On to a broader horizon

MY previous article tried to sketch a framework of geo-strategic and geo-economic concerns that determine the new bearings of the Saudi foreign policy. The first ever visit to China by a Saudi monarch and the path-breaking tour of India at that level after a gap of 51 years were both marked by decisions on the institutionalizing of cooperation in the field of energy taken not in a narrow setting of commercial exchanges but in a much larger context of an effort to understand each other’s world view. The continuation of the tour to Malaysia and Pakistan added a specific Islamic dimension to this quest.

Pakistan was the country where King Abdullah received the most ecstatic welcome. The public aspect of it reflected the emotional attachment to the very idea of the custodian of the two holy mosques. But in my judgment, there is also another subtext that comes into play when Muslim statesmen like King Abdullah, Khamanei of Iran, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, and Mahathir of Malaysia come to Pakistan. The average Pakistani laments the absence of a great Muslim power in contemporary history and yearns to see it filled by a concert of Muslim states; the visiting Arab-Islamic dignitaries are seen as veritable symbols of this hope.

Secondly, a culture that has a perennial, perhaps subliminal, linkage to Hali’s Mussaddas and the entire canon of Iqbal is never content with limited Pakistani nationalism fostered by the ruling elite with “Pakistan-first” campaigns; it longs for an unfading connection with the ummah. While Makkah and Medina reign supreme in the Pakistani imagination, its spiritual iconography also includes Mashed, the holy shrines of Syria and Iraq, and the great mosques, mausoleums, palaces and Sufi shrines of Turkey. When Konya — and the distant mosque of Cordoba — inspired Iqbal to write the great poetry that we cherish, they revealed how deeply the history of Islam had been internalized by our people even when many of them are still unable to read it.

For the initiated and the informed, King Abdullah’s extended interaction with Pakistan as the crown prince established him as a leader who effortlessly blended a visionary approach with pragmatism born of an objective study of contemporary realities. The present-day world polarized to a Manichean extent by Al-Qaeda and President Bush is often not ready to take full advantage of this blend. Four years ago, the Crown Prince Abdullah offered his plan for the revival of the all but defunct Middle East peace process at a meeting of the Arab League. The present western dismay at the victory of Hamas illustrates the price that the international community pays for its failure to take timely note of such statesmanship.

King Abdullah’s present tour has many dimensions. One of them clearly impinges upon another potential crisis looming on our horizon. What happens if Bush discards the saner voices in the United States and elsewhere and embarks upon a confrontation with Iran? The consequences for the global energy situation would be more serious than even those posed by the protracted conflict in Iraq. For the region itself, it will be a disaster. Once again when European leaders wilt under the evangelical fervour of the president of the United States, it is the Saudi monarch who is trying to hold the balance. There are elements in his approach which may not find favour with one party or the other at this moment but which taken together, point to a way out.

Saudi Arabia has, over the years, evolved its own strategy to mitigate the tensions generated in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution. It has drawn correct lessons from Saddam Hussein’s violent effort to destroy that revolution and it does not support any use of force now. On the other hand, it shares the regional concern at Iran’s nuclear programme. Its foreign minister reminded the West the other day that it was its connivance at Israel’s vast nuclear weapons project that fuelled Iran’s nuclear quest. Yet again, by discussing possible consequences of the outbreak of a real energy crisis over Iran with four major Asian states, including China and India which have particularly energy-hungry economies, the Saudis are also offering a life line to the global economy.

The guaranteed oil supplies that the kingdom is offering and the long term reciprocal investment in the energy sector would have far reaching implications. This development may be looked askance in some quarters in Iran today, particularly in the midst of efforts to project Saudi Arabia as Iran’s rival, but I know from personal knowledge that the Iranian leadership perceives a stake in a stable energy regime and, rhetoric apart, invariably comes down on the side of regional peace and security.

Another cliche of the international think-tank community is to see dichotomies between late King Fahd and Prince Nayef on the one hand, and King Abdullah and Prince Saud-Al-Faisal on the other. Some of this thinking had insinuated itself into an otherwise thoughtful article on King Fahd’s legacy published in this newspaper in August 2005. The truth of the matter is that the royal family is a dynamic workshop of ideas where, as in any other ruling elite, there is multiplicity of views. The deeply ingrained Saudi preference for quiet diplomacy leaves such speculations unanswered. But it is not difficult to see that, at the end of the day, Saudi decision-making has a distinctive stamp of moderation.

I remember a meeting between the then prime minister of Pakistan and the Saudi monarch on August 6, 1994, when the Saudi side expressed grave misgivings about the way the leaders of the Afghan Mujahideen were conducting themselves. The clarity of thought was on their side while Pakistan was still enmeshed in staff solutions put forward by its civil and military bureaucracy. Similarly, the efforts Riyadh made, in consultation with Cairo, to avert Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, are widely known now. The Saudis saw the consequences but were unable to prevent it.

In 1987, I joined Sahabzada Yaqub Khan in Tehran to go to Riyadh for a conversation with Prince Saud Al-Faisal about a dark patch in Saudi-Iranian relations. One could not but be impressed by the profound equanimity with which the veteran Saudi foreign minister addressed the issues. There was not the slightest touch of bitterness; instead, there was a deep preoccupation with the larger implications for the Muslim world of any contradictions between Iran and Arab states.

One is not privy to discussions between King Abdullah and the prime minister of Malaysia, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, but media coverage of the visit focuses alike on the measures for greater economic cooperation and a reformist approach to the larger challenges faced by the ummah. Thanks to Mahathir, the internal discourse in Malaysia was never polarized to the extent it was in Pakistan’s case. It gives the country a special place in articulating ideas and strategies to shape a collective Arab-Islamic effort to find a way out of the present impasse.

In Pakistan, in the midst of what I describe above as an ecstatic welcome, one noticed occasional apprehensions about a putative shift in the Saudi approach to South Asia. Over the years, on issues like Afghanistan and Kashmir, Saudis have supported Pakistan in their quiet way. They have largely deferred to Pakistani policies but have often combined this support with well-considered advice. Instead of playing to the gallery, they have endorsed the Pakistani endeavours to find a basis for a rapprochement with India. Any formulation on Kashmir by the visiting Saudi monarch that went beyond President Musharraf’s own perceptions would only have complicated matters. Meanwhile in establishing closer cooperation with India — an emerging political, economic and military power — they are doing what other special friends of Pakistan like Turkey, Iran and China decided to do years ago.

King Abdullah has shifted the emphasis in the bilateral relationship to greater help in building up the capacity of the Pakistani state to withstand internal and external shocks, and to a more effective implementation of its economic plans. Of particular significance are the accords on the avoidance of double taxation and on much needed cooperation in science and technology, educational and scientific cooperation and cooperation in technical education and vocational training. These are areas where mutuality of benefits can be rapidly enhanced.

We also need to make a concerted effort to build an intellectual bridge with the Arab world. Apart from multiplying opportunities for collaboration amongst universities and institutions of higher learning, we need to seek Saudi help to create a comprehensive facility for rapid translations from one language into another. A special wing of this facility should produce world class interpreters. Production of literature on scientific research and technical / vocational training — ranging from scholarly papers to humbler training manuals — in Arabic, Urdu and English versions — should be a routine affair for which special funding should be generously available.

The proposed institutionalization of political consultations between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia answers a long-felt need. Afghanistan and Iraq will be instrumental in creating a protracted period of volatility in the region. Riyadh and Islamabad have expressed an identical view of the victory of Hamas and the territorial integrity of Iraq. But such issues have numerous manifestations that require a frequent and structured exchange of views. Political consultations between state functionaries would need to be underpinned by an ever-growing corpus of research.

Having despaired of most of our existing think-tanks ever breaking out of the stranglehold of outfits that are, by definition, hostile to research, one would strongly recommend the establishment of a high-powered, fully autonomous, Centre for Middle Eastern Studies. Karachi University, the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad and the Government College, Lahore should be obvious candidates for hosting it.

There is an explosion of information technology in Pakistan with the private sector having already demonstrated its vitality in electronic broadcasting. A symbiotic relationship between this centre (and other such centres of knowledge and excellence) and the media will yield a sizable dividend. Conversely, our continued neglect of a knowledge-based approach to international affairs would only add to our growing losses on the global scene.

The writer is a former foreign secretary. Email: tanvir.a.khan@gmail.com

On to a broader horizon

MY previous article tried to sketch a framework of geo-strategic and geo-economic concerns that determine the new bearings of the Saudi foreign policy. The first ever visit to China by a Saudi monarch and the path-breaking tour of India at that level after a gap of 51 years were both marked by decisions on the institutionalizing of cooperation in the field of energy taken not in a narrow setting of commercial exchanges but in a much larger context of an effort to understand each other’s world view. The continuation of the tour to Malaysia and Pakistan added a specific Islamic dimension to this quest.

Pakistan was the country where King Abdullah received the most ecstatic welcome. The public aspect of it reflected the emotional attachment to the very idea of the custodian of the two holy mosques. But in my judgment, there is also another subtext that comes into play when Muslim statesmen like King Abdullah, Khamanei of Iran, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, and Mahathir of Malaysia come to Pakistan. The average Pakistani laments the absence of a great Muslim power in contemporary history and yearns to see it filled by a concert of Muslim states; the visiting Arab-Islamic dignitaries are seen as veritable symbols of this hope.

Secondly, a culture that has a perennial, perhaps subliminal, linkage to Hali’s Mussaddas and the entire canon of Iqbal is never content with limited Pakistani nationalism fostered by the ruling elite with “Pakistan-first” campaigns; it longs for an unfading connection with the ummah. While Makkah and Medina reign supreme in the Pakistani imagination, its spiritual iconography also includes Mashed, the holy shrines of Syria and Iraq, and the great mosques, mausoleums, palaces and Sufi shrines of Turkey. When Konya — and the distant mosque of Cordoba — inspired Iqbal to write the great poetry that we cherish, they revealed how deeply the history of Islam had been internalized by our people even when many of them are still unable to read it.

For the initiated and the informed, King Abdullah’s extended interaction with Pakistan as the crown prince established him as a leader who effortlessly blended a visionary approach with pragmatism born of an objective study of contemporary realities. The present-day world polarized to a Manichean extent by Al-Qaeda and President Bush is often not ready to take full advantage of this blend. Four years ago, the Crown Prince Abdullah offered his plan for the revival of the all but defunct Middle East peace process at a meeting of the Arab League. The present western dismay at the victory of Hamas illustrates the price that the international community pays for its failure to take timely note of such statesmanship.

King Abdullah’s present tour has many dimensions. One of them clearly impinges upon another potential crisis looming on our horizon. What happens if Bush discards the saner voices in the United States and elsewhere and embarks upon a confrontation with Iran? The consequences for the global energy situation would be more serious than even those posed by the protracted conflict in Iraq. For the region itself, it will be a disaster. Once again when European leaders wilt under the evangelical fervour of the president of the United States, it is the Saudi monarch who is trying to hold the balance. There are elements in his approach which may not find favour with one party or the other at this moment but which taken together, point to a way out.

Saudi Arabia has, over the years, evolved its own strategy to mitigate the tensions generated in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution. It has drawn correct lessons from Saddam Hussein’s violent effort to destroy that revolution and it does not support any use of force now. On the other hand, it shares the regional concern at Iran’s nuclear programme. Its foreign minister reminded the West the other day that it was its connivance at Israel’s vast nuclear weapons project that fuelled Iran’s nuclear quest. Yet again, by discussing possible consequences of the outbreak of a real energy crisis over Iran with four major Asian states, including China and India which have particularly energy-hungry economies, the Saudis are also offering a life line to the global economy.

The guaranteed oil supplies that the kingdom is offering and the long term reciprocal investment in the energy sector would have far reaching implications. This development may be looked askance in some quarters in Iran today, particularly in the midst of efforts to project Saudi Arabia as Iran’s rival, but I know from personal knowledge that the Iranian leadership perceives a stake in a stable energy regime and, rhetoric apart, invariably comes down on the side of regional peace and security.

Another cliche of the international think-tank community is to see dichotomies between late King Fahd and Prince Nayef on the one hand, and King Abdullah and Prince Saud-Al-Faisal on the other. Some of this thinking had insinuated itself into an otherwise thoughtful article on King Fahd’s legacy published in this newspaper in August 2005. The truth of the matter is that the royal family is a dynamic workshop of ideas where, as in any other ruling elite, there is multiplicity of views. The deeply ingrained Saudi preference for quiet diplomacy leaves such speculations unanswered. But it is not difficult to see that, at the end of the day, Saudi decision-making has a distinctive stamp of moderation.

I remember a meeting between the then prime minister of Pakistan and the Saudi monarch on August 6, 1994, when the Saudi side expressed grave misgivings about the way the leaders of the Afghan Mujahideen were conducting themselves. The clarity of thought was on their side while Pakistan was still enmeshed in staff solutions put forward by its civil and military bureaucracy. Similarly, the efforts Riyadh made, in consultation with Cairo, to avert Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, are widely known now. The Saudis saw the consequences but were unable to prevent it.

In 1987, I joined Sahabzada Yaqub Khan in Tehran to go to Riyadh for a conversation with Prince Saud Al-Faisal about a dark patch in Saudi-Iranian relations. One could not but be impressed by the profound equanimity with which the veteran Saudi foreign minister addressed the issues. There was not the slightest touch of bitterness; instead, there was a deep preoccupation with the larger implications for the Muslim world of any contradictions between Iran and Arab states.

One is not privy to discussions between King Abdullah and the prime minister of Malaysia, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, but media coverage of the visit focuses alike on the measures for greater economic cooperation and a reformist approach to the larger challenges faced by the ummah. Thanks to Mahathir, the internal discourse in Malaysia was never polarized to the extent it was in Pakistan’s case. It gives the country a special place in articulating ideas and strategies to shape a collective Arab-Islamic effort to find a way out of the present impasse.

In Pakistan, in the midst of what I describe above as an ecstatic welcome, one noticed occasional apprehensions about a putative shift in the Saudi approach to South Asia. Over the years, on issues like Afghanistan and Kashmir, Saudis have supported Pakistan in their quiet way. They have largely deferred to Pakistani policies but have often combined this support with well-considered advice. Instead of playing to the gallery, they have endorsed the Pakistani endeavours to find a basis for a rapprochement with India. Any formulation on Kashmir by the visiting Saudi monarch that went beyond President Musharraf’s own perceptions would only have complicated matters. Meanwhile in establishing closer cooperation with India — an emerging political, economic and military power — they are doing what other special friends of Pakistan like Turkey, Iran and China decided to do years ago.

King Abdullah has shifted the emphasis in the bilateral relationship to greater help in building up the capacity of the Pakistani state to withstand internal and external shocks, and to a more effective implementation of its economic plans. Of particular significance are the accords on the avoidance of double taxation and on much needed cooperation in science and technology, educational and scientific cooperation and cooperation in technical education and vocational training. These are areas where mutuality of benefits can be rapidly enhanced.

We also need to make a concerted effort to build an intellectual bridge with the Arab world. Apart from multiplying opportunities for collaboration amongst universities and institutions of higher learning, we need to seek Saudi help to create a comprehensive facility for rapid translations from one language into another. A special wing of this facility should produce world class interpreters. Production of literature on scientific research and technical / vocational training — ranging from scholarly papers to humbler training manuals — in Arabic, Urdu and English versions — should be a routine affair for which special funding should be generously available.

The proposed institutionalization of political consultations between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia answers a long-felt need. Afghanistan and Iraq will be instrumental in creating a protracted period of volatility in the region. Riyadh and Islamabad have expressed an identical view of the victory of Hamas and the territorial integrity of Iraq. But such issues have numerous manifestations that require a frequent and structured exchange of views. Political consultations between state functionaries would need to be underpinned by an ever-growing corpus of research.

