edhi himself. Prior to his departure to Afghanistan, to help with the aid distribution effort there, he told a colleague that those who attack ambulances should realize that they are playing with people’s lives. “Don’t attack my people and my ambulances. You never know, they might help you [the attackers] in the future,” he says.

Who will forget what a godsend Edhi ambulances proved to be in the mid-90s when Karachi was wracked by some very serious violence. This is what one person who was helped by one of these ambulances has to say about his near-death experience: “I am alive today just because the Edhi staff was there when I was shot in Gulbahar in 1995. I lay bleeding on a street, thinking my life was over, when all of a sudden I felt someone drag me to a vehicle and take me to a hospital. I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for these ambulances.”— By Karachian

Bring the mainstream parties on board

REMEMBER the grand political split that Pakistan suffered during the Gulf war? The elected government, led by prime minister Nawaz Sharif and the opposition led by Benazir Bhutto, were on the one side of the fence during the war while the Army, led by the then Chief of Army Staff Gen (Rtd) Mirza Aslam Beg, was on the other. The General attempted to accord a kind of dubious respectability to his open rebellion against the elected government by defining it as ‘strategic defiance’.

The then elected prime minister was putting his own life at risk by flying out to the war zone to show his solidarity with the governments of Gulf and Middle East countries. The then leader of the opposition Ms Bhutto at that time was in the US appearing on one TV show after the other trying in her own way to show that the country was one on the issue of Gulf war. But the then COAS was not only openly expressing his disagreement with the decision taken by the then elected government but he was organizing from behind the scene protests on the streets against the US campaign. The same fringe religious parties, which are out agitating against the regime today, were out in the streets then chanting slogans against the elected government just because the then COAS had wanted them to do so.

Compare this irresponsible behaviour of the then COAS with today’s highly responsible behaviour of the mainstream political parties like the PPP, PML, ANP and the MQM. Being political animals, they know the iron is hot enough for them to strike. They know if they gave a call of protest against the decision of the military regime to go along with the US-led war against Afghanistan, they will make it really hot for President Gen Pervez Musharraf. Three of these four parties have massive support in the majority provinces of the Punjab and Sindh and the response to their call for agitation would make the support the religious parties have so far received look like picnic outings. But the mainstream political parties are responsible enough to know very well what is in the national interest and what is not. That is why they are not trying to take any undue advantage of the precarious political position in which President Musharraf is finding himself today.

There are many in this country who harbour a kind of pathological hatred for these mainstream political parties. They have already started maligning them for their silence accusing them of being lackeys of the US. What these elements do not understand is that if ever Pakistan needed unity in its ranks, it is today. No matter what political ideology you are following and no matter to which Islamic school of thought you belong, you have to keep your cool and show super-human patience in the face of the mounting pressures. Otherwise, all hell will break loose and the resultant chaos will threaten the very existence of this country.

There is of course the matter of the price which the country would be required to pay very soon for its Afghan follies of the last 20 years. The biggest price that would become payable soon would be in the shape of a dirty running confrontation between the religious fringe parties and the very institution which had created them and nurtured them over all these years. Another price, as big, would become payable in the shape of slow down of the economy notwithstanding the billions that have been promised by the US and other rich countries by way of compensation for our troubles.

The longer this war lasts, the more difficult would it become for Pakistan to explain its position to not only its own people but also to the Muslims the world over. And the longer it takes to cobble together a universally agreed alternative to Taliban the greater would be Pakistan’s plight. The continued bombing is bound to keep increasing the collateral damage which in simple words mean more loss of civilian lives. The silent majority in Pakistan, of course does not agree with the Islamic school of thought that the Taliban are following. Still, they cannot ignore the mounting civilian casualties in Afghanistan.

So, it is becoming ever more difficult for Pakistanis to support the bombing which is being facilitated by our having provided the US-led coalition our airspace, our airbases and information.

This is like guiding the hand holding the gun to take the aim of your own heart. A time will come very soon when the hand that is guiding the hand of the killer would waver and the killer who seems already to have gone completely out of his mind would start shooting indiscriminately. This is when all Pakistanis no matter of which hue would need to stand together to face the music.

On the other hand the scenario which is likely to emerge following the ‘success’ of the bombing appears more horrendous for Pakistan because there is no way the world would be able to set up what is called a ‘broad-based’ government in Kabul in the next 20 years. Meanwhile, the Afghans will continue to settle their political scores with the gun. This would send millions of refugees scurrying across the borders into Pakistan followed by gangs of marauders, criminals, drug traffickers and gun-runners coming over to Pakistan uninvited. What had followed the Afghan war of the 1980s would be replayed on a more massive scale in this country following the disappearance of the Taliban.

This is when the regime would need the help of the mainstream political parties to ward off threats to Pakistan itself from the extremist and criminal elements. But if it continues to keep these parties pinned down to the ground they would hardly be in a position to provide the regime the political exit to safety when things get out of its hands.—Chatterbox

If Shakespeare were alive today

A horse! A horse! my kingdom for a horse! —-Shakespeare, Richard III

My one-time boss, the late Brig (Rtd) Gulzar Ahmed, used to highlight the main difference between Pakistani rural life and urban life, in his own humorous way: “If you feel an urge for a little wee-wee in a village, your run out but in a town your run in”.

Islamabad is supposed to be a “modern” well-planned city, so you’d imagine that among the hundred-and-one facilities provided for the residents, one would be that of adequate numbers of public lavatories for the benefit to those unfortunate people who might be unprepared in an emergency where they would have to do some explaining back home if they returned with drenched shalwars. Unfortunately this is not the case with us.

Some far-sighted residents carry out a thorough check of their physical condition before leaving their homes for fifteen minutes or more. A last visit to the bathroom is a must for them before they step out. However, there is a large number of people who are not so methodical in their habits and take a chance based on the philosophy of the well-known “We’ll cross the bridges when we come to them.”

No problem for those who work in offices because no such places of work are built without proper toilets within the premises. But in the case of “freelancers”, it becomes a case of “any port in a storm”. It might be a pile of bricks at a construction site, a tree, a jhuggi, in fact any opaque object, with stress on the word “opaque”. Imagine if King Richard III were alive in Islamabad today and had gone out in disguise to see for himself how his subjects were faring, and if he had run into the trouble Islamabadis face, he would have yelled “ A loo! A loo! My Kingdom for a loo!”

His Majesty might have rushed to the nearest wall and with his knowledge of Urdu, discovered that the task he wished to perform extremely urgently was forbidden by royal decree!

However, as the agony was unbearable and he dared not face Her Majesty to explain his wet clothes, he had no choice but to do what other Islamabadis do, find any open place to urinate.

In case the authority reading this fantasy supported has ever experienced the exquisite torture compels the people to do this at public places, some thought might be given to this matter of national importance.— N.A. Bhatti

Can we do away with polythene bags?

THE small commercial market at the Naval Colony in sector E-8 is popular equally among the civilian as well ladies of the armed forces. The main attraction being the prices of items, which are quite reasonable as compared to other markets in the Capital, whether it is fabric, vegetable, fruit or grocery.

Reasonable pricing is not the only reason why this market stands out, it is also environment friendly. Whatever you buy, fabrics or fruits, braids or buttons, you carry it at home in a paper bag.

At times it is annoying, when the flimsy poor paper bag cannot take the weight of two kg potatoes and rips apart, with potatoes rolling all across the street or at times bazaar. The vegetable vendor is not harassed and happily secures your supplies with yet another paper bag. All in a days work.

This practice has been in vogue for the past three years in this market. According to Malik Tariq Mehmood, owner of Faisal Silk Shop, “A directive from Commander North Office put a stop to plastic bags and since then we have completely switched over to paper.

“Initially we did face some problems, polythene bags seemed very convenient, especially since paper bags easily tear and the customer was also agitated. Then we ordered bags of durable paper and that worked”, Mr Malik share his experience of transitional period. As we learn more and more about the hazards and nuisance of poly bags we feel happy to have taken this healthy decision”.

Polythene bags invented by Japan in 1963, were introduced in Pakistan in the 70s and became instantly popular because of convenience. They gradually reduced the use of paper bags, reusable baskets and bags made of cloth and straw. By the time the public learnt about its adverse impact on health and hazard, it was too late.

Ethylene forms the basis of the class of plastics known as polyethylene. Generally low-density polyethylene is used to produce plastic bags, from gaseous ethylene under very high pressures and temperatures.

People learnt that re-cycled polybags contaminate eatables leading to deadly impact on food items. Due to lack of composting when burnt it produces smoke causing respiratory related diseases. Improper disposal by municipality results in environmental degradation and poor civic conditions like choking of sewers.

To discourage the public from using polythene bags in mid 90’s, government banned the sale, manufacturing and use of black polythene bags. The ban is being implemented and the provinces are taking steps in this regard. Similarly a ban was also imposed on the import of polythene waste, which is still on the negative list.

But there’s more to it. Asif Shuja Khan, Director General Environment Protection Agency (EPA), views the problem from a different angle. “It’s the collection mechanism that needs to be improved. It is an issue of efficient collection and disposal of garbage by the municipal authorities. If garbage collection is managed effectively, the menace of polythene bags could be eliminated,” he said talking to Dawn.

To discourage its use, efforts are being made to make it uneconomical. “Specification of polythene bags should be specified by Pakistan Standard Institute with emphasis on adequate thickness so that the bag may not blow away with the wind and at the same time enhance its economic value,” says Ziaul Islam, Director Environment Impact Assessment, Pakistan EPA.

Mr Islam said, some firms are promoting degradable plastic bags. They claim that if these bags are placed in sunlight, it gets reintegrated within a week. They also claim that the bag is non-toxic and free of any carcinogenic material and carries no health hazard.

