Posts
Welcome home
By Kamran Shafi
BUT we shall go there later. Wow! What a surprise that the Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) Supreme Court has ruled overwhelmingly, and in every respect, in favour of the Commando’s election as ‘president’ of the Islamic Republic!
Never mind, of course, that a precedent has been set for other Bonapartists, other usurpers in army uniforms working the American agenda of the time, to knock on the court’s door and demand that their ‘election’ as president of the Islamic Republic by another rigged assembly be ratified, otherwise martial law/emergency!
Never mind too that respected newspapers such as The Guardian have called the PCO Supreme Court a ‘kangaroo court’. Who cares, however? If an institution is on the side of the establishment and its Daddy of the time it is fine and dandy, but doomed be its eyes if it so much as tries to be even a little bit objective. Oh yes!
And what a ludicrous defence of their flawed stand by the transitionists when they say that the transformationists are to blame for Musharraf’s knee jerking as hard as it is! What the devil did we do other than ask the political parties and civil society to completely isolate the dictator?
The news is bad, however, with Benazir backing off from the tough stand she took before that architect of many a Latin American coup, Negroponte Sahib Bahadur visited the Land of the Pure and picked up the telephone to her. Did he read the riot act to her rather than to Musharraf?
Has the PPP softened its stand to negotiate a few more seats under the president’s kind control — as we subcontinentals are wont to say when applying for jobs — who will reportedly allocate them according to a plan already hatched in a special cell reportedly set up somewhere in the vicinity of Aabpara if you see what I mean? Go on; surely you know what I mean!
I am just back from a trip to Karachi and the gup there is that the major political parties, the PML-N and the PPP, will be allowed from between thirty to forty seats each, depending on who is the army’s flavour of the month; 90 or so to the PML-Q and the rest divided among the Mullah-Military Alliance (aka the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal) and others under the umbrella of something akin to the Chand Sitara (Moon and Crescent) Party that we saw emerge in 2002 out of, you guessed it, near Aabpara!
Which be as it may, readers will recall that I have often referred to our country as being a most unique place, peopled by a most unique lot, specially our leaders.
It would not surprise me therefore if the president for whom it is Pervez Musharraf first, second, and last, has decided to pull the rug from under the feet of the House of Zahoor, Gujarat Sharif.
Who and their cohorts and gofers such as the most lovely Wasi Zafar and Sher Afgan might well not be missed now that he has to defend him none other than Barrister Shahida Jamil. Polished while she is, the lady is as mindlessly stout in her defence of the Commando and all that he does as the two beauties above named.
I quite frankly fell off my chair when, defending the emergency (read martial law) she said it was quite alright to act unconstitutionally and illegally when the situation demanded it. I wondered if she would not only resile from her stand against them, but actually defend the alleged extra-judicial killings in Karachi of yesteryear.
Yet there is an upside in all of this that I can feel in my bones. And that is the arrival of Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif, and Begum Kulsoom Nawaz and family, who are back in their country after a long exile.
Welcome home to them and here’s hoping the opposition will now be united on a two-point agenda: robbing the dictator and his junta of any legitimacy at all and vociferously demanding the restoration of the pre-Nov 3 superior judiciary.
Let the Gujaratias, the Mullahs and all and sundry referred to above win what will then be a non-election and pack the assemblies. Let them form the next governments. There is such a thing as doing what is right, and which will elevate the PPP and the PML-N onto a very high pedestal indeed.
Incidentally, I have always believed that the PPP’s boycotting the 1985 elections was the right thing to do. It was this act and this alone that saw the party win the 1988 elections, and which it would have swept had the ISI not engineered the IJI into place using hundreds of millions in state funds.
And now for Amreeka Bahadur. If anyone thinks I am running a campaign to expose the American administration’s insalubrious hand in our travails, he/she is right! Of course I am! For I want my American friends, and I have many, to understand that if they have an ‘American Dream’ so do we Pakistanis want our own ‘Pakistani Dream’.
One in which we are free to choose our governments and then have the freedom to vote them out. One in which we too have a fiercely independent judiciary. One in which there is not the dark shadow of the army looming over us.
So, buddies, stop micro-managing us — we don’t exactly live in the trees you know.