Having despaired of most of our existing think-tanks ever breaking out of the stranglehold of outfits that are, by definition, hostile to research, one would strongly recommend the establishment of a high-powered, fully autonomous, Centre for Middle Eastern Studies. Karachi University, the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad and the Government College, Lahore should be obvious candidates for hosting it.

There is an explosion of information technology in Pakistan with the private sector having already demonstrated its vitality in electronic broadcasting. A symbiotic relationship between this centre (and other such centres of knowledge and excellence) and the media will yield a sizable dividend. Conversely, our continued neglect of a knowledge-based approach to international affairs would only add to our growing losses on the global scene.

The writer is a former foreign secretary. Email: tanvir.a.khan@gmail.com

US dependence on oil

“America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world,” said President George W. Bush in his State of the Union speech on Wednesday.

And his solution? He’s going to cut US oil imports from the Middle East by 75 percent, and replace the missing oil with ethanol made from fermented plant waste: “If...being dependent upon oil is a problem for the long term, why don’t we figure out how to drive our cars using a different type of fuel?”

Not a word from Mr Bush about attacking the demand side of the equation by burning less oil (although after the1973-74 oil embargo the US managed to cut its oil consumption by almost 30 percent strictly by energy conservation).

Not a word about the consequences for climate change of burning so much oil, or about the implications of soaring oil demand in the emerging Asian giants, China and India, for prices and supply. Just a promise to cut American oil imports from the Middle East by three-quarters — by 2025.

As so often with President Bush, it’s hard to tell whether he is trying to fool us, or just fooling himself. Sixty percent of the oil that the United States consumes is imported (up from 53 percent when Bush came into office). Last year, less than one-fifth of that imported oil came from the Middle East, so achieving Bush’s stated goal would only bring the share of imported oil in US consumption back to the level of 2001. And much of it would still come from “unstable parts of the world.”

Actually, Mr Bush is being unfair to the Middle East, which is the most stable part of the planet in terms of the longevity of its regimes. Perhaps he is afraid that his vaunted democratic revolutions will actually come to pass, for free elections almost anywhere in the region would produce governments much more hostile to the American presence than the current regimes. (Hamas’s recent victory in the Palestinian occupied territories is an example.) But he is also barking up the wrong tree: the real vulnerabilities of the US lie elsewhere.

The three largest sources of American oil imports are Canada, Venezuela and Nigeria. Canada is stable, but Venezuela is definitely not, mainly because the US keeps trying to destabilise it.

The Bush administration loathes President Hugo Chavez for his socialism and his closeness to Fidel Castro, and has already been implicated in one attempted coup against him in 2002. If there were to be another attempt, and Chavez suspected American involvement, an embargo on Venezuelan oil exports to the United States would be pretty much a certainty. As for Nigeria....

“It must be clear that the Nigerian government cannot protect your workers or assets,” declared the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) in an e-mail last month to oil companies working in the region. “Leave our land while you can, or die in it. Our aim is to totally destroy the capacity of the Nigerian government to export oil.”

Since mid-December two major pipelines have been blown up in the Niger Delta, home to all of Nigeria’s oil. Nine people were killed in an attack on the Italian oil company Agip. Four foreigners were kidnapped from an offshore rig (and later released, presumably on payment of a large ransom). And at least seventeen people died in a motorboat raid on a Shell flow station in the swamps around Warri.

MEND is the latest expression of the seething dissatisfaction of the region’s 20 million people with the fact that all that oil has brought them so little prosperity. In fact, all of Nigeria’s 129 million people have a legitimate grievance, for most of the $350 billion that the country has earned from oil exports in the past fifty years has been stolen by a narrow politico-military elite, but only the people of the Delta live amidst the pollution that the oil causes, and only they can take direct action.

Moreover, the protest groups and the guerillas are often tangled up with the criminal gangs who siphon off oil from the pipelines (“bunkering”, as it is known). The major foreign oil companies operating in the Delta (Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, ENI and Exxon) have long turned a blind eye to the bunkering in return for being left alone to get on with their operations, and the gangs restricted their stealing to about ten percent of Nigeria’s oil. But with the passage of time they have got richer, more heavily armed, and greedier.

