About warped attitudes & the president’s show

WHEN President Gen Pervez Musharraf ended his long discourse at the Pakistan community meeting, some Pakistani Christians shouted questions about the plight of the minorities in the backdrop of Okara evictions. But as the president responded to the questions by explaining the steps taken by his regime to protect the minorities, some Pakistanis sitting in the crowd shouted at them: “Go to India”, “Go to India”.

This was the most pathetic display of misplaced patriotism witnessed here, particularly in the current atmosphere in the United States where the Muslim community is fighting similar sentiments as many mainstream Americans in the aftermath of Sept 11 have been heard telling Muslims: “Go home”.

The Muslim community, in general, and the Pakistani community, in particular, which is crying foul at the loss of civil liberties and the denial of due process, should be ashamed. It is high time that it realized that such zealous and fanatic behaviour is responsible for the state of affairs in the world whether it be in the United States or Pakistan.

The Pakistani community, which has been telling President Musharraf to ask President Bush to be even-handed with the Pakistanis in deportations of the “illegal” migrants, should know that such attitudes do little to further their cause.

Another example of ridiculous attitudes: a correspondent of a Pakistani paper was seen asking the president to ask US Secretary of State Colin Powell to be even-handed and the US should deport illegal Mexicans also while it is deporting illegal Pakistanis. A warped logic: Hum tu Dubain Gay Sanam, Tum ko Bhi lay Dubain Gay (I will drown and I will take you with me).

Once again at the community meeting organized by the Pakistan embassy in Washington, the general got an almost whole-hearted endorsement of his rule. There were no protests and questions about democracy as the president made his case for returning the country to a “real democracy” and to rid it of corrupt politicians.

DELEGATION: One is at a loss to comprehend why President Musharraf bothered to bring the delegation of ministers with him this time. He is a one-man working machine, not only meeting world leaders, giving speeches at the international forums — universities, United Nations, etc. — but he also is forced to brief the press.

The biggest disappointments were Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Inamul Haq and Information Minister Nisar Memon.

The president’s official delegation, in one-on-one meetings with foreign leaders from US President Bush to Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi et al., mostly composed of Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Inamul Haq, Ambassador of Pakistan to the United States Jehangir Ashraf Qazi and his UN Ambassador Munir Akram.

Mr Haq, who accompanied the president on every important function from Boston to New York, was not available to the press for any briefings as was the case in the past.

In the last four visits by the president to the United States, his spokesman Lt-Gen Rashid Qureshi, former ambassador of Pakistan to the United States, Maleeha Lodhi, and the former information minister, Javed Jabbar, made it a point to brief the press and often enough to bring them up to date on the activities of the president’s delegation.

But this time crestfallen Mr Quereshi insisted it was not his domain to “brief you on president’s activities, the information minister should brief you daily.”

The fact is that Mr Memon, who came to town with a more-loyal-than-the-king demeanour, was out of the loop completely. While he lectured the press not to raise contentious issues of democracy and freedom of the press in Pakistan at intonational forums, his press officer in New York kept warning that “journalists should not wash our dirty linen in public.”

To be fair to Mr Memon, he was clueless about any of the president’s meetings for one thing he was not part of any delegation and for another he was never brought in the loop to brief the press. Mr Memon, who flew in with the president, mostly went out to attend community dinners and meetings. However, when asked at a United Nations Club meeting to explain the incidents of violence against the press at Faisalabad, abduction of journalist in Karachi, etc., he took great pains to expound the virtues of the military government in allowing the press to operate as they wanted to but said little in substance on the questions.

As for Mr Haq, who was pretty articulate during his short stint as ambassador of Pakistan at the UN, he just shunned any contact with the press and his ambassadors here could not brief the press also. On the last evening of the president’s visit it was suggested that a final briefing should be given to the press by the information minister, who wisely suggested that Pakistan’s ambassador to the UN, Munir Akram, should give the briefing because he was more aware of the president’s activities than he. Mr Memon was reluctant to arrange the press conference because the last year’s press conference had degenerated into a shouting match between President Musharraf and some journalists and had created a bad feeling on both sides.

Thus it was left up to the president to brief the press as none of his officials from the information minister to the spokesman, Rashid Quereshi, were in the loop. Hence the question; if the president has to do everything himself, why bother to field even the so-called small delegation?