Bushism of the Week: “I don’t particularly like it when people put words in my mouth, either, by the way, unless I say it.” —President George W. Bush - Crawford, Texas, Nov 10, 2007.
P.S. May I express my outrage at the continued incarceration of Munir Malik, Aitzaz Ahsan, Justice (retd) Tariq Mahmood and Ali Ahmad Kurd. All good men. None of them terrorists.
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Ah so!
Ah so!
By Kamran Shafi
THE General to the BBC just before that great friend of Latin American dictators, John Negroponte, came a-calling: “Before March I was very good. Suddenly did I go mad after March or suddenly my personality changed, am I a Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde or what is it? Am I such a person? Please go into the details, the causes. What am I doing? Have I done anything unconstitutional, illegal? Yes, I did it on 3rd November. Did I do it before? Not once.”
And: “They (our nuclear assets or bums in the vernacular!) cannot fall into the wrong hands if we manage ourselves politically. The military is there – as long as the military is there, nothing happens to the strategic assets, we are in charge and nobody does anything to them.”
Three things here. One, he did not do anything ‘unconstitutional illegal’ (hello, what’s this?) before 3rd November when he imposed emergency on the country, suspending whatever human rights we had? Er, the actions of Oct 12, 1999 when an elected, constitutional government was kicked out were not ‘unconstitutional illegal’?
Two, ‘suddenly’ he did not go mad; nor did his personality change; and neither is he Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. (Lord, how many nights did I lie awake, shivering in fear after seeing the film in, if memory serves, Delhi in 1955). And three, he is not clinging to power come hell or high water just because he wants to cling to power; he is only clinging to power to ensure that our bums do not fall into extremist hands. Ah so! And here we were thinking all he really wanted were the pelf and privileges that come from his position of pre-eminence that he and his toadies are so used to by now. Silly us! Traitors the lot of us, actually, to impute motives to him.
Be which as it may, let us get down to serious matters and first ask what in the world he means when he says our bums are safe “as long as we are in charge”? Who is “we”? Why is he making himself synonymous with the army when he has announced repeatedly that he would retire from his army post just as soon as the ‘revamped’ Supreme Court validates his so-called ‘election’ to the presidency? Is he suggesting that he will stay on as COAS till Kingdom Come? Or that the army will continue to call the shots?
Might one also ask what will happen to the military (read army) in the unlikely event that a fair election is held in the country and a properly constituted government takes over? Will the army (which today guards our bums) disappear into thin air, leaving them unprotected to be grabbed by all comers, specially (shiver, shiver) Al Qaeda?
The Commando will do what he will to cling to power, and no one has any control over that, probably not even he himself. The question to ask once again is what Ms Bhutto will do. While her answer to the same question last week was to say to Musharraf that he was no longer acceptable to her as President, in or out of uniform, Negroponte’s telephone call to her (he did not deign to see her) seems to have done the trick. What did he say to her? You are with us or you are against us?
I seem to have lost one hundred rupees, the maximum that I bet, to my old friend Zahid Zaman who said she would relent vis-à-vis Musharraf. He was right; I, who pretend to know her these twenty years, was dead wrong.
But leave alone that the ‘elections’ will be held under virtual martial law, what will she achieve by going into them after all that The Commando has said: variously that the House of Zahoor-led PML will win; the next prime minister will be from the Kings Party; and that Benazir is only the ‘Darling of the West’ but doesn’t really have any popular following?
It is very bad news indeed that the leader of what was Pakistan’s only anti-establishment party has acquiesced to the demands of the US administration that she not upset their tight buddy’s apple cart. An apple cart, I might add, with two wheels missing and the third in utter disrepair.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
As said earlier in these very columns, there seems to be only one way for all democrats who believe in the rule of law and constitution. To demand that emergency (read martial law) be lifted immediately; the Honourable Supreme and High Courts return to status quo ante Nov 3; truly neutral caretaker governments and an election commission approved by all the stakeholders be installed; and every political party and its leaders including Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif be allowed to take part in the elections.
There is strength in unity, every politician must understand. Otherwise, the Establishment will pick them off one by one. When it comes to ‘Aksariat’ we haven’t seen anything yet.
Afterthought: At a recent demo against muzzling the TV channels I carried placards saying ‘Yankee go Home’ and ‘Negroponte Out!’ I, of all people!! For the Americans must be told that they are increasingly being looked upon as those described in The Ugly American, the great late-50’s book by Lederer and Burdick: arrogant, rude, and downright stupid.
Some years ago I asked then Ambassador Wendy Chamberlain (in print) to make this classic compulsory reading for her staff. Looking at the bigger mess we are in I don’t think she listened to me but before it gets any messier may I suggest to the present Her Excellency to please do so?
Bushism of the Week: “In other words, he was given an option: Are you with us or are you not with us? And he made a clear decision to be with us, and he has acted on that advice.” — On President Pervez Musharraf, Crawford, Texas, Nov 10, 2007. (Reader, please note the date).
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
By Kamran Shafi
THE General to the BBC just before that great friend of Latin American dictators, John Negroponte, came a-calling: “Before March I was very good. Suddenly did I go mad after March or suddenly my personality changed, am I a Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde or what is it? Am I such a person? Please go into the details, the causes. What am I doing? Have I done anything unconstitutional, illegal? Yes, I did it on 3rd November. Did I do it before? Not once.”
And: “They (our nuclear assets or bums in the vernacular!) cannot fall into the wrong hands if we manage ourselves politically. The military is there – as long as the military is there, nothing happens to the strategic assets, we are in charge and nobody does anything to them.”
Three things here. One, he did not do anything ‘unconstitutional illegal’ (hello, what’s this?) before 3rd November when he imposed emergency on the country, suspending whatever human rights we had? Er, the actions of Oct 12, 1999 when an elected, constitutional government was kicked out were not ‘unconstitutional illegal’?
Two, ‘suddenly’ he did not go mad; nor did his personality change; and neither is he Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. (Lord, how many nights did I lie awake, shivering in fear after seeing the film in, if memory serves, Delhi in 1955). And three, he is not clinging to power come hell or high water just because he wants to cling to power; he is only clinging to power to ensure that our bums do not fall into extremist hands. Ah so! And here we were thinking all he really wanted were the pelf and privileges that come from his position of pre-eminence that he and his toadies are so used to by now. Silly us! Traitors the lot of us, actually, to impute motives to him.
Be which as it may, let us get down to serious matters and first ask what in the world he means when he says our bums are safe “as long as we are in charge”? Who is “we”? Why is he making himself synonymous with the army when he has announced repeatedly that he would retire from his army post just as soon as the ‘revamped’ Supreme Court validates his so-called ‘election’ to the presidency? Is he suggesting that he will stay on as COAS till Kingdom Come? Or that the army will continue to call the shots?
Might one also ask what will happen to the military (read army) in the unlikely event that a fair election is held in the country and a properly constituted government takes over? Will the army (which today guards our bums) disappear into thin air, leaving them unprotected to be grabbed by all comers, specially (shiver, shiver) Al Qaeda?
The Commando will do what he will to cling to power, and no one has any control over that, probably not even he himself. The question to ask once again is what Ms Bhutto will do. While her answer to the same question last week was to say to Musharraf that he was no longer acceptable to her as President, in or out of uniform, Negroponte’s telephone call to her (he did not deign to see her) seems to have done the trick. What did he say to her? You are with us or you are against us?
I seem to have lost one hundred rupees, the maximum that I bet, to my old friend Zahid Zaman who said she would relent vis-à-vis Musharraf. He was right; I, who pretend to know her these twenty years, was dead wrong.
But leave alone that the ‘elections’ will be held under virtual martial law, what will she achieve by going into them after all that The Commando has said: variously that the House of Zahoor-led PML will win; the next prime minister will be from the Kings Party; and that Benazir is only the ‘Darling of the West’ but doesn’t really have any popular following?
It is very bad news indeed that the leader of what was Pakistan’s only anti-establishment party has acquiesced to the demands of the US administration that she not upset their tight buddy’s apple cart. An apple cart, I might add, with two wheels missing and the third in utter disrepair.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
As said earlier in these very columns, there seems to be only one way for all democrats who believe in the rule of law and constitution. To demand that emergency (read martial law) be lifted immediately; the Honourable Supreme and High Courts return to status quo ante Nov 3; truly neutral caretaker governments and an election commission approved by all the stakeholders be installed; and every political party and its leaders including Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif be allowed to take part in the elections.
