In his NYT op-ed today entitled ‘Don’t Do It, Bibi,’ Roger Cohen issued another stern warning to his favorite target, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. In his piece, he warns about the grave repercussions if Israel were to attack Iran without political support from the United States.

This article is the latest installment in Cohen’s crusade against Netanyahu and the Likud-led governing coalition in Israel. Cohen solemnly recites all the ways in which Netanyahu has mistreated President Obama before he settles down and proceeds with his analysis of Iran’s nuclear threat.

Cohen argues that Netanyahu has stalled in his negotiations with the Palestinians because he foresees a rabidly pro-Israel Republican nominee beating Obama in the 2012 presidential elections. Yet in the next paragraph Cohen contends that Netanyahu is sorely tempted to bomb Iran before the elections because he and his advisors increasingly believe Obama can win in November.

Now, almost everybody following the Middle East understands that Netanyahu is a savvy politician who is not oblivious to American election cycles. Perhaps even more than most politicians, Netanyahu may be better characterized as “cynical” than “shrewd” in formulating his political agenda. And it may be true that Netanyahu indeed forecasts a Republican victory in 2012, but wants to hedge his bets by bombing Iran’s nuclear reactors while Obama courts the Jewish vote in the swing state of Florida.

However, Cohen makes the same mistakes in this article that he has consistently made throughout his analysis of the Iranian threat.

First, he implies that any attack by Israel would be a massive bombing campaign that would instantly and irreversibly unite all of Iran’s people under their oppressive regime and against the West. For starters, any aerial attack would be limited to the nuclear reactor sites and would probably result in few civilian casualties. With the possible tacit support of the US, in the last few years Israel has already attacked Iran’s nuclear program with a computer virus, assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists, and sabotaged missile bases in Iran that resulted in dozens of Iranian deaths. Meanwhile, less than three years ago Iran’s regime was strongly challenged by its populace. While the theocratic government may have suppressed the mass protests in 2009, there is still a strong anti-regime sentiment among Iranians. Moreover, the “regime” itself is an uneasy coalition between Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that is showing highly visible signs of strain. I’m not sure how Cohen can absorb these facts and compute that an attack by Israel “locks in the Iranian Republic for a generation.”

Second (and he is not alone in this truly bizarre line of argumentation), he reckons that Israel’s security is threatened more by the status of the occupied territories than by Iran. I fully agree that Israel must keep striving to find a way to ensure that Palestinians have a fully functioning state. While the on and off again courtship between Hamas and Fatah certainly complicates matters, it is also reasonable to argue that the Netanyahu administration has shown a distinct lack of urgency in its approach toward negotiations with the Palestinians. I am also gravely aware of the risks that any aerial attack by Israel on Iranian reactor sites would entail (although per above I disagree with Cohen about their nature.) However, I struggle to comprehend how the Israeli-Palestinian quagmire, which is grinding toward its 45th year of existence, can be compared to the existential threat posed by the nuclear program of a country whose stated intention is to destroy Israel.

He had no doubt of  his place in literary history and left behind the following epitaph for himself: “Here lies Saadat Hasan Manto. With him lie buried the arts of short-story telling. Here he lies underneath tons of mud still wondering if he was a better short-story writer than God.”

Saadat Hasan Manto died in Lahore in 1955. He was forty-three years old. The life of  one of our greatest short-story writers had been prematurely truncated. I was eleven years old at the time. I never met him. I wish I had. One can visualise him easily enough. In later photographs the melancholy is visible. He appears exhausted as if his heart were entrenched with sadness. In these his face displays all the consequences of a ravaged liver. But there are others. Here his eyes sparkle with intelligence, the impudence almost bursting through the thick glass of his 1940’s spectacles, mocking the custodians of morality, the practitioners of confessional politics or the commissariat of the Progressive Writers. ‘Do your worst’, he appears to be telling them. ‘I don’t care. I will write to please myself. Not you.’   Manto’s battles with the literary establishment of his time became a central feature of his biography. Charged with obscenity and brought to trial on a number of occasions he remained defiant and unapologetic.

It was the Partition of India in 1947 along religious lines formed his own attitudes and those of his numerous detractors. The episodes associated with the senseless carnage that accompanied the withdrawal of the British from India loom large in Manto’s short stories. A few words of  necessary explanation might help the reader to understand the corrosive impact of  Manto on the reading public.

The horrors of 1947 were well known, but few liked to talk about them. A collective trauma appeared to have silenced most people. Not Manto. In his stories of that period he recovered the dignity of all the victims without fear or favour. Even the perpetrators of crimes were victims of a political process that had gone out of control.

In these bad times when the fashion is to worship accomplished facts real history tends to be treated as an irritant, something to be swatted out of existence like mosquitoes in summer, it is worth recalling that something terrible happened fifty years ago today when India was divided.  It is time to recognise it and see if it can be understood and transcended. The survivors owe it to those who perished. At least a million men, women and children lost their lives during the carnage of ‘ethnic cleansing’ that overcame Northern and Eastern India as the Punjab and Bengal were divided along religious lines.

In the months that preceded Partition,  Hindus and Sikhs on one side and Muslims on the other glared into each other’s hate-filled eyes before embarking on  frenzied blood-baths. The character and scale of the butchery was unprecedented in Indian history. In fact even Jinnah, as late as June 1946, was prepared to consider a federal solution as proposed by the Cabinet Mission sent to India by the Labour Government. It was the Congress Party which made that particular solution impossible.

This failure meant that exactly one year before Partition, the Hindu-Muslim riots started in Eastern India. During four days in August 1946, nearly 5000 people were killed and three times that number wounded in Bengal. The mood in the Punjab became edgy. Fear overcame rationality.

My mother, an active member of the Communist Party, often recalls how in April 1947, heavily pregnant with my sister and alone at home, she was disturbed by a loud knock on the front door. As she opened the door  she was overcome by anxiety. In front of her stood the giant figure of a Sikh. He saw the fear on her face, understood and spoke in a soft, reassuring voice. All he wanted to know was the location of a particular house on a nearby road. My mother gave him the directions. He thanked her warmly and left. She was overpowered by shame. How could she, of all people, without a trace of prejudice, have reacted in that fashion. Nor was she the  only one. Manto’s stories help us to understand the madness that grippped [everyone].