The woman that was Amrita Shergil

I HAVE been rather long-winded for some time (though not in Karachi where I was regretfully cut to size for want of space, as I was told). So I have decided not to cross the prescribed limits, specially at my own cost.

Let us therefore quickly turn to Khushwant Singh’s autobiography, Truth, Love and a Little Malice. He says that both his parents were long-lived. “My father died at ninety — a few minutes after he had his last sip of Scotch. My mother followed him eight years later when she was ninety-four. Her last request, made in a feeble, barely audible voice, was ‘Viskee’. It was given to her. She threw it up and spoke no more. I hope that when my time comes, I too will be able to raise my glass to take one for the long road.”

Again; “I am not an admirer of great people. The few I got to know at close quarters turned out to have feet of clay: They were pretentious, feckless, lying and utterly commonplace.” On infancy to adolescence to school years, he says: “Schoolmasters, teachers, domestic servants, cousins and older relations direct or misdirect you. You go through homosexual or incestuous desires.”

When Khushwant Singh returned home from England, friends would ask his father: Kaka kee pass kar ke aya heh? — What has your son passed? Hor te pata nahin, time bohat pass kar ke aya heh — ‘I don’t know really what he has passed except that he has passed a lot of time’, his father would reply.

Khushwant Singh’s wedding, held on October 30, 1939, was attended, among many others, by “Mr M.A. Jinnah who lived across the road and occasionally dropped in to inspect my father’s rose garden.”

His account of ‘Lahore, Partition and Independence’ is at best perfunctory if not altogether superficial but if you care for Khushwant Singh, that shouldn’t bother you at all. He remembers having met two people in Lahore in the years leading up to partition. One was Amrita Shergil, the painter, who had a flat on top of the Fazal Din building on The Mall and the other was her husband, “her Hungarian cousin, Victor Egan, a doctor of medicine...” Then he describes his first encounter with her: “... I tried to size her up. I couldn’t look her in the face too long because she had that bold, brazen kind of look which makes timid men like me turn their gaze downwards. She was short and sallow complexioned (being half Sikh, half Hungarian). Her hair was parted in the middle and tightly bound at the back. She had a bulbous nose with black heads showing. She had thick lips with a faint shadow of a moustache. I told her I had heard a lot about her paintings and pointed to some water colours on the wall which my wife had done. ‘She is just learning to paint,’ I said by way of explanation. ‘That’s obvious,’ she snorted. Politeness was not one of her virtues. She believed in speaking her mind, however rude or unkind it be.”

Then he had another taste of her rudeness. “... we were having beer and gin-slings .... My son was in a playpen learning to stand on his feet. Everyone was payiang him compliments: he was a very pretty little child with curly hair, large questioning eyes and dimpled cheeks. ‘What an ugly little boy!’ remarked Amrita... My wife froze. Amrita continued to drink her beer without concern. Later, when she heard what my wife had to say about her manners and that she had described her as a bloody bitch, Amrita told her informant, ‘I will teach that woman a lesson. I’ll seduce her husband.’ “One day, after suffering all night, Amrita died. “She was barely thirty-one.” That very day, police arrested Egan because he was a Hungarian, a German ally in WW-II. So he “had become an enemy national.” Therefore, Amrita must have died early in September, 1939, when the war started.

Khushwant Singh says: “my version of her (Amrita’s) death came from Dr Raghubir Singh, then a leading physician of Lahore. He was summoned to Amrita’s bedside when she was already beyond hope of recovery. He believed that Amrita had become pregnant and been aborted by her husband. The operation had gone wrong. She had bled profusely and developed perionitis....”

Many people like the art critic Karl Khandalwala, Iqbal Singh (of the Government College) and her nephew, the painter Vivan Sundram, have written books on Amrita. Badruddin Tyebji has given a vivid account of how he was seduced by her (she simply took off her clothes and lay naked on the carpet by the fireplace. Vivan admits to her having many lovers. According to him, her real passion was another woman.”

Here, a digression is necessary. Dr Raghubir Singh, to whom Khushwant refers, was indeed a prominent physician of his time. Whenever my grandmother needed a doctor, it had to be Raghubir Singh in spite of the fact that there was a physician in the family, Dr Mohammad Raza Mirza who practised in Mochi Gate. He was extremely popular with his patients because he would charge them no consultation fee, only the price of the bottle and the mixture which his compounder would prepare on the spot.