There is strength in unity, every politician must understand. Otherwise, the Establishment will pick them off one by one. When it comes to ‘Aksariat’ we haven’t seen anything yet.
Afterthought: At a recent demo against muzzling the TV channels I carried placards saying ‘Yankee go Home’ and ‘Negroponte Out!’ I, of all people!! For the Americans must be told that they are increasingly being looked upon as those described in The Ugly American, the great late-50’s book by Lederer and Burdick: arrogant, rude, and downright stupid.
Some years ago I asked then Ambassador Wendy Chamberlain (in print) to make this classic compulsory reading for her staff. Looking at the bigger mess we are in I don’t think she listened to me but before it gets any messier may I suggest to the present Her Excellency to please do so?
Bushism of the Week: “In other words, he was given an option: Are you with us or are you not with us? And he made a clear decision to be with us, and he has acted on that advice.” — On President Pervez Musharraf, Crawford, Texas, Nov 10, 2007. (Reader, please note the date).
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
This ain’t my war
This ain’t my war
By Kamran Shafi
BUT before we go there a matter of the greatest import: the Commando’s latest pronouncements. In a press conference on Sunday, an angry, upset and cagey Pervez Musharraf announced the planned dissolution of the governments at the centre and the three provinces where ‘elected representatives’ rule, gave out the date before which elections should be held, and said that the so-called emergency (read martial law) will stay indefinitely.
He also used unkind language about My Lord Iftikhar Chaudhry and Benazir Bhutto when asked whether he was opposed to her or was her ally, she being a ‘popular leader’. While all in all it was a sorry performance, most instructive were the glum faces of the soon-to-be-made-redundant members of the cabinet. Do they know something we don’t?
This reminds me. Please, do see pictures of the most recent corps commanders’ meeting published in Sunday’s press and also one in the newspapers of Wednesday, Oct 17, showing the Vice Chief of Army Staff visiting troops in Miramshah. Instructive, you will agree.
Which, be as it may, what will Benazir do now? Will she follow Washington’s lead and merely ‘welcome’ the fact that Dubya’s ‘tight’ buddy has announced a date for the elections never mind that they can never be fair and free if conducted during martial law, without a free judiciary, without a free media and without the participation of Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif? Or will she galvanise civil society and join the lawyers in their demand that the superior judiciary be restored under the able and courageous guidance of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry? I have always said Benazir is the smartest, most fearless politician around. Will she prove the point this time too?
And no sir, no matter that everyone including Charlie and his Aunt are going blue in the face trying to assert that the Great Debacle, also known in official Americanese as the Global War on Terror, is our war, it ain’t mine!
Not in the way it was stupidly (un) planned, not in the way it was prepared for, not in the way it is being prosecuted. In no way is it mine. Make no mistake, though. I am as opposed to the Talibanisation of my country as anyone else, for this is the only country I have; I am as against the obscurantist as the next man and I stand completely opposed to the religious extremist. But this isn’t my war.
I do not want anyone to tell my little daughter to wear this dress or that, to wear the hijab or not to wear one, to go to school or not. I don’t want anyone to force his or her way and thoughts and mores on anyone, let alone on my own daughter, or my wife, or I. But this is not my war!
I do not say this to merely score a point: I say it to caution restraint and to ask for a little more heart, slightly more common sense. For starters can our government, such as it is, make an immediate announcement that women and children and the unconcerned public which does not carry arms against the state are not the enemy?
That whilst they will not be targeted by government forces, it is highly regretted that some have already been killed and wounded? That many innocent families have already lost their homes and hearths and that the government of Pakistan and all its agencies including the Pakistan Army sincerely regret their losses? And will make them up after a properly conducted survey?
Also could new Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) be established for the new dangers that our troops face in the field? Such as suicide bombers coming into close proximity of troops and threatening to detonate their explosive laden vests if they do not surrender? Should the troops not be covered by snipers, what was once called ‘one foot on the ground’?