Trains became moving graveyards as they arrived at stations on both sides of the new divide, packed with corpses of fleeing refugees. As always, it was  the poor of town and country who were the main victims and they were buried or burnt in  hastily dug pits. Neither the song of the nightingale nor lamps or flowers would ever grace their graves. They are the forgotten victims of that year. No memorial in India or Pakistan marks the killings. The Partition of India was a tragedy and a crime. It was neither inevitable nor necessary and  its traces are only too visible in the unending anguish of the great  sub-continent. Faiz Ahmed Faiz,  one of the greatest of 20th century Urdu poets,  born in what  became Pakistan, spoke for many  in his poem Freedom’s Dawn on August ‘47:

This leprous daybreak, dawn night’s fangs have mangled—
This is not that long -looked-for break of day,
Not that clear dawn in quest of which those comrades
Set out, believing that in heaven’s wide void
Somewhere must be the star’s last halting place,
Somewhere the verge of night’s slow-washing tide,
Somewhere an anchorage for the ship of heartache.

But now, word goes, the birth of day from darkness
Is finished, wandering feet stand at their goal;
Our leaders’ ways are altering, festive looks
Are all the fashion, discontent reproved;–
And yet this physic still on unslaked eye
Or heart fevered by severance works no cure.
Where did that fine breeze, that the wayside lamp
Has not once felt, blow from—where has it fled?
Night’s heaviness is unlessened still, the hour
Of mind and spirit’s ransom has not struck;
Let us go on, our goal is not reached yet.

A year later, another poet Sahir Ludhianvi, who crossed the border and came to Pakistan could not bear the atmosphere and returned to India. He sent an explanation in the form of a dirge addressed to fellow-writers in Pakistan:

Friends, for long years
I have spun dreams of the moon and stars and spring for you,
Today my tattered garments hold nothing
But the dust of the road that we have travelled.
The music in my harp has been strangled
Its tunes buried by wails and screams
Peace and civilization are the alms I crave
So that my lips can learn how to sing again.

Saadat Hasan Manto, was moved to write ‘Toba Tek Singh’. Manto wrote sparsely, each word carefully chosen. His diamond-hard prose was in polar contrast to the flowery language of many  contemporaries. He wrote about sexual frustration and its consequences, of jealousy and how it often led to murder. One of his stories, ‘Behind the Screen’, describes a wife’s revenge once she discovers her husband has a secret mistress. The wife takes the husband to his lover’s apartment and in his presence has her body chopped into tiny pieces. The story was based on an accrual event that took place in the North West Frontier Province, bordering Afghanistan. Manto spared his readers the real life ending: the wife had her rival’s flesh cooked and forced her husband to eat the cooked flesh, a striking demonstration of the saying that truth is stranger than fiction (1).

‘Toba Tek Singh’  is a masterpiece set in the lunatic asylum in Lahore at the time of Partition.  When whole cities are being ethnically cleansed, how can the asylums escape? The Hindu and Sikh lunatics are told by bureaucrats organising the transfer of power that they will be forcibly transferred to  institutions in India.  The inmates rebel. They embrace each other and weep. They will not be parted willingly. They have to be forced on to the trucks. One of them, a Sikh, is so overcome by rage that he dies on the demarcation line which divides Pakistan from India. Confronted by so much insanity in the real world, Manto discovered normality in the asylum. The ‘lunatics’ have a better understanding of the crime that is being perpetrated than the politicians who have agreed to Partition.

Few politicians on either side had foreseen the results. Jawaharlal Nehru’s romantic nationalism portrayed independence as a long-delayed “tryst with destiny”. He never imagined that the tryst would be bathed in countless gallons of Indian blood. This was partially the result of a failure by the Congress High Command to make the large Muslim minority an offer it could not refuse.

Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, was a second-rate politician, but with a first-class lawyer’s brain. Initially he had used separatism as a bargaining ploy. Even later, he genuinely believed that the new state would simply be a smaller version of secular India, with one difference. Here Muslims would be the largest community. He really believed that he would still be able to spend some time every winter at his mansion in Bombay, the only city where he had found love and happiness.

Jinnah conceived of Pakistan as an amalgamation of an undivided Punjab, an undivided Bengal together with Sind, Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier Province. This would have meant that forty percent of the Punjab would have consisted of Hindus and Sikhs and forty-nine percent of Bengal would have consisted of Hindus. It was, alas, a utopian nonsense. Once confessional passions had been aroused and neighbours were massacring each other (as in the former Yugoslavia during the last decade of the 20th century) it was difficult to keep the two provinces united.
“I do not care how little you give me,” Jinnah is reported as saying in March 1947 to the last Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, “as long as you give it to me completely.”

A dying old man in a hurry, who could have been a willing collaborator in establishing a single state with important safeguards for the minority, had the Congress been capable of strategic insights, but now he wanted his own statelet, however small and awkward it might appear on the map.
India had come a long way in 1947. All previous rulers had attempted to govern with the consent of the ruling elites of whatever religion. The Mughal Emperors, themselves Muslims, had learnt this lesson very quickly and Akbar had unsuccessfully attempted to create a new religion synthesising Hinduism and Islam. Even the last of the great Mughals, the religious-minded Aurungzeb did not attempt any Islamisation of his army:  his ablest Generals were Hindu chiefs!

The British, when confronted with the nightmare of actually governing India, realised that, despite their more advanced technology, they would not last too long without serious alliances. They could only govern India with the consent of its traditional rulers.  The raj was maintained by a very tiny British presence: in 1805 the pink-cheeked conquerors numbered 31,000; in 1911 they had grown to 164,000 and in 1931 there were 168,000. In other words the British in India never comprised more than 0.05 of the local population.

It was this fact that concentrated the finest minds of the raj on politics and strategy. The civil servants trained by Haileybury and other imperialist nurseries in Britain to govern a mighty sub-continent were political administrators, often of the highest order. They learned to speak Urdu and Bengali so that they could, when necessary, communicate directly with peasants and administer justice. They also learned how to divide local rulers from each other and how to fan religious prejudices. The birth of modern Sikhism and Hinduism owes a great deal to the British presence in India. In return, local potentates were permitted to learn English and taught the etiquette of nibbling cucumber sandwiches with His Excellency at Government House.