Now, Dr Raza Mirza was my eldest uncle (I had many) and his amateur compounder was another uncle. Dr Raza (Razzo, as he was called in the mohallah) had a roaring practice. He had barely the time to go home in the street next door to steal a hurried lunch before he returned to his clinic. He would go visiting patients late at night to attend to old and terminally sick patients. He was a huge man — six foot plus and equally broad. We had named him Uncle Porthos, one of Alexander Dumas’ Three Musketeers. The Mohallah called him the Generous Giant. But enough of Dr Raza. I’ll talk of him at some length some other day. But Dr Raghubir Singh it was who would be called to grandma’s bedside at Fleming Road. Like Dr Raza, Dr Singh was also exceptionally tall and as generous as my uncle. He lived on Nisbet Road where he also (probably) had his clinic. Shortly before partition, the State Bank of India (or was it the Reserve Bank?) issued a two-rupee currency note. Once I deliberately cheated Dr Raghubir Singh of a crisp two-rupee note. I told him a blatant lie whereupon Dr Singh picked me up in his arms, kissed and hugged me and gave me that two-rupee thing before he went in to minister to my grandmother.

Another doctor, favoured by one of my consumptive aunts, was Dr Tirlok Nath who had a small clinic on Railway Road at a stone’s throw from grandma’s Fleming Road house. Now, Dr Nath was a dapper little physician but he had the reputation of having the healing touch. He was an extremely patient man who would think interminably before prescribing a pain-killer or a sedative for my aunt. Such was his power of persuasion that the patient was certain that what he had prescribed was indeed a magic potion. On numerous occasions, my aunt would recover to almost normal health before relaping into fits of all-night coughing. And so on it went — two nights of great discomfort, followed by a Tirlok Nath palliative.

My aunt lived long years after 1947 and I would say that she owed all of them to Dr Tirlok Nath, the quiet physician from Railway Road. I wonder what happened to the two great doctors. But I am sure that if there is life after death, the two are in swarg.

The Army is already in, General sb!

The argument that in order to keep the Army out you have to bring it in, completely ignores the role played by the former ISI chief, Lt-Gen Ziauddin Butt, in the events leading up to the October 12, 1999 takeover. It also ignores the fact that the first time the Army staged a coup, the government was already in the hands of military bureaucracy. Maj-Gen Iskander Mirza, the then un-elected President of Pakistan facing the threat of an election and fearing that power would slip out of his hand conspired with the then commander-in-chief of the Army, Gen Ayub Khan and declared martial law in the country. When later Ayub exiled Mirza he did it for his own reasons. No civilian politician had gone to him to ask him to remove Mirza. Next, Ayub Khan, the Field Marshal, was already ‘in’ when he ‘prevailed’ up on Ayub Khan, the President, to hand over the reins of the government to the then commander-in-chief, Gen Yahya Khan.

There is no record of any civilian politician inviting Yahya Khan to take over. In fact Ayub was bound by his own constitution to hand over power in case of disability to the speaker of the National Assembly. Again it was Lt-Gen Gul Hasan, the then CGS, who forced President Gen Yahya Khan to hand over power to ZA Bhutto and make him the first ever civilian Martial Law Administrator in the history of mankind! In this case, too, there is no record of Bhutto asking Gul Hasan to remove Yahya Khan. In fact Gul Hasan and Air Marshal Rahim Khan went all the way to Rome to bring Bhutto back home promising him protection from any wrong move by Yahya.

And finally Gen Ziaul Haq, the COAS, was already ‘in’ when he allowed Ziaul Haq, the President, to dismiss the elected parliament and Prime Minister Junejo’s government. Here, too, there is no evidence of any civilian politician asking the then COAS Gen Ziaul Haq to oust Junejo.

Now let us take the latest case of the October 1999 takeover. Going by the post-retirement antics of his predecessors it is safe to assume that the then ISI chief Lt-Gen Ziauddin Butt, too, was an ambitious officer. And, perhaps, it was he who, driven by his blind ambition, had sucked a gullible Prime Minister into taking the course that he took on that fateful day. And it is but logical to assume that being the chief of the ISI Gen Butt was in the know of on ground realities. Perhaps he was the one who had created the misunderstanding between the elected government and the Army chief and then used the growing suspicion between them to work on NS to take the plunge. The drama at the TV station on the final day clearly demonstrates how far the then ISI chief had gone in his desire to become the COAS. All the training and all the discipline that the institution of the Army takes pride in could not make Butt see that he was pushing the country beyond the precipice in order to achieve something which he did not deserve.