I am only a ‘bloody civilian’, surely our Rommels and Guderians know better, but could someone please explain why almost 300 men and a battalion headquarters including the CO of an infantry unit were taken prisoner by a handful of tribals?
They came up against, variously, a road-block/landslide/got caught up in a rain-storm – the ISPR dissembling with so much abandon, and so often on the same incident, that it is virtually impossible to understand what it is saying.
Well, if it was a road-block, why did the unit get taken by surprise? Why weren’t pickets mounted, an age-old SOP for the tribal areas, on the prominent features along the route to watch for such obstacles? Instead of the unit blundering ahead why wasn’t an armed patrol sent to see if there were hostiles lying in ambush? If it was a rainstorm why weren’t proper guard posts mounted, the pickets already occupying any high ground?
While the state’s forces are facing defeat after defeat in the Frontier at the hands of armed extremists, the gallant puls is having a field day doing what it does best: mercilessly and cruelly beating up unarmed liberal Pakistanis, this time peacefully protesting against martial law and the destruction of the Supreme Court and the curbs on the media.
If you are one of the lucky ones who have fast internet connections or satellite TV you will have seen the brutality of Musharraf’s police as they get hold of protesters and carry them to the jail vans. While four hefty Yahoos carry the poor man by his arms and legs, at least five run along side pummelling him with hard socks and slaps to his head and face.
Do go onto the internet where tens of sites now give you a ringside view of the General’s idea of enlightened moderation. You will see extremist criminals walking tall in the areas they have ‘liberated’ and respected lawyers and teachers and members of civil society and senior journalists and poor political workers thrashed and carted off to his stinking jails.
Well, let’s see what Benazir does now!
Bushism of the week: “More than two decades later, it is hard to imagine the revolutionary war coming out any other way.” — President George W. Bush; Martinsburg, W. Va., July 4, 2007
By Kamran Shafi
BUT before we go there a matter of the greatest import: the Commando’s latest pronouncements. In a press conference on Sunday, an angry, upset and cagey Pervez Musharraf announced the planned dissolution of the governments at the centre and the three provinces where ‘elected representatives’ rule, gave out the date before which elections should be held, and said that the so-called emergency (read martial law) will stay indefinitely.
He also used unkind language about My Lord Iftikhar Chaudhry and Benazir Bhutto when asked whether he was opposed to her or was her ally, she being a ‘popular leader’. While all in all it was a sorry performance, most instructive were the glum faces of the soon-to-be-made-redundant members of the cabinet. Do they know something we don’t?
This reminds me. Please, do see pictures of the most recent corps commanders’ meeting published in Sunday’s press and also one in the newspapers of Wednesday, Oct 17, showing the Vice Chief of Army Staff visiting troops in Miramshah. Instructive, you will agree.
Which, be as it may, what will Benazir do now? Will she follow Washington’s lead and merely ‘welcome’ the fact that Dubya’s ‘tight’ buddy has announced a date for the elections never mind that they can never be fair and free if conducted during martial law, without a free judiciary, without a free media and without the participation of Nawaz and Shahbaz Sharif? Or will she galvanise civil society and join the lawyers in their demand that the superior judiciary be restored under the able and courageous guidance of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry? I have always said Benazir is the smartest, most fearless politician around. Will she prove the point this time too?
And no sir, no matter that everyone including Charlie and his Aunt are going blue in the face trying to assert that the Great Debacle, also known in official Americanese as the Global War on Terror, is our war, it ain’t mine!
Not in the way it was stupidly (un) planned, not in the way it was prepared for, not in the way it is being prosecuted. In no way is it mine. Make no mistake, though. I am as opposed to the Talibanisation of my country as anyone else, for this is the only country I have; I am as against the obscurantist as the next man and I stand completely opposed to the religious extremist. But this isn’t my war.
I do not want anyone to tell my little daughter to wear this dress or that, to wear the hijab or not to wear one, to go to school or not. I don’t want anyone to force his or her way and thoughts and mores on anyone, let alone on my own daughter, or my wife, or I. But this is not my war!
I do not say this to merely score a point: I say it to caution restraint and to ask for a little more heart, slightly more common sense. For starters can our government, such as it is, make an immediate announcement that women and children and the unconcerned public which does not carry arms against the state are not the enemy?