If the British had granted India self-government on the Canadian and Australian pattern after the First World War it is unlikely that the sub-continent would have been divided. Partition was not a planned conspiracy by either the British or Jinnah. It came about because of a combination of circumstance during the Forties, including the Second World War. Jinnah backed the war effort, the Congress demanded Independence. Some scores had to be settled. Pakistan was imperialism’s rap on the knuckle for Indian nationalism.

Nehru and Jinnah were both shaken by the orgy of barbarism. It offended all their instincts.  But it was Mahatama Gandhi who paid the ultimate price. For defending the right to live of innocent Muslims in post-Partition India he was assassinated by Nathuram Godse, a fundamentalist Hindu fanatic. Godse was hanged, but two decades later, Godse’s brother told Channel Four that he regretted nothing. What happened had to happen.
That past now rots in the present and threatens to further poison the future.  The political heirs of the hanged Godse are shoving aside the children of Nehru and Gandhi. The poisonous fog of the religious world has enveloped politics. History, unlike the poets and writers of the sub-continent, is not usually prone to sentiment.

Partition was a disaster, adjacent to which there lurked another. The two parts of Pakistan were divided by a thousand miles of India, culture, language and political tradition. The predominantly Punjabi military-bureaucratic elite belonged to West Pakistan, while the Bengali majority of the population (60%) lived in East Pakistan. The refusal of the military rulers to permit democracy led to a successful uprising in 1968. A dictator was toppled. In the elections that followed the Bengalis of East Pakistan won a big majority. They were not permitted to take office. The Army invaded the Eastern part of its own country.  There was a massacre of intellectuals and mass rape (Punjabi soldiers had been told to ‘change the genes’ of Bengalis forever) followed by a civil war. Bangladesh was born. One partition had led to another.

India, too, was severely damaged by Partition. The Nehru years (1947-64) disguised the processes underneath, but now the Furies are out into the open. Bombay, once the centre of cosmopolitanism is now Mumbai and under the sway of a neo-fascist Hindu organisation. In their absurd search for a new Indian identity, the scoundrel parties have re-discovered Hinduism and sections of the ‘secular’ Congress have fallen into line.  Communal riots have claimed tens of thousands of lives over the last fifty years.

Manto was amongst the few who observed the bloodbaths of Partition with a detached eye.  He had remained in Bombay in 1947, where he worked for the film industry, but was accused of  favouring Muslims and was subjected to endless communal taunts, even from those who had hitherto imagined to be like him, but the secular core in many people did not survive the fire.  Manto came to Lahore in 1948, but was never happy. He turned the tragedies he had witness or heard into great literature. He wrote of the common people, regardless of ethnic, religious or caste identities and he discovered contradictions and passions and irrationality in each of them. In his work we see how normally decent people can, in extreme conditions, commit the most appalling atrocities. ‘Cold Meat’ is one such story. In 1952 he wrote: “My heart is heavy with grief today. A strange listlessness has enveloped me. More than four years ago when I said farewell to my other home, Bombay, I experienced the same kind of sadness…”

Years later he was still trying to come to grips with what had happened:

“Still, what my mind could not resolve was the question: what country did we belong to now, India or Pakistan? And whose blood was it that was being so mercilessly shed every day? And the bones of the dead, stripped of the flesh of religion, were they being burned or buried? Now that we were free who was to be our subject? When we were not free, we used to dream about freedom. Now that freedom had come, how would we perceive our past state?

“The question was: were we really free? Both Hindus and Muslims were being massacred. Why were they being massacred? There were different answers to the question; the Indian answer, the Pakistani answer, the British answer. Every question had an answer, but when you tried to unravel the truth, you were left groping.

“Everyone seemed to be regressing. Only death and carnage seemed to be proceeding ahead. A terrible chapter of blood and tears was being added to history, a chapter without precedent.

“India was free. Pakistan was free from the moment of its birth, but in both states, man’s enslavement continued: by prejudice, by religious fanaticism, by savagery.”

In a series of Open Letters to Uncle Sam he marked his displeasure at the state of world politics and Pakistan’s Security Pact with the US. Hedisplayed a remarkable prescience as expressed in this extract from his ‘Third Letter to uncle Sam’, written shortly before his death:

“Another thing I would want from you would be a tiny, teeny weeny atom bomb because for long I have wished to perform a certain good deed. You will naturally want to know what.

You have done many good deeds yourself and continue to do them. You decimated Hiroshima, you turned Nagasaki into smoke and dust and you caused several thousand children to be born in Japan. Each to his own. All I want you to do is to dispatch me some dry cleaners. It is like this. Out there, many Mullah types after urinating pick up a stone and with one hand inside their untied shalwar, use the stone to absorb the after-drops of urine as they resume their walk. This they do in full public view. All I want is that the moment such a person appears, I should be able to pull out that atom bomb you will send me and lob it at the Mullah so that he turns into smoke along with the stone he was holding.

As for your military pact with us, it is remarkable and should be maintained. You should sign something similar with India. Sell all your old condemned arms to the two of us, the ones you used in the last war. This junk will thus be off your hands and your armament factories will no longer remain idle.

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru is a Kashmiri, so you should send him a gun which should go off when it is placed in the sun. I am a Kashmiri too, but a Muslim which is why I have asked for a tiny atom bomb for myself.

One more thing. We can’t seem able to draft a constitution. Do kindly ship us some experts because while a nation can manage without a national anthem, it cannot do without a constitution, unless such is your wish.

One more thing. As soon as you get this letter, send me a shipload of American matchsticks. The matchsticks manufactured here have to be lit with the help of Iranian-made matchsticks. And after you have used half the box, the rest are unusable unless you take help from matches made in Russia which behave more like firecrackers than matches.”

Given the circumstances it is hardly surprising that he sought solace in alcohol and drank himself to death. He had written over 200 short stories and had no doubt of  his place in literary history and left behind the following epitaph for himself:

“Here lies Saadat Hasan Manto. With him lie buried the arts of short-story telling. Here he lies underneath tons of mud still wondering if he was a better short-story writer than God.”

Notes:

Khalid Hasan, ‘Sadat Hasan Manto: Not of Blessed Memory’, Annual of Urdu Studies, 4, 1984, P.85

(From Viewpoint Online)

© 2012, Tariq Ali. This article may not be reproduced in any form without providing an active attribution link/ reference to The Pakistan Forum. All attribution links within the article must also be retained.