And then who says the Army has not been all the way ‘in’ all these years. Once a former ISPR chief told me that the commercial enterprises owned by the defence services contribute as much as nearly 3 per cent to the national economy annually. These interests range from real estate to cereal production, banking, insurance, leasing, logistics, cement and fertilizer. Those, including the IMF, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, who do not want governments to be engaged in commercial activities and, therefore, want all public sector enterprises and even education, health, water and power to be privatized have so far said nothing about these enterprises of the Armed Forces. Where in the world does the national army own such huge commercial interests? All these enterprises flourished and are being run ‘profitably’ not by competing on a level playing field but with economic odds heavily stacked in their favour. Large autonomous organizations like PIA, shipping corporation, Wapda, Steel Mills etc., have most of the time been headed by either in-service or retired officers. And very rarely have the top jobs in national sports organizations gone to civilians. But with the exception of a few all these generals and air marshals and admirals have only succeeded in lining their pockets and rendering poorer the organizations they had headed.

President Gen Musharraf has twice in the last one month expressed his deep gratitude to Ayub Khan for the ‘great things’ he is supposed to have had done for this nation. But one would find it very difficult to share Musharraf’s opinion about this man after reading what Sherbaz Khan Mazari who has seen it all had to say about Ayub’s rule in his book A Journey to Disillusionment. He writes: “While Ayub Khan decided to lay all ills on the heads of the bickering politicians, he chose to overlook the fact that all major decisions taken by Ghulam Mohammad and Iskander Mirza had enjoyed his tacit approval. He had remained close to the centre of power ever since his elevation to the position of commander-in-chief of the army in 1951. The fact that he had already stayed on as army chief for seven long years was a reflection of the prominent role he had played during the 1950s — the decade of intrigues... During this period neighbouring India had a single prime minister and several army chiefs. In Pakistan we had seen seven prime ministers, but only one General Ayub Khan. In reality the bureaucracy had been ruling the country, at first surreptitiously and then, after the 1953 dismissal of Nazimuddin, openly. The bureaucratic rule had been closely abetted by the army. Ayub Khan gave his open approval of Nazimuddin’s sacking by joining Ghulam Mohammad’s appointed government as defence minister. By the end of the politically tumultuous decade, the military chief had clearly gained the upper hand at the expense of his bureaucratic team.... Despite the stated intention of the Martial Law authorities that the land reforms were intended to bring about a just and equitable redistribution of land among the poor landless tenants, the first signs of self-aggrandizement had begun. A large part of the resumed land was soon handed over to military and civil officials at throw away prices. The halcyon days for the new military-bureaucratic elite had arrived. Soon urban land was being parcelled out to these officials as well...It was a subtle form of officially sanctioned corruption — but corruption it nevertheless was. In time this military regime largesse would lead to unforeseen ethnic tensions in Sindh, where the beneficiaries of the hundreds and thousands of newly irrigated land were largely non-resident Punjabis, military-bureaucratic officials, and not members of the local Sindhi peasantry.” One can have no feeling other than contempt for such a ruler!!—Onlooker

The writer and the critic

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world- though the cant of the hypocrites may be the worst-the cant of criticism is the most tormenting.-Laurence Sterne, in the 18th century novel, Tristram Shandy.

In the slaughterhouse of criticism, few can save their necks. No wonder some creative writers would agree with the saying: “Nature, when she invented, manufactured and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left”!

But at the weekly meeting of the Halqa-e-Arbab-e-Zauq, you can do nothing else, even if you are an author or the poet yourself. The very nature of the event demands these acrobatics; though once in a while you can hear praises too.

But the good thing about these meetings is that you are regularly introduced to new creative writings in Urdu and Punjabi, and of late in English as well.