That whilst they will not be targeted by government forces, it is highly regretted that some have already been killed and wounded? That many innocent families have already lost their homes and hearths and that the government of Pakistan and all its agencies including the Pakistan Army sincerely regret their losses? And will make them up after a properly conducted survey?
Also could new Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) be established for the new dangers that our troops face in the field? Such as suicide bombers coming into close proximity of troops and threatening to detonate their explosive laden vests if they do not surrender? Should the troops not be covered by snipers, what was once called ‘one foot on the ground’?
I am only a ‘bloody civilian’, surely our Rommels and Guderians know better, but could someone please explain why almost 300 men and a battalion headquarters including the CO of an infantry unit were taken prisoner by a handful of tribals?
They came up against, variously, a road-block/landslide/got caught up in a rain-storm – the ISPR dissembling with so much abandon, and so often on the same incident, that it is virtually impossible to understand what it is saying.
Well, if it was a road-block, why did the unit get taken by surprise? Why weren’t pickets mounted, an age-old SOP for the tribal areas, on the prominent features along the route to watch for such obstacles? Instead of the unit blundering ahead why wasn’t an armed patrol sent to see if there were hostiles lying in ambush? If it was a rainstorm why weren’t proper guard posts mounted, the pickets already occupying any high ground?
While the state’s forces are facing defeat after defeat in the Frontier at the hands of armed extremists, the gallant puls is having a field day doing what it does best: mercilessly and cruelly beating up unarmed liberal Pakistanis, this time peacefully protesting against martial law and the destruction of the Supreme Court and the curbs on the media.
If you are one of the lucky ones who have fast internet connections or satellite TV you will have seen the brutality of Musharraf’s police as they get hold of protesters and carry them to the jail vans. While four hefty Yahoos carry the poor man by his arms and legs, at least five run along side pummelling him with hard socks and slaps to his head and face.
Do go onto the internet where tens of sites now give you a ringside view of the General’s idea of enlightened moderation. You will see extremist criminals walking tall in the areas they have ‘liberated’ and respected lawyers and teachers and members of civil society and senior journalists and poor political workers thrashed and carted off to his stinking jails.
Well, let’s see what Benazir does now!
Bushism of the week: “More than two decades later, it is hard to imagine the revolutionary war coming out any other way.” — President George W. Bush; Martinsburg, W. Va., July 4, 2007
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Back to square one
Back to square one
By Kamran Shafi
I WRITE this on the second day of the emergency imposed by the Commando on the very country he has ruled unchallenged for eight whole years, citing all sorts of reasons mainly ranging from a loss of the state’s writ across the land (as if its our fault!) to blaming the judiciary for hampering the government’s anti-terrorism efforts.
Before we go any further let me here explode this particular myth. One of the gravest charges against the judiciary (read Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry) is that the Supreme Court subverted the government’s anti-terrorism efforts by ordering the handing over of the Lal Masjid back to the same group of clerics who took the law into their own hands and which resulted in the horrific July bloodbath.
It most expediently ignores the fact that it was the government’s own ineptness, some say abetment, that exacerbated the problem in the first place when it looked away and pretended all was well even when the mosque’s hard-line and extremist clerics took over the state’s assets. When they killed its own agents and kidnapped Pakistanis, acting only when China sent a strong message after its citizens were kidnapped.
More critically, it glosses over the fact that the two judges who ruled in the Red Mosque’s (read terrorists!) favour were the two judges who have taken oath under the new PCO. So there.
So then, we now live under yet another martial law, for that is what it is because the COAS has imposed it, not the government. The last martial law I should have said, for after the dust of this one has settled after the difficult days that lie ahead which will call for difficult decisions by ordinary people, no other general will enter politics. Ever again.
Let me tell you why. Look at the mess created over the last eight years. Look at Swat, its people, and just see what a horror has been made of that once idyllic place where I went for my honeymoon in March 1969. We stayed at what was then the Swat Hotel, now the Serena, an elegant art-deco building with well-kept lawns and a dining room that had just stepped out of a picture-book on the Raj.