BY E. Shahid for The Khaleej Times

When Imran Khan is around, there are more jealous husbands than worried batsmen. The famous remark made about the handsome Pathan cricketer, who took the subcontinent by storm in the 1970s and 80s, is symptomatic of the aura of the man that transcended sporting excellence. Despite the fierce cricketing rivalry, Imran was admired both in India and Pakistan, and continues to be a revered figure across the world of cricket.
Intensity and self-belief stood out in his performances on the field and charisma and poise surrounded him off it. Imran added virtues of honesty and missionary zeal to his personality when he single-handedly launched a cancer hospital for the poor and, more recently, a rural university in Pakistan. With his coming of age in the world of politics, it appears that the same set of qualities will hold him in good stead. Or is it?

To an outsider uninformed about the intricacies and conspiracy theories of Pakistani politics, Imran brings a breath of fresh air. He offers a glimmer of hope to an embattled country and a much needed respite from its present set of politicians. He combines neo-liberal political thought with a comprehensive worldview, traditional approach and a clean image in the face of rampant corruption. As a package, he promises a political transformation that can be invested in.

It appears that Imran has managed to bring a fragmented country under one umbrella defying the politics of identity, regionalism, sectarianism and even feudalism. He appears to have appealed to all segments of the society at least across a large swath of urban population, especially the youth who hold key to the future.

Imran has lured into his fold senior statesmen, veteran politicians, some even controversial ones, artists and army men. If the grapevine is to be believed, Imran Khan’s biggest catch is going to be former army general and President Pervez Musharraf, who is also trying to make a comeback into Pakistan politics.

Imran’s political discourse has also matured. In his public speeches, he stresses on programmes and policies and seems to have prescriptions for most ills facing the country, especially its ailing economy. If all this is taken at face value, Imran Khan is a godsend not just for Pakistan but also for the neighbourhood and the region as a whole.

Interestingly, not everyone is willing to label this as genuine transformation. People who matter – namely Pakistanis in and outside the country – often take disparaging positions on the subject. An Abu Dhabi taxi driver who hails from Swat valley paints a completely different picture from that of a Karachiite IT professional working in Dubai Media City.

One such individual says the rise of Imran is ‘escapism’ on a mass scale. Expecting an ‘elitist’ like him to change things is superficial, even idealistic, way of looking at the state of affairs in Pakistan. The argument is that Imran only promises to be a messiah and doesn’t have the wherewithal to become one.

The bottom line is that a lot of Pakistanis still do not see Imran’s upsurge as change, a positive one at that, and unless a majority believes in this change, it is going to be a futile exercise. There are bound to be differences of opinion but stakeholders must see change as a necessity and not necessarily as a means to an end. Pontification apart, outside perspective on Pakistan will always be interesting because it will reflect what the country should be instead of what it really is and is going to be. Unfortunately, the response usually ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous and is seldom a balanced one.

Imran is not making waves as a run-of-the-mill politician. Far from it, he is promising change in Pakistan and change doesn’t come easy. There is a natural resistance to such transformation, especially in a country where change has meant military rule or martial law. Imran is bound to make mistakes in the process but by putting faith in him the country would have at least tried and failed instead of reposing faith in those who breed inequality and deliver squalor.

Filed under: cricket, Democracy, Pakistan, Pakistan Cricket, Pakistanis Tagged: Asif Ali Zardari, cricket, Imran Khan, Pakistan, Pakistan Elections, Pakistani Cricket, Pakistani Politics, Pervez Musharraf, PPP, PTI

One of the thrills of life is following Pakistani politics. Never a dull moment in this comedy or farce or tragedy, depending on your sentiments towards the motherland. As far as I am concerned our national politics functions somewhat on the pattern of a merry-go-round. The riders may get a feeling of moving fast but they always remain equidistant from the central pole.

This has now been going on for ages. Whether things are hectic or slow, a lull or a storm, there are only two guaranteed facts. One, all participants of the process, some of them can also be politicians, will come of the ride slightly dizzy, and two, that nothing is going to move the central pole. For the central pole please read the Pakistan armed forces and the allegory will make even more sense.

I am sure the whole world must be watching the latest comic episode that we have managed to conjure up, or should I say the ISI has managed to produce, the Memogate.

Running to packed houses we have a world class show on display. Have to hand it to our intelligence spooks, they have managed to come up with a plot which even Spielberg would be hard pressed to match.

The storyline is amazing. Our ambassador to USA, Mr. Haqqani, who was previously regularly accused of being USA’s ambassador to Pakistan, was allotted a particularly impossible mission by our President. He was to pass a message to the President Barak Obama that the Pakistan military would likely overthrow the civilian government in the aftermath of the Osama Bin Laden episode !!!

Amazing plot to jolt you wide awake, isn’t it? This at a time when our army was the laughing stock of the whole of Pakistan, Kiyani was running around addressing open army durbars in order to avoid a mutiny, and our chief spook Pasha was actually offering to resign. What else would a good soldier think of at this time but to indulge in the time honored pastime of staging a coup. Makes perfect sense.

But wait, this is not all. Mr. Haqqani then goes and sleeps over this momentous task, has a Bram Stoker like nightmare and comes up with a perfect solution. Have to hand it to our dear James Bond in making, never do simply which you can complicate infinitely. Not for him the simple matter of calling up the White House or the Pentagon, no sir, our man had class . He contacts the most reliable person in the world, a certified CIA double agent, Mr. Mansoor Ijaz, who he then texts various self incriminating messages.

Mansoor Ijaz’s background makes for very interesting reading indeed. Crooks in the UK of the old favored running supermarkets or car maintenance garages as both provided ample opportunities for processing large amounts of money. Modern gentlemen of this ilk prefer to be investment bankers which Mansoor Ijaz is. He also has the dubious honor of having ties with ex CIA director James Woolsey and retired General James Abrahamson, former director of the Strategic Defense Initiative of President Regan. And he appears on FOX channel.

With a background like this, Mansoor Ijaz would have had difficulty getting credit from his neighborhood grocery store, but apparently had the fullest trust of Hussain Haqani.

The real nice piece in this whole saga is that our President, who has a direct line to the White House, allegedly goes on to make commitments to USA in the memo which would have Barak Obama rolling about in tears. It promises among others US oversight of our nuclear programme, handing over of jihadi’s sponsored by ISI, cooperation with our western neighbors on Mumbai attacks, disbanding of section “S” of ISI etc.