It was a pen-picture (in prose): “Haider Qureshi-Poora Aadmi” (Haider Qureshi- The Complete Man) by poet Akbar Hameedi who wrote a portrait of a writer friend, now living in Germany. A Ghazal in Urdu by Khawer Eijaz, another in Punjabi by Akhtar Shaikh were discussed at the meeting of the Halqa in Islamabad on Saturday evening at the Writers House of the Pakistan Academy of Letters.

The criticism on the pen-picture centred around the theme that it was not a complete picture, and was written by a friend to show his friend as a paragon of virtues; and it failed to penetrate the personality that, according to some, was not very endearing to a number of people. Some even objected to the results that Qureshi’s love for the Punjabi ‘Mahaia’ had resulted in the kind of propagation of the Punjabi genre that was portrayed in the paper read at the meeting. Some, however, thought it to be a reasonable portrait.

The Punjabi Ghazal by Akhtar Shaikh was described as an expression of the collective pain of society by poet Ali Akbar Abbas, who presided over the meeting and said it showed what had become of us.

Akbar Hameedi thought that it portrayed a fatigued society, which had silenced the common man, and he had ceased to protest. Rafiq Sandelvi felt that the poem gave a feeling of deprivation.

Poet Akhtar Usman dealt with the internal rhyming that reflected the sad mood of the poem. He also noted that the technique of rhyming in this poem also drew upon the scheme of versification from Urdu prosody.

The Urdu Ghazal by Khawer Eijaz was thought to be an expression of a ray of hope; of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel as it were. “Agarche beech may haill hay dunya ka andhera, magar ek shama to us par bhee rakkhi hooi tou hai” (Although there is darkness of the world in between, but if you can cross it there is a candle placed on the other side).

Akbar Hameedi thought that since poetry was a medium of expression, the development of themes spoke of the hopefulness that the poet felt and reflected in his verses. Ali Akbar Abbas thought that the poet had searched for the possibilities, and as a representative of the contemporary world reflected the desire of the poet to take you to a world of action.

Poet Qamar Shahzad, who was the chief guest, received a lot of applause on his poems, recited on the occasion.

Others who took part in the discussion included short story writer Shahid Hameed, Asghar Abid of the Halqa and poet Hayat Nizami. Joint Secretary of the Halqa read out the report about the last meeting.—Mufti Jamiluddin Ahmad

Thus, life goes on...

Oh, Karachi, what a city thou art! Never a dull moment. But even by Karachi’s own standards of fast pace, the past week has been really a week that was. You could begin with the shootout at an insignificant sort of apartment building in Defence, and conclude with the launching of a book about half a century of paintings by women of Pakistan. In between lies a world that is Karachi’s very own.

The action that began with some routine sort of police action turned out to be a windfall, yielding a bagful of what are being described as the ‘most wanted men’ of today’s terror-stricken world. Or, terror-stricken United States, anyway. One of them is authoritatively billed as “Osama’s top aide.” Seldom has Karachi been the apple of White House eyes like it was last Friday-Saturday.

For the moment, let us say, “thank you Ramzi.” This bearded youth (going by the picture officially released) — a Yemeni by birth — has the face that has come to be the trademark of the Osama band of operators. One is reminded that in the good old British Indian Army, the soldiers used to have a ‘regulation’ haircut. Here is what is another regulation cut — the Taliban cut.

From what has been disclosed so far, it appears that the LEAs (Law Enforcement Agencies) from the city police to our ISI and the FBI of the United States have reason to believe they have at last got hold of a prize scalp. No one should be surprised if this trophy is set to travel overseas. Interior Minister Moninuddin Haider refers to international law and our own commitments to it.

Of course we have not heard the last of Ramzi or Osama. Nor indeed of the rumpus at the campus of the Karachi University. For almost a week, if not longer, our largest house of learning has been having an ado that will be hard to forget for quite some time. Everybody has the right to protest. This right is more religiously recognized in Karachi’s climate. There is never a day when some protest is not going on somewhere in this ever restive metropolis.

However, many of us would like to see a qualitative difference between factory labourers on strike for wages not paid and university teachers expressing resentment over a perceived academic grievance. This kind of difference was not notable in the teachers’ protest — however justified their anger might be. University professors’ anger should have a touch of sang-froid about it.

The teachers stopped teaching, pulled the students out — literally on the street — and shouted slogans. As for the rangers, well, they acted in their all too well known style. If university teachers forget their manners, how to castigate the rangers? This is not to condone their rough style. Only to suggest that teachers should have known better.