Its beautiful furniture; its waiters in their starched pugrees (turbans); its wonderful bone-china crockery and silver. I remember the two of us going to play golf at the well-designed and manicured golf course situated some miles away in the beautiful valley. I so vividly recall the gentle and cool breeze soughing through the poplar trees that were just turning green, and the blossom-laden apricot and plum trees. I wander, my friends, forgive me, but how can you and I not recall the Pakistan we knew? And for which we pine, eyes brimming with tears.
And now see what has happened to it? See what incompetence and foolishness and placing self-interest above national interest — if I hear ‘Pakistan First’ one more time I’ll scream — has done to our country. I mean enough! The last six years, particularly the last two have been spent in working out ways and means for the Commando to be either elected or reelected! The people will not easily forgive the army brass its trespasses this time around. Consider:
A quick recap on the Swat/Malakand situation. Maulana Sufi Mohammad, father-in-law of Maulana Radio, the present rebel leader in Malakand Division, is the man who took hundreds of innocent young boys into Afghanistan as ‘Mujahideen’ to fight the infidel, just prior to and during the US assault on that country. Took them to their deaths surely.
His methodology was simple. He would take a truckload or two of young boys including his own sons into Afghanistan, drop the rest there and bring his own back. And do the same again, and again. As the Americans intensified the bombing and put an end to Taliban rule, Sufi Mohammad’s young ‘Mujahideen’ either got their heads blown off or disappeared into the torture chambers of Bagram or Guantanamo or Mangla or wherever.
Back home the relatives of those poor young men began to bay for Sufi Mohammad’s blood. Instead of letting him face justice at the hands of his peers what does the government do? It locks him up in Dera Ismail Khan jail, thus affording him protective custody.
Nothing to be too surprised about, for this is yet another example of the government’s ineptitude.
No article, no piece these days can be complete without most fulsome praise of My Lords, Mr Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and his brother judges who have refused to take oath under the new PCO. Which judge before him had the gumption to face down the chiefs of the most frightening of the state’s agencies? Who before him extracted some of the ‘disappeared’ from the clutches of the cruel men who run these agencies and care not for the pain they cause to fellow beings?
While his endeavours to, at the very least, locate the ‘disappeared’ were brought to an abrupt halt by his second dismissal, he is to be saluted for at least giving some hope to the relatives of some whose custody the ‘agencies’ had to admit.
Which Chief Justice was as hard working as him? His Lordship reducing the cases pending before the court for decades from 32,000 when he took over to 7,000 when he was dismissed the first time around? Who heard the cries of the poor and the defenceless more than Iftikhar Chaudhry, and then proceeded to provide them succour?
Very few judges in Pakistan’s history were as correct as Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. Though it is an aberration to take his name in the same breath as Maulvi Mushtaq’s (for the younger of my readers, Justice Maulvi Mushtaq headed the LHC bench that sentenced Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to death) who did not recuse himself despite ZAB’s strenuous appeals that he do so because Maulvi bore Bhutto a grudge, Justice Iftikhar recused himself when the Commando’s case came up for hearing before the SC.
I can only pray that other judges model themselves on this good man; and more than that, that he is restored as the Chief Justice of Pakistan.
Bushism of the week: “I fully understand those who say you can’t win this thing militarily. That’s exactly what the United States’ military says, that you can’t win this military.” — President George W. Bush on the need for political progress in Iraq, Washington, DC, Oct 17, 2007
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
By Kamran Shafi
I WRITE this on the second day of the emergency imposed by the Commando on the very country he has ruled unchallenged for eight whole years, citing all sorts of reasons mainly ranging from a loss of the state’s writ across the land (as if its our fault!) to blaming the judiciary for hampering the government’s anti-terrorism efforts.
Before we go any further let me here explode this particular myth. One of the gravest charges against the judiciary (read Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry) is that the Supreme Court subverted the government’s anti-terrorism efforts by ordering the handing over of the Lal Masjid back to the same group of clerics who took the law into their own hands and which resulted in the horrific July bloodbath.
It most expediently ignores the fact that it was the government’s own ineptness, some say abetment, that exacerbated the problem in the first place when it looked away and pretended all was well even when the mosque’s hard-line and extremist clerics took over the state’s assets. When they killed its own agents and kidnapped Pakistanis, acting only when China sent a strong message after its citizens were kidnapped.