Oh, by the way, the memo is written on behalf of the National Security Team. Something which simply does not exist. But then when have facts stopped our spooks from spinning a real good yarn.

But the real fun is in the manner our Army has responded to all of this. General Pasha flew off to London to interview Mansoor Ijaz. The meeting naturally enough took place in the Intercontinental, Park Lane, London, where the good General had thankfully rented out a one bedroom suite at the very reasonable rate of £ 715 per night. This trip was off course undertaken without the unnecessary waste of time in getting any government approval. The army then went around expressing great indignation at this threat to national security.

This matter would have died a natural death, because of its sheer absurdity, but for one of our most well meaning, but severely mentally challenged, politician, if that’s the word, Mr. Nawaz Sharif. Our ex prime minister (twice) is one of those rare people who has an immaculate sense of timing. He always manages to do the right thing at the wrong time.

So what does Nawaz Sharif do, but go and petition the Supreme Court. Poor guy, he had hoped to get rid of Zardari and Kiyani at one go. This, as his other grand designs in the near past, will however remain a dream. All that he has managed to do is give the Army a perfect launch pad for a propaganda war against our elected leaders.

One goes weary looking at all this. But then we Pakistanis seem to have been marked out to have these tamashas on a regular basis. The bad news for the politicians, and us poor civilians, is that the Faujis are again going to have the last laugh on our expense. I fear the future is not looking too bright for the present political setup. The enthusiasm of the masses for the political process seems to have unnerved the military who have consistently bad mouthed politics and politicians for decades.

The latest on the court case is that the council for the defense. Ms. Asma Jehangir has withdrawn from the case, alleging undue influence on the honorable justices from the establishment. The establishment being an oblique reference to our dear friends in the uniform. Mr. Haqqani in the meantime remains holed up with the President or the Prime Minister claiming that his life is in danger if he ventures out.

Whatever happens in this saga next, one thing is sure. The merry-go-round is unlikely to slow down anytime soon.

I have often heard my elders say that we are an emotional people. Isn’t it true? When I was quite young and it was Nawaz Sharif ruling over Pakistan, he asked for some kind of ‘help’ from the mothers and daughters of the nation. I hear of it that women sold their gold to help the dear prime minister back in the 90s. Last year Imran Khan rose to considerable power and his mesmerizing jalsas echoed of brilliant promises and honesty and clean politicians and what not and we readily believed him, arguing with the ‘pessimists’ of Pakistan on offending us over being anti PTI. Well we have our fingers crossed as politician after politician converts to PTI’s ideology and there is supposedly another PTI Nazriati in its formation of the ones left PTI! It’s a matter to be followed in the days to come. And i digress. My heart is broken over another interesting incident.

Shamsul Anwar the great. Haven’t you heard of this chap’s tragic story? It’s an ‘inspiring’ tale of a man, an ex Army soldier, living in Rawalpindi with his eight children. If you haven’t please read here, Shamsul Anwar’s story for I don’t have the heart to narrate it again though this time equipped with more appropriate emotions! I happened to read about it online and was overcome with overwhelming emotions only yesterday. There was me reading into the detailed story of this man Shamsul Anwar with empathy and concern. I was appalled at the brutality of the mentioned terrorists, I was amazed at the bravery of this courageous man, I felt sorry for his wife and children. My heart went out to him and the emotional breakdown he and his wife had to face for years since 2006. I imagined what horrors his sons would have faced in captivity and what mental torture his naïve daughter would be going through now. There was his contact number, bank account number to help the penniless guy in getting back his kidnapped daughter of 14.

With a heavy heart I narrated the heart wrenching story of this vulnerable man to my family to which my mother got quite upset. I was relieved to see that people had started making donations for his help. I was shocked at the cruel, cold blooded behavior of the terrorists. What else to expect of them I thought to myself. There were many friends on Facebook who shared the story of this poor man and I thought, this is the tragedy of an honest brave man. The day ended pitying no one but Shamsul Anwar.

Today started with a blow in the face. As I browsed through Facebook, I read “Police arrest ‘ransom money’ scammer” Shamsul Anwar. To authenticate the news story further I surfed up other newspapers but only one paper revealed that the sympathy gainer man from Rawalpindi was actually a fraud. He had  planned the whole scam to get money out of people by playing on their emotions. There was kidnapping of his sons in 2006, there was no kidnapping of his daughter early last year, and there were no threats for ransom money from the terrorists after him. In fact his daughter is happily married !  Nothing at all I asked myself as I read and re read the truth? There was actually an awkward moment of truth. The man who was innocent and brave until yesterday turned out to be a fraudulent today. I realized that I have been fooled. The emotions of sympathy turned into anger soon followed by disappointment. By the time I shared the latest update on the scam story I was laughing to myself and thinking ‘really I have been made a fool?’

Like me a lot of my friends and people who had believed in this cleverly fabricated story felt deceived and cheated. One of my friends on Facebook said ‘…I feel stupid… you know Pakistani people are not insensitive, they’re just suspicious and this is one example of why they should be cynical’.

Maybe there is nothing to be surprised of. When our politicians can make us idiot time and again, this man is still one of us. He is doing nothing different. But the seriousness of the matter is that if, God forbid, a real kidnapping happens and a man asks for help, people will be reluctant to lend a helping hand.  One is nonetheless forced to think what of the morals? What of the value of truth? Most importantly what to believe in the world of virtual realities…

But before we find ourselves in for another surprise in this story, before we jump to any major conclusions, let’s wait and see what unfolds for it could be something else God knows…

For the time being I think its just better if we keep believing in fairies and Santa Claus. Sigh

PT Report Islamabad- Pir Pagara, a veteran Pakistani politician, chief of the Pakistan Muslim League (Functional) and spiritual leader of the Hur community of Sindh province, passed away today. He was under treatment at a hospital in London. He was 83. His original name was Syed Shah-e-Mardan Shah, son of Pir Sibghatullah Shah (aka Sooriah [...]

Congressman Ron Paul at the Republican Leadership Conference – 2011

Is it just me, or are seemingly incessant GOP debates the past few months allowing President Obama’s lack of public exposure to seem more and more like solid leadership? The Republican lineups simplistic, square and reactionary focus on “Anti-Obama” rhetoric especially on foreign policy has highlighted a resoundingly hawkish stance on Iran with little attention to our current engagements in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And while it may be expedient amongst a certain political base to try and one-up each other in aggressive foreign policy talk, only Ron Paul challenges the party line on Americas role in the world.