Right on the University Road, the Expo Centre has been undergoing a truly impressive face-lift. In recent months, this establishment has really become a showpiece this city can look up to with a measure of joy — if pride is too big a word. It is really good to see something improving, growing and prospering. The Expo Centre appears to be doing all that and more.

The big show starts off today. It is “Ideas-2002.” This is the second show being staged at this venue. It opens a window on this country’s defence industry and its achievements. This is a calculated export-orientated enterprise of the Defence Export Promotion Organization. Let us wish them well.

Around 45 official delegations from 30 countries are expected to be here for some days. Organizers say that well over one hundred exhibitors from 20 countries are participating.

The first “Ideas” show was in 2000. One can see that there is plenty to show for the time between the first “Ideas” and the second in 2002.

After some initial hiccups, work on Karachi’s two major highways is now picking up. Both are mega-projects, in every sense of the term.

Thousands of families are going to be displaced and dislocated. Hopefully, they will be properly rehabilitated. Funds to finance rehabilitation as well as for the construction work on the project have been promised by the federal government. Officials say funds are coming in and being distributed. Sounds good.

Karachi is one of the most congested cities of the world. Apart from civil traffic on the roads, there is enormous movement of trade — import as well as export. All of this passes through virtually the heart of the city. These two highways are designed to take this huge load off city roads. That would be good, no doubt, but it would be solving only a part of the city traffic heartache.

These expressways are no substitute for a comprehensive urban railway network. One is simply astonished at the manner in which the Karachi Circular Railway has been systematically destroyed by a government over-awed by the road transport mafia. Some day this scandal is going to burst into the face of the provincial government and the Pakistan Railways. Let us hope it will be sooner than later.

The DHA encounter: an eyewitness account

KARACHI: Imagine the feelings of a person who wakes up in the morning hearing a loud thunder of Kalashnikov fire hitting his bedside wall and missing him just by an inch. And then goes a series of pistol, rifle, Kalashnikov, hand grenades, small bombs and, later on, machinegun fire, which continue for about two and a half hours in the surrounding area.

It was about 10:15am. My mother rushed to my room panicked and very shaken inquiring about the happening. She took a sigh of relief after she learnt that I had narrowly escaped the bullet (though I still wonder how). She forcibly pulled me out of the room, and we took refuge in another room which was comparatively safer. Within minutes, the entire area turned into a battlefield. Neither side seemed to be in a mood to surrender.

This is Karachi. The city of lights — of all sorts. The date is 11th September 2002 — exactly one year after the collapse of twin towers of the WTC in New York. The area is 13th Commercial Street of Phase-II (Extension) of Defence Housing Society. I live in the building 52-C, on its third floor. Never ever in my dreams would I have thought that I had inhabited a place just across a terrorist hideout. The window of my room facing the terrorists’ building was open for fresh air. And what a gasp of air I breathed that morning!

After coming back to my senses and passing the initial shock of being suddenly fired at, I took my younger brother Adnan and mother to the drawing room, which is located at the far end of the apartment.

Very soon I realized that the matter was really serious, and it was not an ordinary routine ‘encounter,’ that has become a usual affair in Karachi. I wondered why the terrorists chose to fire on our building. Soon it occurred to me that the terrorists mis-interpreted the situation and thought that police were hiding in my apartment. I went to another room to see what was actually going on. I saw that an armed police squad was on the main road of 13th Commercial Street, aiming and firing on the suspected apartments situated on the second and third floors of the building. Strangely, due to folly, over-confidence, or sheer miscalculation regarding the capability of the miscreants, police didn’t try to camouflage themselves.

At that time, the terrorists opened straight fires and threw hand grenades, which resulted in injury to three police constables. One of them was critically injured and his condition was very serious as the bullet hit the upper portion of his body, blood gushed out immediately. All the three policemen were rushed to hospital.

This was the turning point. Police changed their strategy. A number of them, including an inspector, entered our building, and requested us to use the rooftop as retaliatory post. It clicked suddenly that why a bullet had earlier been fired on my apartment; it was a natural defence post in those particular circumstances. The rooftop has a thick concrete boundary wall, making it ideal for a shootout. The remaining force surrounded the area, while keeping a safe distance.