The Nigerian government seems helpless to do anything about the security situation in the Delta (as it is about most things). The double threat of political guerillas and criminal gangs has got so severe that Stakeholder Democracy Network, an anti-corruption group active in the area, suggested in a report last month that “Shell and (other) foreign oil operators may have to go offshore altogether by 2008 as security and public order deteriorate.”

And who would then buy the onshore oil facilities, assuming that MEND had not destroyed them? Probably China, which is willing to accept higher levels of risk than strictly commercial companies in order to have secure long-term oil supplies. If Mr Bush insists on treating oil as a supply rather than a demand problem, he should at least find the right trees to bark up.—Copyright

Spying by another name

WITH polls showing the American public increasingly sceptical about the need to abridge core constitutional freedoms to wage the war on terrorism, the Bush administration launched a major PR offensive recently to justify its decision to conduct warrantless wiretapping within the United States.

The White House deserves credit for at least making its case. Unfortunately for the president, it’s a weak case, and repetition doesn’t make it any better.

Indeed, the administration’s marketing team may be more adept than its legal theorists. All White House references to the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping now call it a “terrorist surveillance programme.” That sounds far less objectionable than the media’s blanket term, “domestic spying programme.” After all, it’s hard to support domestic spying, but who wants to oppose “terrorist surveillance”? Maybe the Los Angeles Police Department could suspend the 4th Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches by launching a “criminal surveillance programme.”

Semantics aside, the administration’s legal case remains wobbly, which may explain President Bush’s churlish attitude toward his critics. On Wednesday, Bush defended the need for the programme at NSA headquarters in Maryland. “Now, I understand there’s some in America who say, well, this can’t be true that there are still people willing to attack,” he said. He then referred to Osama bin Laden’s latest threatening audiotape.

Get it? The president is equating concerns about the legality of bypassing the courts to obtain a warrant to eavesdrop on Americans with a lack of appreciation for the threats posed by Al Qaeda. In Bush’s world, only appeasers stand up for the Constitution.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which created courts that act quickly and secretly to approve such requests for wiretaps, remains a sensible law. It strikes the proper balance between the need for judicial oversight and the requirements of national security - and helps to ensure that the government does not trample on individual liberty.

—Los Angeles Times

Where campaigns fall by the wayside

THE old English saying ‘Well begun is half done’ apparently doesn’t apply to the people who handle administrative matters in Karachi. That, at least, is the impression one gets after reading the final chapter of the sordid tinted glass saga enacted on the pock-marked streets of this city.

There has always been something subversive about people who drive around in vehicles with tinted glasses. Besides setting them apart from the rest of the population, and the fact that the occupants of these cars enjoy the same privileges as the clients who gape at women through one-way mirrors in Thai massage parlours, they are an unmitigated nuisance.

A former inspector-general of police once pointed out that the Karachi constabulary used to orchestrate regular crackdowns against these adventurers who continue to act as if they are outside the reach of the law. Cars with tinted glasses and cars with fancy number plates that bear little resemblance to the official metallic strips issued by the motor vehicle division of the Sindh government, are frequently involved in kidnapping and other criminal activities, and enable the felons to move about with impunity. And so the police in a major crackdown spread over four days registered 207 cases and arrested 228 people for violating traffic rules and regulations. In the Clifton area 78 cars were impounded in a campaign which, according to the Town police officer, was being conducted ‘without any discrimination.’

The phrase ‘without any discrimination’ has little meaning in this neck of the woods, for there is always somebody or the other who makes that important phone call, and the house of cards, elaborately and painstakingly built, dissolves into an untidy heap. This time it was Rauf Siddiqui, Sindh home minister, whose call put an end to what any sensible man in this blighted city believes is a very necessary campaign that should have been prosecuted to its bitter end.

Apparently Dr Amir Liaquat, state minister for religious affairs, didn’t think the campaign was such a good idea. He immediately called the home minister when police intercepted him, and the home minister, who is being paid to uphold the law, dropped everything and rushed to the spot. The police were made to apologize, and the campaign was abruptly and unceremoniously stopped. And so another ill fated attempt to do the right thing was hastily put to an end.