When it comes to Pakistan, compared to Democrats Republicans have a consistent history of preferring to work closely with the military establishment in Islamabad. While there is a level of bipartisanship post 9/11, (case in point is Obama’s continuation of Bush era drone use with little debate), Republicans have through the Cold War and beyond preferred dealing with the military establishment rather than focusing on democratic, or liberal institution building. Which is not necessarily an entirely erroneous policy; part of the rationale is that state building is expensive in blood, toil, time and treasure and rarely feasible. Further, there are an endless number of constraints and uncertainties that profoundly hinder institution, or democratic state building in a place like Pakistan, rendering Republican policies simply pragmatic.

Which brings us to current policy: the bipartisan endorsed “Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act” (S. 1707) enacted in 2009 has yet to bear tangible fruit. Granted the aforementioned that institution building is time exhaustive, the fact remains that Pakistan has deteriorated politically, in the realm of security and economically. And having watched everyone from Gov. Romney, Sen. Santorun, Gov. Perry, Rep. Bachmann and yes even the soft spoken Gov. Huntsman, reiterates hawkish foreign policy while refusing to acknowledge a need for meaningful improvement. In the Republican camp only Rep. Ron Paul’s extreme calls for an isolationist posture offer some semblance of change. And because his prescriptions have yet to be tried, the utility of his ideas have yet to be tested. And now may be a time to consider his stance since they call for exactly what the Pakistani public wants right now.

Referring to our policies to Pakistan as nothing short of “Bombs for Bribes” Ron Paul acknowledges the nobility, yet inherent futility in calling for democratic institutions in places of strategic engagement. He understands that we are already engaged in “130 countries” with “700 bases around the world” and in this speech against the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act, he bluntly explains:

“the way we treat our fellow countries around the world is we tell them what to do and if they do it, we give them money. If they don’t we bomb them. Under this condition we are doing both. We are currently dropping bombs in Pakistan and innocent people get killed. If you want to promote our good values and democratic processes, you can’t antagonize the people”

Ron Paul Opposes “Bombs and Bribes” for Pakistan – 9/30/2009 - VIDEO

He goes on to suggest dialogue and trade as alternatives to current policy. And although his statement is simplistic and was made in 2009, it highlights Ron Paul’s isolationist, more economically focused prescriptions on foreign policy that seek to reduce our military footprint abroad based on pragmatic constraints, like military and fiscal overstretch. And these calls seem more reasonable than before, especially when it comes to Pakistan and the fact that our aid has yet to yield satisfactory results. So while the Obama administration continues engagement and GOP candidates refuse to acknowledge much concern over current policy to Pakistan, can Ron Paul really be the only alternative available?

Someone once considered completely out of left, excuse me, right field, could be the reminder we need to moderate our engagement with countries of interest. Because what is interesting is that current rhetoric in Pakistan is very much in line with Ron Paul’s ideas. Ron Paul isn’t touting conspiracy theories, nor does he echo far left foreign policy thinkers like Noam Chomsky. Rather, his past statements on our engagement in Pakistan as “inadvertently causing chaos” and “violating security and sovereignty“ are exactly what the average Pakistani seems to feel and hears about in their mainstream TV, and print media. Takeaway for us means, it’s a perception that is realistic; perhaps more so than current policy reflects.

In fact, legendary cricket star turned politician Imran Khan’s recent surge in popularity is in large part due to his highly critical foreign policy rhetoric that vociferously calls for D.C. to adopt a more isolationist stance so Pakistan might reclaim lost autonomy. Imran Khan steadily built support for his party on the continued observation that America’s “War on Terror” has intensified insecurity and his subsequent promises to curtail American involvement is a first step in alleviating Pakistan’s problems.

Imran Khan at Davos – Talks about Winning Hearts & Minds; the War on Terror – VIDEO

He underscores Ron Paul’s sentiment that perceptions urgently matter in a climate where American intervention is increasingly received hostilely. While there may be issues of concern with Ron Paul’s overall foreign policy prescriptions, both politicians insistence on winnings hearts and minds does render the congressman’s ideas in relation to Pakistan worthy of consideration. Imran Khan’s recent ascendency and Governor Paul’s gradually increasing support marks a convergence in shifting to a direction of a less militarized approach to engaging Islamabad. Two men once considered out of the realm of politician viability now increasingly resonate in their respective publics; policymakers ought to take note.

ضیاء الدین یونی ورسٹی کا شمار پاکستان کی بہترین پرائیوٹ جامعات (private universities) میں ہوتا ہے۔ اس یونی ورسٹی کے قیام کی صورت میں سر ڈاکٹر ضیاء الدین (1878ء۔ 1947ء) کے خاندان کی کوششوں سے اُن کے اُس خواب کو تعبیر مل گئی جو اُنھوں نے علی گڑھ مسلم یونی ورسٹی میں میڈیکل کالج قائم کرنے کا دیکھا تھا۔ ضیاء الدین یونی ورسٹی کے قیام کا مقصد بہترین تدریس اور تحقیق کے ذریعے پاکستان میں صحت (health)، طبعی (physical)، اور عمرانی علوم (social sciences) کی جدید تعلیم فراہم کرنا تھا تاکہ پاکستان میں صحتِ عامہ کا معیار بہتر بنایا جاسکے۔

ڈاکٹر ضیاء الدین 13 فروری 1873ء کو میرٹھ، اتر پردیش، انڈیا میں پیدا ہوئے۔ اُنھیں ڈاکٹر لیفٹنٹ کرنل سر ضیاء الدین احمد زبیری کے نام سے بھی جانا جاتا ہے۔ وہ دور اندیش سیاست دان (politician)، بہترین منطقی (logician)، ماہر ریاضی دان (mathematician)، اور فلسفی تھے۔اُن کا شمار ماہرِ تعلیم، محقق اور علی گڑھ مسلم یونی ورسٹی، انڈیا کے ناظموں (rectors) میں ہوتا ہے۔ وہ تحریکِ پاکستان کے مرکزی راہ نُما اور قائدِ اعظم کے بہت قریب تھے۔ اُن کا انتقال 69 سال کی عمر میں 23 دسمبر 1947ء کو لندن میں ہوا۔

