Getting away

By Kamran Shafi

HOW absolutely lovely London was in the two weeks that I have been away from the Fatherland visiting my younger boy who lives and works there.

The sun shone almost all of my time there; the thrilling polo final for the Queen’s Cup kept us on the edge of our seats; God was in his heaven, and all seemed well with the world.

Until, that is, out of force of habit, you switched on one of the Pakistani television channels and saw the usual bad news pouring out of the box. Quite apart from the domestic scene, reeks as it does with ill-intent and chicanery and lies and deception and intrigue, what really took the cake was the hairy situation on our Afghan border.

Let me add here that there was a time when we did not have any satellite channels beaming bad news from the Citadel of Islam across the world, when the BBC was the only television channel that carried some news some of the time. One could relax a lot more in those days than one can now. Especially someone like me, who simply cannot cut himself off from what goes on in our country no matter where I am.

But back to the bad news. Leave the stupid ‘Nato’ action that Admiral Mike Mullen, Chief of Joint Staff of the United States, no less, says was “very much by the book” (so much for your ‘protest’ to Nato, Shah Mahmood!) and which killed 11 Pakistani soldiers aside, even little old Karzai, the one with the chogha, a man who hires American contractors to protect himself, has threatened Pakistan with war!

Could this little man have the gumption to challenge his far mightier neighbour (we may be a basket case but compared to Afghanistan even we are a mighty military power) by his lonesome self? Especially when the mass of the people of Afghanistan stand against him and his policies? By golly, we had to see this day too!

This is what the Commando, who clings to the “President’s Lodge” aka Army House by his fingernails, defying the laws of gravity itself(!), has brought this country to, that even refugee Karzai, who and whose family was given succour by this country when they fled Afghanistan 30 years ago, has the temerity to talk down to his great benefactor.

I suppose, however, that Karzai’s gall and supreme confidence grows from the same seed from which grows the Commando’s impudence, nay cheek, too: that of unstinted American (read Dubya administration) support. What a lovely pair, the two of them: both shaming Afghans and Pakistanis by zealously toeing the American line.

There were other matters that upset one no end too: reports that the democratic government had taken a leaf out of the MQM’s book word for word and brought in 40-foot containers to ‘seal off’ parts of Islamabad the Beautiful from the attentions of the long-marchers. Most people who saw that sight immediately said that the government itself had made the long march a success by over-reacting in this way.

‘Super’ Advisor Rehman Malik aka The One Man Demolition Squad was not only credited with the fiasco of the containers which Sherry Rehman told us had been removed but which were brought right back a few hours later showing like nothing else the Super Advisor’s clout.

He also announced that the peace deal painstakingly negotiated by the Frontier government with the Swat militants was no more, for the second time leaving that government reacting with ire to his shenanigans. The first, we remember, was when he machinated an EC announcement that the by-elections had been postponed. One wonders just when the PPP leadership will put a halter on Mister Malik.

If you think that was all that bothered a person such as I, minding his own business in salubrious London Town, you are mistaken. Far more upsetting than any of Mister Malik’s handiwork were reports in the press that the Governor, Punjab, is about to press the boy Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari into service, politicking in the Punjab come August and the young man comes home on leave from his college at Oxford.

Whilst there is no shortage of foolishness and self-serving nonsense that one comes across in the Fatherland on a daily basis, I have not heard of a worse idea in decades. I mean this one absolutely reeks of a hard-heartedness and selfishness and outright cruelty such as few ideas before it.

Bilawal, from all that one knows about him, is a gentle and intelligent young man who is intent on studying further. He is only in his first year at university, and from what we hear, is doing well at his studies. More than this, he comes from a long line of well-read politicians on his maternal side: his grand-father, the ever-popular and iconic Zulfikar Ali Bhutto excelling at studies in two of the finest universities in the world: Berkeley and Oxford and his mother, another Pakistani icon, following in her father’s footsteps by attending Radcliffe and Oxford.

Both went on to achieve the highest honour a people can bestow on any one. The father founded the Pakistan Peoples Party and took it to victory in the elections in West Pakistan, sweeping all before it. He became the country’s leader after East Pakistan broke away as a result of decades of mistrust and bad treatment at the hands of the West Pakistani ruling elite.

What a leader he was too, picking up the pieces of a truncated Pakistan and giving it some little respect after negotiating a quite impossible deal with India which had steamrolled our forces in 1971 and taken 90,000 prisoners of war, mainly army; and vast tracts of land in the West too.

The daughter too became prime minister in her own right, the first time ten years after her father was judicially murdered; and when she was criminally removed from office, once again five years later for another three, when her own friends stabbed her in the back.

Bilawal, therefore, has a rich heritage to look after. But, Laat Sahib Punjab Bahadur, let the kid be. For God’s sake. Let him get on with college and complete his studies so that he can better prepare himself for the long struggle against dictatorship which is not about to let go of real power in our country in a hurry.

Bushism of the Week: “And so the fact that they purchased the machine meant somebody had to make the machine. And when somebody makes a machine, it means there’s jobs at the machine-making place” — President George W Bush, visiting the Silverado Cable Co., Mesa, Ariz., May 27, 2008.

kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk