The elected government and ties with US: DATELINE NEW YORK

FACED with the US Immigration and Naturalization deadline for registration specific to 21 Muslim countries, most Pakistanis in the United States believe that their country has lost all clout with the United States despite being its frontline ally in its war against international terrorism.

“We believe that there is a personal relationship between US President Bush and the Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf but it does not help the Pakistanis who have been targeted for INS reprisals,” said one Pakistani following a meeting with the country’s ambassador Ashraf Jehangir Kazi in New York.

Mr Kazi told a select group of Pakistanis at the consulate on New Year’s eve that the US new Immigration’s laws are here to stay and no amount of diplomatic or political intervention would help.

At the contentious meeting in which most Pakistani based media were not invited, particularly this newspaper which has been critical of Washington embassy’s half-hearted measures to take up the issue with the US State department, Pakistanis feel that they have been left high and dry with no recourse.

They believe that following the latest registration drive thousands of Pakistanis would be deported on minor infractions to which nationals of other countries like India, Bangladesh, and Mexico, etc., have been exempted.

Even the Pakistani-American business groups here said that they had witnessed marked change in the attitude of the Bush administration in the last four months. They maintain that the goodwill that was created in the aftermath of President Musharraf’s visit in February following lifting of economic sanctions against Pakistan is gone. Many businesses which initiated investment projects in Pakistan in the purview of the Pakistani-American business council created to strengthen economic relations between the two nations are facing problems with approval of the State Department.

While Pakistan’s previous ambassador Maleeha Lodhi, who had created an atmosphere of cooperation with the Pakistani business and community leaders with embassy officials, had given orders to help them on priority basis. Now this spirit is absent, most of the Pakistanis said. Besides, Pakistan’s former Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz flexed his public relations and political clout in the past is now unable to do the same as he has not assumed the mantle of the minister as yet and is treading the ground softly.

The Pakistani embassy officials, particularly ambassador Kazi, can probably argue that there is little they can do in face of the change of heart in the Bush administration, but they cannot bury their heads in the sands. If they are faced with intractable attitude from the Americans and give some idea of the efforts, or interventions they have made on behalf of the Pakistanis, it would go a long way to appease them.

Over here one is constrained to point out that whenever such problems are highlighted in the media, the Pakistani bureaucrats at the foreign office, blame the press for creating issues. The fact is that the bureaucrats at the embassy and the consulate here prefer to deal with compliant or amenable coterie of people rather than with any conscientious people who take issues. “Sab achha hai” is the norm. Anyone expressing dissent is shunned and excluded.

Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali needs to take a hard look at the US-Pakistan relations which are on a slippery slope since he took office. He could solicit advice from the president who prefers to sit on the sidelines for now as the ominous diplomatic downturn is hurting Pakistan in more than one ways.

President Musharraf has in the past boasted of picking up the telephone at a moment’s notice and be able to talk to the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell.

It’s time he did on behalf of his new prime minister to give him a fair chance, for not only Pakistani expatriates interests which are at stake, but more important is the Pakistani economy which is once again being undermined under the cloud of US non-cooperation.

Niaz Humayooni — a multifaceted poet: OBITUARY

THE death of a great Sindhi poet, author and a dedicated worker of the Independence movement, Niaz Humayooni, brings an irreparable loss to Sindhi literature. He died of heart failure late evening on Friday at Hyderabad at the age of 74.

Niaz was a multi-faceted figure. A poet of eminence and a trendsetter in Sindhi poetry, he was a revolutionary in thought and action. Not only that he professed his political perception in poetry but he also translated them in action and actively participated various movements.

By being a poet, a Hakim and a political activist, he was a man of many virtues, who advocated peace, raised voice for the oppressed class and expressed his deep love for the motherland and its the people. He was a true humanist who opposed colonial rule and decried feudal system in a forceful yet in a subtle idiom.

Born on April 12, 1928 at a far place of Humayoon in Shikarpur district to a peasant father, Niaz got his early education at the village school. Pressed by abject poverty he joined a local dispensary of a Hakim for living from where he learnt traditional discipline of medicine, in which he worked for quite some time. He then toiled in some newspapers from where he developed the taste for poetry.

Since he came from a peasant family, he had witnessed the atrocities committed by landlords and feudal lords on socially and economically deprived classes. He knew that only political freedom and establishment of a democratic system could emancipate them. This sensitiveness led him to join the freedom movement where he continued to act as a loyal and dedicated worker. But during that course too he did not abandon his love for poetry because he knew that it was his main medium of communication with the people.

Taking up a multitude of writing jobs in Hyderabad and Karachi, Niaz continued composing poetry in all genres. And in this pursuit he also used Urdu and Persian, both of which he knew well. During that period he also joined Jamiatul Shuara, a literary organization with branches all over Sindh. Later it succumbed to disunity but by then Sindhi Adabi Sangat had become a very vibrant and functional literary organization and had become the torch bearer of not only providing forum to the Progressive writers but also a forerunner of the anti-One Unit struggle. Niaz found it an appropriate medium to express his emotions and wrote a number of compositions reflecting the suppressive atmosphere.

In 1965 when the Central government established Urdu Markazi Board in Hyderabad, Niaz was appointed its director, a position he retained for the coming quarter of a century. This board has been now renamed as Urdu Science Board. During this period he with the collaboration of some contemporaries became an active founding member of Pakistan Writers Guild in Hyderabad and tried to mitigate the problems of the writers.

Although he remained too busy with a variety of tasks, he continued with his literary quests. Adorning his extensive knowledge of Urdu and Persian, he also translated some Persian books in Sindhi and authored their addendums. He also translated Farhang-i-Jafri, a Persian dictionary of traditional discipline of medicine, which became very popular.

Technically, Niaz was a prosodic poet who gave new metres and used a diction that rose from the motherland. He was direct yet he used similies and metaphors that were not alien to the average reader. Whether it was simple poem, Ghazal or Geet, his vocabulary portrayed human feelings, their emotions and aspirations in a very gentle manner. Even his long poems did not create any ambiguity in perception and flow of thought. One stanza of his long poem composed over Hiroshima bombing “Dharti ji dil dharke thi” he laments about the man-made human miseries and says:

Iyen khudayee zulm ji aayee, dozakh duniya banji veyee,

Ishq yateem ta soonhan bewah, laash tamana banji veyee,

poye aeen poye hi munhinji hayat Hiroshima banji veyee.

Similarly, in a Geet with shorter metre he says:

Tunhinji dunya sabh rang saanwal,

Mounwat roop nako bahroop ala,

Tunhinji dunya indlath rekha,

Munhinji dunya gadla baadal.

He composed a large number of poetry and most of them were published in literary journals, but two of his anthologies became very popular — Saaneeh ji saakh and Dharti ja geet. Besides he translated a number of works from Urdu and Persian or edited and wrote notes on them.

Despite his aging, he continued with his literary pursuits till his last. On Friday he suffered a stroke which he could not survive. His departure would be long remembered.

Celebrating New Year with fear: SOCIAL THEMES

SHOULD Pakistani society truly celebrate the New Year, year after year? It has been celebrating the occasion for all of its history, and evidently things are changing now. It is a totally new paradigm now, it seems. May be not yet.

Who were all these people, young men and women, mainly the former, on the streets of Karachi on New Year’s eve; keep in mind that they surfaced suddenly around midnight on many main roads, despite the grim atmosphere of a peculiar kind, that had been created thanks to the administrative measures taken by the local administration. Who were the families that came onto the roads in their two and four wheelers; it appeared as if it was an act of defiance. As if to say that if there were forces against the concept of the celebration of a New Year, there were those who felt that they had the freedom to celebrate the beginning of 2003!!

Before one proceeds any further with the Karachi context, let me shift the focus onto the NWFP from where reports in an English-language daily read thus: “MMA government measures dampen New Year spirits,” and another story which said that “New Year eve passes off peacefully in wake of special steps.” And a front-page story in this daily said that “NWFP kicks off drive against obscenity.” This last story read like this. “On the first day of the new year the police here set ablaze thousands of pornographic movies, CDs, sex tonics, and posters as part of its drive against obscenity.”

One Karachiite wondered if that was the scale and extent of the issue in Peshawar, what would it be like in the Sindh capital. But that is another issue, for another time.

Let me take two paragraphs from the other two above-mentioned stories. Said the MMA story that “the New Year night celebrations in the city remained dull due to the presence of the excise and taxation officials in the five-star hotels to stop the flow of liquor, and the deployment of heavy contingents of police to make attempts at merry making a total failure.” Names of two leading Peshawar hotels were mentioned, and also what the Chief Minister had said about ensuring the ban on liquor. Is that the only issue with the New Year celebration? asks a citizen.

The other story said that “the police had made special arrangements in the city on the new year night not to allow revellers to come onto the streets for any celebrations. No arrests were made as most of the people spent that night in their houses. No music shows or parties were allowed.” The report implies that there is strong public opinion against these celebrations in society.

Not quite to that extent, but there was a 24-hour vigil on the streets of Karachi, which seemed to warn those who may try and make merry could get into trouble with the law, or with those sections of a society that oppose these New Year celebrations. And as if to ensure that there were no clashes between the people who want to celebrate and those who don’t wish to permit them, there was a heavy deployment of armed police and other law-enforcing agencies in the city. In particular this was in evidence in the posh areas, in particular, like where the five-star hotels are located, and in Clifton and Defence. Keep in mind that a road closure plan was made public, and which put people on the alert about possible traffic jams on account of the diversions, said a story in Dawn on 31st December that a “High alert sounded for New Year revelries.” “Skilled commandos” were put into service, and so on. That was so symbolic of the mood of the administration.

Without really being an advocate of any kind of New Year revelry, or being opposed to it, very many citizens have been forced to wonder where this kind of thinking and behaviour are going to take Pakistani society. Celebrating the New Year? But what exactly does the middle-class Karachiite, or Pakistani for that matter, want to do when he wants to celebrate? Go around the city, and the beach area in cars and on motorcycles, and consume fast food and return home late. Family get-togethers? What? The upper class and the filthy rich had their own ways, and these were well known; these were the people who had created the problem, argued one citizen who said that the whole celebration was innocent. This is a celebration-starved city?

There are some curious reports in the Urdu press that reveal that there was an unrestrained sale and flow of alcohol, and there were numerous private parties where merry-making, and song and dance continued late; that was the way the New Year was welcomed.

A photograph in an English daily has shown a young man up in the air, on New Year’s eve and this is what the caption read “On new year’s eve, the young and the restless probably had the best time of their life. A youth has been thrown up in the air while his friends are having a ball of a time waiting to net him in a shawl. For once unrestrained fun and festivity were in the air on the midnight of the years 2002-2003 in this entertainment-starved city which was so devoid of peace and sanity during a bloody year so replete with murders, bomb blasts, kidnappings, rapes, accidents, dacoities and possibly every conceivable crime.”

New Year’s eve in Karachi also meant this year that it was part of the wedding and Valima season. So many of those who wanted to be cautious in case they run into any crowds opposing the New Year festivity, were particularly apprehensive when they had to go to a wedding ceremony or Valima. One particular host of a wedding dinner on New Year’s eve, near the Teen Talwar, inside the Naval Housing Scheme had scores of guests who encountered bravely the challenge of returning home that night. For that was the night when thousands and thousands of citizens of this city were on the roads, looking restless and excited, as they moved on the main Clifton road, and as they went to the beach at Clifton. One of those evenings when Karachiites from the other side of Clifton bridge or the other new bridges come to Defence and Clifton, at times to the dismay and disapproval of those who live there.

Significantly despite the frightening nuisance that all this “celebration” may have been, and the firing in the air that took place, and the climate of fear that was generated by the presence of armed policemen at vantage points, the night was orderly. Strange? There was no problem reported, no dead, no injured, observes one person. But another person who resides in Azizabad, for example, observes that there was the usual fear and tension at midnight as there was a free use of weapons being fired in the air. It was like the past.

Strange world we have today, it should be realized. There was tight security in other places in Asia, in Britain, in the United States, and so on, as revelries unfolded on a societal canvas that has “guns and roses” thriving at the same time.