Of course the police had no idea that the minister of religious affairs, along with another 30 or 40 people, were above the law. All one knows is that if this incident had taken place in Mumbai, the incumbent would have been roasted by the press and the police, and if the chief minister of the province had intervened he would have been made to resign.

Incidents like this also remind one of the huge differences in governance that exist between Pakistan and the UAE. The hugely popular former ruler of Dubai, the late Sheikh Rashid, always drove around the city without a police escort and sat up front with his driver. His car dutifully stopped when the traffic signal so demanded, and on one occasion the ruler actually demoted a traffic constable who on recognizing him allowed him to proceed against a red light. Something that would be unthinkable in Karachi where an official’s nuisance value is measured by the number of vehicles provided to him by the police.

One fine winter morning one of Sheikh Rashid’s minions who occupied an important position in the government, crossed a red light and on having his driver’s licence taken away subsequently misbehaved with the traffic constable in a manner that had a remote connection with the rules of the Marquis of Queensbury. The matter was reported and Sheikh Rashid was furious. The hapless subordinate was summoned and was said to have been struck across the face, by the ruler in the presence of 50 other sheikhs. He was told that when he had assaulted the constable he was, in effect, assaulting the ruler, for the poor cop on the beat was only carrying out his instructions.

The tinted glass episode is only one in a series of incidents where the law enforcement agencies worked with grizzly zeal, and just when things were beginning to show positive results, were made to drop the campaign like a hot brick. The other was the crusade against motor-cyclists who refused to wear helmets. There is an essential difference between the two. The use of tinted glasses has an elitist, unpleasant and illegal ring to it. The helmet issue, which affects the Downers, has an altruistic rather than a legal or moralistic base, and it is for this very reason that it was much more difficult to implement.

The law enforcement authorities did their best. In a prolonged campaign motor-cyclists were pounced upon by the thousands. There were a few ugly scenes and the usual stories of unscrupulous policemen letting off errant riders after accepting bribes.

A number of cops, however, werent quite sure of the motive behind the drive, and why they had been asked to adopt such a humane attitude. After all, they were living in an essentially masochistic society, and if a motor-cyclist wanted to risk breaking his head, surely he enjoyed a divine right to do so.

The motor-cyclists, on the other hand, discovered that it wasn’t easy to get hold of helmets, and those that were available, were being sold at double the original price. And so, in true local fashion, after much activity and acrimony and after considerable heat had been generated the campaign was dropped. And so the motor-cycle helmets issue entered the ledger marked “Further Examples of Gross Incompetence.”

The reader who has gotten this far will enjoy another irritating example of ineptitude, which follows the Law of Arrested Development. This is the one displayed by the Pakistan foreign office. It is difficult to understand why the mandarins in the ministry can’t find suitable premises to house a consulate general in Mumbai when the Indians are ready to move into Karachi, literally at a moment’s notice.

First, the ministry wasted a considerable amount of time trying to obtain Jinnah House in Malabar Hill, knowing jolly well that the building was no longer in the possession of the heirs of Mr Jinnah. In 1939 the Quaid bequeathed this property in his will to his sister, Miss Fatima Jinnah. Some time after partition the government of Pakistan awarded to Miss Jinnah Mohatta Palace, an evacuee property, in lieu of the Malabar Hill mansion which has since remained under the control of the government of India.

Then the spotlight fell on Mittal Chambers, which houses the PIA office. This imposing building is located in a crowded part of the city. The selection predictably invoked strong protests from the residents of the area, who believe a legation might pose a security threat. And so the issue of establishing a consulate in Mumbai is once again floating on the ether. It does remind one of what Jonathan Miller had to say in that hilarious 1960s revue Beyond the Fringe when he discussed the difficulties involved in removing the contents of a sardine tin. ‘There’s always that little bit in the corner that you just can’t get out.’

The ideal location is Narriman Point in Colaba. There’s a dual carriageway, and one can always offer a drop box facility. But if that is not possible what’s wrong with moving the consulate a short distance out of Mumbai to a less crowded locality? It is certainly food for thought.