ضیاء الدین ہاسپٹل کی شان دار کام یابی کے بعد حکومتِ سندھ نے 1994ء میں آرڈیننس نمبر 17 کے تحت ’’ڈاکٹر ضیاء الدین پوسٹ گریجویٹ انسٹی ٹیوٹ آف میڈیکل سائنس‘‘ کے قیام کی اجازت دی۔ اس آرڈیننس کے تحت انسٹی ٹیوٹ کو اپنی تعلیمی اسناد (degree and diploma) جاری کرنے کا اختیار بھی دیا گیا۔ اکتوبر 1995ء میں حکومت سندھ نے ایکٹ نمبر 6 کے تحت اس تعلیمی ادارے کو ’’ضیاء الدین میڈیکل یونی ورسٹی ‘‘ میں منتقل کرنے کی منظوری دی۔ اُس وقت تک یہ انسٹی ٹیوٹ صحت کے بارے میں تعلیم (health education) دینے اور اپنی سہولیات بہتر بنانے کے لیے مختلف اداروں سے تعلقات قائم کرچکا تھا۔ اپریل 1996ء میں ضیاء الدین میڈیکل یونی ورسٹی نے پہلا تدریسی سال (academic session) شروع کیا اور پاکستان کی میڈیکل یونی ورسٹیوں میں اپنی پہچان بنائی۔

حکومتِ سندھ کی جانب سے 13 دسمبر 2005ء کو جاری ہونے والے ایکٹ نمبر 2003 کے تحت ضیاء الدین میڈیکل یونی ورسٹی کا نام بدل کر ’’ضیاء الدین یونی ورسٹی‘‘ رکھ دیا گیا۔

اس وقت ضیاء الدین یونی ورسٹی میں درج ذیل کلیوں (فیکلٹییز/ faculties) کے تحت تعلیمی عمل انجام دیا جارہا ہے:
1۔ کلیہ فنون (Faculty of Arts)۔
2۔ کلیہ قانون (Faculty of Law)۔
3۔ کلیہ تجارتی انتظامیہ (Faculty of Business Administration)۔
4۔ کلیہ فنونِ لطیفہ (Faculty of Fine Arts)۔
5۔ کلیہ ذرائع ابلاغ (Faculty of Mass Media)۔
6۔ کلیہ نرسنگ (Faculty of Nursing)۔
7۔ کلیہ ڈینٹل سرجری (Faculty of Dental Surgery)۔
8۔ ڈاکٹریٹ آف فارمیسی (Doctorate of Pharmacy / Pharm-D)۔
9۔ اسپیچ لینگویج تھراپی (Speech Language Therapy)

ضیاء الدین یونی ورسٹی چار عمارتوں پر مشتمل ہے۔ ایک عمارت میں ایم۔بی۔بی۔ایس، دوسری میں ڈینٹل سرجری اور تیسری میں فارمیسی اور اسپیچ لینگویج تھراپی کی تعلیم دی جاتی ہے جب کہ چوتھی عمارت میں ضیاء الدین ہسپتال اور فارمیسی شعبے کے لیکچر روم اور لائبریری موجود ہے۔ ہاسپٹل کی عمارت کی پہلی منزل پر O.P.D کے ساتھ کیفے ٹیریا اور دوسری منزل پر ڈنکن ڈونٹ موجود ہے۔

ضیاء الدین یونی ورسٹی
4/B، شاہ راہِ غالب، بلاک 6، کلفٹن، کراچی 75600، پاکستان
Telephone # +92-21-35862937-9
Fax# +92-21-35862940
معلومات کے لیے ضیاء الدین یونی ورسٹی کو ای.میل کریں
ضیاء الدین یونی ورسٹی کی ویب سائٹ ملاحظہ کریں

Theodor Lessing’s book Der Jüdische Selbsthass (Jewish Self-hatred) was the first work to discuss the concept of Jewish self-hatred, which as the British Journal of Social Psychology states “is often used rhetorically to discount Jews who differ in their lifestyles, interests or political positions from their accusers.” In Austria, this accusation is sometimes labeled against expatriates, Austrians living abroad and daring to point out the petty and indolent political discourse in the “island of the fortunate,” as Pope Paul VI labeled Austria in the 1970s.

I heard this accusation thrown against me more than once in discussions about domestic politics, Austrian manners, and the infamous Austrian ‘soul’ (“Die oesterreichische Seele”). The most circle-the-wagons response I got was “if things are so bad, why don’t you then stay in your fancy New York apartment indefinitely?” My reply is always the same. I never said things are ‘bad,’ but that I am a skeptic of many things Austrians are traditionally proud of, such as the corporatist social partnership or the free-riding, much cherished Austrian neutrality. What I always like to point out is that I am a skeptic of Austria in the true Socratic meaning of the word, i.e. someone who is free from all prejudices and attempts an inquiry into accepted opinions about the nature of things. At this point, people usually change the subject, which I assume is not because I won an argument but because they are fed up and think my case to be hopelessly lost not to believe in the “Brave New Austrian World.”

And indeed I sometimes ask myself why it is so hard to believe in a prosperous, well-run, little democracy in the heart of Europe. In that sense, I am the antithesis to distinguished historian Guenther Bischof’s observation:

Over the years, they (Austrian expats) experience a high degree of assimilationism, once they turn their backs on Austria. While the prewar refugees from Austria often maintained a high degree of emotional attachment to their homeland, which they were forced to leave, this younger crop of careerists sports hardly an iota of nostalgia or much emotional involvement for their birthplace. They want to be successful and leave Austria behind.

I am very much emotionally attached to my country, yet I think for a young person, there are simply bigger fish to fry in the world than the Austrian state eagle. The truth is that Austria has experienced a miraculous economic recovery from the Second World War—the last true big upheaval in Austrian history—and since has been successful in creating a prosperous, well-run social democracy strongly embedded within an European Union of like minded countries.

The political battles in Austria are petty because there is not much to fight about. A little change in the tax code here, a little adjustment in the social security system there; it is no coincidence that Arno Geiger’s great postwar novel on Austria is called Es geht uns gut (We are doing well). In many ways, we are again in Stefan Zweig’s pre-war Vienna of his autobiography Die Welt von Gestern (The World of Yesterday), where “bureaucrats could set their watches to the day when they retire.”