They took their positions and started firing. But each time police fired they got a matching response from the other side. I heard the inspector calling his control room for reinforcement. He said: “We are running short of ammunition, please send help immediately.” He also requested for an additional force, as by then he had realized that the terrorists had a huge supply of arms and ammunition. There were constant instructions to fire one bullet at a time, and that too with a gap. This continued for about half an hour. Finally a number of police mobiles cordoned the area from all sides.

Then arrived the rangers squads equipped with G3 rifles and SMGs. Our roof had been converted into the main firing area. This time the force was properly equipped and was in full strength. Our neighbour’s TV lounge was used for loading bullets. The eyeball-to-eyeball firing continued for two hours, but with little success.

Again the strategy was changed. Plan for a final attack was chalked out. The entire area was covered by police and rangers, leaving no room for anyone to escape. The terrorists were asked to surrender on megaphone. This took another ten minutes. Instead of declining, the fire shots got fiercer and incessant. Police began their operation by firing a number of teargas shells, which created a foglike atmosphere.

Since both sides were operating from a very close distance, a number of policemen were also seen coughing, with water trickling down their cheeks due to the effect of teargas. This strategy began bearing results. The terrorists opened doors and windows of their apartments because of suffocation. But they were not in a mood to surrender. The crossfire continued for another twenty minutes.

Meanwhile, a group of policemen was sent to enter the building, to apprehend those who tried to escape. Police were constantly in touch with their highups on their wireless sets and mobile phones. Another round of teargas shells were fired. Immediately after that, intense machinegun fire was opened for the first time, along with Kalashnikov bursts. This continued for about five minutes, resulting in a major breakthrough.

All the windows and doors got smashed. I heard loud human voices crying with pain. In the meantime, the police party which had earlier entered the building broke down the entrance door with heavy bullet shots. Two of the terrorists were killed on the spot, and two or three others were critically hit. The police force raised the slogan “Naara-i-Takbeer — Allah-O-Akber.” This signified success of their mission.

Later I saw one man who was captured alive, being dragged and kicked and abused by the victorious policemen. His eyes were covered and he looked like a very poor man, shabbily dressed. I wonder who this man was and what was his connection with the culprits hiding just across the building where I live, and will probably live for some more years. After all such incidents don’t happen every day.

Dumping along Mai Kolachi

Several years ago there was a lot of controversy about the land along both sides of the Mai Kolachi Expressway, which connects the city’s financial and commercial district with Clifton. As you travel from Boating Basin to Queen’s Road along Mai Kolachi on your right are mangrove swamps, an ecosystem that has managed to survive despite the raw sewage that empties into it every day.

On the left is land reclaimed by the society formed by the employees of the Karachi Port Trust. In fact there is even a marriage hall here, but much closer to the Boating Basin side. This reclaimed land has been quite controversial in the past, especially during the time of the second PPP government when there had been several allegations, including those levelled by the succeeding PML government, that Ms Bhutto’s husband was somehow involved. He, however, had denied any wrongdoing and in any case that’s not the issue of concern here.

What one should be concerned about is that on the left side, but much closer to the Queen’s Road side, every day a lot of earth-moving work is taking place. In fact, over the past three days, while driving to work every morning on Mai Kolachi from the Clifton Side, I have seen several tractors hauling what seemed to be either waste or sand. Major portions of the stretch along Mai Kolachi have knee-deep water and what these tractors seemed to be doing was to dump the material they were hauling on to these areas. At least four bulldozers were there on Saturday morning, helping spread the material that had been brought there, perhaps to make the water go away. Is this part of the previous reclamation project and if so then why is waste material being used? Surely, the Mai Kolachi is not a landfill site, or is it?

The drive along the Mai Kolachi Expressway is quite pleasant at night with good semi-panoramic views on either side. Other than that, the area where the dumping is taking place is close to small bodies of water where several species of migratory birds have made their home including pink flamingoes, herons, and egrets. Will someone please explain — perhaps the KPT or the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency — what is going on?

All this past week we have been hearing of trouble at the University of Karachi. However, a friend who studies there has another kind of harassment to report about, the sort that only female students have to endure.