More critically, it glosses over the fact that the two judges who ruled in the Red Mosque’s (read terrorists!) favour were the two judges who have taken oath under the new PCO. So there.
So then, we now live under yet another martial law, for that is what it is because the COAS has imposed it, not the government. The last martial law I should have said, for after the dust of this one has settled after the difficult days that lie ahead which will call for difficult decisions by ordinary people, no other general will enter politics. Ever again.
Let me tell you why. Look at the mess created over the last eight years. Look at Swat, its people, and just see what a horror has been made of that once idyllic place where I went for my honeymoon in March 1969. We stayed at what was then the Swat Hotel, now the Serena, an elegant art-deco building with well-kept lawns and a dining room that had just stepped out of a picture-book on the Raj.
Its beautiful furniture; its waiters in their starched pugrees (turbans); its wonderful bone-china crockery and silver. I remember the two of us going to play golf at the well-designed and manicured golf course situated some miles away in the beautiful valley. I so vividly recall the gentle and cool breeze soughing through the poplar trees that were just turning green, and the blossom-laden apricot and plum trees. I wander, my friends, forgive me, but how can you and I not recall the Pakistan we knew? And for which we pine, eyes brimming with tears.
And now see what has happened to it? See what incompetence and foolishness and placing self-interest above national interest — if I hear ‘Pakistan First’ one more time I’ll scream — has done to our country. I mean enough! The last six years, particularly the last two have been spent in working out ways and means for the Commando to be either elected or reelected! The people will not easily forgive the army brass its trespasses this time around. Consider:
A quick recap on the Swat/Malakand situation. Maulana Sufi Mohammad, father-in-law of Maulana Radio, the present rebel leader in Malakand Division, is the man who took hundreds of innocent young boys into Afghanistan as ‘Mujahideen’ to fight the infidel, just prior to and during the US assault on that country. Took them to their deaths surely.
His methodology was simple. He would take a truckload or two of young boys including his own sons into Afghanistan, drop the rest there and bring his own back. And do the same again, and again. As the Americans intensified the bombing and put an end to Taliban rule, Sufi Mohammad’s young ‘Mujahideen’ either got their heads blown off or disappeared into the torture chambers of Bagram or Guantanamo or Mangla or wherever.
Back home the relatives of those poor young men began to bay for Sufi Mohammad’s blood. Instead of letting him face justice at the hands of his peers what does the government do? It locks him up in Dera Ismail Khan jail, thus affording him protective custody.
Nothing to be too surprised about, for this is yet another example of the government’s ineptitude.
No article, no piece these days can be complete without most fulsome praise of My Lords, Mr Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and his brother judges who have refused to take oath under the new PCO. Which judge before him had the gumption to face down the chiefs of the most frightening of the state’s agencies? Who before him extracted some of the ‘disappeared’ from the clutches of the cruel men who run these agencies and care not for the pain they cause to fellow beings?
While his endeavours to, at the very least, locate the ‘disappeared’ were brought to an abrupt halt by his second dismissal, he is to be saluted for at least giving some hope to the relatives of some whose custody the ‘agencies’ had to admit.
Which Chief Justice was as hard working as him? His Lordship reducing the cases pending before the court for decades from 32,000 when he took over to 7,000 when he was dismissed the first time around? Who heard the cries of the poor and the defenceless more than Iftikhar Chaudhry, and then proceeded to provide them succour?
Very few judges in Pakistan’s history were as correct as Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. Though it is an aberration to take his name in the same breath as Maulvi Mushtaq’s (for the younger of my readers, Justice Maulvi Mushtaq headed the LHC bench that sentenced Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to death) who did not recuse himself despite ZAB’s strenuous appeals that he do so because Maulvi bore Bhutto a grudge, Justice Iftikhar recused himself when the Commando’s case came up for hearing before the SC.
I can only pray that other judges model themselves on this good man; and more than that, that he is restored as the Chief Justice of Pakistan.
Bushism of the week: “I fully understand those who say you can’t win this thing militarily. That’s exactly what the United States’ military says, that you can’t win this military.” — President George W. Bush on the need for political progress in Iraq, Washington, DC, Oct 17, 2007
kshafi1@yahoo.co.uk
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