The result is that the country does not produce statesmen or politicians; it principally produces administrators and bureaucrats because the environment does not require visions or new ideas, but merely the slight improvement of the already existing. Helmut Schmidt’s statement in the 1980s that “wer Visionen hat, soll zum Arzt gehen” (whoever has visions should go and see a doctor) was not a sardonic but factual statement. Western Germany had very little room to maneuver on the international stage because it was locked between two competing blocs in the middle of a Cold War that at any moment could lead to a nuclear exchange. Austria, because of its small size, will always be dependent on exterior factors and is ‘locked’ within the European Union and its bigger neighbors.

The best evidence for this is the young political elite of Austria, which primarily consists of young Doppelgaenger (a double of a living person) of long serving politicians. “Er ist tuechtig!” (He is strenuous), or “Er hat noch keinen Fehler gemacht!” (He has not made a mistake yet) are the most often heard praises for young politicians in all parties, which might as well be applied to any Austrian bureaucrat since the days of emperor Joseph II. Yet, as the tagline of the western film The Man Who Shot Liberty Vance states, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” In the case of Austria, that means even superbly organizing a proper Catholic thanksgiving celebration can cause you to be labeled “a political talent” as was the case with former Vice Chancellor Josef Proell, who as a young party member did precisely that. In most other countries, this would make you a good events planner, but in Austria, it makes you a political hopeful, i.e. for non-Austrians and after stripping the legend, an administrative hopeful.

Where are Austria’s grand strategists and statesmen? For example, it is a sheer impossibility to devise a daring new foreign policy for the Balkans or Eastern Europe (which was hijacked by the Austrian private sector more than 20 years ago) or dispatch the best and brightest of Austria to Brussels, the true ‘great uncle’ of small European powers, to push Austrian ‘interests’. (When did anyone ever hear any Austrian politician mention the word ‘Austrian interests’?) I am not even mentioning the rise of China, nuclear Iran, the war in Afghanistan, terrorism in Pakistan, the power transition in North Korea, or the current upheaval in Russia. “Such outward things dwell not in Austrian desires,” to paraphrase Shakespeare’s Henry V, and never seems to be a concern for any party. The exception of course is the United States to which small Austria defiantly proclaims, “Austria is not the 51st state of the United States.”

At the end of the day, bashing Austria as an expat is merely like trying to find the one thing that is wrong with a Jane Austin novel; the elegant form often hides the weakness of the content. Even the Americans recognize Austria’s obsession with outward appearance as a diplomatic cable from the US Embassy in Vienna indicates, “More than most countries, Austria places great importance on conferences and ceremonials.” Yet as the US motivational speaker Wayne Dyer once said, “Transformation literally means going beyond your form.” In that sense, expats bashing Austria are just expressing their frustration that little will change over the years in our Alpine republic. But then again, why should it; Uns gehts ja so gut (we are doing so well!)

“Heroism is not the measure of how gloriously one fights and dies; rather, it is the value of the deeds and events which drove the person to their final end.”

A year has passed us by, and much has changed.

I don’t want to dwell too much on history, for much will be written about that today, capturing the bravery and martyrdom of Salmaan Taseer.

I rather want to focus on his legacy. The legacy which many seem to forget in favour of the more sensationalist diatribes that help get more hits, more clicks and more comments, particularly when the monologue gets sidetracked (on purpose) to focus more on Islam, Qadri, the black law and the pivot of it all: Asia Bibi, the Christian Pakistani woman who was jailed for allegedly blaspheming against the prophet of Islam, Muhammad (PBUH).

No, my focus is on the here and now.

On January 4, 2011, after that fateful moment, Pakistan woke up. It may have woken up in shock, like someone after a nightmare at 4 am, cold sweat dripping down their necks, but it woke up nonetheless.

You see, up until that moment everything related to minority issues and persecution was just a by-line. The news would once in a while show a new report here, a quote from a politician there, and that was it. Even poor Asia Bibi was sidelined, apart from a few months before Taseer’s assassination, when him and Sherry Rehman were more vocal in their support for her.

Enter the assassination, followed by Sherry’s own quieter stance, and Shahbaz Bhatti’s assassination some time later.

Suddenly, the rafters were flooded, the media up in arms and the general public finally no longer sitting on the fence. You were either vocally abhorring the blasphemy law, Asia Bibi’s detention, Taseer’s assassination and the state of minorities in Pakistan or you were waiting in line to shower Qadri with more rose petals.

The lines had finally been drawn.

Things have changed, whether we admit to it or not. Sure, we still aren’t out on the streets protesting in the thousands against Qadri or demanding Asia Bibi’s release. We aren’t bombarding the courts or the government with requests for leniency or release. We aren’t even coming out in force demanding the media in Pakistan cover this issue. All of the above has more to do with the liberal stance of voice over violence than mere complacency.

We ARE however very aware of the situation now. The media’s coverage of minority issues is now a daily feature, with every day bringing to light a new persecution, shedding new light over issues long forgotten.

If one reads the comments section of most major news portals in Pakistan, one feels a sense of joy that the youth of Pakistan are showing a rarely seen desire for justice and for the support of Taseer’s efforts to provide a voice for the persecuted. It begs a round of applause for those in the new generation who are proving to have more integrity flowing through their veins than those who are meant to teach them integrity in the first place. While the older folk go about sipping their teas and nodding their beards to the whispers of Qadri’s ghairat, the youth are thumping their chests at a new dawn of understanding and reconciliation.

Shahbaz Bhatti was further a victim of the brutality of some who use a few verses to turn what was one man’s guidance into a divine mandate, and closely following his assassination was the abduction of Taseer’s son, Shahbaz. All of us continue to pray for his safe return. Let no one be fooled by this blog of mine that I may be making light of such a henious crime. I am not, I continue to pray for Shahbaz’s safety. However I owe it to Mr. Taseer as a minority myself to give him the ode he deserves.

I would never have been active on Twitter if it wasn’t for Mr. Taseer. My voice would have been lost in the stream of the mundane, but his selfless act made me realise I am here on earth for a greater purpose. I have a voice. How I use it is what I learnt from him.

Pakistan is awake again. And we have only one man to thank for this. One man who woke us all up in his life and in his death.

Rest in peace, Salmaan Taseer. Pakistan is poorer for losing you. But at the same time, it is richer, because your legacy will reap a future of harmony. This, I truly believe.