Her account: “Karachi University’s wide roads make you want to take long walks, especially on one of those rare cloudy days. Last week, on one such day my friend and I decided to try the cafeteria in the ‘B’ pharmacy department, hoping that it would not be very crowded. On the way a purple Suzuki FX whizzed past us blaring loud music. The occupants of this car didn’t notice us until they slowed at the end of the road to take a left turn. We however, were too busy wondering why the rangers had not taken any action against the acoustics of the FX to notice that the vehicle had stopped.

“When we reached the bend to turn left, we realized that the vehicle had stationed itself there and was waiting for us. I was fearless; surely the rangers would not allow anyone to harass two defenceless girls. I instructed my friend to keep on walking and pretending as if she hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. To keep her from panicking I started to talk about something else, about someone standing on the opposite side of the road. As we passed the car, I heard the click of the lock and the door being opened.

“Two boys got off and one came and planted himself in front of us. Looking perfectly innocent, he said that he and his friends were new in the university and wanted to know where the geography department was. I told him to go ask someone else. He went on to ask me why I wasn’t being helpful, but I ignored that, and instead tugged at my friend’s hand in order to move away. Just then, the other boy, who was standing behind us, pinched my friend and muttered something incoherent. My friend shrieked and I without thinking slapped him hard, my blow landing on his left ear.

“Next followed a stream of vile language from him to which I reacted as strongly as possible, given the fact that I didn’t understand half the words he threw at me. I abused him back to my heart’s content then walked over to the rangers post only to find the guard staring at a couple walking not very far away. I lost my patience then and told him that all that the guards seemed interested in was in watching couples. This by the way is very true since the rangers are constantly on the lookout for those students who move around with members of the opposite sex. The result is that the kind of harassment me and my friend were subjected goes mostly unnoticed.

“What eventually happened was that the FX drove off, leaving behind a cloud of dust and the guard told me to come to him the next time I saw the same car or any of its occupants. He also told me that my friend and I should not be talking to any boys. I laughed till I almost choked in his face!”

The four-hour long shootout in Defence’s Phase II extension and the fact that it involved men accused of being Al Qaeda operatives left many residents wondering about the safety of one of the city’s most affluent and fashionable areas. Clearly, it’s a bit disconcerting for the residents to know that such people are living in their midst. In fact, according to BBC World on Saturday morning, one of those detained during this raid is a prime suspect of the Sept. 11 attacks, and who recently gave an interview to Al Jazeera from a secret location.

The precise location where the shootout happened is actually a semi-rundown commercial area. Many of the buildings in Phase II extension are quite dilapidated and its not as popular as some of the other commercial areas of Defence.

Nonetheless, to see a four hour gun-battle, to even hear it, as many people in Phase VI and II must have if they were home that day, would be, to say the least, quite unnerving. The reporting of the incident has been shrouded in some mystery and confusion. Initially it was said that a little girl had died and that she and her mother had been taken hostage. Then it transpired that both the child and woman were living with the men whose arrest had been sought. Apparently, the little girl did not die but became unconscious because of the tear gas that the police fired into the third-floor apartment.

It had also been reported that on the very first day there was a very public altercation between a Rangers colonel and a senior police officer over which department should have jurisdiction over the arrested men. The same day a spokesman for the Rangers said that those arrested were in the custody of the police. But the very day, the police chief of the city, Asad Jehangir, was quoted as telling reporters that he had no idea what had happened to those taken into custody.

Unless these statements and counter-statements have been made for some tactical reason, it would probably be better if the such matters were sorted out in a more discreet manner.

A friend’s son decided to pull out of a reputed local college that he had recently enrolled in. He applied to the college’s principal — a tall man with a frizzy beard without a moustache and an apparently forbidding attitude towards visitors — for a refund of the admission and monthly fees. However, instead of any refund (the principal said it was against the rules) the young man and his parents were given a lecture.

“You withdrew from the college and now you will have to suffer because of what you did,” roared the principal when approached by the student’s parents. They were also told that the student would end up undergoing a lot of suffering. Well, what does suffering have to do with all this? If the student felt that the college was not up his expectation, why should he (the student) have to suffer for that?

The principal of this private college, located in an affluent area of the city, should have his concept of suffering redefined. Such warped ideas about suffering can become a problem especially since they can be behind some teachers’ thinking that students are meek and brainless, cannot take decisions on their own and must be lectured to all the time. — By Karachian

Email: karachi_notebook@hotmail.com