“It is in the experimental phase since we want to be absolutely sure about its safety and get results of all the research before jumping to any conclusions,” he adds.

All provincial EPAs with Environment Protection Department, Punjab, have been supplied with samples to test the impact of degradable polythene bags and if found usable, they will then contact the manufacturers.

We seem to be doomed to sink in a sea of polythene bags, unless we put our foot down and learn to say “No.” There are alternatives. We can eliminate them from our life and shops!—Huma Khawar

When fortune favours the tyrant vile

A friend lent me a book recently. It is called A Literary History of Persia, Volume II, by Edward G. Browne, Sir Thomas Adams’s Professor of Arabic and Fellow of Pembroke College in the University of Cambridge. At the University Press, 1928. That makes the book 73 years old but it is in excellent shape. Down with the computers and the CDs!

As I was leafing through it the other day, I found a message of particular significance for Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Qazi Hussain Ahmad. I think readers will also find it relevant to the Afghan situation. For Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Qazi Hussain Ahmad, the following account is presented as a humble petition and advice.

Writing on Saadi as an ethical poet, Browne says:

When Saadi is described (as he often is) as essentially an ethical poet, it must be borne in mind that, correct as this view in a certain sense undoubtedly is, his ethics are somewhat different from the theories commonly professed in Western Europe. The moral of the very first story in the Gulistan is that “an expedient falsehood is preferable to a mischievous truth.”... And to make a long story short, how very sensible and how very unethical is the following (Book-I, Story 22):

“It is related of a certain tormentor of men that he struck on the head with a stone a certain pious man. The dervish dare not avenge himself (at the time) but kept the stone by him till such time as the King, being angered against his assailant, imprisoned him in a dungeon. Thereupon the dervish came and smote him on his head with the stone. ‘Who art thou’, cried the other, ‘and why dost thou strike me with this stone?’ ‘I am the same man, replied the dervish, ‘on whose head thou didst, at such and such date, strike the same stone. ‘Where wert thou all this time?’ inquired the other. ‘I was afraid of thy position’, answered the dervish, ‘but now seeing thee in this durance’, I seized my opportunity; for it has been said:

“When Fortune favours the tyrant vile,

The wise will forego their desire for a while.

If your claws are not sharp, then turn away

From a fearsome foe and a fruitless fray.

‘T is the silver wrist that the pain will feel

If it seeks to restrain the arm of steel.

Wait rather till Fortune blunts his claws:

Then pluck out his brain amidst friends’ applause!’”

Now, what is so bloody unethical about it, as Browne alleges? Saadi talks sense and he has his feet, unlike Fazlur Rehman and Husain Ahmad on the ground. I tell you if the two are so fired by the spirit of jihad, why don’t they lead their followers to Afghanistan to fight a holy war against the thrice accused Americans?

THE Punjab Government Record Office published a monograph (No 17) in 1935. It is called Events at the Court of Ranjit Singh - 1810-1817. It was translated from the papers in the Alienation Office, Poona (now Pune) by courtesy of the Bombay Government. The monograph was edited by Lt-Col H.L.O. Garret, MA, IES, Keeper of the Records of the Punjab Government and G.L. Chopra, MA, PhD, PES, Deputy Keeper of the Records.

The monograph is a selection of day-to-day events at Ranjit Singh’s Court. Each entry begins: News of the Deorhi of Sirdar Ranjit Singh Bahadur; Thursday dated 20th December, 1810 (22nd Ziqaad, 1225 AH,) the Royal Fort, Lahore.

It begins:

Yesterday, the Noble Sarkar remained inside the zenana until the day advanced one quarter and a half, and continued merry-making, drinking wine and enjoying the dance of the dancing girls. At noon, he took his meals and went to rest. He awoke at about the third quarter of the day and came out to the Saman Burj. The sirdars usually present at the court came in and made obeisance. .....

When the night had passed by two hours, the sirdars and others who were present, walked out. The Noble Sarkar went into the zenana and engaged himself in enjoying the music of the dancing girls after taking his meals. When the night had passed by one quarter, he retired to rest. .... This is written according to the verbal statement of Khushal Singh, the news agent of the informant.

Earlier in the account, it is said that the sirdars told him that during the night, dacoits had raided the quarters of the goldsmiths and decamped with property worth Rs275. The maharaja summoned Bahadur Singh, the city police chief, and ordered him to arrest the robbers and present them before him, “warning him at the same time that failure to do so would not be to his credit.”

From the entry for January 1, 1811, we learn that Hakim Muhammad Ali Khan, Hakim Azizuddin and Ghulam Mohyuddin, the surgeon, and Hukma Singh, the thanedar of Lahore, “presented themselves at the door of the zenana.” We are also told that the maharaja had his pulse examined by the two hakims named above. He was found to be quite normal. However, some medicines were administered to him. Mohyuddin, the surgeon, treated his boil. The entry als